Two thousand, three hundred and ninety miles; ten states; four national parks, two national monuments, and two state parks; $1002.20 in gas.
What a journey this past week has been. While it may have cost me an arm and a leg to get out here, never in my life have I seen so much in one week. As I sat at my final campsite in Wall, South Dakota on Saturday night, I almost couldn’t believe that it had only been a week.
A friend told me a few weeks ago that he had talked to a professor about our perception of the passage of time. In the moment, he explained, time tends to go faster when we’re doing a variety of activities, and slower when we’re doing the same things day in and day out. Retrospectively, however, the exact opposite is true; rote periods seem like the blink of an eye (think of quarantine), while periods of lots of variety stretch on in our memories for much longer than it seemed then.
This past week felt like a month, and I mean that with absolutely no exaggeration. It seems like graduation, moving out of my house, and leaving home are all distant memories, but they all only happened a couple weeks ago.
I’m not exactly sure what to make of all that. Life has been moving so quickly for so long that it now feels weird to just sit down. I’ve found that even in my trips into the park so far, I’m still in the mindset of go in, see the thing I want to see, and get back to my place that I was in throughout my trip. I’m trying to slow it down a bit once more, but the transition from go-go-go to having nothing but free time has been very strange.
Regardless, the week of travel was one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. I got to see more in a week than I probably will in some years in my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I saw mountains, forests, caves, lakes, plains, beaches, rivers, valleys, whatever the hell Devils Tower is, bison, pronghorn, prairie dogs, elk, bighorn sheep and countless other things. I’ve seen more of this country this week than some people do in a lifetime, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to have done so. There’s so much out there to see, and to get to see as much of it as possible is a goal I hope I can continue to pursue.
I think I’ll do alright out here. There was an initial shock at having much, much older roommates assigned to me, but they’re honestly pretty chill and it seems easy to just keep to myself. I’ve been into Yellowstone 4 times already, and have gotten to see Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, as well as a giant herd of bison with a few newborn calves. Unfortunately the weather has been terrible so far (it snowed on Memorial Day), so I haven’t really gotten to see a night’s sky yet. It’s also been rained at least a little every day I’ve been here, so I’m hoping that lets up soon.
Even so, I found myself a few miles hike from my truck yesterday as a light rain blew over, and still found myself smiling ear to ear. Even with all of the life turmoil right now, it’s hard not to be happy here, at least when I’m in the park. I’m hoping it warms up a bit soon so that even when I’m not in the park I can just go hang out outside. Right now I’ve been stuck watching TV in my down time, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I’m ready to be able to be outside all the time.
My job also seems pretty cool. It gives me the opportunity to actually talk to people, which admittedly I’ve not done much of here. The job itself is pretty fun, and all the people I work with so far have been very warm and welcoming. Once I get the basics down, I think it should be pretty smooth sailing.
I’m not really sure how to make friends out here. I was hoping there’d be some built in friends through work or my housing situation, but it doesn’t really seem like that’s gonna be the case. I got back on Tinder again… which… I guess is a thing. That’s not really making friends but meeting people is meeting people, and you never know what might happen I guess. Probably a bad decision though, we’ll see if I delete it in a few weeks.
Regardless, I’m mostly doing well at the moment, I just want to try to slow things down a bit and settle into a routine. I think that’ll make it easier to get in things I want to do as well, if I know what time is structured and what isn’t.
I think this will be a good summer, I’m looking forward to it.
Song of the Week:
The Line 
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