#WhereAreTheUbryTerrells ... Leg 17: Wyoming

I was very much looking forward to our trip to Wyoming. Between my junior and senior years in college I spent the summer at Yellowstone National Park in the northwest corner of the state. It was by far the most foundational summer of my life. My parents probably thought I'd "gone prodigal" (to steal a phrase from Greg Laurie) because I wasn't much interested in hearing from home. But it was the first time I'd ever been immersed in a culture so different from the one I had grown up in. And I couldn't get enough of it.

When you are surrounded by people who have always been where you have been and have grown up the way you have grown up, no one thinks to ask who you are. They assume they know. They assume you are just like them. And you can start to assume you are too.

But these people I spent the summer with were people from every state and multiple countries and a variety of backgrounds and they all wanted to know: who are you? what do you like? where are you going? why?

And for the first time I started to ask myself the same thing.

Who was I? Who did I want to be? Where did I want to go? What did I want to do--and not just for the rest of my life, which is something that people ask juniors and seniors in high school and college all the time--but what did I want to do, right now, today, with this one day that I would never get back again? And if I wasn't doing the thing I wanted to do and being the person I wanted to be--why the heck not? Why?

While we were in Oregon, over dinner with my friend Jim, I asked him how he became who he was, which seemed so very different from the "Jimmy" that I went to high school with. Then he was quiet and smart; now he lives for outdoor adventure. Then he felt like he didn't fit in; now he has kids who are confident in who they are. I liked him then and I like him now. The differences in who he was and is are subtle, but differences nonetheless. And he told me that when he went away to college he decided to be someone else. He called it a reinvention, but I think it was more of a becoming--becoming who he truly was. As soon as he was away from a culture that called him something else, he was able to be himself.

And that's what Wyoming was for me.

Which takes a lot of trial and error. A lot of failure and a little bit of success. It can be pretty scary. And hella fun.

All of these memories came flooding back to me as we crossed the border into Wyoming. We spent 2 days in the Grand Tetons, which was all we could handle before the mosquitoes ran us off. But just a few miles north we entered Yellowstone National Park and I immediately felt like I'd come home.

We spent a week in this place that I so dearly loved. We went to the kitchen where I learned to make 10 different kinds of eggs. We recreated a photo of me with the park entrance sign, where 17 years before I stood to hitchhike my way home after a relaxing day in the tiny town of West Yellowstone (which is now a huge tourist town, not unlike Tusayan or Jackson Hole). We watched Old Faithful erupt and explored the travertine steps in Mammoth. We saw tourists chasing bears into the woods and tourists stopping traffic to see wolves and bison and squirrels. (That certainly hasn't changed in 17 years!)

One thing I really wanted to do was take Randy and Van on my favorite hike in the park -- to see Lonestar Geyser. We found the trailhead and parked, but as soon as we stepped on the wide, paved pathway I knew something was wrong. I didn't remember it being paved. Or wide. The trail followed the river the whole way. Which I also didn't remember. Nothing about the trail was familiar until we reached the geyser. It was, in fact, Lonestar. I recognized her right away, even though I felt like I was approaching her from a different perspective. There was a crowd of people waiting to see her erupt. I also didn't remember crowds. Or people at all. We didn't stay.

On the trail back I stopped to talk to a woman who was heading to Lonestar and beyond to camp for the night. That felt more familiar. She talked about all the trails she has hiked -- PCT, AT, Continental Divide -- and how she and a group of women helped created part of the PCT 50 years ago. She was like my spirit animal, calling me back to this life.

Even though I relished the conversation with this grandmother, I was still disappointed when we reached the trailhead parking lot. I couldn't believe my memory could be so wrong. While waiting in line for the bathroom I caught a glimpse of the trailmap. I looked at it closer and started laughing. We had, in fact, taken the Lonestar trail, but there was another trail, a backcountry trail to Lonestar Geyser, one that started near employee housing, a dirt trail through the woods that approached the trail from a completely different direction. That was my trail!

It reminded me that no matter how much I loved my memories of that summer I couldn't recreate them. Nor did I want to. It was time to rejoin the present and embrace who I am because of that summer. It was time to enjoy the people I am with.