All Good Things are Wild and Free A #CUWild Story

On August 11, 2015, in Missoula, Montana a wind super-storm reached gusts of 74 miles per hour, a Class I Hurricane. Lightning sparked fires on dry August hillsides and residential gardens. Power lines fell, leaving thousands without power for days. Trees were uprooted and downed – landing in intersections, blocking sidewalks, and crushing parked cars. Emergency services were overwhelmed and the 9-1-1 circuit jammed within minutes.

The storm moved quickly. It barreled through town just minutes after I returned from an evening run on a nearby mountain trail. In the three and a half year I’ve lived in Montana, my typical summer has been spent backpacking the wilderness or exploring uncharted rivers – adventures which make for great story-telling – however this summer I took job at a local law office and have exchanged my outdoor excursions for evening runs. Trail running has been a welcomed ritual and an adventure of its own.

As a non-runner with short legs and a gait I was relentlessly teased for in middle school, I have found a peacefulness in running the mountain. As it turns out, the mountain doesn’t care how you look. There is no cell service, city lights, or crowds. I have found also that surprising things can happen when you are alone, quiet. You smell the pure, unaltered aroma of earth. You begin to recognize the trees like old friends. You observe the view from your summit with appreciation as the valley floor opens for miles and miles and miles. You feel free. You feel that you are living raw life.

Moving to Montana has helped me to appreciate the raw, unexaggerated, often un-beautifulness that is life. When I arrived – a vegan, self-proclaimed-child-of-the-earth, wearing yoga pants and faux leather boots– I was immune to hyper-reality. I had come to believe that comfort was inherently better than discomfort. I had come to learn that something was better than nothing. I had pasted the bits and pieces of myself together on the outside so as to disguise the reality of my ‘unsettledness’ on the inside.

It is an understatement to say that it was difficult to adjust to being alone. I lived in a log cabin for the first two years after I arrived in Montana. Nestled in the trees and down a dirt road, my bedroom window overlooked the Blackfoot River, a roaring, wild, unstoppable force of nature. For the first time in my life I was without basic services like internet, mail, or trash. I was surrounded by stillness. It was dark. As in dark, dark. I remember once learning, as an impressionable child on a cave tour with my family, that pioneers had been known to go blind from enduring too long the darkness of the caverns. Their bodies were unable to reconcile the absence of light. And so, at 23-years-old, I was legitimately terrified of the pitch-black absolute nothingness I felt sure would consume my colorful Southern California life. Absolutely nothing was terrifying.

During this time I desperately tried to escape the stillness of life indoors by spending time outside. I left the emptiness of my house in search of experiencing something else – anything else. I took walks up and down my dead-end street, then expanded to essentially any dirt road I could find. Some roads led me to disgruntled neighbors who stood on their front lawns with a territorial sternness, while others led me to new views of the Blackfoot River, abandoned rustic ski-lifts, animal tracks in the snow and voices of creatures I could not identify.

The more I experienced what was happening outside the more I could turn off the inner anxious ramblings of my own mind. I remember talking to my dad on the phone a few months after moving, feeling directionless and isolated. He told me that I was shedding. Like snake skin, I was shedding the chapter of life I was outgrowing. It wasn’t supposed to be easy. It wasn’t supposed to be painless. It didn’t have to be beautiful. But it was the only way to grow into something new, something more, something which fit.

It is only natural to break down and re-build. So, naturally, that is what I did.

A few days after the super-storm, when I returned to the mountain for a run, a tree whose roots now stood vertical on the ground stopped me in my tracks. The roots, completely pulled up from the soil, towered over me at least eight feet high. Little bits of dirt hung off its unearthed fingers, falling as I watched them desperately search for solid ground to hold on to. Inexplicably, the smell of soil and mercilessly snapped pine limbs brought tears to my eyes. What once was magnificent had been transformed into something unexpectedly vivid, vibrant, raw with life. And it was wonderful. Smaller trees and bushes I had never seen before were suddenly bright green, all craning their branches towards the opened-up sky like excitable children raising their hands to answer a question, to be heard. The gale force winds of the super-storm had transformed the landscape, exposing the potential which had been untapped, unexplored, and unacknowledged.

I have far more scars now than when I left California. From tumbling off mountain bikes to breaking in hiking shoes to learning to open beer bottles with quarters, my experiences have literally changed the skin I live in. My new snake skin. I look at myself and think that the wild is not something other than us, something beyond us. The term “outside” is a misnomer. It implies that to get there we must go somewhere other than where we are. But adventure does not necessarily require far-off places. Being in the wild can mean having no cell service. It can mean walking down a dirt road. It can mean stopping to smell the dirt on a summer eve’s run. Being in the wild can mean being alone. For me, this has been and continues to be the greatest adventure of all.

“Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest . . . In short, all good things are wild and free” – Henry David Thoreau

Trina Clausen ’11


 

 

 

Trina Clausen graduated with a B.S. in environmental science and policy from Chapman University in 2011. She was the first graduate from Chapman University’s undergraduate program in environmental science. After moving to Montana in 2013 to work temporarily for the National Wildlife Federation in Missoula, Montana, she decided to never leave. Trina currently is a third-year law student at the University of Montana School of Law. She works for the Brown Law Firm in Missoula, Montana where she assists in civil defense litigation. While at Chapman University she was a founding member of Kappa Alpha Theta, Eta Sigma, and served as their vice president of administration and risk management officer. She has served as an advisor to the University of Montana chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta, Sigma Nu. She is a first-generation hunter and enjoys fly-fishing, shooting her bow, crossword puzzles, and exploring new trails in Montana.