I had wanted to cut off all my hair and drive across the country, alone, in celebration of my singlehood — not because being single was new to me, but because it was, I had decided, O.K. Better than O.K., if a single person lived as I would: at large, roaming, free.

Naturally, I started seeing someone a few weeks before I was set to leave. Then I chickened out and didn’t cut my hair all the way. I drove, and each time he texted — each time his sweet little name lit up my phone — my blood coursed with pleasure, as though I were tethered to a heartbeat miles away.

I sped through the Rockies and slept beside the Great Salt Lake, but the part of the trip that stays with me is the day in Nevada when I lost phone service at noon and didn’t recover it for 24 hours. The signal had cut off mid-conversation with a friend who was getting divorced. I pulled over to take a photo of the road, so endlessly sunlit and bare, but as soon as I got out the isolation spooked me and I hurried to step on the gas.

This was the fear I had been expecting to feel all along. Without reception, I was unaccountable, unseen. What if my car got stuck in mud? If a snake bit as soon as I stepped out to explore?