To Cross the Northern Tier - The Mountain West

Carol Myers bikes across America, May 31 - August 22, 2015. 
1. Anacortes, Washington through Logan Pass, Montana

Is it vision, dream, or deja-vu?
I’m sipping espresso at Moka Joe’s
three miles east of Anacortes, first stop
down a summer road that ends in the cold

Atlantic. I savor the morning shadows
of my next new life. A continent calls.
Its mountain ranges rise before me,
mile-high passes carve the heights,

constraining my path to the Plains.
Washington caps the North Cascades,
Sherman cuts the Kettle Range,
and Logan tops the Rockies.

The charismatic elevations loom.
But more than heights — the hills
and heat, the toils and snares, what
lies between. Unknowns await,

yet I bring what I need. I will move
by my own instinct and keep up
with no one. I will stretch out on rocks
and ponder. I’ll pare down

and live each day by the sun.
I will work up a sweaty grime
and bathe in cold lakes. I will go
lightly across the land.

I may feast on fresh eggs
or dine on days-old bags of food,
drink huckleberry shakes
or stanch thirst with stale water.

There will be days dogged by heat
when I arrive in a red daze
coated in a salty sheen and think
how sweet it feels to be alive.

For in the end, not heights nor heat
nor trials between, but what we find
that lies within. Soon I will be gone
from here. We travel alone together.

next: The Great Plains
Carol's YouTube slide show: "NT The Northwest"