Early on this wintry Saturday, I-95 is quiet. Shrouded in fog, lined by spiny, leafless trees, save for the pines. Litter and traffic cones dot the otherwise monochromatic landscape. Here a sleeping excavation machine; there, in a clearing, a shrine to a dead loved one, the cross and wreath tidy, tended. What looks like a hawk wings through the haze. What looks like an owl watches intently, feathers puffed against the chill.

The bus driver pulls into a rest stop. A new driver boards. Wrappers crinkle, a respectfully low din of conversation is a hypnotic white noise.

We resume our journey north. The fog is spectral, enchanting. Was it fog like this that blinded Kobe’s helicopter pilot? What is beautiful can also break, crush, ruin. Just look at the world.

I am heading to New York for refuge in its relentless vibrancy and tolerance, the theater, and a coincidental overlap with my parents’ own week of retreat in the city.

In this bus in this fog in this cold in this path through dead-not-dead, I feel peace for the first time in weeks.

It is welcome.