By Christopher Dill
This isn’t your typical road trip story. Or maybe it is.
I knew I was afraid of heights before I took a cross-country road trip in 2018.
What I didn’t know was how many other things I was apparently afraid of.
Mountains.
Roads carved between walls of rock.
Massive elevated interstate bridges that twist and turn while you’re nowhere near the ground.
Driving through major cities with buildings towering over you.
Blizzards.
Unfamiliar forests in the middle of the night.
Being hundreds of miles from home with no idea where the hell Google Maps has decided to take you next.
That road trip didn’t necessarily give me anxiety.
It showed me anxiety I didn’t know I had.
And it showed it to me repeatedly.
I was driving from Georgia to Wisconsin with my daughter, who was still pretty young at the time. The entire trip took place over roughly a week, including the drive there and the drive back.
I didn’t have a paper map spread across the dashboard. I wasn’t studying an atlas every night and planning every highway before we left.
I had Google Maps.
Put in the destination. Follow the blue line.
Simple.
At least that’s what I thought.
The Deer Were Probably the First Warning
We hadn’t even gotten that far before the trip started getting interesting.
Going through the Atlanta area, we started seeing deer coming out onto the interstate.
Not one deer standing peacefully beside the highway.
Deer were getting into the road. Cars were swerving. Deer were getting hit. We were maneuvering through all of this while trying not to become part of it ourselves.
Luckily, nothing happened to us.
But it immediately added another thing to think about while driving.
And because we were traveling around Thanksgiving, we were also traveling during deer hunting season.
As we continued north, we’d see hunters with deer in the backs of their trucks.
I didn’t realize my daughter was paying quite as much attention to this as she apparently was.
Eventually, after we’d gotten up to Wisconsin, she asked me a question.
“Are we gonna have Christmas this year?”
Of course, I’m thinking, What kind of question is that?
“Yeah. Why?”
She explained that she’d been counting all the deer we’d seen during the trip, including the ones hunters had, and she didn’t think Santa had any reindeer left.
It was sad.
It was also hilarious.
She was a little kid trying to make sense of everything she’d seen through the world she understood.
And looking back, that moment captures something about the entire trip.
My daughter and I were looking out the same windows, but we weren’t always seeing the same things.
Then Google Maps Took Me Into the Mountains
I knew there were ways to make the drive without going across the kinds of mountains I wanted to avoid.
I knew people who had traveled between these parts of the country before.
What I didn’t consider was that Google Maps wasn’t necessarily going to choose the route somebody familiar with my fear of heights would choose.
Google Maps was going to choose whatever Google Maps thought was best.
So I followed it.
The mountains in Georgia weren’t too bad.
Then we kept going.
And going.
And climbing.
Eventually I found myself so high up that we were above the clouds.
I couldn’t see the trees below anymore.
My daughter thought it was cool.
I did not think it was cool.
I was terrified.
I don’t know exactly why driving at heights affects me the way it does when flying doesn’t.
I’ve been in plenty of car accidents over the course of my life, so maybe some of it comes from that. Maybe I’ve watched too many things happen on television and in the news. Maybe it’s simply the fact that when I’m driving, my mind understands that I’m the one controlling this vehicle.
On an airplane, I’ve never really had the same problem.
Once I get on an airplane, I’ve pretty much given that situation to God. I’m not flying the thing. I’m not making the decisions. I’m sitting down and going wherever the pilot takes me.
Driving is different.
On the side of a mountain, I can see the road.
I can see the drop.
I can see the other cars.
And my brain can manufacture a thousand different versions of:
What if?
What if somebody comes into my lane?
What if something happens to the car?
What if I make a mistake?
What if somebody else makes a mistake?
And this time I wasn’t only responsible for myself.
My daughter was in the car.
Somehow There Was a McDonald’s Up There
At some point on top of this mountain, we came across a McDonald’s.
To this day, there’s something funny to me about being terrified, above the clouds, having no real idea where Google has taken me…
and there’s a McDonald’s.
I called people I knew who had traveled the route before.
They had no idea where I was.
They hadn’t seen what I was describing.
That wasn’t particularly reassuring.
Their advice basically came down to the obvious:
You’re going to have to keep following the directions.
Yeah.
I knew that.
But knowing you have to keep going and actually making yourself keep going are two different things.
My anxiety had gotten so bad that I cried.
We went inside McDonald’s.
We sat down for a little while.
I got something to eat.
I got myself together.
And eventually I had to accept the reality of the situation.
There was no magic button that was going to teleport us off the mountain.
My daughter and I still needed to get to Wisconsin.
So I got back into the car.
Getting Off the Mountain Didn’t End It
You would think once I got through the mountain section, I’d relax.
Instead, the trip started teaching me about other situations I didn’t know would bother me.
At one point, I found myself driving through an area where the road was basically surrounded by rock.
I don’t consider myself particularly claustrophobic.
But I discovered that I don’t like driving somewhere where my brain immediately recognizes:
There’s nowhere to go.
If something happens in front of me, where do I pull off?
If another driver does something crazy, where do I move?
There’s rock beside me.
There’s traffic around me.
There’s no normal shoulder where I can simply get away from everything.
Different environment.
Same feeling.
Then there were the bridges.
Apparently I Don’t Like Driving Through the Sky Either
There are bridges, and then there are those enormous elevated highway structures where you’re driving high above the ground and the road itself is curving.
Sometimes you’re turning.
Sometimes you’re changing elevation.
Sometimes you’re surrounded by traffic.
And somewhere in the back of your mind is the knowledge that you’re not driving on ordinary ground.
You’re on a giant piece of infrastructure suspended in the air.
Again, my brain went straight to:
What happens if something goes wrong right here?
That’s when I started realizing the mountain itself wasn’t necessarily the whole issue.
The trip kept putting me into environments where I felt like my options were limited if something happened.
And apparently my brain really likes having options.
Then Came the Cities
I didn’t grow up driving in major cities surrounded by towering buildings.
I’d been to different places. I’d traveled. I’d lived in different areas during my life.
But there’s a major difference between being somewhere and being the person responsible for driving through it.
When you’re in the backseat as a kid, somebody else is handling the road.
When you’re on a Greyhound, the driver is handling it.
When you’re on an airplane, the pilot is handling it.
When you’re behind the wheel?
It’s you.
Driving through unfamiliar major cities gave me that same trapped feeling I’d experienced around the mountains and rock.
Now there were towering buildings.
Traffic.
Cars parked everywhere.
Unfamiliar lanes.
People everywhere.
And I had no familiarity with the terrain.
At home, there’s a certain level of comfort that comes from knowing your surroundings.
You know the roads.
You know where things are.
You know where you can stop.
You have some idea of what you’re getting into.
When you’re traveling across the country, that familiarity disappears over and over again.
I’ve Never Been Quick to Trust Strangers
That wasn’t something the trip taught me.
I’ve always been cautious around people I don’t know.
When I was a teenager, I used to travel by Greyhound. At 16, I could be sitting in a bus station in another state by myself.
If some stranger came up and said something like, “Hey, come over here. I want to talk to you,” my answer was pretty simple.
No.
I’m staying right here where everybody else is.
Most of the time, I wouldn’t even go outside the station to wait for the bus. I’d stay inside until they announced that the bus had arrived, and then I’d go outside and board it.
I also made sure I kept one important bag with me—something small enough that I could keep it between my legs.
So caution around unfamiliar people wasn’t new.
What changed as I got older was how much experience I had feeding that caution.
You see things.
You experience things.
You read the news.
You watch things happen to other people.
You learn all the different ways situations can go wrong.
Then you become a parent.
Now you’re not simply thinking about protecting yourself.
You’re responsible for protecting your child too.
That changes the calculation.
Wisconsin Had One More Surprise for Me
Snow.
Not just a few flakes.
I found myself driving through conditions I’d never experienced before.
I’d never driven through a blizzard like that.
The closest comparison I can give is one of those scenes in Star Wars where the stars seem to be flying toward you as everything moves at incredible speed.
That’s what the snow looked like coming toward the windshield.
Except I wasn’t watching a movie.
I was driving.
And I couldn’t clearly see what was ahead of me.
So that was fun.
At different points during that trip, I didn’t want music.
I didn’t want distractions.
I wasn’t trying to sightsee.
I wasn’t looking around thinking about how beautiful everything was.
I wanted to see the road directly in front of me.
That’s it.
I found myself singing Jesus Loves Me over and over because it gave my mind something familiar to hold onto while I concentrated on driving.
Everybody else could enjoy the scenery.
I was just trying to make it out alive.
On the Way Home, I Had a Brilliant Idea
After everything we’d experienced getting to Wisconsin, I decided I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
I had a plan for the trip home.
Avoid the mountains.
This time I was going to outsmart Google.
So we traveled down through Illinois.
Flat.
Boring.
A whole lot of nothing.
And after the trip I’d just had?
Boring was beautiful.
Give me flat land.
Give me an interstate where I can see what’s ahead.
Give me miles and miles of absolutely nothing exciting.
I was perfectly happy.
Our return route took us through several states as we worked our way south, eventually bringing us through Mississippi and into Alabama.
And somewhere along the way, I discovered a small piece of geographical information that apparently had escaped me my entire life.
Nobody Told Me Birmingham Was on a Damn Mountain
I’d seen plenty about Birmingham over the years.
History.
Civil rights documentaries.
News footage.
Television.
Somehow, none of that information had registered in my brain as:
Christopher, Birmingham has mountainous terrain.
I found out while driving through it.
There were highways running alongside each other, roads carved through the terrain, elevation everywhere—and because there weren’t many cars around me at the time, I could see everything.
Sometimes traffic can make driving more stressful.
In this situation, having almost nobody around wasn’t necessarily helping.
There was nothing blocking my view.
And Google Maps wanted me to take a road that, from where I was sitting, appeared to go straight up toward heaven.
I looked at that road disappearing upward and thought:
Oh my God. This might be worse than Tennessee.
Then a police officer pulled me over.
He asked if I was okay.
I explained that I was traveling, that I wasn’t from there, and that I had specifically tried to choose a route that would help me avoid mountains.
His response, essentially, was:
Well, you didn’t avoid them.
You’re on the side of one right now.
Thanks.
I had figured that part out. 😂
I told him Google Maps didn’t exactly have an “avoid mountains because Christopher is losing his mind” setting.
He laughed and tried to help.
He suggested what he thought would be my best route toward Montgomery, and from there I could work my way toward Columbus and eventually back into Georgia.
So I followed the advice.
And went right back up another mountain.
Going Up Was Bad. Going Down Wasn’t Better.
The climb felt endless.
It may not actually have been as long as it felt, but anxiety doesn’t measure distance particularly well.
It felt like we were climbing straight upward forever.
There were people behind me, so I couldn’t just crawl along at whatever speed made me feel comfortable.
And I’m not even sure going slower would have helped.
Going uphill, my brain kept giving me the sensation that the car could somehow fall backward and we’d tumble down the mountain.
Eventually we reached the peak.
Great.
Except now we had to go down.
Immediately my anxiety changed directions.
Now it felt like the car was going to fall forward and we’d tumble down.
Logically, I knew that’s not how normal driving works.
Anxiety isn’t always particularly interested in logic.
We got through it.
Again.
Montgomery in the Middle of the Night
Eventually we reached Montgomery.
It was the middle of the night.
I’d never been there before, and almost immediately I noticed something I wasn’t expecting.
There seemed to be people dressed in tactical-looking gear posted around different parts of the area. I couldn’t tell whether they were police officers, some other type of law enforcement, security, or something else entirely.
And it wasn’t just one group that we happened to pass.
I kept noticing them.
They weren’t necessarily doing anything. Some of them seemed like they were basically just standing around or hanging out.
But it was late.
I was in a city I’d never been to before.
I didn’t know whether something unusual was happening that night, whether there was some completely ordinary explanation for what I was seeing, or whether somebody who lived there wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
I simply didn’t know.
And that’s what made it feel strange.
When you’re somewhere familiar, you have context.
You know what’s normal.
When you’re traveling through an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night, you don’t have that context.
At that point in the trip, after mountains, unfamiliar cities, snow, bridges, and everything else we’d already experienced, I wasn’t particularly interested in investigating.
I had my daughter with me.
We needed gas.
So I got gas, got us back on the road, and kept heading toward home.
A Forest Feels Different at Night
From there, I believe we traveled through the Tuskegee area and forest.
And this was at night too.
Driving through a forest during the daytime is one thing.
Driving through an unfamiliar forest in the middle of the night is something else.
Your headlights illuminate what’s immediately in front of you, but beyond that?
Darkness.
Trees.
More darkness.
There was something eerie about it.
It had that feeling you get watching one of those scary movies where somebody is driving down a road surrounded by woods and you’re sitting there thinking:
Just keep driving.
Of course, when you’re watching the movie, you’re sitting safely on the couch.
This time I was the one driving through the forest.
And once again, I didn’t know the area.
I didn’t know what was around the next corner.
I didn’t know where the next major town was.
I didn’t have the familiarity that comes with driving around home.
When we stopped at an isolated, run-down-looking gas station, the combination of the late hour, unfamiliar surroundings, and people I didn’t know made me uncomfortable.
That doesn’t mean anybody there was doing anything wrong.
I had no way of knowing anything about them.
But when you’re traveling with your child through an unfamiliar place in the middle of the night, your mind evaluates everything.
Where am I?
Who is around?
Where’s my daughter?
What do we need?
How quickly can we get back onto the road?
Get in. Get what we need. Get out.
So that’s what we did.
Eventually, things smoothed out.
And we made it home.
That Trip Showed Me Anxiety I Didn’t Know I Had
That’s probably the biggest thing I took away from this entire road trip story.
I already knew I was cautious.
I already knew I didn’t automatically trust strangers.
I already knew I didn’t particularly like heights.
What I didn’t understand was how many different situations could trigger the same feeling in me.
Mountains did it.
Roads trapped between rock did it.
Huge elevated bridges did it.
Twisting highway ramps in the sky did it.
Major cities did it.
Snow taking away my visibility did it.
Unfamiliar environments where I couldn’t immediately see my options did it.
Driving through an unfamiliar forest in the middle of the night did it.
And the trip put those situations in front of me repeatedly.
There was a common thread underneath a lot of them:
What happens if something goes wrong and I don’t have a way out?
That’s something I didn’t understand about myself until I experienced it.
Being the Driver Changes Everything
I’d traveled before that trip.
A lot.
When I was younger, I traveled on Greyhound buses. I’ve flown. I’ve lived in different areas. I’ve visited family in other places.
But being transported somewhere isn’t the same as being responsible for getting there.
As a child in your parents’ backseat, you don’t necessarily think about the mountain road.
Your parents are driving.
As a passenger on a bus, you’re not thinking about every turn.
The driver has it.
On an airplane, I don’t sit there wondering whether I should turn left.
I’ve already surrendered control.
But when I’m driving my daughter across the country?
I have to watch the road.
I have to watch the weather.
I have to follow the GPS.
I have to figure out where we’re stopping.
I have to pay attention to the people around us.
I have to make sure we have gas.
I have to deal with the deer.
I have to navigate the cities.
I have to get through the snow.
I have to get over the bridges.
And ultimately:
I have to get my daughter home.
That’s a different kind of responsibility.
My Daughter Saw a Different Road Trip
That’s one of the things I appreciate most when I look back at it now.
When we were above the clouds and I was trying not to lose my mind, my daughter thought it was cool.
When I saw deer becoming another potential highway hazard, she was apparently keeping a running count and worrying that Santa wasn’t going to have enough reindeer left for Christmas.
She was experiencing the same trip with a child’s understanding of the world.
Years later, she’s a teenager.
And now?
She’s more scared of heights than I am.
There’s something funny about that.
But there’s something interesting about it too.
When we’re young, there are things we simply haven’t learned to fear yet.
We haven’t seen enough.
We haven’t experienced enough.
We don’t have a mental catalog of everything that could happen.
As we get older, life gives us context.
Sometimes that context makes us wiser.
Sometimes it makes us more cautious.
Sometimes it gives us anxiety we didn’t realize was sitting there waiting for the right situation to introduce itself.
Would I Take That Trip Again?
No.
Not a chance.
And I know that’s not the inspirational ending people expect from a travel story.
I’m probably supposed to tell you that I conquered my fears, discovered the beauty of the open road, and now believe everyone should leave their comfort zone and travel across the country at least once.
Nope.
I did it. I’m good.
Other people love traveling.
Some people want to see every state. Some want to drive across the country. Some want to visit every major city, mountain range, national park, landmark, and coastline they can find.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
I’ve traveled enough throughout my life to reach a different conclusion for myself.
People everywhere are mostly doing the same basic things.
They’re working.
They’re eating.
They’re raising families.
They’re trying to pay bills.
They’re living their lives.
There are certainly places worth seeing. If you don’t live near an ocean, maybe you want to experience the beach. If you’ve never seen mountains and actually like heights, maybe standing above the clouds sounds incredible.
For me?
I’ve found that I don’t need to travel constantly to feel like I’m living.
I’ve got what I need close to home.
I’ve even found man-made beaches close enough to give me some of that same feeling without driving halfway across the country.
I’ll take it.
If You Do Take the Road Trip, Know Where You’re Going
There is one practical lesson I would give somebody from my experience.
Don’t blindly assume the fastest route on your GPS is the route you would choose.
Technology is trying to solve a particular problem.
Get Christopher from Point A to Point B efficiently.
Google Maps doesn’t necessarily know that Christopher would gladly add some time to the trip if it means not driving across the top of a mountain.
Maybe the route saves a few minutes.
Maybe it’s technically more efficient.
That doesn’t automatically make it the best route for you.
Look at the route beforehand.
Understand the terrain.
Know the major cities you’re going through.
Think about the weather.
Know where you’re likely to stop.
And if there are particular driving conditions you strongly dislike, don’t assume your navigation app knows that unless you’ve specifically configured around them—and not every preference is something a navigation app can account for anyway.
Because I still think about that trip sometimes.
The mountains.
The snow.
The cities.
The bridges.
The deer.
The nighttime forest.
The McDonald’s above the clouds.
My daughter worrying that we’d witnessed the destruction of Santa’s entire reindeer operation.
The police officer informing me that my brilliant plan to avoid mountains had somehow placed me directly on the side of another mountain.
And me, somewhere in the middle of all of it, driving down the road singing Jesus Loves Me because I didn’t want music, didn’t want sightseeing, and didn’t want anything distracting me from getting us home.
Google Maps may have saved me a minute or two somewhere along that trip.
But I’m pretty sure it took a few years off my life.
We made it to Wisconsin.
We made it back to Georgia.
My daughter was safe.
I was safe.
And I learned something about myself that I hadn’t known before we left.
Sometimes you don’t know where your anxiety lives until life takes you somewhere that wakes it up.
That road trip found mine.
Repeatedly.
