When a young man leaves his home in Kansas City to find a career, he struggles to settle down in one spot. He wanders, impoverished, across the western United States and finds a transcendent understanding of the human condition.

A girl flees her home when her parents want to send her back to her abusive husband.

When an old woman sees her son straining to leave to see the world, she remembers her husband doing the same many years earlier. In a fierce battle pitting love against discovery and adventure, she does her utmost to set him free.

A young woman is returning to her husband and parents in New York, after having left her husband for a brief affair. As her father drives her home and reminisces on the hard work it took to build a life at their farmhouse, she learns that he hasn't told anyone else she's coming home.

A young boy finds a clearing while exploring the wilderness and meditatively observes the nature around him.

After her father kills himself, a young girl runs away with a traveling, unhoused stranger she meets at the bus stop. The two scrape and save for a life together until one day, she wakes up and he's gone. After looking for him in the cold, surviving an assault, and accepting help from a stranger, the girl realizes he's betrayed her, taking their savings and leaving. The next year, she gives birth to their child.

A teenage boy follows in the footsteps of his favorite teacher and leaves his small, rural community to attend a faraway college. However, a chance encounter with an old man makes him remember the value of nostalgia and one's birthplace.

A group of friends realize they have been living vicariously through one of their friend's travel stories for their entire lives.

A middle-aged Canadian writer reflects on her life, and recalls a family friend who has spent decades drifting in and out of her life, and who leaves chaos and clarity in her wake.

A woman who is not content with life and fears staying in one place works as a traveling writer, recording her thoughts and interactions on tape recorders and finding different lovers in each place she visits.