Bound for the Promised Land

Forced to go where work calls, I wake at 4:00am. Ahead of me is a 2000 mile journey across the United States. Today I will drive 19 hours to reach Oklahoma and from there the mountains of New Mexico.

As I set out on my journey the sun rises, its flames chasing me away from the east, my home no longer. The hours become meaningless as the landscape around me measures my progress; the hills turn into mountains, the mountains slope down into the grasslands, the grasslands grow sparse and are replaced by rock and gravel, the rocks eventually growing back into mountains.

Finally I reach my destination; at an elevation of 8500 feet the air is thinner here than I am used to. It whistles in my lungs as I struggle to catch my breath. Staggering weakly from my vehicle I take my first step into the Caldera, a valley carved out by an eruption from an enormous, ancient volcano millennia ago.

As I begin to survey the landscape my steps feels lighter. The old trails and paths of my old home had begun to feel a bit familiar. Here now is a new world, unexplored, untamed, promising a new adventures…