IN A HOT SUMMER SOME THIRTY YEARS AGO, ONE OF my brothers got married in Colorado Springs. We live in Tennessee, so a wedding in Colorado called for a serious road trip.

When the time came for the long drive to carry us all to the big day, a small caravan, led by my father, rolled out of the suburbs of Nashville and headed north and west to Saint Louis and then west across Kansas toward the Rockies. The drive was long, and the summer was hot, and the sun was brutal. My memory is that we could see the Rockies when we cleared the western outskirts of Kansas City, but it seemed as though the mountains kept backing up in the distance. I would not have been too surprised to have passed a wagon train along the way.

In those days I drove an MGB convertible. The length of the trip and the unreliability of the automobile notwithstanding, I insisted on driving the MGB to Colorado. I also insisted on driving with the top down the whole way. After arriving in Colorado Springs, I spent two days in bed suffering from sunstroke. Those who had suggested I might have been better served by the rental of a car with air conditioning were right, of course.

But I wanted the MGB there with me for a reason. When the wedding was over, I was ready to be alone and to wander.

On the day after the wedding, everyone else packed up and headed home to Tennessee. I put the top down and headed north and west with only the barest notion of where I was going.

I knew I wanted to go far enough north to cross the Rockies at Independence Pass. I knew I wanted to wander some blue highways until I had wandered my way into Wyoming.

Somewhere in the wild and woolly West, I planned to circle back in the direction of the sunrise and pick up some four-lane to take me back south to Denver and to the highways that would lead back across Colorado and into Kansas and Missouri and over the big river into Kentucky and home to Tennessee. Having just this vague plan, I took my leave from my family and started out with only a map and a convertible and a clear western sky. And this time with a hat and plenty of water.

I waved good-bye to the ones who sat comfortably in their machines with the factory air, and then I peeled out of the parking lot. My younger brothers were watching, and an older brother in a convertible needed to give the young folks in the RV something to cheer about. I rolled down the road, thinking no more than two or three hours ahead at a time.

In the next days I passed through some of the most astonishing country I have ever seen. And all I was doing was following my nose.

“This road will get me to the next little town, and I can have a bite of lunch and figure out where to head next,” I muttered to myself.

Another day I cleverly deduced, “Dark will be here before I get to Medicine Bow, so I had better spend the night in the next town.”

Watching rain clouds come screaming across the big sky one afternoon, I realized, “Gonna be messy to go all the way to Horse Creek, so I might as well stop in the next town and see if I can find a decent sandwich and a place to stay.”

I spent a morning sipping coffee and sitting, legs crossed, on the sidewalk, watching people go by on the square in Aspen. My eyes were peeled for both John Denver and Neil Young, but I came up empty.

One afternoon I drove a two-lane road side by side with a railroad track through a canyon that had me dreaming of riding toward the Ponderosa with Hoss and Little Joe. When the track disappeared into a tunnel, the road ran out, and I had to turn around and go back. I ran out of daylight, but the joy of driving that empty road turned out to be well worth the time and the gasoline.

The next day I got so lost in the mountains I ended up lunching on Popsicles and crackers on the front porch of a one-pump gas station because the nearest restaurant was a hundred miles away.

In the end I always got where I was going for the night. A few days later I even found my way home to Tennessee.

A lot of years passed before I really began to write, before I ever hoped the Muse might visit me at all. But remembering my trip out West reminds me of something important in my life as a writer. I have noticed over the years that when the Muse finally shows up, I am usually wandering around.

Wandering through the books I read over and over, I stumble upon an interesting notion, and the next few days and weeks are spent thinking of what draws me to that notion, and then words begin to come.

Wandering through my old journals—I try to read one or two of them each year while on retreat—I am reminded of a forgotten bit of my life, and the once-lost story finds a home.

Wandering the sidewalks in our neighborhood or through the park a few blocks away opens up a way of seeing something I never noticed before, and a bit of light appears in the dark of what I am trying to write.

“To remain silent and alone is to be open to influences that are crowded out of an occupied life,” writes Peter France in his book aptly named Hermits. Wandering around alone, in the absence of other voices, helps me find what I have to say, or at least what I have to say today. Tomorrow will be another day.

I rarely trust the Muse to show up on her own. I worry she has better things to do, better writers to inspire.

I do have complete faith that the best way to be found by her is to wander around, both literally and figuratively. If necessary, put the top down. Take a stroll through the park. Open up a book of quotes. Thumb through your journals.

If she is going to show up for me, it will be somewhere on the road between Horse Creek and Medicine Bow, between my house and the park, in the midst of the dance I do with the fountain pen on the page.

It will be when I am wandering, when I am following my nose.

When it is time to begin a book, when the blank pages are waiting and the fountain pens have been filled, I recommend you make the barest of plans you can, just enough to aim at what you are setting out to do. Too little direction and you might miss Medicine Bow. Too much planning and you can talk yourself out of turning onto the little unmarked road that leads to the left, along which may be the moment the whole journey will end up being about.

It helps to make a list of the stories you want to tell and events you want to describe or the things you want to say. I find it is better to make a list rather than an outline. A list makes me feel as though I am writing a book rather than taking a correspondence course.

I think it wise to leave enough room to ramble around between stops to see what is there to be discovered. Or perhaps to sit in a square and watch people go by. It will not hurt to drive down a long road and have to turn around.

I like to have enough of a plan to know when one might be well advised to turn west into the sunset or stop for the night. But I also need to give myself the freedom to add a chapter or throw one away, to add a story or save it for another day.

A writer can dutifully follow a well-reasoned outline and end up missing the point. A writer can complete the assignment she set for herself and still not write the work she meant to write.

“The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist,” writes the sculptor Anne Truitt, “is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.”

Solitude is likely necessary to be in touch with the things deep inside you. Silence may be required for you to hear what those things are saying to you.

Do not be afraid to be quiet. Never be afraid to be alone.

Wandering around in wide-open spaces, especially spaces offered by a blank page, may be the key to making some art of those things found in the silence and the solitude.

It may well be that such places are where the Muse chooses to drop by for a visit.

Whenever you get the chance or the courage, put the top down and follow your nose.