Wild Wild West

We left home with 61,000 miles on the odometer.  My Mama was right – there was a Griswold-type feeling all around us.  We had a plan, a dream of what we wanted this trip to be. Much like Clark, I wanted it to bring my family closer together, to make them happy.  I wanted to make sure that my adventurous little girl got a chance to let her free spirit shine, a chance to “go out West” like she’d longed for since hearing second-hand stories of its magnificence.  I wanted time with my nephews, the chance to make up for all of the times I’d missed and the moments where I may have let them down.  I wanted time with my Mom, a way to catch up for all the moments we had lost during both of our journeys through a colder, darker valley of life.  I longed for an exciting journey with my beautiful wife and best friend.  And, even though Liam wouldn’t grow up to remember a single thing from this excursion, I wanted to instill in him a lasting sense of adventure that might one-day help to shape his life, making him bolder and more fearless than I could ever be.

For a good bit of my life I chose to surround myself with strangers I tallied as friends.  I chose to self-medicate with alcohol, a means to hide from my problems and shortcomings rather than address them.  Propelled further into rough seas by bad choices made when attempting to view life through that murky haze found in a bottle, I was adrift and taking on water.  Why God saw fit to keep throwing me lifeline after lifeline, I can’t explain. But now, 12 States and 7,166 miles later, the skies are clearer, and I know in my bones that this trip was part of his reasoning.

We made it through the hills of Kentucky and the landscape flattened – mountains of trees became fields of corn.  Whizzing through the agricultural lands of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa brought back memories of the many “Monster Bucks” movies I’d watched in the mid-to-late 90s. I hadn’t tried alcohol then.  I had seen what it could do to a person and it scared me.  While a good bit of my classmates were experimenting with it, I was the oddball out. Slow, like the VHS tapes that would help to fan the flames of my fire for white-tailed deer, we made our way Westward.  Unlike a DVD or On-Demand Video, you couldn’t just press a button and be exactly where you wanted to be.  You had to wait for it.  The sound of a tape rewinding or fast-forwarding almost like a drum roll setting the stage.  Looking back, that’s how I view the throngs of bugs splattering the car as night fell on our last few miles of corn fields before crossing into the rolling prairies of South Dakota – one of God’s many drumrolls.

Each night we’d stop, rent a couple of rooms, unpack our horde of luggage, and get a few hours of sleep. Each morning, still sleep-deprived, we’d re-pack our modern-day station-wagon and head further West.  The long stints in the car, if nothing else, gave us time to reflect and sing.  One night, about 11 pm, as we were making our last push towards Cut Bank, Montana, we’d stop on the side of the road for some much-needed stretching and disposal of some excess water.  It was my first time experiencing the Milky Way with not even an ounce of ambient light to distract me from its grandeur.  From Cut Bank it was on to Glacier National Park and then south to Yellowstone.  From the cold glacier water to the meandering snow-melt streams inside of America’s first National Park, our minds in a state of near endless imagination as we took in some of the most beautiful sights and sounds we’ll likely ever see.  White-tailed Deer, Mule Deer, Antelope, Elk, Moose, Bear, Bison, Wild Turkey, and Trout-filled streams – heaven for a hunter like me.

“Bye, Bye Miss American Pie”, “It’s a Great Day to be Alive” – our theme songs as we rolled along the open road.  As the Grand Tetons faded from view, stands of slow-growing, Lodgepole Pine lining the roadway left me in a state of awe – over 30 years old and barely as tall as a 10 year-old loblolly.  It’s no wonder that my soul was at ease in this western place.  In a world where everything is so fast-paced, our trip whizzing by in an instant, time slowed for a moment and allowed me to take more in, to be more present with my family and the natural world, bound by our love for each other and the wild things around us – Free and clear of vices and burdens and fully able to enjoy God’s great world.