An Open Road

 Upper Glacier National Park, MT

July 11, 2019

Montana.

I enjoy being on the open road alone.  I enjoy it immensely.  In exercising privacy and absence from the company of others, the pressure to be everyone else’s definition of “a person” flitters away and I am reintroduced to myself.

And how much I prefer quiet solitude over the whispering multitudes.

Seven states and over 3100 miles later, I returned to San Francisco after spending a week on the open road — the pinnacle being upper Glacier National Park in Montana.  I camped wherever I could stake a site and woke up to views of the best kind: towering pine trees and mountain ranges nestled among sleepy skies.  I delighted in the still moments during morning twilight — laying in my sleeping bag, looking into the endlessness of earth.

I drove in and out of different towns, teetered on mountain ledges, charted and touched lightly the unfamiliar places, observed the glimmering gold of lakes and rivers.

Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier.  There was not a shortage of national forests in between them.  Wyoming stole my heart.  The Montanan landscapes were everlasting.  Two showers in the span of eight days.  Daily fasting with discipline.  Hiking alone through grizzly territory.  Herds of bison, a couple of elks, a mountain goat, two foxes, three bears (two black, one grizzly), and countless horses.  After years of preparing, planning, and putting off this expedition, being able to experience the northwestern US without distraction from any cohort felt (for lack of a better or more succinct word) right.  

It was personal — this trip.  I had no wish to extend any invitation.  This was a retreat into the rehabilitating elements of nature and the aloneness very few know how to navigate and embrace.  I think it to be something remarkable when one can find happiness and contentment in sitting by herself, disconnected from the vast majority of her fellow humans, being fully present and feeling the shifts in life's fleeting moments.

It is a challenge to articulate and explain the true context of my experience.  However, amid the deep lack of, instead of finding it jarring, I find the blank space to be more than enough. 

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(additional photos to follow)