Roadside Attraction: The Stillness That Holds Everything

I Am Route 66 | This Is My Memoir

Apr 25, 2026

To remember what it feels like to belong to the world again…

There are places along the length of me where the noise falls away. Where the hum of tires, the static of radios, the shouts from the past…all go quiet—like someone’s drawn a curtain around the moment and told the world to hush.

It’s not the emptiness that catches you.

It’s the presence.

The weight of stillness that somehow lifts you.

A field in Oklahoma just after the rain.

A canyon turnoff in Arizona, golden with late light.

A rest stop in Texas at 2:17 a.m., when even the vending machines are deep in slumber.

These are the places where you don’t realize you’ve stopped breathing until you finally exhale.

I’ve seen people pull over just to sit. Not to check a map, not to take a photo—just to be. Maybe they sit on the hood of the car and pull their knees to their chest, wrap themselves in an unfamiliar bond of communion. Lift their eyes to the horizon and gaze out at…nothing and everything, all at the same time.

First comes a sigh, then a release so deep the exhale seems never to end. The influx of breath that follows is different somehow…natural, organic, one.

And in those moments, I see something sacred unfold.

A man presses his forehead to the steering wheel, weeping with relief.

A woman lies on the warm desert sand, eyes closed, listening to nothing but wind, the weight of the earth cradling her.

A child too young for language, in awe at the shape of a cloud.

This road has always been more than movement.

It’s a place to pause.

To notice.

To remember what it feels like to belong to the world again.