Willie Morris - North Toward Home (7)

I finish the book. Just when I thought I had the title figured out, the author throws me a curve ball at the end. My thought was that Morris is saying he found home in New York, where he would see people and things that reminded him of Mississippi, and that's what he meant by north toward home. But then he visits Mississippi after an absence of 3 years, and as he heads back to New York he concludes the book by writing this:

"Why was it, in such moments just before I leave the South, did I always feel some easing of a great burden? It was as if someone had taken some terrible weight off my shoulders, or as if some old grievance had suddenly fallen away. The big plane took off, and circled in widening arcs over the city, over the landmarks of my past, and my people's. Then, slowly, with a lifting heavy as steel, it circled once more, and turned north toward home."

So now I am left wondering about the meaning of the title.