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The Long Way Home is not the same thing as being lost. I want to say that right up front because people confuse the two all the time and they are nothing alike. Lost means you don’t know where you are. The long way home means you know exactly where you’re going and you’ve decided the direct route isn’t the only route worth taking.
I’ve taken the long way home more times than I can count on this road. Sometimes it was Route 66 when I-40 was right there and faster and would have gotten me where I was going without the detour. I took the old alignment anyway. Not because I was lost. Because I wasn’t ready to be done with the road yet and there’s a difference.
That difference matters more than most people give it credit for.
The Long Way Home and the Man Who Needed More Miles
I met him at a diner somewhere between Seligman and Kingman on a Tuesday afternoon that didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. He was nursing a coffee and had the look of a man who had ordered it more for the excuse to sit than for the caffeine. Retired. Heading back to his daughter’s place in California after a few weeks visiting his son in Oklahoma.
He could have taken I-40 straight through. Four hours. Done by dinner.
He’d been on the road for three days.
I asked him if he got turned around somewhere. He smiled and said no. Said he knew exactly where he was going. Said he just wasn’t ready to get there yet. Said his wife of forty one years had passed in the spring and his kids were wonderful and meant well but being at either of their houses made him feel like somebody’s project. Out here on the road he was just a man having coffee. Nobody was worried about him. Nobody was watching to see if he was okay.
Out here he got to just be.
The Long Way Home Takes More Courage Than It Looks Like
There’s a version of the long way home that looks like avoidance from the outside. The family thinks you should be there by now. The GPS keeps recalculating. Everyone means well and everyone is waiting and the reasonable thing, the efficient thing, is to get on the interstate and cover the miles and arrive.
But reasonable and right are not always the same road.
Sometimes the miles are the medicine. Sometimes the long way home is the only way you get to arrive as yourself instead of arriving as the version of yourself everybody needs you to be right now. He needed three more days of diners and counter stools and strangers who didn’t know his wife’s name and didn’t look at him like a man who was grieving. He needed to just be a man having coffee on Route 66 in the centennial year of the Mother Road.
That’s not lost. That’s found. It just doesn’t look like it from the outside.
I told him to take as many days as he needed. He laughed and said his daughter was already nervous. I told him to call her and tell her he was fine and that the road was taking good care of him. He said that was exactly right.
He finished his coffee and left a good tip and took the long way out of the parking lot too. I noticed that. Went around the long side instead of the short one. Just a little more road before the road ended for the day.
I understood completely.
✨ Roadside Reflection:
The Long Way Home is not a detour. It’s a decision. A quiet brave one that says I know where I’m going and I’m going to get there in the way that serves me best even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone watching from the outside. The road doesn’t judge your pace. It doesn’t recalculate when you take the scenic route. It just keeps going and lets you keep going with it for as long as you need. If you’re on the long way home right now, you’re not lost. You’re just not ready yet. And that’s okay. The destination will still be there. Take the miles you need. Arrive as yourself.
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Faith and Good Courage is a podcast and journal by Christopher Tuttle.