Reaching Glacier: An Inflection Point

Journal Entry #38

August 18, 2022

It’s taken me a bit longer to write this entry. I have had many experiences that are hard to describe and lots of feelings to sort through over the past few weeks.

First, I’ll start by eating my own words. You may recall that in my last blog I spent time commenting on how we have much enjoyed the parks and paths less traveled —sometimes even BETTER than many of our bucket list destinations, including some of the National Parks. Well, after visiting the North Cascades and Glacier, I need to make an amendment. These two National Parks are exquisite and worth every bit of the advance planning and people traffic, such as it was.

Our arrival at Glacier and our days there felt particularly profound. It was a destination that we had planned for in our itinerary long before we left New Jersey. Glacier was a place that, as we traveled around the country, we knew awaited us — like a sort of holy grail; a storied, mythically beautiful place that would be something we would look forward to near the END of our trip.

Arriving there always seemed to reside squarely in the “future” with many months of other adventures ahead of us…that is, until now.

Hiking in Glacier was beyond thrilling for us. In a way, it represented a kind of “culmination” of nearly a year of living on the road. It was a hiker’s paradise with challenging and rewarding trails that our seasoned feet were ready for. The epic scale and majestic beauty of this place is hard for me to articulate. I hope some of my photos can do it justice, though I urge anyone who can go to GO. Perhaps John Muir captured the feeling best:

“… You will find yourself in the midst of what you are sure to say is the best care-killing scenery on the continent – beautiful lakes derived straight from glaciers, lofty mountains steeped in lovely nemophila-blue skies and clad with forests and glaciers, mossy ferny waterfalls in their hollows, nameless and numberless, and meadowy gardens abounding in the best of everything …”

Yet, despite all of these intensely exhilarating moments, reaching Glacier was also bittersweet. You know that feeling you get when the summer is nearly over, when you feel a slight chill in the evening air and the days are growing just a touch shorter? You sense that change is just around the corner—and you feel it viscerally too; a small pit in your stomach and ache in your heart. In that moment, you want time to pause so you can hold onto the “now” a little longer, to relish it and to breathe it in. At the same time, you know you must ready yourself to look forward and to embrace the shift ahead.

The days in Glacier were exactly this inflection point for us; the pause before the shift. Because here it is— the round belly of mid-August. We are nearing the end of summer with a just few weeks remaining before we land back east.

I am feeling the emotional waves of other important shifts too. H returned to college for her sophomore year today.  And, after a challenging and intense five-month search, E will begin a new job in the coming week. Tom’s youngest, M, leaves for a year-long overseas work opportunity at the end of this month.

On our many hikes in Glacier we delighted in the “now” moments; epic views, knife-edged mountains, aquamarine lakes, abundant wildlife. We enjoyed the riot of blooming wildflowers, the bright sunshine, the sound of wind in the pines and the bracing cold of the streams. Part of the luxury of these long mountain hikes was that we could have open, flowing conversations about anything. In Glacier, we noticed that our hiking conversations drifted towards the philosophical; about what we have learned and how we have shifted and changed ourselves.

With fewer travel destinations ahead of us, our discussions also seemed to shift to the things that await us upon our return to “stationary living.”  We are both beginning to reflect on what this trip has meant to us and what how it feels to “go home.” Actually, I find it strange to say the phrase “go home” at all because, right now, the van and this way of living IS home.

How do I assemble these mixed emotions to make sense of them? Maybe another analogy will help. In my senior year of high school I took a course called Senior Humanities. As part of the curriculum we read many of Shakespeare’s plays and studied the structure and arc of these works. The classic arc was a universally good recipe for stories that capture our attention and imagination. The arc goes like this: the exposition (act I), rising action (act II), the climax (act III), falling action (act IV) and finally the denouement (act V). Spending time at Glacier felt like act III, the climax— reaching of a pinnacle, both literally and figuratively, in our travel story.

Of course, the final two acts of the arc are also crucially important. They bring the actions to their logical (or sometimes surprising resolutions) and are often the parts of the story that shed light on the deeper meaning of the events that have taken place.

But the last two acts are also the harbingers of the “end” — and don’t match the power and energy of the action in act III.

That’s where we are. The inflection point at the end of act III. Having departed from Glacier, we are moving into the final acts of this year-long journey.