Small gifts
Valdez Glacier, Alaska
Whether it's sitting quietly listening to the cracking and calving of an ancient glacier, winding through never-ending dirt tracks hugged by snow-capped mountains, or watching a lone sea otter floating his way to nowhere in the middle of the ocean, nature has a beautiful way of making me feel small. And it's in that smallness that I'm able to confront my own insignificance.
I've spent the better part of two years worrying about things I believed were big. Work slowed down, direction got murky, and I found myself in months of sometimes unrelenting, circular thinking that wasn't going anywhere useful. Indecision is not my forte. I'm not sure stillness is either.
This trip is helping change that.
With Tom beside me and the road ahead of us, we've given ourselves this time to enjoy being small, being still. I made a decision early on that I wasn't going to spend this time thinking about what I want to do with my life when I get home. Quite the opposite, in fact. I wanted to allow nature to do what it does best: make the noise stop. Help me be in the here and now. Little did I realize that when the chatter quieted down, new realizations would arise.
The small towns we've passed through have a kind of social richness that's hard to explain until you've seen it. One restaurant, one hardware store, one grocer. When options are few, connection runs deep. Slap on a hard, isolating winter and you've brewed a recipe for companionship, trust, and reliance. There's something radical about a town of two hundred people that socializes more genuinely than most city folk. More doesn't mean better. These small communities are a reminder of what life actually runs on: family, friends, experiences. Things we treasure most but sometimes put last when work gets busy.
We've also met people out here who have been on the road longer than us, and who plan to be on the road longer still. They carry a particular kind of ease. Travel does that. It loosens your grip on whatever you were holding too tightly back home. It reintroduces you to the kindness of strangers, which is easy to forget when you've spent too long inside your own circle. People who live differently teach you things you wouldn't otherwise learn.
Thoughts quietly recalibrate out here too. Your worries don't disappear exactly, but they shrink to their actual size. Thoughts that felt overwhelming back home look different when surrounded by a vast, untouched landscape full of ancient things. Plans are less permanent. Life is less urgent.
Ideas feel insignificant when dwarfed by wide open wilderness. Out here, nature makes us feel small. And now, travelling down road after road, I'm realizing that might be one of her greatest gifts.
