Heart broken open

 Not 100 feet from my camp at Two Medicine, in a very crowded campground of about 100 sites that filled by 9 a.m., this vista. There was a bench here and a woman sitting on it, reading. I was leaving her alone, but she volunteered that she drives from Fargo every summer, sits on that bench, and reads every day for two weeks. I got tears in my eyes behind my sunglasses, just thinking about it. I was high as a kite, but not from any drugs or anything. My heart just opened all the way up. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen, a little bit, too. I felt absolutely free and light for the first time in months, but still full of the tenderest grief. It was a transcendent feeling. I think this is what my soul had been pulling toward, here in Glacier. Somehow it knew. 

I realized I was extremely hungry, maybe due to being completely relaxed into madness for the first time in a while. I drove out of the park, thinking I was heading toward Going to the Sun Road, a scenic road that runs east-west through some of the most amazing areas of the park. In fact, I had gone the wrong way. I did stumble on a tiny little bed and breakfast/restaurant, right outside the park. I went inside and sat down to a single pancake bigger than my head. The couple at the next table was eager to tell me that this place was incredible, that they were here from Seattle on their honeymoon, and that they had never been happier. 

 I had no trouble believing them. I imagined what it would be like to be in such a place on one's honeymoon, stuffed full of pancakes, making love in what was probably a huge four poster canopy bed, wandering around in between in this wilderness. I imagined it would be even better than I imagined, with the right marriage to the right person. I thought to myself that if I ever go on a honeymoon again, which doesn't seem very likely, but if I do, why not here? Then, one morning over piping hot coffee with cream, and huge pancakes, as me and my new wife made eyes at each other over the table, I would tell her, "I was here in 2019, alone, and I knew I'd want to bring you here, and here we are." There wasn't anything mawkish or sad about this thought whatsoever, just a kind of exhilaration, that such a thing might even be possible.

I drove to Going to the Sun Road and crossed the park, along with about ten thousand other people. Traffic was incredible. But it was all worth it. I truly have A to thank for teaching me that it was possible to go to national parks and other popular areas at peak season and enjoy oneself, as long as there was a strategic plan and some forbearance and patience. For decades, I had avoided these huge parks out of a hatred for large gawking crowds in the midst of beauty. It's a clashing spectacle for sure. Just tune them all out, A had said to me one summer at Zion. Who cares? And it worked. Back at the campsite, there was a huge group of Boomers, booming, drinking wine, hollering as if they were in a saloon in San Francisco. Just tune them out. Who cares? In a place like this, focus on the beauty. Forget the bullshit. That was something valuable A had taught me. 

 By evening, there was a huge hailstorm, wild with thunder and lightning. I hunkered down in my tent and read Melody Beattie and looked at tarot cards and felt 100% absolutely well and happy. I had made friends with the truth that was my own truth. Every now and then, a thought would pop up like, what if you always feel like this? Or: what if this is not reciprocated at all, if you are forgotten and just a memory, while you are unilaterally feeling this way? But the larger consciousness that had opened up for me was, who cares? It is what it is. What was I going to do about it anyway? 

I went to the funny camp store down the road and bought soft serve huckleberry ice cream and a huge sandwich and then walked back to my tent at sunset. I still felt that intense combo of bottomless grief and unlimited joy. It is what it is, in my loins and gut and heart, no matter how bloody or impossible. My first wife, Star, used to tell me "a heart broken open can contain the universe." I hadn't believed her, really, although why not? 

It definitely felt true on night one at Glacier.