Lost by accident—or perhaps by quiet intention—I drift off the crowded highway and descend into side roads, empty and abandoned. Moving at a softened pace, I slip into a realm where civilization brushes against nature like two eras barely touching. The teeming, hurried highway feels to me like a metaphor for the mainstream: a life propelled by relentless urgency, always pointed in a single, unquestioned direction. The fringe zones between the city and the wild—set slightly aside from the main current—appear as enclaves of stillness. Places to breathe. Sanctuaries from the ordinary. They whisper of an older rhythm, gentler and closer to the earth. And so, despite the rutted roads, the peeling, almost grotesque buildings, the aging cars, the dark, remote landscapes—I want to remain. Here I find quiet, deceleration, a moment of exquisite silence. A refuge from obligations. A hideout from the steady stream of grim news. I begin to see how this world is changing. Buildings, cars, signs, gas stations, little service outposts—many vanished just a few years after I photographed them. The change is not merely aesthetic; it is metaphysical. As though an entire era were quietly slipping away before our eyes. On an ordinary day, looking for a way around the clogged highway, I take side roads for the quickest possible return to the nearest passable intersection. But this time is different. In this journey, arrival is not the purpose at all—the road itself, the deliberate “losing of one’s way,” is the destination. I wish this drive could go on for as long as I manage to stay awake.