When Weezie came to pick me up for our road trip to the mountains, six months after her husband Emmanuel was diagnosed, she looked excited. But it felt forced, like a child who no longer believes in Santa but pretends to believe so they may feel the old tingle of anticipation. What I saw was grief.

On a clear late summer afternoon along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Sandbar slid off its foundation and washed into the Atlantic Ocean, the footage so dramatic, it went viral on social media and made the national news. The house was now called Dolphin’s Point, but for my friends and me, it would always be Sandbar. I thought about how the owners must have felt watching something they loved drift away from them, as they stood helpless, knowing they would never see it again.

I asked myself, how do I get into these things? How did I find myself in the middle of a desert, with nothing but a gas station for over a hundred miles, in the searing heat toting a backpack that magically gained weight the further I went?

Is it possible to feel the loss of something if you never had it to begin with? I don’t mean desire, because to desire something doesn’t necessarily mean a palpable sense of missing it. I mean, rather, to feel a defined and tangible absence, like that of a phantom limb, but for one never possessed in the first place.

The sun set an hour ago, which means it’s finally below forty degrees Celsius. Normally I embrace the dry heat in Erbil in exchange for the humidity back home in Toronto, but today it leaves my throat dry and hoarse. I shuffle my feet on the dusty tiles outside my house and peer over the metal gate until Emmita’s black SUV pulls up.

I moved to Albuquerque in August. In the middle of, at the end of, during a pandemic that plausibly does not have an end. I got a job here, and in late-stage American capitalism that’s about all it takes to rationalize moving across the country.

When we tell Clarence that I need to drive my car from New York to Los Angeles, the first thing he says is, you can have the time off. She can’t. He is, of course, pointing at S, not knowing we’ve stayed up the night before planning a 12-day, 10-city cross country road trip. We’ve planned this trip down to a T, but what we haven’t factored in is our boss not being on board.

Two years into teaching English in Barcelona I have this feeling of doom. It’s a hollowness in my stomach, a black hole sucking everything in. It's too late to leave but too late to stay. Time grinds to a halt. I no longer understand anything; at the event horizon, the rules no longer apply. We fly back from a short summer vacation in Prague and the plane circles the city, round and round, waiting to land, and I look down and I recognize every landmark, and I see all of my neighborhoods, and can only think, why? Why come back? I don't belong here.

The airplane skims over a monotonously beautiful carpet of lakes, clouds, forest, and fields. The Land of Midnight Sun (well, actually, one out of five possible Lands of Midnight Sun; each Nordic nation with its twenty-four hours of summer daylight technically qualified to claim the title) reveals itself to you in puffs of white, geometries of emerald, bowls of aqua. It’s only a matter of minutes before you land and have to start apologizing.

The road unfolds in front of us, a black ribbon of tarmac glittering in the summer heat. It is one of many roads I have taken. The rearview mirror reflects the same view, a yellow dotted line that connects us to the next destination, and the previous. Were we ever there? Over a hill, the road disappears, and I wonder if we too will disappear as we follow it.

I had no inklings, only longing. I wanted her to be a girl so much, I'd convinced myself of the crazy notion that if I didn't find out ahead of time, I'd get Sabrina. That would be her name.

My pale, Nordic friend, Dahlia, arrives on the station platform in Goa in late afternoon. We embrace each other in the brilliant sun, surprised to see each other in this place. I hold her trim, wiry body tight against me, surprised she’s really here.

After we dated for a few months, Miguel told me that when he saw me for the first time he immediately thought, “I hope she’s single and speaks Czech.” Only one was true.

I know many things, some of them untrue:

• By 2050, the southern half of Vietnam could all but disappear under the high tide of the South China Sea.

• The Ho Chi Minh Trail is a popular hiking destination.

• Vietnam is longer than Chile and has a greater population.

I have never been a wilderness person, preferring to hike through urban shopping districts, explore museums and cathedrals, and slide into cafes for an espresso respite. There is no call-of-the-wild in me. But, at sixty-years of age, I craved nature’s inspiration. I wanted to see ancient beauty that would exist long after my expiration date.

My shins felt like sponges.  My ankles were tree trunks.  I was exhausted.  My fucking maternity jeans refused to stay up; it was a constant game of tug-o-war to get them to stay up over the tender, stretched out skin of my stomach.

You always hear people say that you grow closer to your partner when you have children, or when you get married, or go through a life crisis. For my money, over the course of this year, I’ve learned that you grow closer to your partner when you travel. Well, you either grow closer or you end up hating them, it’s really a crap shoot.

Many people love having the window seat when flying. They love the scenery and seeing people turn into ants and cars transform into small specs. The window seat is not just a seat, it is an experience.

It was day 8 of a 2-week study abroad trip I was leading through the south and north islands of New Zealand. It was also day 8 of suffering from poor, interrupted sleep, even though sleeping in new or strange places doesn’t generally pose a problem for me. In fact, I’m quite proud of my acquired skill to “travel light.” Give me a backpack with a change of clothes, necessary toiletries, a good book, and a writing pad, and I’m ready to travel anywhere, no problem.

As I’ve grown, so has my desire to see, taste, and experience the world. An unquenchable thirst for encountering newness, you could say.

I’ve become a travelling woman.

Not that I often traverse great distances or see far-off places or spend much money to do so. On the contrary, my glorious little life has led me to find ways of travelling right where I am.