Back before COVID relegated most of us to our homes, I got the chance to do a lot of traveling through the Rockies from time to time. Every once in a while, someone will ask me what my favorite part of the world is – the quick and easy answer is the Rocky Mountains. I have never been more at home than I have there. If money and other factors were not issues, that is where I would certainly find myself – particularly the northern area.

Every few years, I put my mind into a thinking mode of where to travel to. Lately, my mind has gone back to those travels. Since I hate flying, I prefer the long drives from Texas to Wyoming, Montana, and all the nearby areas. For me, driving is a manner of therapy. I find that I am quite capable of driving twelve to sixteen hours on my own before I need a night’s rest. A few years back, an uncle of mine passed away, and the burial was up in Indiana. I drove from Dallas, Texas to the north side of Nashville, Tennessee in a single day, alone. All of my father’s brothers were truck drivers, so I guess there is some of that genetic makeup in my material.

There is a section of interstate in Colorado that runs from the southern part of the state to Colorado Springs. The interstate is on a flat portion of the prairie, as it rolls up to the edge of the Rockies. Those mountains are off to the left on the drive north, jutting majestically out of the land – reaching for the skies above. That single area is one of the images that I can easily recall in my mind when I am day-dreaming. So many others I have discussed this with call it “the most boring stretch of road” they have ever driven.

There is also a stretch of highway 287 in north Texas that I love to drive. From Wichita Falls to Amarillo, the drive takes you through a long stretch of smaller towns and not-so-large cities on the way into the Texas plains near Amarillo. Many of these towns have fallen on extremely hard-times, as evidenced by the run-down buildings and closed store-fronts of their tiny centers-of-town. Often, I have wondered what towns, such as Claude, Texas might have looked like during more prosperous times. Many times on the many drives through 287 to Amarillo, Texas, I have wondered what this part of Texas might have looked like back in the days when the Kiowa and Comanche tribes were numerous and powerful.

More than one person has commented to me that I belong to a different time-line than where I am. Most comment that I remind many of them of the times commonly referred to as “the old West” when people here in North America and the fledgling United States were moving westward to expand the country. In many cases, there was a desire for adventure, exploring the great unknown. For others, it was a chance at a new start. There were many, many other reasons, as well – but the romanticized history of the times tends to relate those two reasons as the greatest. I suspect that they are probably right. I have had lucid daydreams of just that perspective from time to time. Gods, I honestly would love to go back to my thirties and spend some of that time in my life reaching out to the less exploited and less inhabited parts of western Texas. The only thing that comes across as difficult to deal with for me is my personal distaste for guns. But that’s a thought for another time.

One of my favorite places that I have traveled to is in Wyoming. Medicine Wheel in the Bighorn Mountains is in the ancestral lands of the Apsaalooke’ (Crow), Cheyenne, and Oceti Sako’win (Sioux). My visit there happened on the long trip to Montana, that I mentioned previously. According to the cultural history, Medicine Wheel dates back thousands of years into a time where no First Nations settlers had been seen. The moment you encounter the Wheel after the mile-plus walk from the parking lot, you can sense the sacredness of this place. The view across the valley looking westward and north towards the poorly named Custer Gallatin National Forest is simply amazing. This one place, I have felt at utter and complete peace. The area around the Wheel is populated with the nearby town of Lovell, Wyoming located down the steep, winding road into the valley. Of all the places that I have visited, none have called more deeply to my soul than Medicine Wheel.

I enjoy traveling. I guess I have a gene of wanderlust in my genetic makeup. Perhaps, that came about from my parents pulling me and my sister along to Volksmarches in the German countryside, when my dad was stationed there. Walks along small roadways between farmers’ fields, along the cobble-stone roads of small German villages, and my favorite (and most well-remembered) walks through the dense, dark, and venerable Black Forest are such deeply ingrained memories of my life. I remember getting permission to walk off the path, into the dense ranks of the trees, walking on the soft, brown pine needles that seemed to be the floor of the forest. Marveling at the shafts of light that would penetrate the dense canopy like multi-colored laser strikes from spacecraft high in orbit – or at least that was what it seemed to a SciFi addled school boy’s over-active imagination.

Thinking deeper into what I have noted above, I would surmise that a lot of the energy and calm that I felt came from Spirits of Place. I cannot prove this for a fact, but each of those experiences remain some of the strongest memories I have at a time in my life where I can scarcely remember what I had for dinner last night. Yes, memories do fade, particularly if you do not feed them. My memories of high school feel like old, yellowed photographs of faces I do not remember very well. My memories of a childhood spent growing up throughout Europe, courtesy of the United States Air Force, are even fewer in number, and far less sharp in contrast, with the sole exception of walking through the countryside for a simple Volksmarch medal (all of which I still have).

I still wonder if I really belong in this time-frame of the world or if my soul actually belongs elsewhere. That’s a question of reincarnation and rebirth, something I have no qualifications to speak coherently on. I do believe that there is some aspect of that which exists, but it is only my supposition. Still, I wonder about the pull of a time within the history of this continent I currently inhabit. I also wonder about the pull of specific locations that I have physically visited in this life. How can a place that I have never been prior to my first visit exhibit that kind of continued pull in my life? I do have desires to return to Medicine Wheel, this time with the proper offerings in hand. And should that occur, I will certain spend time detailing the entire aspects of such a trip. Could it be described as a pilgrimage? Perhaps. I am not sold on the concept of that perspective. I do know that the need to return and properly pay respects is strong. And what of the potential of Spirits of Place? I have always felt that Spirits of Place ignore humans for the most part. They have been here much longer than we have. Our significance is not that great, outside of the harm that we have caused. What of Them?? Certainly, for me, much of this is a continued process of “food for thought”….

However, I do miss traveling…thanks to COVID-19.

–T /|\

Note: This is the sixth re-write of this post. I hope it makes more sense than the first two did.