Thoughts of the trip

It's been quite a while since I wrote in this blog. I've covered a lot of ground since my last post. To summarize, I started driving west from St. Paul Minnesota. I arrived in Laramie where I put my possessions in storage and got rid of the U-haul. I drove on to Dubois where I spent a few days in my brother-in-law's hunting camp. I then drove on to Oregon, taking a route through the Tetons, southern Idaho, and the Columbia River Gorge.

I spent a couple weeks in Corvallis, Oregon, helping my girlfriend pack her belongings into another U-haul. With that done, we journeyed in a small caravan of two vehicles, my pickup and trailer, and her little SUV, to our eventual home destination of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We retraced my tracks back through the Columbia River Gorge and across southern Idaho. We cut south through Ogden, Utah, and drove through suburbs and communities nestled between the majestic Wasatch Range, and the Great Salt Lake. We turned east on I-80 across windy, southern Wyoming to Cheyenne, where we then turned south on I-25, into Colorado, through Denver, along the Front Range and into New Mexico.

It's easy to list out the route and recite all the towns I drove through. It's more difficult to answer the question that I was asked, "How did you feel about all that?" The short answer would be 'excited tiredness'. The long answer will take much more time.

It's the memories that bring out the emotions, and I remember the small fleeting things. The day I left the Twin Cities, I got up at 5:00 to take care of business. I left town in the early afternoon and drove late into the night. I was looking for a place to pull over and sleep a few hours. It was almost 2:00 a.m. and I was dead tired. I was in the Black Hills on two lane blacktop, driving south toward Custer. I found a narrow parking pullout so I stopped. I got out to check the suitability of parking there for a few hours, and as I stood in the darkness, I looked up at the millions of stars in the black, moonless sky. A chilled breeze was blowing. Then, from that darkness I heard the eerie, almost unnatural sound of birds from across the road. They were coming from a stand of trees that I could barely make out. First I heard a hoot from an owl, and then a loud screech from some kind of raptor, maybe an eagle. It sent a shiver up my spine. I had never heard an eagle screech at night. Was it screeching at me? I decided the parking area was too small, and it looked like a place where people might congregate in the morning. I didn't want to wake up with a tourist peering in my window. As I drove away my tired mind came to the realization that a bird sanctuary or a small zoo must have been hidden in the darkness of the trees. Still, I was creeped out, tired, and a little depressed. I drove on.

I remember driving through, or near, Custer Park, still looking for a place to stop and sleep. My tired eyes suddenly saw shadowy sillouettes in front of me on the road. I slowed down. My tired mind couldn't make them out, but I suspected deer, or cows. When my headlights caught them full on, I could see deer-like animals with horns. They were large, and they had a different coloring around the neck, like a mane. Elk! Then I saw more sillouettes beside the road, three on one side, then a bunch on the other, then more on the first side. I slowed the pickup to a crawl. If one would jump in front of me, I didn't know if was alert enough to avoid it. I needed to stop soon. I don't know how many were there, maybe a dozen, may fifty. Then they were gone, and I had only the dark, empty highway ahead of me. It made me feel good to see elk. It made me feel good to know there were still wild things out there, even if they lived protected in a state park.

After driving through Hot Springs, SD, I finally found a place to turn off. It wasn't really a place. It was a turnoff that ended at a wire gate to a sagebrush pasture. I didn't care. I couldn't go any further. I made sure the U-haul was off the road, and then I kicked off my shoes, laid the seat back, and slept. I slept longer than I expected, longer than I wanted. The sun was fully up, and the road was surprisingly busy. I carefully backed the U-haul onto the road and drove on again.

A coyote ran across the road at Edgemont, Wyoming, and then turned and stood near a patch of rabbitbush and watched as I drove by. What was it thinking? Surely they do think. Coyotes are adaptable and cunning. They need to be with man around. I was raised to despise them, but I admire them just he same. I have caught many glimpses of them from the road. I've felt their sharp teeth while playing with a friend's pet coyote which he raised from a pup. I have come eye-to-eye with a big male, as I sat on the edge of a meadow waiting for elk to appear. Each encounter was surprising, and somewhat awe inspiring. What did that coyote in the rabbitbush think of me? Now I am questioning what I think of him.

This move to the southwest is a transition for me. I am rethinking everything. I am throwing off the old and the boring and the familiar. I'm shaking loose from the tradition and convention. Some parts of the old system still have me in its grip, like the need for a paycheck and insurance, but I want to change what I can and see things from a new perspective. I want to see my world from the eyes of the coyote.