The Ultimate Vacation: A Return to Self

Planes land like clockwork beginning Thursday afternoon, filled with anxious and excited tourists ready to explore Glacier National Park. They planned their trip a year in advance. They made their park reservations. They’ve written their out of office messages. They’ve decked themselves out in Patagonia gear they’ll never wear again.

When they stand in awe at the wild, rugged, dangerous and mountainous terrain, they’ll lose their breath at its magnificence. They’ll feel, at once, small and yet completely infinite and they won’t know quite how to make sense of that.  

In just one look at the jagged surface of the planet, they’ll gain a level of understanding that goes beyond words. 

She’s running barefoot and alone into the ruggedness just like the young Pikuni Blackfeet man did in the mid-1800s, knowing he’d likely be gone for a week with only the sound of his feet against the earth and his breath keeping him company. 

Crowfoot, like so many Blackfeet, took to the wilderness on a vision quest to pray, fast and connect to their ancestral strength in order to understand their place in their tribe and in their world. Armed with nothing but herbs as offerings, Crowfoot took to the peaks of the Upper Rockies to gain spiritual clarity and connection to the land. The vastness around him would translate to a vastness within him, and the visions would begin.

Maybe he saw a bear. Maybe an owl. Maybe he heard the voice of an ancestor breathing purpose into him. Maybe the sacred plant medicine guided his trip. 

Maybe the hunger turned to euphoria. 

And maybe when he returned from his quest, he had the ability to bear well. 

Maybe Crowfeet returned to his tribe with a sense of healing. And maybe Kelsey does too. 

For centuries, rugged, mountainous landscapes were the backdrops to vision quests for tribes across the northwest—offering euphoric spiritual healing.

Later, in the early 1900s, sanatoriums in mountainous areas like the Rockies or the Swiss Alps became popular as diseases like tuberculosis increased. People would take extended refuge in the solace of the mountains to attempt healing. Their days would start with waking to the sun, sitting in quietude while being observed by staff, taking air baths outside, sometimes for hours, and drinking herbal teas. It was the medicine of the mountains, and what was called a “rest cure.”

There was no doubt, in the screaming quiet and the cold, a euphoria that eventually revealed itself—journals from sanatoriums of this time recorded visitors experiencing lucid dreams, encounters with ancestors or a sense that all time had stopped around them. 

Maybe that’s what draws humans to the mountains, still.

Not just the Instagram pics or the bucket-list hikes, but some ancient knowing tucked in the marrow of our bones. A whisper that says: you’ve been here before.