When I first started telling people six years ago that I was moving to Idaho, I got all sorts of responses to the news. I remember one person joking that I was continuing my “I-90 ministry”—I’d begun with my theological education in Boston, continued back in my hometown of Rochester, and now was making the leap to Idaho (I-90 runs through the panhandle). According to this theory, I’ll have to retire in Washington to complete the journey.
I didn’t mind the joke at all. In fact, there was something comforting about knowing that I’d still be connected, however distantly, to the highway that I’d logged so many miles on over the years. Growing up, my family traveled I-90 to visit my grandparents in Buffalo; I made the trek between Boston and Rochester on a regular basis during the 5 years I lived in Massachusetts; I’d even occasionally hopped on I-90 for just a few miles if the traffic was bad on the other highways. Even though I was only really familiar with a relatively small stretch of the Interstate, it was still reassuring that, in the face of such a dramatic life change, I could still follow that same road to travel back home.