Momentous, Not Impulsive (Productive Flourishing Pulse #509)

How a seemingly spontaneous trip to Glacier National Park reminded us that the most aligned decisions often don't look like what we expect

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between being impulsive and something being momentous.

Sunday morning, I wasn’t sure what we might do for the week of the 4th. By Wednesday, we were on the road to Glacier National Park.

Going to Glacier National Park wasn’t something we were planning to do this summer. Two weeks ago, we figured that we’d be heading back to basecamp on Sunday morning.

What changed?

Two things, really. The first contributing reason was that I wasn’t able to sleep well on my sleeping pad in a tent, even though I did just fine last year. I may have endured through it.

The more significant factor was that Angela got sick in the final days of our last outing. Sick enough that we had to get her to a roadside motel the day before we left so she could recover well enough to follow me home in our Telluride as I drove the motorcycle. (I may backtrack and tell more of this story in a future Pulse.)

Whenever Angela gets sick, it starts a three-week cooldown of activities. She has a host of chronic illnesses and is immunocompromised, so she gets sick more easily and stays sick longer. It’s about the same with injuries; she gets injured more easily and takes longer to heal.

This is one of the many reasons we hold our summer plans so loosely. Things could be fine one day. A day later, we’re invoking recovery protocols.

We decided that we’re out on tent camping, though, which is consistent with the Pulse two weeks ago about quitting activities that are no longer fun or relaxing.

But last year, we discovered that we really enjoyed being in places where fireworks aren’t allowed over the 4th. Neither of us enjoys fireworks, but the random pops and mortar surprises on the days around the 4th startle Angela and make her anxious. They’re not great for my PTSD and hypervigilance, especially extra loud mortars at night, and I sometimes wonder if Angela is keyed up because she’s attuned to feelings I’ve disassociated from. (Living with an empath can be like that.)

Sitting at home when we could be out was already bugging us. Sitting at home over the 4th with headphones on for four or five days was even worse. We’d also be in the third week of the recovery cycle, so our range of activities was much more limited.

Additionally, in the background, Angela being sick wasn’t the only thing shaping our summer. We have some friends coming into Portland in the second weekend in July, and they’d like to do the Mount Hood & Falls loop as a day trip. We also have an emergent trip to visit my brother- and sister-in-law in Florida in August; he got reassigned to Guam and is on a fast move timeline.

During Sunday morning’s contemplation, I recalled that last year, we also discovered that road trips can be incredibly rejuvenating for Angela, even when she’s in recovery. A road trip is probably better than whatever gardening or house projects she’d get into here because she’s bored and frustrated. It’s also better for me than having to check on and coax/wrestle her into taking it easy.

Glacier National Park has been on our “check out in the next few years” list since we went to Yellowstone last year and saw how relatively close Glacier National Park was. I had mentally filed it away as a “beat the summer heat” road trip, as well.

So, when I anchored on a road trip being something we could do, Glacier National Park slid back into the picture. I have ChatGPT tuned to help me with our adventure plans, so I went into centaur mode to do some big-brush scenario planning and budgeting for a Glacier National Park road trip and a cabin stay in Mazama Village here in Oregon as a backup.

Everything fit the parameters. In theory, we’d like to have an extra day at Glacier National Park, but we might also be done after the two and a half days we’ll be there. There wasn’t likely to be a better time to do it this year, given how the summer was shaping up.

On our morning coffee walk, I presented the two options to Angela. We were already discussing getting out for a day-long motorcycle ride to the coast, and she mused about making it a two-day ride with an overnight stay. If we were rolling out to either Glacier National Park or Mazama Village, we’d need Monday to prep, and I knew we’d both rather apply the lodging budget to one of those options.

She was instantly in for the Glacier National Park trip. We committed to a local day-long motorcycle ride, in part so we could discuss the Glacier National Park trip and have space to percolate on our respective gear shifts. We talk more, think better, and are more connected on the road.

On the way home from the coffeeshop, I asked which of us was going to be the adult in the decision to go. We’ve both been itching to get out, and just because we could didn’t mean we should. We both gave the energetic “not it!”

We both knew what ‘being the adult’ usually means: saying no, playing it safe, sticking to the plan. But what if being the adult means choosing what’s truly aligned, even if it’s unexpected?

Which meant we had to talk through it via first principles:

• Was going to Glacier National Park consistent with the way we want to live our lives and spend our summers? Yes.

• Was going to Glacier National Park something we wanted to do? Yes.

• Did going fit within our general summer budget? Yes, by pulling forward our August and September budget, which was going to happen anyway with trips.

• Could we make it work without a massive disruption to our lives or work? Yes. I was already going to be as off as a writer and small business owner can be, and Angela’s medical appointments were stacked earlier in the week.

All systems go. Instead of spending time moping about what we couldn’t do, we accepted how the summer is shaping up and rolled with it.

We hadn’t planned that things would work out this way, but how they’re working out is probably better than how we’d planned. That’s the gift you give yourself when you hold your plans loosely and work from first principles.

The decision to go might look impulsive, and it still sometimes feels impulsive. But it was momentous because it came from the life we’re building, not the one we’re trying to escape.

~Charlie

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