As if we were testing anything else

On the plane, Matt — who I just met — leans over and says “You can always tell when you’re on a flight to Salt Lake City because someone’s always talking about scripture.” I take a second to overhear the conversation behind us. It occurs to me, he’s right. It occurs to me, Matt’s trying to figure out if I’m Mormon, like he is. The beer I order a few minutes later will let him know I’m not. But he’s still nice to me. He’s nice to me when we land and he hands me a small card with his name and phone number on it and ‘mormon.org’ on the other side and he says “Give me a call if you need anything on your trip or have any questions or just want to talk” and we part ways. Every Mormon I’ve ever met is incredibly nice.

Driving from the airport into downtown Salt Lake City I turn off the radio and put my phone in the glove compartment and the sky and the mountains surrounding the city are purple and miraculous to me and I say aloud to myself “You deserve to be alone in silence right now” and I know what I meant by it. But it sounded different when I said it. Looking out the window of my hotel room at the purple sunset and the city lights I say to myself “It’s so beautiful here.” I say it again, “It’s so beautiful here.” I say it once more, “It’s so beautiful here.” Until it’s a prayer.

I pull the car over maybe every 20 minutes in Wyoming. Out here the land is confused and fighting itself, unsettled, unsure of what it is. So unsure, it resembles waves frozen in time. It’s been doing this for millions years.

I came here to figure out my soul. What did I mean when I said that? How many times have I said, “I don’t write for other people, I write for myself.” What do I mean when I say that. Driving east through the desert surrounded by sage and sand and bizarre, surreal geological formations and sky swallowing up more sky, out here I need to sever the parts of me I’ve grown to hate. Up through Evanston, the Red Canyon, Fossil Butte National Monument, through Kemmerer, Eden, and Farson, I need to start anew. I need to figure out my soul. What do I mean when I say that? What does it mean if I’m silent? I sleep in my tent in Sinks Canyon State Park, shivering and aware of every sound. I don’t dream here.

I’m lying in the grass in a park around noon in Thermopolis, Wyoming, self-proclaimed home of the world’s largest hot spring (though that’s actually in New Zealand.)

I’ll admit I drove here simply because I loved the name of the town. It seemed as good a reason as any. I climb around the hot springs for a while, watching the rocks sweat steam and water and sulfurous odors until I’m light-headed and I head up Highway 120 en route to Cody and I can see for so far out here, this planet that is not Boston, this planet I’m never certain I truly deserve. I still pull over every 20 minutes. I get out of my car and spread a map open on the hood and guess how long until Cody. My phone has been acting up. There’s a phantom glitch in it pressing the power button so it keeps glowing at random and killing the battery real quick. I let it die.

What was it Adrienne Rich said about the American West? Out here, we are up against it. Out here I feel more helpless with you than without you.

The truth is I came here because I’m lost. I’m at my first rodeo tonight in Cody, Wyoming and the sun’s setting over the mountains as the announcer cheers on the riders and the 2 young women in front of me take a selfie with their phone that I make the mistake of getting caught looking at when they take it and they look at the screen and turn and look at me and laugh and I laugh too, drinking a Budweiser, and I came here because in twilight like this sometimes I do like myself, truly, I think. In twilight sometimes things that come easily to other people don’t come easily to me, and I know that. And I’ve been struggling. I know that, too. Am I a good person. Am I a good person for the right reasons. Am I every awful thing I’ve ever been called. Am I any one of them.

As if it were not ourselves, Adrienne Rich wrote. Leaving the rodeo, the moon is bigger than anything, and I’m shivering. As if we were testing anything else.

I’m lying on a picnic table in Buffalo Bill State Park at night watching shooting stars, nerve endings open and exposed to the wind. My phone falls from my pocket onto the concrete below and shatters, hilariously. Later that night in my tent by the reservoir I’m awakened by a grunt and a large animal stomping through the water. I grip my bear spray and lie perfectly still waiting for a shape to pass my tent. It never does.

I wade out knee deep into the frigid Yellowstone Lake the next day and wash the sweat and salt from my skin. On the beach, a family horses around, the kids throwing rocks at each other, their parents yelling at them to stop. And I’m in love with it here. When I write, I always write about water and light. Why is that. My feet are numb standing here in Yellowstone Lake, and I wonder how big the biggest fish are in this body of water. I look back across the surface at my car in the sun. I consider fumbling around with my phone to make a joke and share it. Why is it so important to me that I’m liked. Why do I need to make people laugh so badly. I’m in love with the mountains here and I know there are things in my mind that haven’t been adding up lately. I almost know what it means to be here, I think.

I find a new campsite in Grand Tetons National Park and set up my tent. The camp host warns me there’s been a mother black bear with 3 cubs spotted around here lately. I carry my bear spray with me everywhere. I lock my food up in a locker. I lie on the ground that night by my tent and watch more shooting stars. What am I made of, really. I go on a hike the next morning and find large claw marks on a tree.

I’m sitting on the shore of Jackson Lake with the Tetons sprawled out before me reflected perfectly in the water, running my fingers along smooth, cold stones, I’m remembering everything about you backwards. In daylight sometimes I used to close my eyes and try to picture every image inverted. I swim out into Jackson Lake, my skin absorbing light and us and everything. I’ll swim until I’m sure of it.

I cross into Idaho and make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and eat it, along with some beef jerky and triscuits. The land here is like where I grew up in Illinois, but exaggerated. Brighter colors, rolling hills, mountain peaks in the distance. I put the map on the hood. I end up in a motel room in Idaho Falls and I dream about the Yellowstone supervolcano erupting. I dream about fleeing a cloud of ash spanning the North American continent with a loose caravan of strangers. In my dream, a young boy tells me who I remind him of.

I’ve always wanted to see Craters of the Moon National Monument. That’s where I head the next morning. Southern Idaho is harsh, and so strange. Small mountains appear out of nowhere, then disappear. The government uses this land for testing. Driving to Craters of the Moon I’m listening to old Songs: Ohia albums and trying to talk with Jason Molina’s ghost. How many times have I done this. I’m listening to Tim Rutili sing Open your mouth, what are you? How many times have I listened to this song and thought I knew the answer. Then I’m here.

They brought astronauts here in the ‘60s because the land so much resembled the land they knew they would encounter on the moon. I came here because I want to know what the Earth is capable of. To see what I’d seen in photos as a child. Eerie black lava rock stretched out as far as the eye can see. Further into the park, I ascended Inferno Cone and watched strangers reach the peak and dissipate into a clear, sharp line separating the cinder from the sky. I felt my whole heart long for them, for what they’re made of. I reached down and held the hot cinder in my fingers. We climbed and disappeared together.

I make my way up through Bellevue and Hailey, up into the Sawtooth National Forest, and what a simple, funny gift I had taken for granted all this time, to find oneself on some corner of our planet this beautiful and to say, I’m pretty tired and I have a tent, I’ll just sleep here. And so I did.

I’m awakened by a terrible storm. I lie in my tent listening to the canvas flap hard against the wind and the rain pummeling it from all sides, praying it doesn’t rip open and leave me helpless, soaked, and freezing. I’m lying here alone in a sleeping bag in this vast, dark, menacing forest that appeared so beatific in the light but things change quickly and I know that. Everyone knows that. Everything that happened this year that I couldn’t have imagined until I had to, and the truth is I didn’t come here alone, I came here with questions. Is it genetic. Is it inevitable. Is there a time bomb inside me. Is it carved into my bones, hidden and waiting, will I be poison to the people I love. That night back in Boston when I punched the floor and said my soul was sick, did I mean it. Will I come back different. When I say I write for myself, do I feel it. When I say what I say to the land and the night and the people who love me and the people I’ll let down and the people who will forgive me, will I mean it. Will they know it, will I hear it.

When I wake up the storm has passed.

It’s my last night here and I’m tipsy and dancing with strangers at a small music festival in downtown Boise. I haven’t watched people dance so freely and uninhibited in such a long time, so many smiles, so much happy shouting. I wander through the alleys of Boise that night, admiring the street art, just trying to stretch it all out a while longer, as long as I can. A drunk woman jogs past me and says, “Nice walking.” “Excuse me?” I call ahead. “Oh! Just keep walking.” And I do keep walking until my legs are tired and aching and I find a hotel room and sleep.

I’m speeding east on 84 to Salt Lake City where I’ll catch my flight back to Boston. Wildfires are spreading in central Idaho and I’m surrounded by an eerie cloud of smoke, interrupting what would otherwise be a spectacular view. I think. The smell of smoke is so strong at times I start coughing and the further I get on 84 the more unclear it is if the fires are behind or ahead of me, and it looks like limbo, or like I’m suspended in a kind of vague apocalypse. But I keep driving, even as I see more and more cars pulled over, I have a flight to catch. Am I closer. Do I know better. Am I leaving or returning. “Nothing is the News” by Damien Jurado is fleeing from my speakers, out the windows, into the smoke, beyond the mountains I know are out there, even though I can’t see them right now. All you had heard were ghosts of the words in a song.

I pull over at the Juniper Westbound Rest Area a few miles before entering Utah. I get a notebook out and start writing:

I found your ghost here under the moon in harsh yellow light and frigid water. I asked you questions about where you’d been, I told you to be better. In my dreams I loved you and I was afraid of you and I felt fear for you, too, even now as I write this for myself — to myself — I know I’ll see you again in perfect weather, and when it happens I’ll be calmer. Then I start the engine up again, heading south, and I swear the funniest thing happened to me today. Because there we were.