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Mile Zero doesn’t look like much. It’s just a driveway. A cup of coffee going cold in the cupholder. A map you’ve already looked at three times even though you don’t really need it. The engine running. The garage door still open behind you like it’s giving you one last chance to change your mind.
I know that moment. I’ve lived it more times than I can count. The trip is still just a feeling. Nothing has gone wrong yet. Nothing has surprised you. The road hasn’t asked anything of you and you haven’t asked anything of it. It’s just the two of you sitting there in the quiet of a morning that hasn’t decided what it’s going to be yet.
That’s Mile Zero. And it’s the most honest moment of any journey.
Mile Zero Is Where Everything Is Still Possible
I met a woman at a gas station just outside of Kingman who was standing next to her car with both hands wrapped around a paper coffee cup staring at the highway like it owed her an answer. She wasn’t lost. She wasn’t broken down. She was just at Mile Zero and taking her time about leaving it.
I asked her where she was headed. She smiled and said she wasn’t completely sure yet. Said she knew the general direction but hadn’t committed to the details. Said she figured the road would sort out the specifics once she got moving. I told her that was about the smartest thing I’d heard all week.
There’s something sacred about not knowing yet. About standing at the edge of something and letting it be unfinished for just a little longer. We rush past Mile Zero most of the time. We’re so focused on the destination that we forget the driveway is part of the trip too. That the moment before the first turn is worth something all by itself.
Mile Zero and What the Road Already Knows
Every great Route 66 trip I’ve ever taken started with a version of that driveway moment. The time Mary and I headed west with nothing locked in past Flagstaff. The solo run I made down the old alignment with a full tank and three days and no particular agenda. The morning I left for a wedding in a town I’d never been to and took the long way just because the long way felt right.
None of those trips looked like much at Mile Zero. They were just a feeling and a direction and the quiet understanding that something was about to happen that hadn’t happened yet.
That’s the gift the road gives you before it gives you anything else. The possibility. The wide open unwritten nature of a morning that hasn’t made up its mind. You don’t know about the flat tire or the unexpected diner or the stranger who’s going to say the thing you needed to hear. You just know the engine is running and the road is out there and today you’re going to go meet it.
What You Carry Out of the Driveway
The woman at the gas station finished her coffee and tossed the cup and got in her car. She pulled up next to me on her way to the highway and rolled down her window. Said she’d figured out where she was going. I asked her where. She smiled and said forward. Then she pulled onto the road and was gone.
Forward. That’s the whole answer. That’s what Mile Zero is asking you for. Not a plan or a destination or a guarantee that everything is going to work out the way you’re hoping. Just a direction. Just the willingness to leave the driveway and find out what the road has been saving for you. I sat with my coffee a little longer after she left. Watched the highway. Thought about every driveway I’d ever sat in and every road that came after it. Not one of them let me down.
✨ Roadside Reflection:
Mile Zero is not the beginning of the trip. It’s the permission slip. The moment you give yourself to go find out what’s waiting down the road. You don’t need the whole map. You don’t need every answer. You just need enough courage to back out of the driveway and point it forward. The road takes care of the rest. It always has. It always will. Whatever your Mile Zero looks like today, the engine is running and the road is out there. That’s enough. Go.
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Faith and Good Courage is a podcast and journal by Christopher Tuttle.