Into the Wilderness, Alone.

A lonely sunrise in the Northern Great Plains.

The road stretches endlessly before me.

The sky, burning with the last light of day, feels vast and unforgiving. The weight of silence presses in on me. My fingers tighten around the wheel. I haven’t seen another car in miles. This isn’t how I pictured it. This isn’t what freedom was supposed to feel like. A lump rises in my throat. How did I get here?

Two Years Ago…

It’s Mother’s Day, 2021. The forest is alive with the gentle rustling of maple leaves, the scent of damp earth lingering in the late-spring air. My family walks ahead of me, their voices blending into the quiet hum of nature. I barely hear them. My mind is somewhere else. 

I’m scared. My sophomore year of high school is coming to an end, and the future looms ahead, vast and uncertain. I have no plans. No roadmap. No clear next step—just a dream so big it feels impossible. I want to be a landscape photographer. But how? I’m 16. Stuck in school. Trapped in a life that feels too small for me. The thought of following the traditional path—college, a stable job, a predictable routine—frustrates me. There has to be another way. There has to be something more.

I start lagging behind on the trail, lost in thought. And a small patch of fresh yellow gravel crunches beneath my shoes as I run through every possibility. What can I do? How can I live my dream? Will I really just follow the same path as everybody else and live a life of, what I think will be unfulfilling? How can I do that? Surely there’s a way. There has to be a way! How do I make this real? 

Then, it hits me. A single idea that feels like a door opening into a great plain full of possibilities: What if I take a road trip—I graduate highschool early and go see what I’m made of? Not a short trip. A long one. Six months on the road, traveling solely for landscape photography. I can go wherever I want, chase the light for as long as I please, build a portfolio, and most importantly—be free and start my life’s adventure.

The idea rushes through me like a tidal wave, clearing all the thoughts I had prior. This is it. The way out. The way forward. The way to prove—to myself, to everyone—that this isn’t just a fantasy. I nearly trip over a root, barely covered by the yellow gravel. The idea consumes me.

I should be here, present, enjoying this day with my family; talking with them. But my mind is already gone. Lost in the future. Lost in a dream.

Back in School…

When school reopens in the fall, it’s not the same. We’re part-time in person, part-time online. The school building feels soulless—a brick box with white walls and gray carpets, not much decoration at all. It’s uninspiring to the point of absurdity. I don’t remember it being so dull. Last year we were in lockdown and I was stuck at home—it sucked, but this isn’t much better.

I feel trapped. Not just in school, but in my own head. Every day feels like waiting. Waiting for the bell, waiting for my life to start. I can’t focus in class because all I can think about is out there—the mountains, the deserts, the coast. While my classmates take notes, I’m on Google Earth, tracing the rugged ridges of the Rockies, following rivers through rainforest canyons, zooming in on the endless landscapes I need to see with my own eyes. It’s more interesting than logarithmic functions or trigonometry. Way more interesting. 

I don’t care about what’s being taught. I don’t care about college. I don’t care about anything except making this dream real. So, I do just enough schoolwork to get by—to keep my plan intact, to graduate early. 

——

When the bell finally rings, my day isn’t over. Not yet.

At 4 p.m., I clock in. Seven-hour shifts, sometimes four, five days a week, dragging on until 11 p.m. I barely have time to eat before I crash into bed, only to wake up and do it all over again. School. Work. Sleep. Repeat. It’s wearing me down, turning me into a zombie, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Because every hour, every shift, every exhausted drive home at midnight means I’m one step closer to the road trip.

——

Somewhere in the middle of all this, without noticing, I start slipping away from everyone around me.

It’s not that I’m rude. I still show up but I’m not really there. I don’t ask how people are doing. I’m never invested in conversations. I answer in short sentences, and end interactions as quickly as possible. It’s not intentional—I’m just obsessed with this dream and I can’t take my mind off of it. I don’t care about anything else… graduation can’t come soon enough.

January 24th, 2023…

Holy cow, I just did it. I just graduated. That’s the last time I’ll walk out of that building. Hopefully.

I drive home in a daze, still trying to process it. Today is January 24th, 2023. In just eight days, I’ll hit the road—the trip I’ve been planning for nearly two years. The trip I’ve sacrificed for and obsessed over. I should be ecstatic. And I am. But it’s daunting, too. 

The nerves creep in, weaving through the excitement. I tell myself it’s natural. I tell myself it’s just the anticipation. But there’s something else, too—a heaviness I can’t name. I try not to dwell on it. There’s no time for second thoughts. I need to get out of this town.

February 1st, 2023…

The highway stretches ahead, a perfect, straight line through the open plains of Colorado. Twelve hours from home. My first stop—Estes Park—is still hours away. The sun has just set behind the distant Rockies, leaving a fierce orange glow on the horizon, fading into the deep, icy blue of night. The sky is massive, open, and endless. It should feel exhilarating. It should feel like freedom. But it doesn’t. I feel claustrophobic; trapped in an idled position hurdling 70 miles-per-hour down a road so uncertain. I tell myself this is just the beginning—that the excitement will come. That this is what I wanted. 

The sunset is beautiful, but I can’t enjoy it. I try to play music, but every song feels wrong. I reach for my phone to call someone, just to hear a familiar voice—but I don’t call. The silence presses in. And then, slowly, it settles in, heavy and absolute.

I imagined freedom. But I never imagined the loneliness.

A deep sense of dread creeps up my spine. My expectations crack, then shatter. I thought this moment would feel different. That I would feel different. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. But my pride won’t let me turn around.

Night falls completely, swallowing the last traces of warmth from the sky. My headlights carve through the darkness, illuminating nothing but the endless road ahead. My hands grip the wheel, but I feel detached, like I’m watching myself from the outside. I start to tear up. Not just because I’m overwhelmed. Not just because I’m scared. But because I finally see it. All of it. The people I love. The friends. The family. The ones I dismissed, brushed off, ignored—so consumed by this dream that I let them drift away. I told myself I didn’t need anyone. But I do. And now, here I am, alone. How could I do that? What was I thinking? The road hums beneath my tires, the occasional crack in the pavement jolting through the silence. I am motionless. Petrified. 

I’m sorry.

Something Real…

This road trip gave me everything I wanted—and everything I wasn’t ready for. It opened the door to adventure, but it also led me down a lonesome path, one I’m only now finding my way out of.

But I don’t regret it. If anything, I needed it. It stripped away the fantasy, the illusion of a perfect life on the road, and left me with something real. The struggles, the solitude, the setbacks—they didn’t kill the dream. The fire has only grown stronger. Adventure has not only made life more potent, more visceral, but it has also matured me. I used to think I needed nothing but the open road and endless wilderness. But somewhere between the empty highways and silent nights, I caught myself reaching for my phone—nearly every night, I’d call up a good friend just to hear a familiar voice. And that’s when I knew: I didn’t just want adventure. I wanted a connection. I needed people. And that’s something I’m grateful to have learned.

I didn’t last six months on the road. Instead, something else called me forward—Alaska. A new challenge. A new risk. And this time, I wasn’t chasing a fantasy. This time, I knew what I was walking into… sort of. And I walked into it anyway.