A Subaru Ascent, 2,200 miles and an empty nest

Every year, Georgia families load SUVs for Athens, Macon, Statesboro, Atlanta — or colleges hundreds of miles from home.

The destination changes; the ritual doesn’t. Neither does the strange quiet when the trip home begins with one fewer passenger.

On a 2,200-mile college road trip from the Chicago suburbs to Massachusetts, I had time to process my new role as an empty nester in my now-empty Subaru Ascent. The numbers were easy: seven states, four nights, three cars, two colleges, two kids. The last part of the trip was not.

The three-row Ascent tester was an evolutionary leap from the 2005 Subaru Forester they grew up in. Yet the Ascent hasn’t been redesigned since it launched in 2019. Subaru’s largest family hauler is aging. I can relate.

The Ascent doesn’t stand out against three-row rivals. And that’s just fine. The 24.2 mpg we averaged reflects its lack of a hybrid option. Its turbocharged 2.4-liter flat-four is built for the long haul. Its third row and cargo space are on the smaller side, and it’s a few inches shorter than the Chevy Traverse, Honda Pilot and Kia Telluride. But that makes the Ascent, with its broad sightlines, easier to navigate and fit into crowded garages and school lots.

It’s not flashy, a mountain climber or a rocket ship, and it doesn’t aspire to be. It’s safe, reliable, practical and comfortable. It’s fine blending into the background, ever ready when called on.

I relate again.

Packing the Ascent

Cargo room expands from 17.8 cubic feet behind the third row to 75.6 cubic feet with the second and third rows folded. For people who think more in stuffed bags than cubic feet, that means up to six double-bagged grocery bags behind the third row. If you had to carpool the starting pee-wee hockey team, you might fit their duffel bags stacked on top of one another, excluding the goalie.

With the seats folded, it fits dorm and apartment essentials: dartboard, guitar and amp; bins, bushels and bags; shirts, shoes and skirts; jackets, rackets, brackets and whatsits.

No Lorax, no Bone, no Potter, no home.

There was room enough for a tent and a sleeping bag, for one.

On the road

The Ascent Touring led a three-car caravan and was the only one coming back. We had a 28-hour window to cover seven states and 1,100 miles with two stops. Keeping three cars together through Cleveland’s rush-hour construction and the darkness of upstate New York caused enough anxiety.

But with the Ascent as talisman, we made it to my son’s apartment in Rochester with slaphappy laughs and a brief respite before a 5 a.m. departure for leg two. We left his car behind, brother and sister together in her car, following the Ascent through fog over the Finger Lakes.

This softened me. We’d done this so many times, so many miles over so many states, but never apart. The two of them together, just 17 months apart, shared playlists, bickered over where to stop during Apple CarPlay calls, pulled up beside me and faded away with silly faces, encapsulating 20 years of my life in my rearview mirror.

The Touring’s heated and ventilated leather seats and lumbar support helped keep exhaustion at bay. The safety reminders kept me alert, if sometimes annoyed; adaptive cruise control handled much of the highway work while I did the reflecting.

We beat the start of move-in orientation and hustled everything from the Ascent into her dorm, where her brother built a shelf, and their mom and grandmother helped set up the room.

I parked her Hyundai Santa Cruz, its bed stuffed with hockey and training gear, and gave the Ascent a break.

These birds have flown

After a night in Boston followed by rain-soaked goodbyes to my daughter, the return to my son’s place in Rochester ended with the second goodbye of the day.

With a few hours of daylight left, I set up camp for sunset over Lake Erie. It cleared the congestion in my chest, quieted the question of whether I had done all I could and the knowledge of what I could have done better.

With such preoccupations, it was sweet relief not to worry about the car.

The tent’s rain fly was missing. My daughter had last used it to camp with friends this summer. My usual double-check got lost in the college packing shuffle. When storms thundered over the lake at 4:30 a.m., I smiled. If she were with me, I wouldn’t have been smiling.

I crawled off to sleep in the car. I don’t know if an air mattress would have fit, but a sleeping pad, sleeping bag and cracked sunroof were enough for a bit more bittersweet sleep. That’s not on the spec sheet: With the seats folded, the Ascent can double as a camp bunk for a wet 5-foot-8 dad.

To my Subaru surprise, I didn’t come home alone. Somehow, in some mystic Subaru way, a grasshopper clung to the passenger-side mirror for 700 miles, from Erie, Pennsylvania, to home, as if to remind me that even when we’re alone, we’re not alone.