"Is That All There Is?"
Heh. Not to bite the hand that feeds me -- otherwise certain really cool events in my life would have never been possible. But after keeping my nose to the grindstone for the past 15 years, I finally took a good long look around me and realized I might very well be spending the next 15 or 20 years of my life confined to a grey box in a grey corporation plonked in the middle of a nondescript Ohio suburb whose main claim to fame was original authorship of "The Seat Belt Law". Look, Ma --- I'd achieved the American Dream. ...Is that all there is to life? ...Hmmm. I was 34 years old at the time and starting to feel a vague dissatisfaction with it all.
Once I'd been told of how many coworkers were in therapy and I'd wondered why at the time. Shouldn't they be happy that they were making good money? ...After all, one should consider themselves fortunate to have a job to provide a roof over one's head. But then I too started catch the contagion of Corporate Malaise. Perhaps it was a Zeitgeist of sorts: there seemed to be an undercurrent of discontent in that decade of reassessment and re-evaluation. Ideas of the previous era were being challenged; Prozac was a best-selling med of almost trendy proportions; various reactionary noisemakers and events from more untamed locales making headlines and provoking head-scratching essays amongst the media's analysts, spin doctors and psychologists:
"There's a little bit of the Unabomber in most of us. We may not share his approach to airing a grievance, but the grievance itself feels familiar. In the recently released excerpts of his still unpublished 35,000-word essay, the serial bomber complains that the modern world, for all its technological marvels, can be an uncomfortable, 'unfulfilling' place to live. It makes us behave in ways 'remote from the natural pattern of human behavior.' Amen. VCRs and microwave ovens have their virtues, but in the everyday course of our highly efficient lives, there are times when something seems deeply amiss. Whether burdened by an overwhelming flurry of daily commitments or stifled by a sense of social isolation (or, oddly, both); whether mired for hours in a sense of life's pointlessness or beset for days by unresolved anxiety;...whatever the source of stress, we at times get the feeling that modern life isn't what we were designed for."

-- Robert Wright, "The Evolution of Despair", TIME magazine, 8/28/95

For a brief time, the media spotlight turned its attention to Montana and nearby western states, pointing out that they were becoming the preferred retreat of individualists and transplanted ex-yuppies disillusioned with the corporate lifestyle. Mentioned were small towns and villages, reminiscent of years gone by, which fostered a greater sense of community -- something pointed out as lacking in most modern cities and suburbs.
But back to my story. ...It was that year that I was offered the option to go on freelance contract, and I gladly accepted. ...And then when I was given several months' work in advance, freeing up my summer months... well... I thought it was time for a little adventure.
...ROAD TRIP!
I'd done some solo travel before, as well as some longer camping trips with a then-boyfriend. This was the first time I had planned to travel solo for an extended length of time, and I planned to spend at least a month on the road. ...Destination? I knew of one person to visit in Seattle, but had no other place in particular in mind, except that I wanted to cross through the Rocky Mountains and probably into Montana out of curiosity after all the media attention, and to see if it really was the Individualist Paradise it was made out to be. I'd never been to the Rockies before -- several times over them in an aircraft, but never up close and in person. ...So part of the fun of the trip, I figured, was to just go where the road would take me, and be prepared for surprises.