- Young, Asian, Female, Alone
“Hey!” you said, your voice flagging me down. “I noticed you also have California plates.” You gestured at my car, then your car.
You were young, Asian, female, alone. I was young, Asian, female, alone. You were dressed in a way that reminded me of 20-year-olds in sceney stomping grounds like West Hollywood and Williamsburg—tight lavender tank, loose red cargo shorts, no bra. I was wearing one of two pairs of earth-colored leggings I’d been hiking in for about a month now, and my feet were almost glued to my tan Tevas with a combination of sweat and dirt. A shower of sweet onion chip crumbs had fallen to the ground when I got out of my car to use the gas station restroom.
“Yeah!” I said, not surprised that you had noticed me, but that you had spoken up. “Where are you from?” The subtext, we left unspoken: What brings someone like you to a place like Evanston, Wyoming?
You were from the Bay Area and driving cross-country to New York. I took another look at your car. It was filled with cardboard boxes and stray velvet hangers.
“For a job?” I asked.
No, you said. You were just . . . figuring it out.
You looked a few years younger than me, but somehow I felt like I knew you, like you were someone I had grown up with, graduated high school with. Maybe you had played clarinet in marching band, edited the newspaper, shouldered your load of APs, unflinching. Maybe you had done well and gone to Berkeley or Stanford. But then maybe you had gone against the grain, shunned the groomed trails of doctor, lawyer, engineer. And studied art history. Or literature. Or sociology. Graduated into the middle of a global pandemic.
You probably had friends in New York, like I did—friends who were scraping by and worrying about money and trying to write poems late at night when their three roommates fell asleep. Or friends who held down corporate jobs and spent their days in quiet, glass offices, wondering what was next.
You asked me what I was doing out here.
That morning, I had woken up in my tent in northern Utah, surrounded by trees displaying fiery fall shades of reds and yellows. [End Page 132] It was September, but in LA, the perpetual summer remained unyielding. I remembered then the excitement of changing seasons, the shimmering question mark of possibility in the air. I had begun driving toward the Uinta Mountains in the northeastern corner of Utah because I had an image in mind of a particular red rock that towered, castle-like, over an alpine lake, 10 miles into the forest. I was going to walk until I stood before it.
“I’m spending the month doing some camping and hiking,” I said, trying to clear the phlegm from my voice. “I’m from LA but drove north through Oregon a couple weeks ago. Now I’m heading back south through Utah.”
I hadn’t spoken more than a few words to anyone in days.
Your eyes lit up. “That’s so cool! I was thinking of checking out Yellowstone along the way.”
“You definitely should,” I said. “It’s beautiful out there, tons of wildlife.” I pictured you discovering Yellowstone against a backdrop of classic Western sights. The 100-foot geysers, the bison and their calves blanketing the valley. I wanted you to see these parts of the country as I did—as someone far from home, who treaded lightly and marveled at it all, all the same. It felt good to see someone like you, like me, out in these corners where we are not often found.
Over my month on the road, I had been questioning my bent for traveling alone. Part of me loved the solitude—the way the scale of the land overwhelmed me, how I was simply forced to pay attention at all times. But I doubted myself constantly, my brain a tangle of choices that only I could make. Simple ones, like whether to make dinner or pitch my tent first, whether to...