This past August marked the ten-year anniversary of the road trip that changed my life.
In the summer of 2013, I was 27 years old and working for a television show. I had a steady job and a 30-minute commute. Every day was exactly the same, like clockwork.
On many of those morning drives, with the sun just barely finishing its rise above the hills to the east, a recurring intrusive thought would pop into my mind: What if I just kept driving east? What if I missed my freeway exit and instead just kept driving?
I daydreamed about hitting the gas pedal and continuing to drive. I said I wanted to see what was at the end of the freeway. What I really wanted was to leave behind my day-to-day drudgery. What if I just never went back to my desk? Who would stop me?
Some days I could ignore this nagging Call of the Wild™️, and other days, I felt it pulling at my chest like I might physically die if I didn’t abandon all my responsibilities in an instant and run away just to go see what was on the other side of them thar hills.
I had only ever lived in California up until that point and barely even left the borders of the state. Why bother leaving?! All my stuff was here! My friends, my family, and the entirety of the film and television industry were here! Awfully convenient for me – but also extremely limiting. I had built a life that could only be lived in California and that eventually became an increasingly depressing prospect. I was not as free as I wanted to be.
Now, I realize that California is seen as this dream place to live, but not if you’re handcuffed to it. I was 27 years old and getting real sick of seeing the same old shit I had seen for the preceding 27 years. I didn’t know what other places looked like. And the notion of places that weren’t California fascinated me.
Some Corn in Colorado
This impulse didn’t come out of nowhere. I had gotten a brief taste of Not California when I traveled to some film festivals in some cities across the country to screen a film I had co-produced a few years before – namely Charlotte, Denver, and Orlando. To you, these might sound like basic run-of-the-mill American cities, but to me, these were EXOTIC LOCALES.
Now, when most people go on work trips, they simply do what they need to do, eat at a Chili’s next to their Holiday Inn Express, and then immediately leave. But I, a young Southern California rube, made sure to add an extra day to my work trips so that I could just drive a rental car around the countryside exploring by myself. What is even out there?
On one of these work trips, I was so struck by the pastoral beauty of the roadside CORN in Colorado that I pulled over and took photos of it.
If you’ve lived in a place with rural areas nearby, you’ve probably seen acres and acres of corn fields before, right? Well, you know who hasn’t? THIS GIRL.
That photo later became my desktop background at work. That’s how much I romanticized the corn I saw in Colorado.
Corn.
And I bet you’ve seen BARNS before, right? Well, guess who hasn’t??
What about a dilapidated house in the middle of a field? LET ME GET MY CAMERA.
Everything impressed me. I became aware that I was in awe of things that most people considered downright boring. Every time I would tell people in California my plans to drive around the countryside taking photos of corn and barns, I would hear the same question over and over again: Why?
And the answer is: because it’s all new to me. I’m sure there are people who go their whole lives dreaming about seeing the ocean in California. But I did the reverse – I had spent my whole life dreaming about seeing an abandoned, decaying shack in a field in Fort Collins, Colorado.
I’m a tourist in the truest sense of the word. I like to imagine for a moment that I could live in a place with barns and cows and main streets because it’s fun to imagine alternate realities for ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m thankful to have grown up where I did. I had a lot of fun and if not for my supreme luck of having been born in Southern California, I never would have been able to pursue my dream of working in Hollywood in the first place. I don’t say any of this to lament the place I came from, but to say that a restlessness can be born in anyone, from anywhere, at any time.
The Walkabout
When you work in television, there’s a period of downtime between seasons called a hiatus. In 2013, I knew that I would have a 4-week hiatus. I daydreamed about spending that time traveling across the country. FINALLY, a chance to act on my intrusive thoughts about driving east until I reached the opposite ocean.
But I could never! A 27-year-old woman? Traveling alone? Just aimlessly meandering around the country? It’s a recipe for being murdered.
But when I told my boss and mentor about this fantasy of mine, he was instantly supportive. “Oh my god, you should absolutely do that!” he said.
“Really?”
“Yes! You’re young and wild and free. I wish I was young and wild and free. Go on a little walkabout and get it out of your system and be back here in 4 weeks when the new season begins. GO.”
So I left! I barely had time to put together an itinerary. I just packed a bag and went.
When I told people my plan, everyone in my life told me the same thing (after first admonishing me for probably getting myself murdered): “You’re going to get SO BORED driving. There’s literally nothing out there.”
My first day on the road, I got a glimpse of the “nothing.”
The “nothing” on the I-40 heading east is the mountains and pines of Flagstaff. Sorry, folks, but it’s fucking beautiful. There are these pretty little yellow wildflowers everywhere and the air is clean and smells like pine. You know where we didn’t have clean air that smells like pine? LOS ANGELES.
The “nothing” also included the red rock formations of the New Mexico desert. They don’t even look real??
What I discovered is that I fucking LOVE the nothing. The nothing is the whole appeal.
People warned me to load up on audiobooks and podcasts because I’d need something to distract me from the long drive. But in reality, I only played music and relished the time to be alone with my thoughts and come up with ideas and make grandiose plans for the future.
That first day on the road, I decided I would stop in Albuquerque. I announced my plans on social media (in retrospect, very stupid, because that actually could have gotten me murdered – but it was 2013 and it was YOLO times, baby).
An old high school friend of mine said that he was living in Albuquerque and wanted to meet up for dinner. I decided right then that Road Desiree is an EXTROVERT and would be HAPPY to grab dinner with an old friend, even after 14 hours of driving.
Such was the energy level of a 27-year-old. R.I.P. to that lifestyle. 🙏
I spent the trip voraciously seeking out new experiences I would never forget.
I went to a football game at Permian High School in West Texas – the real school that inspired the book and show Friday Night Lights. There, I had my first Frito pie, a delicacy I now crave at every sporting event.
I walked up and down 6th street in Austin (remember, it was 2013 so this didn’t sound like the Worst Idea in the World).
My first steps into the French Quarter in New Orleans caused me to instantly fall in love with the city. To this day, New Orleans remains my absolute favorite city in the world. I walked up and down every street for hours taking photos of the most interesting buildings I had ever seen in my life and when I was finished, my shoes were filled with blood (Converses were the wrong choice – another valuable life lesson gleaned).
I saw the swamps of Louisiana and almost shit my pants when I thought I saw an alligator. (I have no business being in the swamp.)
I saw the rural decay of Mississippi and Alabama.
I saw the wetlands of Florida, although everywhere I looked, there were signs that said things like “TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT” and “AROUND HERE, WE DON’T CALL 911” and I believed them, so I didn’t spend long in the wetlands of Florida.
I saw the giant oaks and Spanish moss of Georgia.
I saw the windmills and cows of Oklahoma.
I met kind people everywhere – in a piano bar on Bourbon Street, at a gas station in Georgia, and one particularly kind old woman in the Ozarks of Arkansas who could that tell I was lost in her small mountain town and invited me to use the bathroom in her house. (I now realize that ALSO could have gotten me murdered, but I really had to pee.) When I left, she patted me on the back and said, “Now you can tell your friends you’ve been inside a real Ozark hillbilly house!” And I did.
The Aftermath
When I returned home, an odd feeling washed over me – my room suddenly felt smaller than it had before I left. I had seen the great big world out there (yes, even Oklahoma) and decided that living the same old life in the same old place was never going to be enough for me. I was always going to be restless here.
Before the 2013 walkabout, my life had been singularly focused on one goal: becoming a bigshot Hollywood writer, director, or producer. That was my purpose, I thought.
But this trip planted the seed that maybe my life had a different purpose and one that absolved me of the pressure of conquering showbiz. Maybe what I actually wanted out of life was to see interesting shit, to eat interesting foods, to drink interesting drinks, and to meet interesting people. Within 2 years, I would come to terms with the fact that Hollywood wasn’t for me, and I was making plans to move to Austin, Texas.
This one road trip changed my life by imparting me with a few nuggets of wisdom that I hope you’ll indulge me enough to hear.
First: it’s important to know when it’s time to do big, bold shit. If you want something you’ve never had before, you’ll need to do things you’ve never done before. If there’s something you’re always daydreaming about, then you should figure out a way to do that thing.
It’s scary and it’s not easy. You will have to take risks. Case in point: I was 27 and NOT making good money when I took this trip, so I went into debt to pay for a good portion of it, and it took me a couple of years to fully pay it off. But if I could go back to 2013, would I do it all again?
Fucking yes I would. You only get one life in which to do all the things you’re ever going to do. Take the risk. Do the big shit.
And the second thing I learned is: you are so remarkably free.
Have you thanked the ghost of President Dwight D. Eisenhower for the American interstate highway system lately? Because you really should.
We have over 3 million square miles of land from coast to coast, all of which can be accessed by the many roads that criss-cross this country. My single day-trip from Los Angeles to Albuquerque would have taken MONTHS just 200 years prior, and everyone in the traveling party would have died along the way. This is nothing short of a MIRACLE. And yet, today, we treat road trips like a chore.
After eating a free breakfast at a Holiday Inn Express, you can strap yourself into a chair that’s moving at 80 miles per hour and be in a completely new region HUNDREDS of miles away by dinner time. How are you not in awe of this?!
You’ll never starve out there on the open road because there will always be gas stations to stop at and buy Corn Nuts and Sour Patch Kids. Our ancestors ate buffalos and trees on their road trips.
At any given moment, you can just go. Pack a bag, get in your car, and keep on driving until you feel like stopping. You don’t need permission to do it. You don’t have to sign out of anywhere to leave your state or enter another. You can drive any highway in the middle of the night without telling a soul. How can you not be romantic about the road?!
With a day’s drive, you can leave one life behind and start another in a completely new state, with new geography, and new climate, and new grocery stores that feel like the grocery stores back home, but instead have weird names like Tom Thumb or Kroger.
You are so much freer than you think you are. And yes, I know many of you have spouses and children and your lives are much more complicated now. But even then, only a few tweaks stand between your whole crew and a life elsewhere, or a weekend elsewhere, or anything in between. That is all still yours, albeit with a bit more fuss.
Even I’m not as young and free as I was 10 years ago. I have a house and a steady job. Going on a 4-week walkabout today would have consequences I’m not interested in. But at least once a year, I get a hankerin’ for a drive that seems like it’s never going to end.
And sure, sometimes the appeal of the road loses its luster. On the 10th anniversary of my first walkabout, I drove from Texas to California and back, a route I’ve now taken many times. I drove the same I-40, with some modifications because I now know all the places to avoid. (Like Albuquerque, because green chili moves through me like a bullet train and they slather that shit on everything.)
I travel the same highways, but 37-year-old me has already seen all the pine trees and red rocks. The route isn’t new or exciting and the experience isn’t setting me on any new life paths. It’s still pleasant, but in a familiar way. I listened to the audiobook of Paris Hilton’s memoir on this latest drive. That’s right – sometimes I even get bored while driving now.
That said, I also know that there are vast swaths of the country my tires haven’t even touched yet and I’m certain that the moment I catch a glimpse of New England in the fall or the mountains of Montana for the first time, I am absolutely going to lose my shit and fall in love with a new place once again.
Thank you, ghost of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 🫡