Second Generation Pioneer

Carly discovered the tattered maps as she cleaned out her parents’ closet. Circles and X’s marked the towns, off the beaten path tourist traps, and motels where they’d stayed when she was a child in the seventies. She ratted in the kitchen junk drawer for scissors, and as she cut out the most meaningful map sections, her mind wandered. Her family had been pioneers once, those maps a testament of their journeys into the unknown. As she pasted the map sections into her journal, a tear rolled down her cheek. She would explore the world now as a woman alone.