Issue #253: A Solo Week of Wild Joy in Glacier National Park

Learning to trust happiness.

I was fully expecting to feel miserable.

As the weeks ticked by since my breakup, I continued to look over my shoulder, checking for the thunderhead of grief I was sure would close in at any moment. If my divorce four years ago had taught me anything, it was to never let my guard down—for years following my separation, happiness felt like a rare exception; any joy I felt was swiftly washed away by a downpour of sadness that I had to work through or just let myself feel. So even as I felt happy and stable at home in Portland over the past month, I didn’t trust it. I feared the sadness would strike when I was most vulnerable: alone, hundreds of miles removed from my community, in Montana.

After saying goodbye to a friend in Missoula, I drove north towards Glacier National Park, singing a motley rotation of Labi Siffre, Harry Styles, and The Chicks. I was completely alone. Still, I felt…. good? And when I entered the park, my happiness only expanded. All around me were clear skies. Maybe I could trust it…

I spent the week pushing my legs up wildflower-filled trails leading to lakes at the basins of mountains, where other hikers—if there happened to be any—lent me their binoculars to look at mountain goats and bighorn sheep. In the afternoons, I’d work in the van during rainstorms, then cook myself beautiful meals, which I’d eat while plotting the next day’s hike. The mountains offered perspective and refused to let me feel anything other than astounded and grateful. The phrase “wildly happy” kept coming to me, as I shared, breathless, in this voice memo on my way to Iceberg Lake last Thursday, while crossing over alpine creeks:

I know it won’t last forever, and that life has other twists and turns in store, but that’s also what makes it so important to recognize these moments of progress and joy, that allow us to recognize how far we’ve come.

I worked so hard to get out of that two-year tunnel of grief, to learn how to sit in the hard stuff when it comes, as it did for the first quarter of this year. It feels like this happiness emerged directly from that darker space, where I learned how to redirect my attention again and again towards the beauty in my life, and how to tend to my community, my creativity, and my body through routines that nourish me.

Issue #251: Letting Go of an Old Story to Move into a New One

All my life, I’ve been told that I needed a partner—it’s the social messaging we’re all fed—but by the time my breakup came, I felt stable enough to feel the tenderness and loss of someone I love, without letting it take me out. Even at thirty-four. Even with so many unknowns on the horizon. More importantly, I feel capable of sitting in the beauty of feeling so much. I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, I can trust this feeling of being wildly happy…

Until then, I’ve shared my itinerary from Glacier National Park, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen (with a few bear safety principles and the story of my grizzly run-in)!