“Load the car and write the note,” the song "I and Love and You" by the Avett Brothers begins. It’s an imperative: we’re going. What’s not clear here is who the speaker is speaking to. But we’re grabbing our bag and coat, perhaps traveling light, but with a sense of purpose. We’re telling “the ones who need to know.” So maybe we’re going to be gone for a while. People might miss us. But we’re not telling everybody. Just the ones who “need to know.” Why is that? A hint of trouble? Or mistrust? Or just urgency: don’t bother telling everybody, just a select few.

So the song is a song of leaving, a song of departure. And where are we going, for now, it’s just “north.” That vague direction compass has a mythical feel to it. North verses south. After the first verse, it changes. And we’ll see that all the verses are loosely connected like this. In the second verse, we get an explanation. The speaker has been living “one foot in and one foot back.” That is, noncommittal, looking in both directions, cautiously. “It don’t pay,” he decides, so he “cut[s] the ties” and jumps “the tracks / for never to return.” That is, he’s going for it, going all in. He’s going to take the risk.