As you wind your way through this issue, I hope you’ll spend some time with “The Longest Route,” an essay by College alumna Mary Quade, AB’93. Quade’s meditation on Route 20, which passes near her Ohio home as it traverses the country from Massachusetts to Oregon, made me think about traveling and destinations, and the minor fall—the journey’s end—that can come with the major lift of arriving somewhere.

Route 20 has become a slower means of getting from point A to point B than it once was; or rather, other means, like the interstates, have gotten faster. Quade writes about how Route 20 loses its identity for a stretch in Yellowstone National Park, becoming an unnumbered park road where taking your time is enforced, even celebrated (see above).

I haven’t been to Yellowstone, but in northern Michigan I love the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. This past autumn was just the latest time my husband and I handed $25 to the National Park Service to take the road’s 7.4 miles at no more than 20 miles per hour, snaking through the woods toward a memorable view of Glen Lake and, beyond it, Lake Michigan—in local parlance, the big lake.

And it is. “It’s the same lake!” we can’t resist exclaiming in mock wonder each time we travel the five-plus hours from Chicago without straying far from the same body of water we see every day. Friends visiting from the East Coast, whose referent is the ocean, sometimes need a moment to take in how expansive—dare I say great—a mere lake can be. It’s all relative.

Twenty miles per hour is relative too. Some drivers treat the speed limit as just a suggestion, pushing 30 in pursuit of the scenic overlook. Others treat it as a different kind of suggestion, embracing the journey to the tune of 10 or 15 miles per hour, pulling over as needed to let the vista seekers pass.

Maybe you opened this magazine with a destination in mind, or maybe you like to see what you see along the way. Whatever your chosen path, we always want to hear what catches your attention at uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.