A great way to test a new relationship is by sleeping on the ground and not showering for five days.
After dating for about seven months, my boyfriend and I decided to take a 10 day trip out West. After living in New York City for the past two years, camping, hiking, and being out in the open sounded perfect. But we had a lot planned in that time – we would meet up with friends in San Francisco, drive up to the coast of Oregon, hit Crater Lake National Park, and drive back down through the Redwoods, camping all along the way. As a fairly type-A person who had spent their entire life on the East Coast, I was a little stressed out by the up-in-the-air nature of where we would be staying every night.
Wouldn’t we need to book campsites? What if places were full? My boyfriend, who had lived in California for five years, assured me we’d be fine. The West isn’t like the East Coast, there’s plenty of space and you can do what you want.
I had never really thought about how there were places in the United States you could just show up and camp in.
Hiking in Lake Clark National Park
Three years later that trip remains one of the best we’ve ever gone on, and we both look back on it as a turning point in our relationship. We pulled over on the side of the road in California to watch herds of elk walk by, camped somewhere in the middle of Oregon and didn’t see another person for 36 hours, jumped into Crater Lake, and barely had a roof over our heads the whole time. It helped me realize there was a whole big country out there for me to explore – one where you didn’t need to plan it months in advance and then just be surrounded by swarms of people anyway – and that I had maybe found the person to explore this amazing country with.
Since that trip we have traveled to National Parks, state parks, wildlife refuges, and been outside as much as possible. We got married and spent two weeks in Alaska, exploring the amazing wildlife and public lands the last frontier has to offer. It seemed appropriate to celebrate our marriage with a trip similar to the one that solidified it.
Being outside on our public lands helped us realize we wanted the same things in life. That realization has now brought us to New Mexico, where we’re still exploring the amazing landscapes our new state has to offer. And I no longer have to worry about booking campsites – we just grab our tent and go.
Susan Torres is the Communications Director at the New Mexico Wildlife Federation
“My Public Land Story” is an ongoing feature. Submit your own and you could see it featured on our website or in the Outdoor Reporter.
