A Taste of the West

It wasn't like I never got out of New Jersey. I had taken a car trip down to Florida as a kid, and we regularly visited my grandparents in Philadelphia and New York City. I had been up to visit relatives in Boston a couple of times, as well as camping in Upstate New York.

My one big high school travel opportunity came between my Junior and Senior year when I worked for the month of July at a camp in Colorado. It was called Frontier Ranch and it was run by a youth group I was involved with. I rode out with a bus load of campers from Maryland and got my first taste of Middle America. I spent most of the trip by the window, looking at all the places I had seen on my map and in pictures; Ohio, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado. I savored the rest stops the most when I could get out and try to 'feel' the immensity of the West and the crowdedness of the East melt away.

In Colorado, I worked outdoors building fences, fixing roads, and splitting wood. At night, I finally saw the Milky Way and realized that there were indeed more than the two dozen stars that are visible in brightly lit New Jersey. I stood on the edge of the Continental Divide and looked at mountains that made me feel invisible. I rode horses across the rangeland and understood what the words 'big sky' really meant. At the end of the month I went back to New Jersey and my senior year of high school. It had been a tantalizing taste of the world and I was aching to get out into the big land again — but on my own.