Epilogue
There is, I am told, a picture of me riding forward in the van, gazing at the road like a poet anticipating a rhyme. That is accurate. Every expedition begins with a windshield and ends with the smell of rain in the fur.
The humans in the front chatter about roads, about weather, about things that, strictly speaking, have already happened and cannot be repaired. I gaze ahead in silence. My silence is more useful than their chatter, for silence at least does not mislead.
Every expedition, no matter how small, is a comedy of errors: someone forgets a hat, someone quarrels with a map, someone insists the mountains are nearer than they appear. I contribute by being consistently present. To sit beside one’s people while the wipers beat their nervous rhythm—that is already an achievement.
Between the beginning and the end of every journey there is only this: the steady love of my people, which is the only network I truly need—fast, reliable, and never blocked.
