While I’ve taken plenty of road trips, I’d never moved myself 2,500 miles across the country in the middle of national protests and a global pandemic.

Tucson, Arizona—where my partner and my dear friend were waiting—was my destination and my future.

In another time, I would’ve made this a leisurely drive, filled with roadside attractions, scenic byways, nowhere diners.

I wanted to know: How much of the country could be seen from the road.

In D.C., I’d grown used to mostly masked neighbors and daily racial justice protests.

Then it was a straight shot across the country to my new home—Tucson.

Day one: 590 miles to Knoxville, Tennessee.

This was still country I knew.

I passed friends’ hometowns; my family’s vacation spots; the overlook where my partner and I began our relationship, just a few months before they moved to Tucson.

This was the first year I’d missed celebrating since my partner and I started dating.

Day two: 800 miles to Tulsa.

At some point it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a mention of COVID-19 for hours.

I’d chosen to drive solo, unwilling to ask loved ones to expose themselves to risk of viral transmission—and to decrease the chances of exposing people in the places I’d stop.

(Related: This writer took the Great American Road Trip—in an electric car.).

I watered my plants at a rest stop in the Ozarks as dusk warmed the pines.

As time went on and bookings remained low, she was forced to lower prices to net enough visitors to keep her housecleaning company employed.

Though the city had seen largely peaceful protests for racial justice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, several people were injured weeks before when a truck drove through the crowd.

(Related: He drove 2,300 miles to get home—and saw how uncertain the future is for black Americans.).

It was the first time I’d sat down at a restaurant in months.

At the time of publication, CNN reports, more than half a million people have been killed by coronavirus; a quarter of them were American.

Day three: 650 miles to Albuquerque.

Somewhere in western Oklahoma, I realized the dirt had turned red.

Beyond them stretched miles of flat, flat land

Texas produces more wind power than any other state; if it were a country, its production would rank fifth globally

I’d seen wind turbines before, but never so many—nor so close

Day four: 450 miles to Tucson

Leaving Albuquerque, I headed south, turning away from I-40 for the first time in more than a thousand miles

The pandemic had reappeared: Road signs read “COVID risk remains high

Protect NM.” At a rest stop that afternoon, a new danger: “Beware of rattlesnakes.”

(Related: It’s the summer of road trips. Here’s how to do it right.)

I had an eighth of a tank left, and I hadn’t seen a single thing in 40 minutes except solar and wind farms

A little over an hour from Tucson, I realized that what I’d mistaken for clouds was actually the smoke of the lightning-sparked Bighorn Fire, at the time more than 15,000 acres and spreading across the Catalina Mountains north of the city

For the next hundred miles, I watched the pink-yellow plume take on the texture of cotton candy

Driving into the smoke’s shadow, I realized there’d been fires of one kind or another everywhere I’d traveled

I’d seen other things, too: the friends who loved their homes and wanted to keep them safe

The masked woman guiding her masked, elderly mother through a rest stop, who thanked me for wearing a mask myself

I’d seen more than two thousand miles of a land so beautiful I almost didn’t want to stop driving