As the sun rose over the Alberta prairie, I knew I was doing something much bigger than taking a road trip to Mexico: I was facing death. Modern cars are equipped with features that give us the illusion of safety, but facing down other metal machines at the same high speeds, plus unpredictable road conditions, wild animals, and wind gusts—what real chance does one have if death comes knocking? The roads between Lundbreck and my first stop, Coleman, in a strip of towns called the Crowsnest Pass, were damp but not icy. The weather was just warm enough to melt the bit of precipitation glazing the highway. My anxiety levels had descended to about a medium.

I stopped to see a girlfriend whom I’d met in Japan back in 2005 to about 2007. We lived in the same cluster of mountain communities in Nagano and had partied together. In coming to know one’s own age, re-encountering someone you knew in your 20s then seeing them again as a middle-aged person is both jarring and profound. She was recovering from a brutal knee surgery and still sifting through the ashes of an even more brutal divorce. Both of us were single again in this mid phase of life, shaped and bruised by the realities of womanhood (and dare I say, the dismal state of manhood), but were, as in our early adulthood, as ever, picking up the pieces, looking forward, and building anew.

I carried on from Coleman, pushing further into the Rockies when a patch of snowy fog descended and everything got misty and white. With only the base of the majestic mountains peeking out, the sun suddenly intervened and a rainbow appeared. On a journey like this, with death on one’s shoulder, everything is a sign and a rainbow is a very good one.