Warning Light

I’d never seen that little light before. You know the one; the bright red flashing one that appears on your dashboard moments before your car blows up. I had just bought this car, 1000 miles ago while lost in South Central Los Angeles. Not really the place you want to find yourself lost as a white, 22 year old female, however, I had my big kid pants on. I was a world traveller, an expert at reading road signs, maps, and navigating with a phone from 1999. Yet I was still lost, and around 20 miles from where I needed to be. After most of the day I made it to the car dealership, took the car for a test drive, got it checked over, and bought it, right then and there. This golden chariot was to be my home for the next six months as I drove across the United States, worked at a summer camp and then drove back.
Now, here my friend and I were, 30 miles from civilisation, in the middle of Montana with the engine light flashing. Scenes from Wolf Creek swirled in my mind, I swiftly locked the doors. As the sky succumbed to a seeping orange glow, we limped into Deer Lodge, MT. Being in the ‘middle of nowhere’ really had taken on a new form in my mind. The car at this point had no lights, no indicators, and with my foot flat to the floor we were managing around 10 miles per hour. Everything was closed. I whistled the cowboy tune that happens right before there is a showdown and watched the tumble weed drag race us down the road. We pulled over outside Bills Auto Repair, set up the van for sleeping and waited for morning.
Bill emerged from his trailer around 9:45am, clearly on local time. He had the demeanour of your favourite uncle, wore grease cover overalls and sported a grey handle bar moustache that would make Hulk Hogan jealous. We pushed our car into his workshop and waited for what would be a “quick fix”. After a new alternator and the promise to send a post card, we parted ways with Yellowstone National Park once again in our sights.
This adventure was just another affirmation that what happens along the way is equally as important as the final destination. One of the many joys of being a traveller is the knowledge that things might not always go right. Wrong turns can happen, cars do in fact break down and more often than not you will run out of gas in the most inconvenient place possible. These are all growth opportunities and that’s exactly how I saw meeting Bill.