The two of us loitered outside of the 7-11. The boy sipped a blue slurpee, which had managed to stain his lips like some new and uniquely American plague. He was adhering to his daily ritual of waiting for his mother to finish her shift and abandon the cash register for the day. I took swigs from a bottle of iced tea as I asked him about his Virginia town and the mountains that flanked it, mountains that now looked like the shadows of an erased pencil drawing, lines and boundaries diffused in the humid Autumnal air. He spoke of days in the forests and streams that defined summer as he knew it. He spoke of copperheads and bears, as well as creatures long extinct in that area whose names now served as nothing more than repositories of myths and legends. He spoke of a place called Jumbo, West Virginia and the dirt roads he traveled to get to his father's home and his grandfather's tavern there. He spoke of the place as if it were a distant homeland, a name on a map somewhere in the Old World, a world to which he may never return.

Then suddenly he looked at me, studying my dirty clothes, haphazard stubble, and copper skin. He glanced over at my bicycle and trailer, loaded down for a trip that would take me through 15 states, one province, and over 2,800 miles. "Where do you live?"

I paused for a moment, always unsure how to answer this question. "Well, right now I'm on the road for a while. I'm from Iowa, but started pedaling in New York and went up to Montreal, Canada and then down the Maine coast, and then cut over to the Appalachias. I'm eventually headed to see friends in Boone, North Carolina, and then onto see more friends in Houston, Texas." His gaze returned to the mountains in front of us. "But my parents live in Iowa," I said. "That's where I grew up."

"Are you homeless?" the boy asked. His deep brown eyes reflected the sun, yet contained a void wherein questions arouse that could perhaps never be satisfactorily answered.

I paused for a moment. Home was a mobile concept. In the past year, I had drifted with the seasons. I spent last fall pedaling down the West Coast from Vancouver to Tijuana, then couch surfed in Iowa City while working as a farmhand, lived in my car in Breckenridge during the winter while snowboarding everyday, returned to Iowa City in the spring to resume my role as "that guy who lives on the futon" while working temporary jobs, then returned to New Mexico for another summer spent guiding 20-day outdoor education backpacking trips before hitting the road on my latest journey. I thought about his question and I thought about when I first pitched my new Meteor Light tent and proudly announced to my friends that I was officially a homeowner. My thoughts drifted to the countless days and nights I had spent in my home – nights in the desert with stars as dense as the sequins of a prom dress, afternoons humbled in the shadows of redwoods, days camped near the coast listening to the crash of waves carrying the rhythm of a slowed palindrome, a restless night spent waking to the recurring calls and cries of a curious lynx while camped by the side of a highway in the Adirondacks, days and nights spent listening to rain falling on the tent's fly, a dark night shrouded in a blanket of fog and condensation in a newly-met friend's backyard in Portland, Maine, an evening spent outside a volunteer fire station in Pennsylvania after a memorable night of Bingo and baked goods. I then thought about the nights ahead – strange twists of trails and roads, dirt and dust, concrete and gravel that would lead me to countless other places to call home – even if just for a night.

The boy's eyes returned from the mountains to meet mine. He waited for an answer, still sipping the slurpee he clutched with both hands.

"No," I said. "I'm not homeless. I have a tent."

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Home sweet home

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