Finding Freedom on the Open Road: A Playlist for Every Mile

Your Summer Roadtrip Playlist

Words: Mia Pohlman

Photography: Kassi Jackson

Art Direction: Mia Pohlman

There’s nothing that says “freedom” quite like a road trip. When viewing the countryside with good friends, music and nothing ahead except the open road and a destination still faraway, everything becomes possible; even everyday tasks fill with wonder.

The world opens up in a car on a road trip. It has our attention.

American author Annie Dillard wrote that in one square foot of soil there are 1,356 living creatures present, each being in their own complex ways. She implies: we could spend our whole lives learning to know the microscopic detail right underneath our feet, and still not finish.

Road trips remind us of this, of the marvel present in places everywhere.

So whether you’re embarking on a trip or staying home, here’s to celebrating the novel and the mundane. Here’s to having new experiences, and to the things we already know how to do. Here’s to being excited about our lives, both on Mondays mornings and on Friday nights.

Because whether you’re on the road or in our town, we all still have to do everyday things. It’s the everyday that gives shape and rhythm to the color that weaves its way through our hours.

This is a tribute to the daring it takes to find adventure at home or away, to the nerve in experiencing freedom in the ordinary and extraordinary.

An homage. With suggested music.

You intrepid woman, you.