00:00I'm in my early thirties, and I've always been drawn to solitude.
00:03Not in a lonely way more like a need to escape the noise of civilization,
00:07to breathe air that hasn't been recycled a thousand times.
00:11That's why I got into dispersed camping.
00:13No reservations, no designated spots, no FVs.
00:17Just me, my truck, and whatever patch of public land looked inviting.
00:21This particular trip had a destination, my older sister's place in Bend, Oregon.
00:26A multi-day drive through some of the most desolate country this side of the Mississippi.
00:30I was three nights in, making good time a full day ahead of schedule
00:34when I pulled of the highway onto a small trail.
00:37It wasn't much of a trail.
00:38Just a dirt path went into the earth by decades of tires,
00:42barely wide enough for my truck.
00:43The kind of place you'd miss if you blinked.
00:46No signs, no markers, nothing to indicate it was even a camping spot.
00:50But I'd learn to recognize these places the subtle flattening of the ground,
00:54the blackened circle of old fire pits, the scattered debris of previous campers.
00:59This one had all three, though the debris was old, half buried in the undergrowth.
01:04Nobody had been here in a long time.
01:06The highway was about half a mile back,
01:08a single lane road that cut through the forest like a scar.
01:12I'd seen maybe three cars in the two hours I'd been driving on it.
01:15This wasn't a place people came to.
01:17This was a place people passed through on their way to somewhere else.
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