Finding Beauty in the Storm

“Born on Route 66, Healed by It Too

Dear friends,

I was born on Route 66—Deaconess Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri, right along the 1933 alignment. So when Steinbeck called it the “mother road,” I took it personally. But for most of my life, I didn’t realize just how deeply that road was etched into me.

I was born on it. I lived near it. I spent years in towns just blocks from it. I traveled it with my family—back and forth to my grandparents’ home in St. Louis. And yet, it wasn’t until 2018 that it hit me: Route 66 had been there all along. Not just a road—it was the quiet spine of my life.

When life begins to unravel, I don’t run—I drive. Route 66 has long been my sanctuary. Not just a highway, but a haven. A place where I can think, breathe, feel—sometimes for the first time in weeks. Whether I’m chasing inspiration or trying to escape something I can’t name, the road always welcomes me back.

These past two months have been brutal. Loss. Grief. That heavy silence that fills a room even when you're not alone. So I did what I’ve always done—I turned the key, pointed the truck west, and let the mother road hold me.

Out there, I found light again. I was driving, letting the road quiet my mind, when suddenly a full rainbow arched across the sky, the pavement beneath it glowing like a promise. I didn’t scramble for my gear. I just watched. Breathed it in. And only after I’d fully experienced it—after I felt it—I raised the camera. Not to chase the shot, but to honor it. Because in that moment, it wasn’t about capturing proof. It was about receiving beauty, and letting it come to me.

Photography has been my refuge too—but not for the reasons people think. These photographs I’m sharing now? They aren’t trophies. They’re prayers. They didn’t erase the pain—nothing does. But they softened it. Beauty doesn’t cure, it consoles. It doesn’t lift the weight, but somehow, it makes it bearable.

Maybe that’s what Route 66 has always been for me. Steinbeck called it the road of flight. For the Dust Bowl families, it was escape. For me, it’s been return. My own Dust Bowl wasn’t wind and dirt—it was heartbreak, uncertainty, and the quiet collapse of things I once held dear. But that road? It didn’t save me. It held me. It gave me space to breathe, to see, to remember: even when everything’s stripped bare—when you think the storm might take you—beauty still finds a way through the cracks.

Thank you for walking this road with me. Let’s keep looking for the beauty in every storm.

With gratitude,
Jim