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I would stop short of labeling it a crisis, but with my 40^th birthday looming on the horizon, there was a certain amount of anxiety mingled with reflection. After all, my dad’s parents died just either side of 80, and I was closing in on the halfway mark. I began to questions whether I was on track for the rest of my life. A road trip was in order.

Stephen Ambrose (Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West)  peaked my interest in The Lewis and Clark Expedition with his book Undaunted Courage. At roughly 3,000 miles from my home in western North Carolina, I speculated that a trip to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Oregon coast- Lewis and Clark’s destination- should give me plenty of time to update my life’s map for the remaining 40 years.

My daughter Elizabeth and Ken Bell, a friend of mine,were also eager to go. The three of us set a departure date.

We greeted each day with enthusiasm. The miles clicked away, we reached our destination. For 14 months I’d planned for this moment. Visions of sitting on the beach, staring into the ocean and waiting for my epiphany had filled my head. Instead, Elizabeth and I walked down to the water’s edge, picked up a few stones and snapped a couple of photos. We climbed back on the back and headed east.

Three thousand miles later, thinking back on the people we had met and the sights we had seen, I realized that it wasn’t about the Pacific Ocean or reaching Oregon. Hoping to find the secret of life on a distant coast, the truth struck like a lightning bolt less than 10 miles from home.

I had been so fixed on the destination that I lost sight of the fact that it’s the journey that counts.