I’ve always been the kind of person who leaves.
Not dramatically.
Not in a “sell everything and disappear into the wilderness” kind of way.
Just quietly.
A cheap flight booked on a random Tuesday.
A long drive north with no real itinerary.
A backpack tossed into the passenger seat and the feeling that if I keep moving long enough, something inside me settles back into place.
Solo travel has never scared me. Honestly, I trust myself more in unfamiliar places than I do standing still for too long.
But this spring had been different.
Hectic in the way adulthood sometimes becomes without warning.
Too many shifts.
Too many responsibilities.
Too much noise.
The kind of season where your calendar starts looking like a threat instead of a plan.
By May, I felt like I had been sprinting through my own life for months.
And camp was coming.
A full summer of organized chaos, homesick campers, mystery injuries, bug spray, campfire smoke, and becoming “the nurse” twenty-four hours a day.
I love camp deeply. I do.
But before camp starts, I always feel this pull to disappear for a little while first. One last breath before the noise begins.
So on the first day of summer, I packed the car and drove north alone.
Toward the coast.
Toward colder air.
There’s something comforting about long drives by yourself. No expectations. No conversation to maintain. Just road stretching ahead and the strange peace of being temporarily unreachable.
The farther north I drove, the quieter everything became.
The air changed first.
Cooler.
Saltier.
Pine trees replacing crowded highways and strip malls.
By the time I reached Lubec, fog hung low over the harbor and the entire town looked like it existed slightly outside of time.
Fishing boats rocked gently in the water.
Seagulls drifted overhead.
Weathered docks creaked softly against the tide.
I parked near the water and walked down to the rocky shoreline alone, the Atlantic stretching gray-blue and endless in front of me.
The first day of summer.
No schedule.
No radio clipped to my waistband.
No one yelling my name across a field.
Just ocean.
The water was freezing, obviously. Atlantic Ocean in Maine freezing. The kind of cold that feels personal.
But I waded in anyway.
Shorts rolled up. Laughing to myself as waves crashed against my legs hard enough to sting. There’s something strangely healing about cold water when your brain has been running too hot for too long. I stood there ankle-deep in the Atlantic while fog rolled across the coastline and honestly felt my nervous system restart a little.
Like my body finally realized:
we survived.
Later that afternoon, I crossed the bridge into New Brunswick, heading toward Campobello Island.
And the second I crossed into Canada, something inside me unclenched.
It sounds dramatic, but it’s true.
Crossing that bridge felt like breathing again.
Not because anything magical happened immediately.
The road didn’t suddenly become cinematic.
There wasn’t some profound movie soundtrack moment.
But the world slowed down.
The trees grew thicker.
The roads quieter.
The air smelled like spruce and saltwater.
For the first time in months, I didn’t feel late for my own life.
That’s the thing about traveling solo:
you notice exactly when your body relaxes.
There’s no one else there to distract you from yourself.
No conversation filling the silence.
Just you realizing, somewhere between the ocean and the trees, that you’ve been carrying tension in your shoulders for weeks.
Campobello felt wonderfully quiet in that windswept coastal way.
Tiny roads weaving through evergreens.
Lighthouses standing against the cliffs.
Cold wind off the Bay of Fundy strong enough to make you zip your jacket even in June.
I spent hours wandering aimlessly.
Stopped at overlooks.
Walked empty beaches collecting sea glass.
Sat on rocks watching waves slam against dark cliffs.
No itinerary.
No pressure to “make the most” of the trip.
No one asking where I wanted to eat.
That’s what I love most about traveling alone.
You move entirely at the pace of your own curiosity. If you want to sit by the water for an hour doing absolutely nothing, you can. If you want to stop the car because the fog over the trees looks beautiful, nobody complains.
If you want seafood chowder at 3 PM because you passed a tiny harbor restaurant and it felt right, then congratulations—that’s the plan now.
And the chowder?
Perfect.
Thick and creamy with chunks of haddock, lobster, and potatoes soft enough to count as emotional support.
I sat by the window eating slowly while fishing boats drifted across the harbor outside.
Traveling alone used to make me feel self-conscious when I was younger.
Now it feels like freedom.
No performing.
No negotiating plans.
No trying to make yourself smaller or easier or more convenient for other people.
Just existing exactly as you are.
And after the spring I’d had, that felt revolutionary.
By sunset, fog rolled slowly across the coastline while the lighthouse beams flickered on one by one along the shore.
I remember sitting on the rocks watching the sky turn silver-blue over the Atlantic and thinking: this is why I leave sometimes.
Not to escape my life. Just to hear myself again before returning to it. Because soon enough, camp would begin. The campers would arrive carrying duffel bags and sunscreen and enough energy to power small cities. The infirmary would fill with bug bites, homesickness, mystery stomachaches, and children somehow injuring themselves while standing still.
I’d become “camp nurse”. And I love that version of my life.
But for one quiet stretch of coastline between Maine and New Brunswick, before the chaos of summer officially began, I got to just be myself.
Cold Atlantic water around my ankles.
Fog in the trees.
Salt in the air.
A bridge behind me.
Another summer ahead.
And somewhere between Lubec and Campobello Island, I could finally breathe again.