Three of us — my father, my older sister, and I — drove down to visit my father’s brother, Lee. We’re staying in a hotel in Lima, Pennsylvania. The motel we’re staying in is right off U.S. Route 1, one of those small motels that all look pretty much the same:– bland prints in gold-toned frames on the walls, slightly worn desk and chest of drawers covered in wood-grain plastic laminate, little two-cup coffee maker next to the sink.

After eight hours in the car, I was ready for a walk. Dad came with me. We walked up towards the state highway — the motel sits at an intersection of a state highway and Route 1 — but there were no sidewalks, not even a verge on which to walk. Dad has a bad knee, so he gave up and went back to the room. I walked down towards Route 1 through a boarded-up gas station — still no sidewalks and no verge — nothing but a big mall across four lanes of traffic. I walked around the periphery of the motel parking lot, but there was no way out. This is not a pedestrian-friendly motel. We’re fenced in on all sides by highways, like the characters in J. G. Ballard’s novel Concrete Island.

But I was desperate for a walk, so I walked back up to the state highway. A kid carrying a skateboard was walking precariously along the curb at the edge of the highway. I figured if he could do it, so could I. He looked surprised to see another pedestrian when we passed. A couple of hundred feet along the roadway, a construction entrance led into trees.

I walked in to find a completed road but no houses. Blackberry bushes grew along the side of the empty road, and some of them were ripe. After I ate a couple, I turned off and followed a path someone had mowed along the right-of-way for an underground gas pipeline.

I wound up at the edge of a farmer’s field, with chimney swifts circling overhead catching their evening meal of insects. A flycatcher was calling in the trees off to my right somewhere. I could barely hear the noise of the highways, although I could see, through a break in the trees, the huge mall across Route 1.