7th
The Journey West: Part No. 4
I wake up and eat a final breakfast with Trevor and Sarah and then I’m on my way. Today I will conquer Colorado, Wyoming, and some of Montana. As I leave Denver the geography begins to change to more slopping hills, longer stretches of nothing, and begins to resemble Kansas (yet some how doesn’t seem as bad). When you’re driving out there you feel so free. It’s just amazing that as crowded as America has become over the years there still remains vast fields of nothing. Hills that have remained untouched and rocks that seem to crown out of the earth’s surface. It is such a rough country out there. Nothing never looked so beautiful as it does out there.
Driving through the empty country becomes something more to you as you push on. You think about how you’ve seen maps of how far away Washington is from everywhere you’ve ever lived or know anyone and it seems really far. Then you actually take that journey. When you cross the spiral binding of the atlas from the right page to the left page it becomes an accomplishment.
Note: For the record when you cross that spiral binding you’ve only reached the middle of Kansas. Perhaps the designer of the atlas should of thought about that. It would be so much cooler if the spiral was actually a state border or even the Rockie Mountains. Who cares if the atlas wouldn’t fit perfectly together, it would mean more to the crazy kid wondering who decided to put the spiral right down the middle of Kansas.
Scenario: You’re out on the road on your own. Your dog is in your passenger seat. You look in your rear view mirror and beyond the pile of your complete belongings, that ride in the back seat, you see your bike hanging on a car rack. You think to yourself, “I have everything I own in my car right now and I have nothing holding me back.” Then it becomes the most liberating experience. You realize that if you didn’t want to go all they way to Seattle you don’t have to. It makes as much sense for you to live in Seattle as it does for you to live in Vegas or even Canada. However, that’s what makes it so great. You have no rules. The realization that you’ve just picked up and decided to move 2600 miles from the last person you met is an adventure in itself and you haven’t even reached your destination. You’ve done it. You haven’t gotten stuck in a hole, you’re still striving to see new things. The fact of the matter is that everyone has to go on their own journey. Whether that journey takes you across the country or that journey takes you out of your comfort zone you have to do it. If you don’t find your journey I would argue that you haven’t lived the life you were meant to live. It’s that journey that brings all the things you have wanted to be, mixes them with what you are, and spits out the person you are going to be.
Back to the day, I end up driving through Wyoming and I decide that in another life I will be a sheep farmer and own a ranch in Wyoming and have a pack of border collies to bring in the heard at the drop of a whistle. Property is so simple in Wyoming. Just a house, a small barn that looks like a 12 year-old constructed it, and a massive lot of bare land with a simple barbed wire fence reminding you where your territory comes to a hault.
After about 4 hours the sand clock of Wyoming had finally drained. I had made it to the giant state of Montana. As a child from the East Coast I was spoiled by all the states on the way to Indiana to visit relatives or New York. States in the East are a third of the size of the Western side of the country. Montana is about as big as Kansas, however, it has a better landscape job. The mountains are insanely big there and it seems that you’re climbing up them for hours and hours. When night falls you’ll be lossed in the chaos of rocks and pines. You won’t know it because you can’t see more than 20 feet infront of you, but at that very moment you are steering through giant rocks as if you Moses parted the mountains.
I would sleep in my car sitting up right on and off for the whole night. Pull into a rest stop sleep for a while, drive to the next rest stop, sleep a while. This cycle would continue throughout the night. Never knowing how far the border was to Idaho. A place that I never would of thought to be so happy to see. Always sleep in lite parking lots such as rest stops, grocery store parking lots, Wal-mart lots, etc. it’s just better that way.
After a grueling lunge for the border of Montana and Idaho I surrendered to Montana for the night. I only had 115 miles to go but I felt it was best to wait til morning to drive the last bit and so that was how it was written.
