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7/18

The sun hangs on a pendulum, swinging left, right, left as I continue forward. I can read the sun here. Use it as a tool to find my way.

I can see West here. In the sun and in the way the wind has carved the trees. In the way the license plates change. In the laying of the pavement. West doesn’t feel like a direction, but a destination. It is something I’m meant to reach. I don’t know why. The whispers of a million settlers or the tales of untamed mountains. The thrill of animals that could kill me lurking in the sharp-needled forests.

I didn’t pick West. I just had no more east to go to. I’ve been traveling up and down the eastern seaboard all my life to find… I’ve run out? Not quite. I’m headed to the coast soon. A new life not directed by my old Appalachians, but by the ocean and its whims. But I’m settled. I’m settled on my hills and the way they grip me. Settled in how I can look across a canopy of eastern hardwood forests and discover something new that I’ve always seen but never known—it looks like a massive head of broccoli.

My point is, the mountains hold me as they always have, and I have loved their embrace. The fullness of their hollows. How ridges corral and contain a valley of corn or cows and harbor it as a secret pocket. I’m held in. Surrounded by these broccoli walls, but I’m told its time to go by my degree and my job and myself. It’s time to go. Break free. Leave the bower in which my landscape has so beautifully crafted me and whose greens and browns color my person. It’s time to go. But things at rest stay at rest, so I need motion, I need momentum.

I can’t hurtle myself at the ocean out of nowhere, so I fling myself away and use the western slope of my Appalachians to set my sails. It’s time to go West not to see the West, but as a slingshot. A backboard. A ping pong ball, I want the Rockies to shoot me back east. Past my mountains, past my home, past what has so far been me, into a new life.

But not yet. First, I make my journey West. A slow-moving coast across plains and rivers which I’m finding not so plain and ever so riveting.

I never expected beauty here, in this vast bowl. These acres that are not a destination, but instead are considered a requirement of access to such. I never understood what would happen when the ridges fell to release a flood of valleys.

The world has unfurled. The depth of this flood is endless as the wave of crop and cattle spills past the bounds of hills. The road is uncurling out in front of me, unconstrained by the landscape. The sunlight pours endlessly until a rain cloud swallows the entire sky. Trees branch into the expanse of everything, creating canopies of titan, glorious branches.

My eyes can swim for miles and all I find is the sparkling surface of green, speckled in houses, cars, cows, and silos.

“Where do these people go?” I ask.

“Home.”

Swimming in these plains, people have found the oasis of home. I see their houses tucked under bunches of spreading limbs that hold them and harbor them from storms.

Home.

This land of waving corn and cotton candy skies isn’t home for me. I can see myself in the landscape—clouds painted on the sky as stretch marks paint the pieces of my skin I usually try to hide. Spreading tree branches that reach their fullness as I hope to do. Happiness in home as I know I’ll find. But I know this landscape isn’t me. We merely share familial traits. No, I am not the plains.

We’ll go further West tomorrow. Into more “boring lands.” Finally, we’ll reach the mountains—the Rockies. I’m excited, nervous like a first date, but I know I already have a partner, and I’m not sure if polygamy suits me. It’s just a date. And then, a ping pong paddle, they’ll give me the momentum I need. Shoot me across the country—this time in the sky. Send me all the way to the ocean where I know the waves of my new home will catch me and safely return me to shore.

7/19

I’m not a ping pong ball. I realized I do not want to be shot back and forth, endlessly. No, that won’t do for me. I feel like the aptly named ball and cup game, shot into the sky and hoping to land safely in my cup, tethered to it all the same.

And with my string holding me safely to what I know, I continue the ascent into the unfamiliar. Driving through fields of hay and cattle in Iowa and Nebraska, I could feel that string stretching from what I know—endless shade with a touch of endless whitetail deer.

Then we hit prairie. Or, I think it was prairie. Could be rangeland. I’ve never been to lands where green seems so ultimately unnatural. Jets of irrigation spray invasions of corn, but the water sometimes escapes to make semi-circles of lush green on the wrong side of the fence and it looks…out of place.

I’ve never looked so far and never seen a tree. Some say you’ll feel open. Exposed. I feel untethered. Like my string had been cut and I had to resort to using the slackline to lasso horizon-breakers. Silos, dairy complexes, cell towers, billboards. I pulled myself along by these landmarks, counting cattle as I passed and waited for a grove, a snapshot of home. My string has snapped, and I have flown out here, untethered.

I don’t much like the prairies. But I don’t much know the prairie. The unfamiliarity of it all is appalling, but this is home. Not to me, of course.

This incline to the foothills is an ADA certified ramp to happiness for some, and I think I could understand it should I come to know the sedges and grasses here—even a bush or two.

This won’t be my home, but maybe a roadside BnB.

When the mountains arose, they made the difference. I could feel my tethers again, holding me to the earth. I guess these are my bounds for now and I got antsy in their absence. The land is still foreign and barren here in the foothills, but tomorrow we rest, and I will try to learn a few names to pull myself down to the earth again.

7/20

When I shave my legs, I look down and see beauty in their barrenness. When I look at these foothills, I’m not sure I see the same. Barrenness, unsure of its intention to be such.

These shaved mountains are captivating, but beauty isn’t what strikes me about them. Indifference is. This landscape doesn’t seem to care of the opinions of people—it is its own beast. The east coast cares. The Appalachians care. The Rockies. The Rockies don’t seem to give a damn what I think of them.

I have always loved a game of hard to get.

And I don’t even know if I like it here yet, but I can’t keep but feeling this deep pull to plan when I next return.

These mountains haven’t given in to me, and as bad of a quality as it is, I can’t handle rejection. Can’t handle a landscape so utterly uncaring and untamed. That goes against what I spout, but what do I really believe?

We walked through town today and I anchored myself. I found cottonwoods and maples growing along streams. I even found oaks. No sycamores, though. Despite that, it made me feel connected; tethered to the earth that knows me. Like if I followed this water and these plants that hold me down, I could find my way home, wherever that may be, geographically.

Did you know pelicans live in Colorado? These birds that, to me, always seemed born and belonging to the sea, find this semi-arid climate to be their perfect home. Pelicans, native and flying above highways, mountains, and prairie dog colonies.

Maybe we’re more flexible in home than we think. Maybe I shouldn’t entrap myself in the rigidity of eastern forests.

But even writing that feels wrong—like a betrayal.

I’m not a pelican. But maybe I could be a cottonwood. Finding home suitable wherever ample waters reach my roots and sun crests above my crown. Maybe I’m a cottonwood. Maybe.

I don’t feel like I’m attached to my string anymore. I feel like a pinball, dropped from security and falling. Bouncing along farmland and prairie. Hitting peak and foothill. There’s a chance I get shot back up to my roots. But there’s a greater chance I’ll succumb to the inevitable tug of gravity, falling closer to the unavoidable reaches of horizons I do not yet know.

7/21

I touched the Pacific Ocean today. Well, not exactly, but close enough.

We crossed the continental divide in a pass so crowded with peaks that little room was left for words. Getting out of the foothills was remarkable in a way I’ve never experienced. We wove up a canyon and embroidered its rocks in our journey. We dove under foothills and came out the other side as amazed as before. We rose into the mountains, and they lurched so high into the sky that I had to lean and twist and get unimaginably in the way of the rear-view mirror just to see the tops. From ruddy rock canyons to greening north-facing forests to luges of fallen timber to the top of the continent (I know it’s not quite the top, but delineation wise, I’ll consider it the top). I can’t believe I had no desire to know the world out here. To know beastly ridges with racing stripes of snow and meadows set on fire by the retiring of the summer sun. I still don’t believe it to be my world, but what a world it is.

Climbing up dirt roads so pitted with potholes that every inch was a strategic decision to try and save a muffler, we disappeared into the hills. Coated in pines—half dead, half not taken prey by a pine bark beetle. I see myself here. In the saddest way, I see myself in the land here, but even that comforts me. That almost purple glow of dead branches and tragedy remind me that this is a home.

Finding a campsite was simple, but not easy. How to best be in the great outdoors while keeping the comforts of the great indoors close at hand? Dispersed camping and a quiet site two-hundred feet from the car seemed to be the answer. But I look out and see only golden trees, a rising ridge, and other non-people things and so my world tells me this is nature.

I like this. The unregulated campfire, small tents, and the airplane icon on the upper left corner of my screen.

But I also liked the canyon road crowded with hikers and tubers. I liked the busy pass we stopped at to look back at the Atlantic. I liked seeing the moose in the marsh and I liked watching the woman photograph her with nothing but joy and respect exuding from her person. I like to hear children laughing in the stream near our campsite. And I like knowing that today, I, and probably a moose somewhere, peed in the Pacific Ocean. What a beautiful thought that is.

Don’t get me wrong, I love hiding in the mountains. Covering myself in the scent of smoke and bathing in the grit of the ground. Sheltering between peaks and retreating into the forest’s edge. But I get the sense that people aren’t hiding here. They’re running away, pretending not to see the dead trees in an attempt to weave themselves into a lie that they have found wilderness. Forsaking the human race and living a pure life and using the huge peaks and desolate grasslands to shield themselves from the reality. There’s no escaping us. And as I’ve so clearly and recently learned, running doesn’t do any of us much good.

The east has taught me different lessons than these ridges seem to hold. Back home, there’s a rationing of running and little space left to go to. We barter in bits and pieces while the wagers out here seem to swallow the sky.

These peaks were supposed to make me feel small, but I feel bigger than ever in a way I’m not sure I like. A too big for my britches way. This land doesn’t seem to put me in my place. Perhaps because the illusion here is that there’s endless space to go.

7/22

It’s easy to say you’re not a camping person when you seem to spend more time waking up than sleeping in a tent that seems unfairly frigid.

It’s my fault for sure. Not owning my own sleeping bag, not putting on socks for bed. Using my jacket as a pillow.

As I woke up throughout the night, all I could think was: this isn’t for me. It didn’t help I had been spooked by the dark and the impending lightning. Each time I woke up, I contemplated putting on more layers. I just couldn’t reach my feet and they were the coldest part of me. To put on warm socks, any socks, I had to unzip my whole sack. No thank you, not for me.

I stayed cold from the very dark hours to the semi-dark hours. The semi-dark hours has bird calls. The bird calls faded into the…moose calls? I think they were moose calls, bellowing and vibrating the air around me. The moose calls convinced me to put a jacket and socks on, and when I woke up in sunlight at eight, it felt like camping was for me again.

To aid and play a part in my own comfort—a novel idea. To unzip my bag and find my feet with fuzzy socks. That’s what moose calls told me to do for myself.

After sunlight came, warmth came. I went out to the meadows hoping to see the authors of the calls, but they had vanished, just like my cold toes and dreams of getting a full night’s sleep. Night two will be better if I can stop convincing myself that lions and bears are waiting for my every misstep. I never used to be so scared of the dark, but I was never as convinced that things could and would kill me, even if the truth is, they really won’t.

Camping is for me if there is coffee, and we had coffee. Right as we were about to fill our pot, a female moose strode by, calm and collected and massive. Not forty yards away. Not blinking an eye. Hurrying after her at a much less leisurely pace came a bull. When they hit the meadow—gallop. Coffee tasted better after that.

An easy morning melded into an easy drive and an easy hike. An easy day, but no less magnificent.

I may not like the stark, open bowls of land with just-too-big and just-too-new houses scraping away a living at its sides, but how can one not fall in love with this: A crystal creek turning over boulders and branches. Springing from hillsides swathed in pine trees and accented by a monarch butterfly’s wings. Looking up at striking rocky peaks that are still, in late July, speckled in snows. Sitting under the shady boughs of trees and hearing nothing but water, bird calls, wind, and hikers. It’s impossible not to love this.

It’s impossible not to love moose streaked meadows and pine needles that sound like rain. Impossible not to love fire rings and instant coffee made on a camp stove. The beauty and the peacefulness is so striking, I would almost call it impossible not to love the cold toes that come with it.

Almost.

7/23

Things I observed today:

-The sound a small creek makes when it runs under snow

-Two small mammals—a yellow-bellied marmot and a pika—both shouting at me

-How sturdy a snowbank can be, despite it having edges that seem to plunge down for miles

-How much I hate mosquitoes

-How having approximately 732 mosquito bites makes each one, individually, less itchy

-How hard it is to walk up mountains, until you look back and notice all the progress you’ve made

-How deceptively hard it is to walk down mountains

It’s been a good day despite my itchy skin. Fulfilling would even be an excellent word. We climbed mountains today, and saw off into the distance from the top of a ridge—both sides. We crossed snow, climbed rocks, and rinsed our hands in streams so clear, it was like they weren’t even there.

Sitting here, surrounded by ridges, water, contentment, and mosquitoes, I hold so much respect for this land. This land that doesn’t care if I fall down a rocky slope or navigate it safely. One that doesn’t care if a bear enters my campsite or if I have a face-off with a moose as I’m trying to make food in the morning. It doesn’t and will not give a second thought about me. How scary is that?

Being out here makes the east feel like practice nature. Like the outdoors equivalent of that warm-up hole before you start a mini golf course. This scares me, and this isn’t even extreme. This scares me in the way the ocean scares me. It’s unknown, and who isn’t afraid of that? I’m wavering between love and fear, and there is no escaping that. Maybe it’s just love? I think its respect.

I’m being dramatic, I know. The world here fears me as I fear it. Vastly. Uncertainly.

These aren’t my mountains, but God, are they mountains. And I’m grateful that they’re holding me now.

7/24

It turns out I am crafted by fears. Funny, isn’t it? How much I love and respect nature, yet how terrifying it is to me to hear an echoing bark in the blackness near my campsite just as I’m about to go to bed.

I had been trying to hold in my fear. To calm how much the dark woods scared me, but the seams I was using to keep logic sewn into my mind unstrung with each coyote that echoed along the ridgeline.

Maybe this land isn’t meant for me. Maybe I am not meant for it. Somehow, the second explanation is simpler to live by.

I did not love sleeping in that high forest, but I loved waking up in it. Birds chipping away the dawn with their morning songs. Moose, strolling by our campsite. Washing breakfast dishes in a stream. The whole of it. The dark grasped a fear I didn’t know I had. It was unshakable. Visceral. But the mornings were brightness and light.

But now, I find myself in the comfort of a bed. Exhausted. Happy to have camped. Excited to do it again, but on my own turf. And when I understand the wild better here, I will come back.

The mountains here are jagged, ruthless. Home to afternoon thunderstorms and snowbanks in July. And they are also soft, opening up into bowls of meadows touched by so many color palettes of wildflowers. Mysterious and wonderful, I met them and saw their face and they saw mine. Now, they’ll do exactly what I wanted from the very start: they’ll send me home.

7/26

And so it ends.

Tomorrow will slingshot me into a setting sun, and I’ll be glad to watch the West fade out the plane window.

I haven’t fallen in love. I will be sweetly looking forward to returning westward, but I will, again, be a guest. A smooth ridge on a rough palate. A flowering dogwood in Colorado. Becoming a permanent fixture here doesn’t seem in my cards.

These hills and mountains gave me more than I expected. A reminder of love for the broad treetops that hold me together and the soft chill of oak leaf shade on my face. The love of the lightning daggers that winter branches shoot across my mind’s sky. I remembered that these legs can carry me up mountains and how my eyes ache to see the view. The curiosity (or desperate need to know) that lives within me for the natural world around me. I was braided with ribbons of fear and respect as creeks and waterfalls braid this landscape. I knew this, but sometimes I need to be reminded to see it.

So now I launch east on the slope of these mountains, much faster, more purposeful. I look forward to my days among my old home and look forward to the time I’ll spend creating a new one.

I’ll miss this landscape. Its reliable thunderstorms. Its scrubby brush and patches of unnatural green. Its rigid peaks and rough face. I will miss it, but not too much.

So like a ping pong ball, shoot me east. Across the lands I have met that now know my name. Across the mountains that built me in my wilderness. Beyond the past that endlessly tries to snatch me in melancholy and nostalgia. And deliver me to the ocean where I know the waves will carry me to shore to begin anew. A land where I will sew up the fear, braid it with ribbons of uncertainty, newness, love.