We decided which way we were going on the drive there.

It was the most important hour and a half of our lives.
So we flipped a coin.
Heads for south, tails for north.
We didn’t say it, but we both knew which way we picked – south was the way we knew.
We got tails.
I think it was for the best.
We knew what was down south – Miami, the Keys, white sandy beaches and hot blondes.
It was party capital, USA.
Guaranteed good times, good drinks, bad hangovers, and blurry memories.
But the north, the great, wide open north – that was the unknown.
At least for two kids from central Florida.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, but we lived in the virtual gonads of America, surrounded by water on most sides and just about the same people anywhere in-between. Anything past Tallahassee was just trees, mountains, and reenactments of scenes from Deliverance.
We hit A1A at New Smyrna, a beach we’d been going to since we could walk, talk, and throw sand at tourists. We had our boards strapped up top but we didn’t stop – we were looking for new surf.
For waves unconquered and horizons left pristine.
There was a fleeting moment we both doubted which way to go at the fork, but we both knew where the possibilities led, that the roads didn’t run out if we took a left, that there wasn’t a destination if we took the plunge.
We both knew that it was the unknown that edged us on, that it was what we were really looking for. There truly is nothing else in the world than the feeling of having the goalless goal of losing yourself.
It was there, in the lost, that we hoped we could find something more.
Maybe even ourselves.
So without a word I twisted the wheel and took the left.
And we broke away.
I mean, I guess it really didn’t matter which way we chose.
Regardless of direction we were taking the scenic route.
The great and powerful rolling and broiling Atlantic ebbed and flowed behind passing windswept dunes and rows of waving sea oats on my right.

We made a pact with ourselves to avoid maps and glances at road signs for a long as we could.
Somewhere further north than where we started we decided to break out the boards, the guitars, and the tent, setting the living standard for the coming weeks.
We would spend the days under the sun, fresh towels, free showers, and aloe quickly becoming our best friends. We would stop at little beach towns and hang around for however long as the local hospitality, girls, and patience of exasperated beach patrols lasted.
We could stop for a days and nights at a time, or just a few hours.
As soon as boredom, monotony, and any sense of routine was even hinted we were on the road before a flip-flopped, Hawaiian shirt clad, and thoroughly fanny-packed man from Minnesota could scream “Wanderlust!”
Somewhere on the coast of Georgia we met some friends.
And when I say that, I mean we met them as friends.
From the moment we took in their tie-dye headbands, leather bracelets, genuine grins, tanned skin that smelled of sea spray and warm breezes, and preference for lack of clothing, we were friends.
Kara and Javen.
Two souls that burned – and I mean not just burned, but burned – with love and without hindrance. They were more beautiful than anybody we else we had ever encountered.
Free spirits, they truly were, without a home and without destination. 
It’s funny how you don’t notice these kinds of people until you realize that the path you’re taking could one day lead down to a life like theirs. It was almost too much to hope for, yet I laid awake at night under stars listening to their snores and the surf, hoping with everything I had regardless.
They rode with us up until we crossed the Carolinas, filling the quickly drying air with their stories of far flung experiences and stories mostly involving excess substance abuse and plans gone awry in the best of ways.
We parted ways on a beach at sunrise that didn’t look too much unlike the one we met them on.
Kara kissed both of us and Javen hugged with his tattooed arms that belonged more in the Philippians than Philadelphia, but Kara had family up there she said she needed to see just so they knew she was alive.
Javen clasped my hand, letting his compass slide from his calloused palm to mine.
It was adorned with a chain of feathers, sea shells, and little metal sailboats.
“I haven’t used it a while, but somebody gave it to me a long time ago,” he told me. “I think it’s only right to pass it on to somebody that I know will use it right. Let it guide you.”
And so we parted.
“Which way now?” he asked me, wind from the open window blowing his sun bleached hair around.
I glanced at the compass, the ‘W’ almost faded out and filled back in with neon orange sharpie.
“West,” I said.
And so we went.
The land began to grow, to mature and to become wiser with wind cut cliffs and crags, winding creeks and weathered boulders, and old timber that stood strong like ancient guardians.
We would camp among the mountains, hiding the car and making two or three day trips out into the wild on meager – we wouldn’t have admitted it at the time – and stupidly low supplies before looping back.
The wind doesn’t just blow among the mountains at night – it sings and it dances and it whispers stories of content loneliness and nature, the calls resonating between peaks and below the inky heavens as one comes to mouth gaping revelations of his complete infantile status among the infinite stars.  
We spent time in Kentucky – I was drawn to it, I don’t know why, but it just sounded like a place to be.
And boy, was I right.
Horse country, boundless, pedicured, and bourbon soaked.
We kayaked for a while on the Elkhorn, swapping supplies and stories alike with locals and other travelers, all of them intently surprised at our dedication, to which we would just smile and say that we were too.
We ditched the boats on the side of the highway with “please return!” notes on both of them with the address of where we found them.
It’s not stealing if you at least try to give it back.
Right?
It wasn’t long before the coast drew us back, the roar of the waves calling us like a pounding siren and the dry salty crust on our boards begging to be quenched.
It was too cold to surf by the time we got back to the ocean, but New York was only a day’s drive away by now. Somebody, some distant version of me, used to have the urge to see Manhattan and to traverse the streets and swirl in the crowds under the tantalizing neon bath of Times Square.
So we went.
We stayed for two hours, bought hot dogs, and left.
Whoever I was now wasn’t as impressed with tall buildings when he had stood under even taller mountains just days before as my younger self would have been.
It was okay though, because Canada was just next door.
Freakin’ Canada.
If north was unknown to us before, Canada was a totally blank slate, my only recollections being of strange bacon, cozy accents, and that you should play dead when you see a grizzly bear.
Or something like that.
We didn’t have any coins to flip – or even dollars to fold at that point.
So we went anyway.
It was a blur of the green timber, verdant fields, and pot dispensaries.
We drove hard, not too sure what we were looking for or maybe just waiting for something to happen to us.
And it did.
For better or worse.
Somewhere halfway across the country we broke down hard.
Now, we had some engine problems before but it was nothing our old friends duct tape and ingenuity couldn’t solve, but we had ran out of tape in New Hampshire and our ingenuity had recently started a slow and painful decent with too many trips to the dispensaries.
After cursing loud and long enough to possibly attract the Canadian Mounted Guard he pulled his black and slick with oil hands out and declared the engine finished.
I already had our packs off the off the car.
“Where too?” he asked, breaking a limb to use as a walking stick.
I glanced at the compass before closing it.
We didn’t need it.
Not anymore.
“Whichever way this takes us.”
And so we went.
The trees and moose quickly became like old friends, greeting us every morning with open arms and snorts of discontent. We walked and hiked and climbed and crawled and – don’t tell anybody – cried for a long time through those woods.
We hunted, we foraged, and we built out there, always on the move.
We learned more than we could have imagined.
We were freer than we could have ever believed.
Our facial hair became the only way to tell the passage of time.
It was pure untamed beauty out there.
Somewhere further west than we had started we met some friends.
They were travelers too, two Canadians totally dissatisfied with modern materialistic society, and they had been out on the trail for a few weeks, not sure of how long they would keep it up.
Chase and Aurora.
We said we were going west.
“Where west?” they asked.
“Anywhere west,” we responded.
“Sounds good to us.”
And so we went.
On the trail we nurtured their restless spirits with as much love as we could give, at first telling them stories mostly of excessive substance abuse and good plans gone awry in the best of ways, and then of the moments of total pure, ecstatic, and rapture nature had given us. We told them of the beaches of South Carolina, of the views from the mountains and rolling foothills of Tennessee, the wide pastures and clay of Kentucky, of the early morning sun shafting through the forests of New England, the chaos of New York City, and of the people we’d met along the way.
We showed them what the Canadian wilderness had taught us in her own harsh way, passing down everything we could, from tracking game to what plants will make your tongue swell to half the size of your hand and which ones are actually pretty damn tasty.
They took to it with patience and laughter, quick to flash smiles in the way a child does when it can’t believe it’s dream, no matter how simple, is unfolding in front of it.
Before we knew it we were staring at the coast again, our toes sinking into the wet sand.
The cold and grey Pacific glared back with white caps and flexing crests.
We parted ways on that beach.
Chase and Aurora were heading south, they wanted to see if maybe they could find a quick way across the border, having been transfixed by our descriptions of northern California and the mountain lakes that glistened there.
Aurora kissed both of us and we hugged the two of them in a way that only having been out in the wild for so long only allows.
I let the compass slide from my calloused palm into Chase’s.
“Somebody gave this to me a long time ago,” I said. “Let it guide you.”
And so we parted.
I took a deep breath, savoring the salt air and listening to the gulls.
“Where to?” he asked, his sun bleached beard blowing in the sea breeze.
“Anywhere,” I said.

And so we went.