Yesterday, I was on a long coastal road from Florida to Alabama, driving alone. I was coming back from vacation (an amazing vacation in which I also struggled with deep depression). But the main thought on my mind was how wide the open road ahead was. There is no third-culture/military brat/missionary kid in the world who doesn’t feel a tingle deep down in our bones as we hit miles of open freeway.

For a few transitory, golden hours, travelers, we are in between lives. No having to pick and choose between lives. No commitments, no responsibilities. In this loose and shining set of moments, we can go anywhere and be anyone. Suddenly, no deadlines, personal or professional commitments. I can hit the road, and just keep going. Past Alabama, through the South, any direction, west or east or north or south, the road stretches on, because the vast and beautiful interconnected freeway system of America can take you anywhere.

One of the things I love the deepest, all the way down to my bones, about America is how dramatically, extravagantly big the country is. Try going anywhere in the world except China or the continent of Africa and living for a few months, and then coming back and not being awed by how our country just keeps going and going and going. It never quits, it never stops being dramatic. You don’t see this from flying over it. Unless you’ve driven through Kansas, Wyoming, Texas, at the very least, you don’t know. How gorgeously the miles keep unfolding under your wheels, beautiful and relentless, always giving. 95,471 miles from coast to coast in the United States and 3 million square miles. Coasts, swamplands, deserts, arctic peaks, immense pine forests: we have it all.

John Muir, the famous naturalist, explorer, writer, and conservationist who was hugely influential in founding our National Parks system, was born in and grew up in Scotland until the age of 11, at which point his family moved to Wisconsin. Sometimes, it takes the lens of an outsider to see the beauty here. His most famous (or infamous due to overuse) quote is “The mountains are calling and I must go.”

But it’s the land itself that calls to me. The road, and its endless possibilities that sing to every TCK. You can shed your current identity. You can start all over again, freshly minted and new. 2 days, 10 days, down this freeway, somewhere, you can stop in a random town, or at a random port. You can get a job at a diner, or a boatyard. It’s not always, or even often, that we actually want to leave our current lives. But oh, the song of the road hums clear and golden, a thrill to the traveler’s blood. When you belong nowhere, sometimes this space of endless possibility feels the most freeing, the most comfortable. In between lives, everything is open. Here, we can be deeply at home, for this brief, illusory set of hours. Free from the specificity of attachments and the choices that guide and pin down our hours and identities. Lungs breathe lighter, and realities feel changeable.

And then a breathe, and return again to our lives. Until the next time, when we meet the road again, in between time.

I’m thankful for roads.