That Rest Stop in Wyoming Where I Ordered Taco Time

I walk in as the morning shift is ending, the young manager counting her register, removing her headset, brushing back and fixing her ponytail. She looks exhausted but happy in those few moments after the shift ends, and I assume she’ll be back early tomorrow. I’m day four into my cross-country road trip from Philadelphia to Seattle, somewhere between Cheyenne and Salt Lake City, and I’ve become convinced that all these towns are just extended rest stops along a highway, where people decided to pause their journeys for good. The elevation has steadily climbed since Kansas, and now sharp crackling rocks jut up as mountain ranges in the distance. I’m some 6,500 feet above sea level, a surprising feeling for a girl who grew up eye-level with the Gulf. As the morning manager takes off her apron and fills a soda cup to take home, I wonder where she’s off to next. Who does she go home to, if anyone, what does she do there, what does she think about current politics? Would it be wrong to assume we would disagree without ever giving her the chance? I remember my own time spent in my twenties as a morning manager at a quick service restaurant in a small town, and I imagine she is also ready to get out and leave it all behind, but I don’t know why I assume that – perhaps only because I have been so privileged to leave towns. How easily I replace her story with mine, as I leave with a lunch I will regret later and head back to the road for two more days of driving, thinking of what it might be like for someone to find contentment in the place they call home.