Author: Chih Sang

At this point, I will stop counting days.

The road has a way of dissolving time like that. One town blends into the next, provinces change without ceremony, and suddenly the need to label everything feels unnecessary. What matters now isn’t how long I’ve been gone it’s that I’m still going.

Days five and six blur together as I cross into British Columbia. The air shifts. The light feels different. There’s a sense of arrival, even though I don’t quite know what I’m arriving to yet.

And then I reach a town called Hope.

I laugh out loud when I see the sign. Not because it’s subtle it isn’t but because sometimes life abandons metaphor entirely and just puts the word right in front of you. After mental fatigue, numbness, grief, and long stretches of emotional silence, here it is. Hope. Literal. Unavoidable. Impossible to ignore.

I don’t pretend it’s profound in a cinematic way. It’s almost too on the nose. But I’ve learned not to argue with moments like this. I’ve spent enough time overthinking meaning to recognize when something simply wants to be felt.

Hope, British Columbia is also where Rambo: First Blood was filmed, a fact that I did not know. A town named Hope, famous for a movie about a man pushed past his breaking point, misunderstood, overwhelmed, and finally forced to confront everything he’s been carrying alone. I walk around town, cross the bridge, recognize scenes I’ve watched before and for once, the movie reference doesn’t feel like an escape. It feels like a mirror.

But unlike Rambo, I’m not here to fight anything. I’m not running. I’m not being chased by expectations or proving my endurance. I’m just here. Walking. Breathing. Letting myself enjoy the strange delight of standing inside a place that exists both in real life and in film.

And something else sneaks in while I’m not paying attention: lightness.

Not the kind that erases what came before. Just enough to remind me that joy doesn’t always arrive with a speech. Sometimes it shows up as a quiet afternoon, a familiar bridge, a town with a name that feels like a message you weren’t sure you were allowed to receive.

I don’t claim that I’ve found hope in the abstract, capital-H sense. I’m not healed. I’m not finished. But I’ve found this hope the small, physical kind you can walk through, take photos of, laugh about, and carry forward without pressure.

For now, that’s enough.

The journey continues from here.

Not in days but in chapters.