This year, like clockwork, my wife and I packed up for our annual trip to the Midwest to visit my uncle, aunt, and cousin. It’s become a family tradition — good food, good laughs, and my uncle’s legendary smokehouse grilling that deserves its own cooking show.
While he was manning the grill (and proving once again that patience and smoke can work miracles on meat), our conversation drifted across the usual topics — farming, small-town life, and the rhythms of the community he’s so deeply rooted in. Then he turned the tables and asked me something simple, yet surprisingly disarming:
“Why do you spend so much time driving around by yourself while you’re here?”
I didn’t have an answer. Not then, anyway. My wife and aunt were content by the pool, my uncle popped in and out to join them, and there I was — off wandering down quiet roads, camera in hand, chasing something I couldn’t quite name. The question stuck with me, echoing through my head for months after the trip.
Now, it’s October. And I think I finally understand.
We’re all given just a blink of time on this earth. The older I get, the more I see life as a test — not one of success or failure, but of awareness. The world feels more disconnected than ever. People withdraw, countries turn inward, and conversations too often end in anger instead of understanding. I hear people asking, “Why is everything falling apart? Where’s the goodness? Is there anyone decent left?”
Maybe that’s why I wander.
I travel because I want to see the good — not just hear about it in passing or hope it shows up on the news between the chaos. I want to remind everyone that beauty still exists — in the quiet fields of the Midwest, in the kindness of strangers, in sunsets that don’t care who’s watching.
There’s still so much worth finding out there. You just have to go looking for it.
