I had a good life in Pennsylvania. My job was in Philly — a web app programmer working on database interfaces that nobody would ever love but everyone needed. The train commute was long enough to read a book to a good soundtrack — but still short enough that I enjoyed it. I came home around 7pm with enough energy left to have fun.

Lancaster was where I lived, and Lancaster was where my people were.

Travis and Sam were perhaps my closest friends when I left. Many nights I’d come back from the train station, grab my bike, and meet them at the Lancaster Dispensing Co. around eight. Taco Tuesday was the best night. We’d grab our usual spot near the door, at a table big enough to welcome newcomers, and Travis would already be telling some story about an album he’d found at a yard sale or Sam would be sketching in her book.

One particular Tuesday — must’ve been spring because none of us needed jackets — Sam showed up with an idea. She had remembered an old covered bridge somewhere, one of those slippery wooden ones from the 1800s, and she wanted to see it at night.

We shrugged, down for any bike ride.

A beer or two later, we were on our bikes. I had a flask of cheap whiskey that we passed back and forth as we cruised through neighborhoods that got progressively darker and quieter. We sang badly (well, Sam was always the real singer). We made up stories about the people living in the houses we passed. The whiskey made everything funnier than it was.

The bridge was exactly as advertised: old, wooden, covered, mossy. We sat on the entrance with our legs hanging over the creek below, listening to frogs and throwing rocks. Nobody said much. We just existed there for an hour, maybe more.

On the way back, all hell broke loose when I ran over a tree branch. Somehow it slipped between my wheel spokes and I went over the handlebars — I can still remember that feeling of helpless launching.

I could barely believe I was fine. But the bike was beyond repair with our pocket tools, so I had to carry it the remaining two miles home. That night, it felt like a trophy.

Another night, we stopped at the Salvation Army dumpster — not because we needed anything, but because we were dumpster divers and that’s what we did. We found a worn winter coat, some picture frames, and a toy xylophone missing two bars — Travis said he needed for reasons we’d figure out later.

We ended up back at my place on Queen St. around 2 AM. The big house I shared with four other people was dark and quiet. We dragged everything up to my room — the only space I’d ever really had to myself in my adult life.

My room was small but mine. I’d hung Kate’s sketches on one wall — these weird abstract pen drawings with a non-sequitor phrase or poem that still travel with me. A few posters from local shows filled out the empty space. My bookshelf was a mess: Robert Anton Wilson leaning against Hakim Bey leaning against old anarchist texts someone had given me, comic books by Grant Morrison stuffed in wherever they’d fit, a beat-up copy of the Lost Horizon that had coffee stains on half the pages. Yes, I was that guy.

We sat on the floor. Travis fiddled with the broken xylophone. I found my one good bottle of bourbon and poured three shots into mugs because I didn’t own shot glasses. We talked about nothing important — good songs, childhood stories… whether the soup we’d made for Food Not Bombs that week had been too salty. I’d made so many gallons of emergency soup in the past few years, I’d completely lost my idea of salty.

I imagine. Of course I’m pretending these are the exact conversations we had 25 years ago.

Around 4 AM, Travis fell asleep along my floor. Sam and I kept talking in whispers about where we thought we’d be in five years. She wanted to work on community there — she talked about a community garden, about the way she wanted to build something real here for everyone. I felt like this sounded amazing… but I still wanted to keep traveling.

“Why?” she asked. “This is pretty good.”

And it was. The house on Queen St. had a huge backyard where we threw parties with live music and the neighbors would actually show up instead of calling the cops. I had my job, my friends, my room with my books.

I loved my life there.

But Lancaster was not and had never been my home. My parents had moved there after I’d already left for Spokane. When I came back during a rough patch in my early twenties, I lived with them for a while, then moved into the Queen St. house. I’d been there four years now. I had protested with these people. Made massive pots of soup and potluck dinners. Played music at living room shows. Done all the things that were supposed to make a place feel like home.

But every time I walked through Lancaster, I felt like I was borrowing someone else’s story. Like I was visiting a life that looked right but didn’t quite fit. I couldn’t explain it to Sam that night, so I just said something vague about wanting to see mountains or deserts or something new.

I think my friends thought I’d leave for a few months, and return later. Like everyone was doing. But I wanted something that would break me open a little. Hard work and fresh desert air — something harder than web applications and beer at the Dispensing Co.

A few months before I left, my ex and I had visited a wolf sanctuary somewhere in rural Pennsylvania. I don’t remember the name — one of a million plots of land in that area with rolling hills and decent roads.

We’d gone on a cold Saturday morning. They gave us a tour, showed us wolves that looked more like myths than animals, told us stories about rescues and rehabilitation. At the end, we volunteered to help — cleaning enclosures, building fences, whatever they needed. They took our contact information and said they’d call.

They never did.

But something had stuck. The way those wolves moved as a pack, the intense stares and body language. I’d always been scared of dogs and wolves, never really trusting any large animal with teeth and muscles like that. But it felt like what I wanted to do: to face a fear of mine in a whole new environment.

When my ex and I split a few weeks later (she wanted New York City, while I wanted the desert), I started looking for sanctuaries that needed help. I found one in Candy Kitchen, New Mexico. Middle of nowhere. Room and board included. The pay was twenty-five dollars a week.

I applied. They said yes. I gave my notice at work.

Then I started selling everything I owned. The furniture went on Craigslist. The books went to anyone who’d take them. My bicycle went to Travis. Skateboard went to Nate. Most of my clothes went to Goodwill. I kept what fit in a backpack: three shirts, two pants, socks, underwear, a jacket, my notebooks, and the banjo I’d barely learned to play. No computer or phone.

I quit my job intending to save money for the move. Instead, I spent the last two weeks going out every night — dancing at clubs with my friends, buying rounds I couldn’t afford, staying out until 3 AM like I was trying to squeeze every last drop out of a life I was about to leave behind.

The final week came and I checked my bank account: $195.

I couldn’t fly — flights to New Mexico were $400 minimum. Trains didn’t go to Candy Kitchen. And I’d already donated my old car to charity. That was about 48 hours of panic, wondering what I would do.

But this was 2008, and Craigslist still worked for weird things like this. I miraculously found a rideshare post: two sisters driving from New Jersey to Los Angeles, looking for an extra person to split gas. They wanted to camp most nights to save money. It would take four days.

I messaged them. They said yes. I paid them $75 up front.

They were talkative and kind. Mary was the one moving west, and her sister was along for the ride. The first night we camped outside in… Illinois? Indiana? We grilled hot dogs and chatted by the campfire until the mosquitos were impossible. They had a tent, but I slept on the ground like I was already learning to do. I pulled a jacket over my head to keep the mosquitos off.

We made it to Missouri the first night, stopping at my childhood friend Jake’s place outside St. Louis. Jake had been one of those kids who introduced me to cartoons and video games and everything my parents didn’t like — it was fun getting to see him as an adult. The sisters wanted to stay in, and they talked all night with Jake’s mom while Jake and I went to a local brewery.

The third night, somewhere in Oklahoma, we decided to get a hotel to clean up and relax with a pizza and movie. The hotel clerk eyed us suspiciously, took cash only, and gave us a room that smelled like, as my friend would put it, “sin and drugs”. We had a few beers and chatted about what our next lives would be like.

Back in the car, I stared out the window at landscapes that got progressively more desert and more beautiful as we reached Albuqureque the next morning. The Sandia Mountains were impossibly huge and I saw plants and cacti that I’ve never seen before.

We had one last breakfast together on Gold St, each of eating a delicious breakfast burrito with green chili, done New Mexican Style.

I thanked the sisters, grabbed my backpack, shouldered my banjo case, and stood in the parking lot as they drove away toward California.

I counted my money. $120 for my new life.