The Last Place I Was Unreachable.

When the road still had edges.

I don’t remember the exact day, only the place.

I was twelve years old, sitting in the far backseat of our family car as we drove east toward the coast. My grandparents were in the front. My sister and her friend sat in the middle row, headphones on, watching a movie on the small flip-down screen mounted to the ceiling. My friend and I had claimed the very back—the way the cool kids used to take the back of the school bus. Not because it was better, but because it felt like ours.

The car smelled like McDonald’s. Fresh fries and coffee. That particular mix that only existed at the beginning of long trips, before everything blurred together and the smell faded into the background of the day.

I had headphones in too—cheap white wired earbuds trailing down into my pocket, plugged into a lightweight metal iPod. The album playing was The E.N.D. by The Black Eyed Peas—the one with the green digital face on the cover. Futuristic, at the time. We listened to it on repeat, learning every word without trying.

In my hands was a Nintendo DS. I was playing Pokémon Diamond, and my friend was playing the Pearl version beside me. We had badges to earn, levels to grind through, rare Pokémon we were convinced we were close to finding. Entire worlds contained in our palms—small enough to hold but large enough to get lost in for hours.

Outside the window, the scenery repeated itself. Long stretches of highway lined with trees. Pine after pine. Occasionally something would break the pattern—a gas station, a roadside billboard, a bridge over a river, a big house we’d learned to recognize. These landmarks became checkpoints. Proof that we were making progress, even when the drive felt endless.

The stops mattered.

We always stopped at the same places. Bathroom breaks. Pit stops for drinks and snacks. A quick loop around the store. We would look at the seasonal t-shirts, and sometimes we would buy the new one for the current year with our saved up allowance or the money we got from a recent Christmas or Birthday card. We would stand too long in front of the fish tanks, looking at the eels and different species that were being displayed in the fishing area.

Sometimes my grandmother pulled off the highway to an outdoor outlet mall with a nice big playground in the middle. A real one—slides, climbing structures, space to run. We’d spill out of the car, stretch our legs, soak up the summer sunlight. Maybe get some ice cream. Maybe find a new pair of Crocs.

Then it was back to the car. The DVD was paused where we’d left it. The game closed but waiting for our return.

The drive took at least four hours. Often longer, especially with my grandmother, who liked to stop at random little stores along the way. But time didn’t feel wasted. It had shape. You could feel it passing—not as something being killed, but as something being inhabited.

We had devices, but they had edges.

The DS battery dipped into red. The iPod held only the albums we’d chosen ahead of time. The movie ended. When something ran out, it stayed out. So we talked. Played cards on the armrest when the batteries died. Invented new games. Made friendships with my sister’s friend we wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise, the way siblings usually ignore each other.

And we were unreachable.

Not dramatically. Not stranded-on-an-island unreachable. Just unreachable in the way that used to be normal. My grandparents had a flip phone somewhere in the front seat—a short list of numbers saved, service unreliable on the back roads. Our friends might have known we were headed to the beach from a message sent before we left, but they knew we couldn’t be reached. No one expected updates. No one waited on replies.

That was simply the condition of being there.

No one framed it as intentional or healthy. It didn’t need a name. It was just how the world worked. Certain places created distance from everything else, and that distance opened up a different kind of time. One where thoughts finished themselves. Where boredom deepened into something else—into imagination, into conversation, into staring out the window long enough that you stopped thinking about anything at all.

You weren’t skimming along the surface of time. You were submerged in it. Swimming through the hours instead of trying to skip past them.

At twelve, I didn’t think of it as freedom.

It was simply normal.

I have another vivid memory from the following year. My dad and I drove across town to see The Amazing Spider-Man. The sun was still in the sky as we walked into the cinema. The theater went completely dark when the lights went down—no glow from phone screens, no one scrolling during the previews. For two hours, nothing else existed. When we walked out into the parking lot, it was into the darkness of the night. The whole evening had passed inside that room.

Now, before the previews even start, the theater is already lit with blue light from dozens of phones. When the movie ends, phones come out before the credits roll. The movie recedes, replaced by whatever came through while we were supposed to be watching.

The darkness isn’t as dark as it used to be.

I saw a kid in the backseat of a car recently. Maybe eight or nine years old. iPad braced on his knees, headphones on, face lit blue. The car was stuck in traffic beside me, and I watched him for a moment at the stoplight. He didn’t look out the window. Didn’t shift positions. Just stared at the screen, swiping occasionally, completely absorbed.

His parents were in the front seat, also on their phones.

I couldn’t help noticing—he wasn’t looking for checkpoints. Wasn’t marking progress. Wasn’t aware of where he was or how long he’d been there. The journey had collapsed into the screen.

I think about that car ride to the coast more often now.

Not because it was perfect, or because I want to go back. But because I’m realizing how rare that condition has become. The unreachability. The edges. The built-in limits that forced us into the time we were passing through instead of trying to escape it.

The DS battery died, and we couldn’t charge it. The iPod ran out of songs we wanted to hear. The DVD ended. So we talked. Invented card games on the armrest. Watched the trees go by. Let the hours be what they were—long, sometimes boring, but also deep. Textured. Real.

We weren’t choosing to be present. We just were, because there was nowhere else to go.

I don’t know if that kind of space can exist the same way anymore. Everywhere is reachable now, all the time. The same apps, the same feeds, the same notifications. There’s no distance to cross. No condition that seals you off from everything else, even temporarily.

And maybe that’s fine. Maybe it’s even better.

But I wonder what it means to grow up without ever being truly unreachable. Without ever sitting in the back of a car for four hours with a dying battery and nothing to do but look out the window—when you’re never forced to swim through time instead of skimming along its surface.

I notice it’s not just childhood that lost its edges. It’s how I work now, how I spend evenings, how I wait for anything. The same condition that reshaped road trips reshaped everything else too. And I’m still learning what that means.

At twelve, I didn’t know I was experiencing something that would disappear.

I just thought the road would always feel that long.