One Difference Between a Quest & a Road Trip

One difference between a quest and a “road trip”—in the broadest sense of the term—is the degree to which the traveler knows what he or she wants.  This is how we know to differentiate between the necessary and the incidental. The appeal of the long road trip, or the long through-hike, or the pilgrimage, is that the “point” is so deliberately minimal—to arrive at, you know, the end—and the decisions involved are so banal (stop for gas now, or in a bit?) that the distinction between signal and noise is blurred. When the question of significance is deferred, all moments are rendered equally significant.

From “On the Road” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus for The New York Times Magazine, 2016; Photo by Averie Woodard

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