I was lucky enough to travel to Los Angeles in October to see Joni Mitchell perform at the Hollywood Bowl (really, I should say, I’m lucky enough to have a husband who scored the tickets).

At different points in my life, I have declared no less than four songs from the album Hejira to be the greatest song of all time. At the concert, Mitchell played three of them: Coyote, Amelia, and the title track, shown below.

Hejira is an album about retreat, which feels appropriate today. Enjoy.

Stephen Whitlow lives in Chapel Hill. Trained as an urban planner at DCRP, he works for a research, evaluation, and technical assistance firm and focuses on the areas of housing affordability, fair housing,...