Miles Ahead

For those who listen.

This is not a journey toward something.
It begins the moment you realize you’re already moving.

Not a destination.
Not a measure of distance.

It’s a way of listening.

Miles Ahead is a literary memoir composed during a six-week solo journey across the United States.

What follows are excerpts of a larger manuscript —beginning at the threshold — before the first mile.

Attention

Before the first mile, there is the decision no one sees.

Not the packing.
Not the reservations.
Not the careful choreography required to make an
absence look temporary.

The quieter decision.

The one that happens internally.
The moment you realize
you are no longer standing still—
even while your body remains.

The car is already loaded.

Not completely.
Not perfectly.
But sufficiently.

Max watches closely—
his body alert, but untroubled.

He does not need explanation.
Only proximity.

He knows.

The upright remains inside—
waiting.

The plants rooted.
The jars sealed.

Small evidences of continuity—
holding their places without protest.

Nothing has asked me to leave.
Nothing has pushed me out.

This is not departure as escape.
This is departure as listening.

I sit in the driver’s seat longer than
necessary, hands resting lightly on the wheel.

The engine off.
The morning not yet committed to
becoming anything.

There is no ceremony.
No announcement.
Only awareness.

How easily a life can appear complete from the outside.

How invisibly it can begin to move
from within.

I turn the key.

The engine responds immediately.
Mechanical certainty.
No hesitation.

Max settles beside me,
his breathing steady, already surrendered to whatever comes next.

I pause once more before shifting
into drive.

Not out of fear.
Out of respect.

For the life I built.
For the version of myself who built it.
For the version of myself now being asked to meet it differently.

The road opens.
Gravel under the tires.

There is no visible threshold.
Only motion.

Nothing has changed.
Everything has.

The road does not rush to meet me.
It waits.

And for the first time,
I understand that forward is not something to chase.

It is something to allow.
Miles ahead.

Morning comes.

And with it,
the first test.

I’m getting a screaming deal on gas—$2.49 a gallon, nearly half of what it costs back home—and I suddenly have no way to pay for it.

An irony, considering how carefully everything else has been planned.

I’m leaving for at least six weeks.

I get out the door by 8:00 a.m.— on the road by 8:03 a.m.

A small victory.

This trip has been designed with intention: easy travel days, pet-friendly hotels, space for bike rides with Max, nights in jazz listening rooms instead of loud bars.

Nothing rushed.

Nothing accidental.

All of it an opening act for a destination I’ve been holding quietly in mind—a long arc of listening that eventually leads me to the ocean, and to music.

The morning feels cooperative.

I’m making good time when I pull into Brooks, drawn in by the price on the sign.

I fill the tank, go to pay, and realize my wallet isn’t where it always is.

Instead of panicking—or driving off with the pump still attached, which briefly crosses my mind—I leave the pump, park, and stop.

This is new for me.

I pause.
I breathe in deeply, hold it, then
exhale slowly, counting to four.

I look under the seat.
Between the seats.
Nothing.

My heart speeds up.
My mind starts racing.
Ugh.

The night before: a recording session, a cash stop around 10:00 p.m.

I know I had my wallet then. After that—packing the car, cleaning the house, checking reservations, maps, mileage.
By the time I went to bed, it was after 2:00 a.m.

I stop the story again.

Rest. Breathe.
This inhale is longer.
The exhale shorter, but deliberate.

I remind myself: I’ve done an extraordinary job preparing for this trip.

One missing object doesn’t erase that.
Still, the wallet is missing.

I unpack slowly.
Charts. Laptop. Charger.
Nothing.

My travel purse: receipts, lip oil, lotion, a lone throat-lozenge wrapper.

Then I push the seat back
and look again.
A single plastic debit card.
Hope.

I imagine the worst-case scenario—another habit I’m loosening.

If it’s gone, I go home.
I regroup. I push the trip back a day.

The arc stays intact. The listening still happens.

The point isn’t perfection.
The point is staying in motion without panic.

I say a small prayer—not for the wallet, but for calm.

Max looks at me like, What are we doing?

“Mom’s just doing her thing,” I tell him.

Then I see it—wedged between the passenger seat and the console.
Everything spilled out.

License. Insurance card.
Everything I need to continue.

I pull back onto the road and let the miles stack.

Later, merging onto I-5 south, a semi-truck fills the lane beside me, close enough that the air shifts.

My hand moves toward my phone—the reflex to document rising automatically.

I stop.

The phone goes away.
Hands steady.
Eyes forward.

Breath returns.
The truck moves on.
The noise fades.

The road opens—wide, forward, unobstructed.

This is what the trip is about: attention.
Choosing presence over urgency.

Letting the road teach me how to listen—so that by the time I step into the music waiting ahead, I’m already tuned.

Miles ahead.

Apprenticeship

By now, the ship has developed its own
internal weather.

Not the kind measured by wind or tide.
Something human.

Patterns of movement.
Familiar faces appearing at
predictable intervals.

Musicians carrying instruments through
narrow corridors with the same care surgeons carry tools.

The quiet choreography of people devoted to something that does not belong to them, but moves through them.

I begin to recognize the rhythms beneath the schedule.

Who wakes early.
Who listens from the back.
Who stays late, long after the room
has emptied.

No one seems to be trying to extract anything from the experience.

They are simply inside it.

Clinics dissolve into conversations.
Conversations into shared listening.
Shared listening into silence.

No hierarchy announces itself.
Only attention.

I spend long stretches saying nothing.

Sitting near the piano without needing
to touch it.

Standing at the edge of rooms where
mastery unfolds without commentary.

Not studying.
Receiving.

There is a moment, midweek, when the urgency to interpret everything begins to soften.

Not disappear.
Just loosen.

I’m standing near the edge of the room after a set—close enough to see condensation forming on abandoned glasses, the piano lid resting half-closed, the drummer making small adjustments to his cymbal stand with unhurried attention.

No one rushes away.
The room settles into itself.

Instruments returned to cases.
Shoulders lowering.

Bodies reentering ordinary gravity after carrying something invisible together.

What strikes me most is the absence of separation.

No one elevating themselves above
the moment.

No one protecting what they know.

Just musicians continuing their relationship with the work.

One of the pianists I’ve admired for years stands nearby, speaking quietly with someone else.

His voice softer than I expected.
His presence neither diminished nor enlarged by proximity.

He pauses and includes me in the conversation without transition, as if there had never been a boundary to cross.

We speak briefly.
Not about achievement.
Not about career.

About listening.
About how each room asks for something different.
How the music reveals itself when no one is forcing it forward.

Nothing instructional.
Just shared understanding.

He nods as I speak—not evaluating, not affirming—simply receiving.

The exchange completes itself naturally.
No conclusion required.

What becomes clear is not that I have arrived somewhere new, but that I have been participating all along.

There is no threshold to cross.
Only attention to sustain.

All week, I’ve watched these musicians create space for one another.

Not competing for definition, but contributing to something none of them could produce alone.

Excellence here does not isolate.

It connects.
It listens.
It responds.

Standing in that room, I recognize the same orientation inside myself.

Not as aspiration.
As continuity.

Nothing about this moment feels
transactional.

Nothing to earn.
Nothing to prove.

Just presence, shared and sufficient.

Something in my nervous system settles further into trust.

Not trust in outcome.

Trust in process.
Trust in listening.
Trust in continuation.

Later in the week, there is a passenger jam.

Not the headliners.
Not the scheduled artists.
Just those of us who have come to listen, stepping briefly into sound ourselves.

The room is warm.
Informal.
Generous.

Names are called.
Players rotate through.
Encouragement moves easily between strangers.

At some point, someone turns toward me.

“You should sing.”

It isn’t pressure.
It’s an invitation.

Respectful.
Open.

A version of me would have said yes immediately.
Not out of ego.
Out of reflex.

Participation as confirmation.
Sound as proof of belonging.

But I don’t move.

Not from hesitation.
From clarity.

I am exactly where I want to be.

Seated.
Listening.

Inside the music without needing to alter it.

The urgency to insert myself isn’t there.

Not because I couldn’t.
Because I don’t need to.

Musicianship was once something I demonstrated.
Something earned publicly.
Measured externally.

Here, surrounded by artists whose work shaped my own, something quieter has taken hold.

I am not here to prove I belong in the room.

I am here because I already do.

So I listen.
Fully.
Gratefully.

Letting the music arrive without needing to add to it.

Nothing missing.
Just attention.

And for the first time, that feels like enough.

Nothing has been given to me directly.
No instruction. No correction.
Only proximity.

And proximity, I realize, is enough.

Later, walking the outer deck alone, the ocean stretches without edge.

No audience.
No structure.
Just distance and direction.

The ship moves forward whether I monitor it or not.

The same is true of everything that matters.

Progress here has not come from effort.

It has come from attention sustained long enough to become natural.

I return to my cabin without turning on the overhead light.

The room holds its quiet.

Nothing to report.
Nothing to resolve.

Only continuation.

Miles ahead.

Weather

Driving the North Rim after the soft curves of the Catalina Mountains feels like changing keys mid-song.

Desert bronze to alpine hush.
Cactus to pine.
Heat to breath.

The land doesn’t transition gradually.

It asserts itself.

Red rock rises again, and I realize how close I am to two names I’ve heard my whole life but never stood inside:

Bryce Canyon.
Zion.

My father.
My sister.

Harley Davidsons humming through corridors of stone long before I understood what those places meant to them.

They had been.
I had not.
Until now.

So I delay the return.
One more day.
One more movement before the final cadence home.

I leave before sunrise.
Route 89 in complete darkness.

Headlights carve a narrow corridor through terrain that does not reveal itself willingly.

And then—

A deer.
Still.
Official.

As if she is not crossing the road but inhabiting it.

She stands in full possession of the moment.

I slow immediately.

She turns her head and looks directly at me.

No fear.
No urgency.
Only acknowledgment.

For several seconds, neither of us moves.

Then she dissolves back into the dark.

Not fleeing.
Returning.

The road resumes.
The forecast shifts.

Snow.
Of course.

We’re climbing past 6,000 feet.

Weather does what weather does.

The temperature drops from desert warmth to winter warning in less than a day.

My body registers it before my mind finishes processing.

Hands tighten slightly on the wheel.
Breath shortens.
Then steadies.

Max lifts his head briefly, sensing the shift, then settles again.

He does not negotiate weather.
He accepts it.

That posture transfers itself to me.

Weather is not personal.

It’s informational.

[Read More]

Stillness

I wake before the alarm.

For a moment, I don’t know where I am.
Not disoriented.
Just unassigned. 

No hotel geometry.
No unfamiliar ceiling.
No hum of interstate beneath my body. 

Only quiet.
Real quiet. 

Max is pressed along my side, his breath slow and heavy with sleep. He does not lift his head.

He already knows.
We are home.

Light enters differently here.
It does not force its way in
It gathers gradually touching the hardwood floors, the edge of the dresser, the plants across the room waiting exactly as they were when I left. 

Nothing asking.
I lie still long enough to feel my own breathing match the room. 

No urgency.
Nowhere to be.
Nothing to solve. 

My body feels lighter than it has in years. Back in my upstairs master bedroom, everything is bright, open, and fresh.

My head, shoulders, lower back—my entire body—melts into the mattress as I hear Max breathing deeply beside me.

Home.

The nervous system, which has lived in calibrated vigilance for weeks—mapping exits, reading terrain, anticipating variables—begins to loosen its grip.

Not all at once.
But enough. 

My jaw unclenches without instruction.
My shoulders settle deeper into the mattress. Breath moves farther into my body than it has in weeks, reaching places that no longer brace for interruption.

Nothing in me prepares for departure.
Nothing scans for what might be required next. 

For the first time since leaving, there is no internal queue forming ahead of the present moment.

Only this.
Enough. 

I stretch into the morning and sit upright, breathing slowly.

Grateful for the quiet gifts of life, safety, and enough.

When it’s time to rise, my feet find the familiar cool of the floor.

Not foreign.
Not earned.
Known. 

I walk barefoot into the living room.

The hardwood floors are cool beneath my feet, steady and familiar. Morning has already entered through the east window.

Sunlight stretches across the room in long, quiet bands. In the distance, Mount Hood stands snow-capped against the horizon.

Unchanged.
Certain.

My house does not feel empty, even though the baby grand has not been here for months. Nothing feels missing.Only rearranged.

My upright is waiting downstairs.
I move toward it naturally.
No urgency.
No announcement.
Just continuation.

I sit on the bench and look out the window, watching a flurry of birds moving across the open sky beyond the trees. They travel without formation.
Without visible instruction.

Just movement.

I lift the lid.
Not to play.
To recognize.

I sit.
I breathe.

No urgency to produce sound.
No impulse to prove anything.

Just the weight of the stool beneath me. The steadiness of the floor beneath my feet. The instrument before me.

I place my fingers gently on the ivories.
Not pressing.
Touch only.

Contact.
Presence.

What is no longer here is immediately clear.

The anxious energy to do something.
To resolve. To arrive.

Gone.

The instrument is not a tool in this moment. It is witness. It has held its place without me.

It has asked nothing.
It has waited without expectation.
We recognize each other without sound.

 No announcement required.

 I leave my hands there a moment longer. Not playing. Not withholding.

Just existing in the same space again.

Complete.

Max shifts in the other room, settling deeper into his bed. His breathing steady.

Certain.

Outside, the day continues.
Not demanding entry.
Just present. 

The life I built remains intact.

The life I returned to contains more space than when I left.

Stillness is not the absence of motion.

It is motion integrated.

I am not preparing to leave.
I am not arriving.
I am here.

Two love sources.
Home.
Still listening.

Miles ahead.

Excerpt Five — Epilogue

What do I know now that I didn’t know before I left?

I know that I can travel with myself.

Not as a fallback.
Not as something to endure.
As a choice.

The road clarified that.

For most of my life, I believed readiness required proof.

Credentials. Endurance.

Demonstrations of competence offered in advance, as if belonging depended on performance.

But the road does not ask for proof.
It asks for presence. 

And presence reveals what was never missing.

Six weeks.
Thousands of miles.

Cities.
Ocean.
Desert.

Silence.

Every variable changing except the one constant.

Me.

Steady.
Resourceful.
Able to navigate unfamiliar terrain.

Able to stop.
Able to listen.
Able to continue.

I no longer wait to earn the right to trust myself.

Trust is not granted.
It is recognized.

 I will keep traveling.

Sometimes alone.
Sometimes alongside others.

Not to avoid solitude.
Not to fill space.

But to share it—with those who arrive as participants in their own lives.

People who show up with curiosity.
With vulnerability.
With courage.

People who do not need the road to validate them.

People who do not ask me to abandon myself to accommodate their uncertainty.

People who understand that travel is not escape.

It is attention.

If they appear, I will welcome them.
If they do not, I will continue just the same.

Because what I know now is simple:

I am not waiting to begin.
I am not waiting to be chosen.
I am not waiting to arrive.

I am already moving.

The road remains.
So do I.

Miles ahead.

[Read More]