It is an odd phenomenon, the sound of your own voice, after nearly a month on the road alone. There’s a manner in which it seems to shift in its volume. Louder, as if to reflect the weight of your reliance on it. When you break hours-long silences to ask for directions, or coffee, or call your mother. The negative space of the quiet dissipating as it cracks through with proof of your existence. Where in Spokane, my voice is simply one in a series of the chatter that fills my day, now the sound of my voice is an entity that occupies space. 

As of today, I've been gone for a month. I am asked a lot of if I am afraid to be wandering like I am. It’s a question that comes up in nearly half of the conversations  about my trip that I have with people these days. In one instance, as I explain the details of my Rail Pass to a seat partner in a dining car, the woman--a retired schoolteacher picking at her vegetarian burger with a level of extreme skepticism--looks at me and said “Aren’t you scared?”

As if I am crazy for not being.

Fear is, of course, one of the most potent elements that hangs above our species’ existence. The genesis of this situation is the very normal practice of keeping an ego. But what happens when the vision you carefully craft of yourself over the course of a lifetime gives way to something completely different? When the sound of your voice becomes louder than all of the things that negate, define, or oppose it, both as a human and modern woman?

The other side, after plenty of cynicism, regret, and anxiety, is an acknowledgment that love is most likely the axis around which all things exist (for better or worse), and there is absolutely no better celebration of this than the crisp ability to not care what you’re told to worry about as you skip from one new destination to the next. 

After Florida, I spend three days in the outskirts of Atlanta with my cousin Joanna and her family. I’ve never been one to believe in the American ideology of keeping a house and family in adulthood as a form of happy ending. My cousin Joanna, a special-education teacher, is proof that it can be just that. Her mother, my dad’s sister Debbie, is one of the most nurturing, sweet women I’ve had the pleasure of growing up around (and often, one of my only cheerleaders that I’ll actually take advice from); her house in Lawrenceville is flanked by other, similar-looking houses, and fronts a large patch of unruly forest. 

The time I spend there is a period of relaxation, good food, and lots of goofing around with my cousin Bryce, who is an absolutely insane ball of toddler fury. The mornings in which I wake up, walk out into the living room, and see he and Joanna playing gleefully on the floor brings about a tidal wave of sanity to my perspective on life. Like God is pointing a big fat finger at me, giggling, and saying “See? Lighten up.”

We go to the movies with my cousin Katy, eat Chipotle, and spend four hours on a pontoon boat meandering a bathwater-temperature lake; I explore the woods behind her house and stumble upon a dry riverbed littered with quartz crystals. When it finally comes time for me to hitch my ride to NOLA, I don’t know how to explain to her how much I have valued my time with her. We hadn’t seen each other in years, let alone spent much time together; yet it becomes so instantly easy to just laugh, and talk, and sing along to Taylor Swift. I reiterate -- fear may be one of the most potent elements to human existence, but it doesn’t have jack on the uncontrollable wild creature that is love.

In New Orleans, the train rolls in during a particularly vibrant sunset. Though I am there for a mere 14 hours, it really feels as though I’m returning to the easy company of an old friend. Something about the city has made its claim on me, even though I doubt I could live there due to its deep lack of trees and park space. I return to India House for a night’s sleep, and vanish again at seven in the morning for my train to Los Angeles.

The Sunset Limited stretches 1,995 miles across Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. It boasts the same layout as the Empire 8 Builder, complete with a sightseeing lounge where I spend much of my time charging my phone and watching my reflection in the window move 80 miles per hour through stunning desert terrain. My seat partner, an incredibly kind and witty woman named Barbara, asks me repeatedly if I want to share the never-ending amount of food she brought with her, and refuses to let me move my legs when she needs to move back and forth between her window seat and the aisle. I meet two other women in the lounge car. The first is a 19-year-old redhead Texas native who shares her love of travel with me, and tells me a story about the time she spent Christmas in Chicago on accident and the resultant shock of encountering snow. The second is a Tucson-bound grandmother who hates the margarita she bought from the Cafe car and is 33 credits away from her degree in social work. 

The land outside morphs from mountainous and freckled with shrubbery, to crisp flat horizons populated by cactus. In Tucson, the sky is completely gray and overcast, but when I step off the train for air it begins to shoot down tiny droplets of precipitation. 

 I sleep in odd intervals as I move backward to my normal timezone, and dream about people I’m homesick for. 

I didn’t initially plan to go back west on this trip. In fact, before I left, I was almost certain that I would be restricted to the East Coast and Midwest due to a ticket I purchased for Osheaga. Unfortunately, the U.S. Government is still processing the passport application I submitted in mid-May; as a result, I’m improvising (Osheaga is held in Montreal. Thanks, Obama.) Historically, I haven’t held much interest in visiting L.A.; however, when it began to look like Canada would be off the table, I stumbled across something amazing. 

Whilst browsing the tour dates for T.V. on the Radio (one of my favorite bands,) I saw a July 25th date slated to be held in a photography exhibition. I clicked it without really thinking, just so I could understand how one of indie rock’s most progressive and critically acclaimed acts would be expected to play in an art gallery. As it turns out, the show is a free concert held in an outdoor amphitheater in the Hollywood area. At the time, I simply needed to RSVP to reserve a spot. It seemed like a nice back-up plan.  I said “sure!” and filled out my personal details, receiving a sweet little confirmation e-mail. 

In Florida, it became apparent that Osheaga was definitely not going to happen. Despite all my planning and attempts at good organization, I saw literally every single thing I needed to make it happen blow up in my face. I slowly gave into a situation that could withstand zero procrastination. And now, I write this sitting in the lounge at my Los Angeles hostel, waiting for the city to wake up so I can meet it more properly than the my groggy foray into Starbucks a few hours ago; so I can go find more stories to tell you.

So I can go continue to make a messy, joyful sound with my voice and footsteps.

*Note: The pictures from this story are few because I'm a derp who doesn't know how to operate an iPhone properly and wiped out most of my camera roll from the past three weeks. However, you can follow me on Instagram, username @audreshkigal.