The End is Nigh

Hiking in the Rocky Mountain NP. (Photo credit: Jill Haber)

My epic cross-country adventure is about to be over.

After seven weeks, 23 states, 9 national parks, and more Nutrigrain bars than I can count, I’m heading home.

I’m writing from Nashville, my last major stop, bringing my trip full circle. My dad is flying down today to meet me here, and then we’re driving back to New York together. I’m excited about that, because after last week I wasn’t particularly looking forward to more 8-hour blocks of driving.

I feel like I should be starting this post so much further back. I feel like I didn’t really write about ANYTHING! I never really wrote a post about Yosemite or Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons, I didn’t write about the Utah parks, I haven’t written about Jill’s visit last week. There’s just so much I haven’t told you about, so much that you don’t know.

Why didn’t I write as much on this trip, despite there being so much to describe and share? Well, I think not having WiFi or the ability to plug in my laptop while camping was one reason. And another reason: there was almost TOO MUCH to write about, so that it would have been a mental exercise in itself to pare down what I wanted to include.

And now it feels too late. It’s been a month since Yosemite, three weeks since Yellowstone, two since Utah, one since Colorado. To write a post encompassing all of that seems impossible.

But I’m not giving up. There will still be more posts. I have lots of ideas. I’ll write a summation of where I’ve been and what I spent. I’m working on a list of Abra’s Tips for Kosher Car Camping. Maybe I’ll do a series of photo essays when I get home. Maybe I’ll go through my journal and pick out the best vignettes from my trip. I don’t know yet. I don’t even know what I’m going to say in this post. I just know that I feel a need for some real-time closure.

Roughly:

In the past month or so, since reaching California and beginning the park-tour phase of my trip, I’ve visited seven major national parks, done a bunch of hikes, seen a lot of wildlife, photographed many beautiful vistas, camped in several different campgrounds, driven for hours through some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen, cooked over open fires, and came to feel like I might actually know what I was doing in the great outdoors.

OHMAGERD yum.

I felt at home in the parks, in my tent, at my campfire. I felt capable of surviving. I could build a fire easily, I could erect a tent in full darkness. I acquired all the equipment necessary to feed myself (albeit maybe a little too late in the course of my trip) - a camp stove, cookware, utensils, even biodegradable soap. I learned how to read maps when my phone’s GPS wouldn’t work in the parks. I hiked with ease and lots of water. I just got it.

This really came home to me when Jill traveled out to Colorado to meet up with me for my last nature destination, the Rocky Mountain National Park. She had never been camping before, hadn’t even been to a national park before. My comfort around a campsite astonished her, a consummate urbanite (her word).

And it was interesting. After all, we come from the same background: we’re both native New Yorkers; we both grew up in the same Long Island town; we both went to SUNYs. How had we diverged so massively, to the point where she could find the correct subway to anywhere in the city and I could build a fire in the wilderness?

Of course, neither of these are the most impressive accomplishments. There are lots of people who can do one or both well. The point is not that they’re difficult skills to master but that they’re so different. More specifically, the fact that a Jewish girl from a jappy Long Island town could end up easily navigating the outdoorsy scenes in which we found ourselves was amazing to Jill.

And let’s call a spade a spade. Jill is widely known to be one of my biggest fans. She’s not exactly an impartial observer. She’s impressed by pretty much everything I do, from highway driving to candy consumption. But even with that large grain of salt, I could recognize that in a sense, she was right. These were cool skills that I had developed. Maybe a lot of people are comfortable in the great outdoors, but not a lot of people we know. I had, once more, traveled outside the known sphere of our joint experience.

And maybe it’s time to recognize that, and to be proud of it. Maybe it’s time to admit, and acknowledge, that I am a cool, nature-proficient, outdoorsy gal who is confident on a hiking trail and at a campsite, that I can do a lot of interesting things, that I am a strong and capable woman.

It was SO hard to write that paragraph.

I think the realization this time - that I’m not the shrinking, fearful, anxious, useless person I was in Israel - came in a different way than it did on my first trip back in February. Then, it was much more of an in-your-face kind of thing. I was so intoxicated by what I was doing, by the fact that I was going on this road trip alone and having all of these new experiences, that the difference hit me in a much more frontal way. It was such a contrast to the life I had been living. But this time around, I had, in a sense, already been living that new life for a number of months. I had traveled, I had hiked, I had farmed, I had been out in the world. So when I set out on this cross-country adventure, I was ahead of my own game. I was already the cool, independent woman I had wanted to become.

And maybe that’s why this trip didn’t come as such a revelation, as I discussed in a previous post. There was just less to reveal. I had already stripped away much of the dead shell of my former self.

So, as a result, during this trip, I didn’t discover a new facet of my identity. Instead, I lived it. I wasn’t becoming: I became. I was. I took the knowledge that I was capable of doing all of these things - solo road tripping, solo camping, hiking and exploring new places - and I just did it.

The idea of the thing becomes the thing itself. The process of alchemy is complete.

It means that in the moment, I’m less aware of the ecstasies of living, because those moments have become my real life, not the little sparkles around the edges. In one sense it’s disappointing: you don’t feel the heights the same way. But in another sense, your entire self is elevated to the next level. You access vitality differently: more holistically, more completely, less vibrantly, less ethereally.

Yes, it loses some of its magic in this process. Extreme heights can’t always be sustained. In fact, they usually can’t. You still have to live, to function, to interact. But in exchange for these bright, fleeting moments, you get to level up. You get a new default. A happier one.

I think that’s the takeaway from this summer, though I'm still processing. No, it wasn’t as shiny and bright as my first trip, but it was more solid, more real. It was a calmer, truer journey to find the lasting changes within myself that I first began to cultivate in February. Or maybe earlier, when I made the decision to come back.

Is the journey over? Nah, I know for a fact that my experiences this next year are going to open up a whole new world for inner Abra. My reality will continue to shift. My world will continue to grow and change. By next summer I might be a whole new person again. I might have discovered things about myself I never suspected were within me.

It’s exciting. I know one day I’ll get fed up with all of this upheaval and uncertainty. Maybe even one day soon. I’ll look forward to settling down, to embracing stability, to finding a place to land. And because that’s still so unknown for me, even that place seems mysterious and thrilling from here.

TL;DR: A good trip. More to come.