Wyoming

I was thrilled when I opened the curtain to see these views from the windows. When I asked the lady behind the desk about taking a walk on the trails, she said, "Go ahead, just mind the rattlesnakes!" I decided to pass. 

My friend Sarah and I took our first road trip was when we were twenty-four. She was moving to Oregon for graduate school and we decided to make an adventure of it. We worked as waitresses in Bar Harbor, Maine all summer long to save money to zig zag the country for five weeks. I loved the way one state changed into another and the way you could feel that shift even before the actual border arrived. 

We were surprised by the slice of the Flat Irons in Boulder and the unexpected ice in the mountains in New Mexico. We laughed at the lady in Las Cruces who thought Vermont was a city in California, and were laughed at for the way we pronounced the "J" in Jemez and the "lls" in Bernalillo. People warned us about long boring states in the Midwest, but I had never seen such open space, I found the endless fields soothing, an eraser for eyes that are constantly searching.

Mornings were full of energy and curiosity but in the late afternoon, as day shifted into night, we would grow quiet. Things were changing, an island summer and road adventure were shifting into career ambition. Where were we going? We were, of course, going to Madison or Boulder or Tucson, but where were we going? We would be twenty-five in a year and we couldn't possibly picture it. We just looked straight ahead and kept on driving that road between responsibility and possibility.