Highway 670, better known by the locals as Saylor’s Pond Road, was busy at ten in the morning. Cars and trucks, many going to-and-from the Air Force base, passed by me as I stood on the south side of the two-lane road. Gazing west, I saw a mile of blacktop, fading into the fields of New Jersey. If I could have gazed farther down the road, past the farms and small towns and rivers, I might have seen my eventual destination, three thousand miles away.

An hour before, sometime just past nine, I signed my name on a legal document, saluted one more officer, and became a free man – a civilian once again. When I scribbled my name on the discharge papers, I became, for the first time in my life, a man on my own. No longer did I have parents to raise me, nor the military to feed me. From here on, at least until I figured out what I would do with my life, I had no one to answer to except myself.

It was a surreal moment in my life, although it didn’t feel like one. As I stood on the side of the road, thumb stretched into the air, all I thought about was when the first ride might come, how far it would take me, and where I would sleep that night. My sleeping arrangements, a faded yellow sleeping bag and an old, worn foam pad, were strapped to the top of my vintage canvas backpack. I purchased the pack in haste in Germany, a month before leaving my last duty station. The sleeping bag was one of the few things I had from my youth, used often as I hiked and hitchhiked around California as a kid. The pad was given to my from a German friend who thought I might want a little cushion between the hard ground and me. Clothes, a small cook stove, a coffee pot, a mess kit, and a new Swiss Army knife rounded out my gear. My entire life fit on my back, hauled between cars as I made my way across the country.

Three thousand miles to go. Then what? I didn’t realize it then, but life changed drastically. I was a person without a life. I had no home, although I wasn’t homeless. I was alone, but I wasn’t lonely. I had no job, but I wasn’t unemployed. I had an entire county to pass through, and as long as the five-hundred dollars in my wallet lasted, I could go anywhere, as long as it was in a southwesterly direction.

Three thousand miles to go. Why was I going home? I had no home. My parents were gone, making me an orphan before my sixteenth birthday. My sisters were gone, both moved away and in bad marriages. A few old friends were still back home, but after four years of traveling the world, serving my country, and growing up without them, would we have anything in common?

Three thousand miles to go. How long would I stay there? Maybe I could go to college. I had the G.I Bill at my disposal. Maybe I could get my job back at the small diner where I learned how to cook. Maybe I’d meet a girl, get married, settle down, and raise a family. Or maybe I’d get bored with the thought of responsibility and move on somewhere else, anywhere but there.

It took less than twenty minutes for me to flag down my first ride. A red sedan with out-of-state plates pulled off the road, a hundred feet in front of me. I grabbed my pack and ran to the open passenger side window. The driver, a middle-aged man wearing dusty coveralls, a Penn State hat, and cracked, brown boots looked up and asked “Where you headed, son?”

I smiled and said “California. About three thousand miles down the road.”

“I’m going as far as Pennsylvania.” he replied.

“That’ll do just fine.”

I threw my pack into the backseat and climbed into the front. A mile down the road, I quietly said to myself, “Two-thousand, nine-hundred, and ninety-nine miles to go.”