Idaho

I spent every night last week on a different bed or couch in random spots around south Idaho. When I got home a few days ago, I wasn’t eager to finally crawl into my own bed, but I still did so, obedient to the order to which I had returned. To return was to return to reality; fittingly, the moment we entered my hometown after a week of seeing incredible sights with luscious forests and picturesque skies, we were surrounded by a haze of choking smoke, as if to say, “This is reality. Come away from your childish daydreaming.” But c’est la vie. Vacations are meant to end, and reality comes clawing at you sooner or later.

Despite that, the trip was great. As many of my friends are well aware, I have always had a dream of going on a cross-country road trip with friends after graduating high school. In the past year I also developed a goal to see more of Idaho since it’s the state I’ve lived in my whole life, yet I feel like I know nothing about it. So when the opportunity arose to go on a road trip around Idaho with a good friend of mine, I knew I had to take it.

So, after extensive planning and a car stocked for any possible emergency, we set out on our journey 10 days ago. The plan: 8 days around south Idaho, staying at a mix of motels, with friends and family, and inns, while filling our days with as many stops as possible and wandering down any road that called to us. So on we went, with a playlist of my creation supplemented by his CDs of Metallica and Guns and Roses and a bag jam-packed with a healthy amount of unhealthy snacks. Our inaugural snack, and a makeshift breakfast, was a honeybun.

Before I start explaining the highlights of the journey, it’s important for me to establish exactly what we wanted out of this trip. For both of us, a big motivation was simply to explore. We would take dead-end roads or long, unproductive detours and throw up our hands and say, “Well, this is what it’s about. Exploring!” But for me, that exploration wasn’t just for fun or curiosity. It certainly was those things, as well as the aforementioned desire to know more about my home state, but beyond that it was a retreat from the world, through which I hoped I could find myself. A corny statement, I know, but I’ve been feeling adrift between graduation, waiting for school to start, and my recent break-up, so self-discovery was and is necessary, especially after my recent urges to live a more solitary life. Going around unfamiliar places with only one familiar face was a good little taste of what that life might look like, and left me wondering constantly, as we drifted through tiny rural towns, “Could I live here?”

My friend’s motivation is equally as important, even if it was not my impetus. He wanted to go across the state to visit the town in which he grew up, to rediscover his old haunts as he approached adulthood. So in that way, I viewed our journeys as dual pilgrimages, making us the perfect duet. My pilgrimage site was the quiet shrine of nature in every field and forest we came across, and his was the forges of his childhood.

So did I find what I wanted? Maybe. Jury’s still out. Who ever finds what they’re searching for, anyways? But I did certainly find that Idaho is more beautiful than I ever imagined. Everyone says it’s a beautiful state, and that’s certainly one of its top selling points, but I didn’t know. Maybe it’s because I wanted the trip to be worth it, so I found something beautiful in even the most dry shrubbery that I would have once taken as an example of how drab Idaho is, but I just felt so grateful for everything I saw. And while I appreciated the relatively tame stuff that could be found anywhere in Idaho or even around the country, Idaho also offers wonders. There was the City of Rocks, a metropolis of white stone reaching toward the sky from out of the plains of the most southern side of the state, where we hiked until I had an allergic reaction from a granola bar I failed to read. A bit north of that was Craters of the Moon, an ancient park of burning black rocks so alien they made people look to the stars, rather than the hell to which those rocks might have belonged. We watched the Shoshone Falls, falling from a height greater than even the mighty Niagara Falls and descending into the gorgeous Snake River which guided the first half of our journey. Shaped by that ancient river and, in the ancient past, the Yellowstone hot spot’s enormous eruptions, the Snake River Canyon formed a stunning landscape of steep rocks, painting the landscape with brilliant blues and greens. In the more central region was Mesa Falls to the east and the Sawtooths to the west, which were views so incredible and beloved by me that to describe them would be a disservice. I can only say that you must lay your eyes upon their mists yourself, and that the view from the Sawtooth scenic byway was strangely moving to me, almost to the point of tears.

It wasn’t just about the great views either. When we went to my friend’s hometown, I was really happy to watch as he pointed out, with great excitement, how his memories were rushing back to him of every small detail that shaped his childhood. We also met some very interesting people all around, some of whom we had fleeting conversations with, and others who we got to know pretty well. Of course, we got to know each other much better as well after spending 24/7 with one another and talking in the car as often as possible to keep each other awake. We talked about mundane things like the habits of our siblings and our old friends, as well as debates and discussions about culture and religion. Other times we played trivia games about the holidays (yes, in the middle of the July) because it was all we had. If we weren’t doing either of those things, he was usually talking to his girlfriend, because even on our road trip, I managed to find a way to third wheel. I didn’t mind though. I had no one to text, and no one texted me, so I spent the nights reading Victory City by Salman Rushdie, which was refreshing since I rarely read at home even though I have no reason not to. I only moped about being lonely a tiny bit.

Now, of course, is the big reveal: what did I find on this trip? To be honest, I don’t think I learned much about myself. I mean, I can plan a decent road trip, I guess, but I can’t imagine that was the type of self-discovery I was looking for here. I mean, this is the big solo outing before the rest of my life! I gotta find out something a little bit more substantial than that. Here’s what I did learn, as written in my commonplace book on the last night of the trip: “It is beautiful here. More than I expected, and more than I cared to see before. Who am I, against the soaring mountains and unending forests? Against the rushing waters and serene expanses?” Uh-oh. More questions, not answers. It continues. “To live in the heart of [Idaho’s] sprawling wilds now sounds appealing. The quiet life. The sun, the snow; the cry of the birds and the lowing of livestock… Living simply to live… Perhaps it is a sort of privilege, to buy the fruits of civilization, and be unbothered by the raging fires of other civilizations.” My attempt at elegantly gesturing toward global politics. “Or perhaps it is the enlightened acceptance of the non-stop churning of power and time, wholly ignorant of my life or death… Living without concern for grandiose promises of legacies never realized. But perhaps it is the easy path, to run from others… Do you help only yourself? That has never been my philosophy, and I am too young to be weary of it already.”

I realize it’s rather gauche to quote myself, but I think quoting my own entry is the most elegant way to impart how I felt as I prepared for the trip to be over. Something that really struck me, and inspired most of those words, was the mother of a friend of ours. They own land out in the country and are building a home for themselves, so we stayed with them for a night, and she told me they were planning on moving out there to get away from the crowds, despite living in a city that’s not very large. She joked, “We hate people!”, a joke I could easily see was a joke because of how kind she was to us, which made me realize that some people just want to live their lives away from other people, not because they hate them, but because they hate being surrounded and prefer the quiet and solitude of a slower pace of life. It made me seriously contemplate if that’s how I want to live the rest of my life, after spending my few conscious years being bothered by my own expectations of other people, although I know that I fundamentally love people and hearing their stories. Perhaps I will always be torn, whichever path I find.

So there’s my grand revelation. Not much, but not bad for a week. Either way, I’m so immensely happy I took this trip, and I can honestly say I’m much more thankful for Idaho now. I do want to travel the world, but it will always have at least a piece of my heart. If you care to, please tell me about Idaho. Tell me about the quiet life.