5.27.25 // Big Mountains

I'll never forget the first time I truly experienced big mountains.
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It was a semi-cross-country road trip from Chattanooga, TN, that started with Colorado in mind, veered into Utah, and accidentally ended in Arizona. A dirtbag trip with someone who was part coworker, part boyfriend, but mostly one of my favorite humans that season.
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We drank the same kind of adventure Kool-Aid—spiked with desert dust, open roads, and the ache for something wild. There was a recognition in each other: a shared yearning for something just beyond the horizon. So when the chance came to chase the call of the West, we jumped.
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We gunned it for Colorado, racing through in-between states, barely noticing the molehills- we were dreaming of mountains.
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And then, the moment I’ll never forget...
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We drove a partial back road into Colorado. The windows were cracked, letting in the scent of pine and spruce on an unseasonably cool breeze. The sky was thick with clouds—swirling, brooding, and suddenly breaking.
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As the clouds parted, he pulled off the road. Grubby and road-weary, I threw on his gray sweatshirt, climbed out, and stepped into air so fresh it stung my eyes.
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And there they were—jagged, snow-capped peaks that felt impossibly close. I was in awe. I was home, not in Colorado, but in the mountains.
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I was 26 when I finally saw what my heart had been quietly calling out for, for years.
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8 years later, I still believe the places where snow meets rock, where desolation isn’t just a threat but a promise, where crags brush the clouds, are home.
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I’ve had “motivated by mountains” in my bio for years, but those words don't begin to capture what my soul feels most alive in places that rise toward the stars.
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But it’s never been about conquering them. I just need to be near them. As if their height reminds me to reach for mine. As if their silence teaches me how to listen.
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In the 8 years since that first roadside moment, I’ve seen and felt mountains worldwide. In the next 8? I’ll keep chasing the places that feel like home, the earth that calls to my soul, the peaks that fill my horizon.
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Photo 1/2: from last weekend in Austria
Photo 3: THE moment, captured