Illustration: Hannah Buckman New York subscribers got exclusive early access to this story in our Brooding newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Decades ago, in the spring of my husband Gray’s senior year of high school, his class took a trip to Washington, D.C. During the trip, he did something that was not unusual for him at that time: He left the group and went adventuring on his own without telling anyone where he was going.