As the Sun Breaks
On the fleeting moments the wilderness gives you, and why I keep going back for them.
Something a little different this week. Less a trip and more a reflection on the moments that keep me heading into the wilderness.
I wake to the sound of the world beginning to stir. I crawl out of my sleeping bag, gather my things, and climb out of the tent. The sun has started to rise, but there is still quite a bit of time before it reaches down into the valley I am camped in.
I set up my stove and light it. I fill the pot with water and set it on top. It does not take long to boil, enough for a cup of coffee and the rest poured into a breakfast pouch, soon to be delicious backpacker fuel.
I look groggily at the pouch, hunting for the cook time. It says to let it stand for twenty minutes. While I wait, I start packing up camp. I am hoping to get back on the trail as soon as breakfast is done. Packing up takes less time than I thought, and I still have some time left before the food is ready. Sipping my coffee, I notice the birds are getting more active and the sun has almost crested the mountains.
I am starving and a little chilly. With coffee in hand I start to pace, watching the mountains. I pace to get my blood flowing and warm up. I also pace because it is too hard to sit or stand still for more than a minute at a time.
The food is finally ready. I open the pouch, let the steam out, and stir. The mush is unrecognizable, but I take a quick smell and it is heavenly. It takes me back to a greasy spoon diner in small town America. As I start to eat, my gaze settles on one specific spot on the mountains. A low spot. The place where the sun will break through first. I wait for it, eating and sipping my coffee.
I look up and there it is. At that exact moment the valley I am camped in is bathed in sunshine. All the stress I had been carrying from home, from work, from the day to day, is gone. Those thoughts had been consuming me, taking up every inch of free space I had. As if a switch had been flipped, everything wrong in my world is corrected. For that brief reprieve everything is right and I have no worries. I am one hundred percent in the moment, focused on right now. I can recall every detail. The smells, the sights, the sounds, the feelings.
We seek out these moments every time we head into the wilderness. They come when we least expect them, at the top of a mountain, in the middle of the trail, or over coffee in a campsite. A moment where you are filled with pure joy. They seem to last forever while we are lost in them, but they are only a flicker in our lives.
Not all of them come in the high country either. Some of the best have found me over a slow river at first light, a long way from any mountain, close to home.
Those are the moments, when we are standing bathed in that first light, that we have to hold onto. Collecting them like baseball cards from our youth, to look back on during the gloomy days.
I have a good stack of those mornings now. On the gloomy days, I take them out one at a time.
If you want more like this, the trips and the places behind these moments live over at Wander the Road. The library keeps growing, new stories, national parks, state parks, ghost towns, and the odd roadside stop, all of it from the road. Come wander for a while.