I didn’t sleep the night before leaving, so to say I “woke up” at 4:30 a.m. would be misleading. If I wasn’t laying with eyes open, mentally running through all the things that could go wrong on my trip, I was in a half-asleep dream state. My dream started in the middle of time, as if I had awoken from a coma, and was more a feeling than an image. I knew I was married but couldn’t remember to who, or when, or how long we had been apart. I didn’t know if they remembered me. I didn’t know why they were gone. I just knew I was very alone, but I wasn’t meant to be.

By 5:30 a.m. I had kissed Eric and Romeo goodbye and started my 10-hour drive through West Virginia and Kentucky to Mammoth Cave National Park. For the first four hours I was on high alert for anything that could mean danger. My mind kept replaying an Instagram reel I had seen that was filmed from the perspective of a car’s dash cam. The car quickly came up upon another car, parked in a city tunnel, door open to block the road and men standing by at the ready to do who knows what to the driver approaching. The driver tried to back up but another car pulled in from behind, so he quickly sped through the door of the car in front, nearly hitting two people. What would I do? Would I have the wherewithal and the guts to speed through? Was I willing to fatally hurt someone else for my own safety? Would I even know if the moment called for it?

Meanwhile, the road ahead was not full of city tunnels, but wide two- or three-lane roads traveling each direction with grassy medians separating them and lush green spires protruding on either side. Driving through West Virginia, the mountains swallowed up Darla, my RAV4, as we drove through mist, fragments of clouds hanging in the crevices of the green walls.

When I entered Kentucky, the sky turned from steel blue to royal blue, and cumulonimbus clouds grand enough for Olympus opened their gates. Endless undulating fields were segmented by split-rail fences and dotted with horses and cows flicking their tails. As I drove deeper into the state, white clouds turned a deep granite and rain poured, water columns extending down over each car in front of me like UFO beams.

Somewhere in the middle of Kentucky I stopped at a gas station and was one of a small handful of cars in a very wide open parking lot. As I walked in, a man in a small seating area to my right was smoking a blunt, and lifted his eyes over the shoulder of the woman sitting in front of him to look me up and down. I couldn’t tell if it was an invitation or a warning.

To my left was a fully exposed kitchen with two cooks who looked very busy despite the place being empty, other than me and the couple at the table. A sign at the back of the store directed me to the restroom: “Take a right, then a left, then another right.” After walking the labyrinth of dishwashing stations and storage rooms I found the restroom - a toilet, sink and mirror (and noticeable lack of soap) surrounded by plywood walls that didn’t reach the floor. Under the mirror someone had written in Sharpie, “ALL EMPLOYEE’S WASH HAND’S.”

A crown of trees in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky — *The crown of trees that hung over my campsite*

The moment I pulled up at my campsite in Mammoth Cave National Park it felt like not just my car, but my whole life had gone from 80 miles per hour to zero in an instant. The tears came quickly and fiercely. I was so alone.

After 15 minutes and many deep breaths, I got out to inspect my site’s tent pad, which was flooded. I checked my cell service - a little if I stand here, but none there. I sent a test message from my satellite communicator to my mom and Eric, and had sudden and overwhelming panic about the fact that I couldn’t make a phone call. I’d have to work my way through this wave of panic alone.

My dreams of a spiritual awakening realized through long drives and meditation were replaced by waves of exhaustion and straight up existential dread. It was 5 p.m. and all I had eaten all day was an apple, but I was too anxious to be hungry. I knew I needed to eat, so dinner was a Swanson’s pack of BBQ chicken on a small tortilla, and one date for dessert. I had planned this trip because I wanted to become resilient, to become confident in myself, to learn to be okay alone. The path to getting there was already very different than I imagined.

The next morning I woke up laughing to myself about all my drama. What was I so panicked about? Birds chirped, and a group of eight boys who must have ranged in age from 5 to 12 stood at the water spigot, dipping their toes in the water and giggling while they splashed each other, pretending to be surprised when another splashed them back. I exchanged cheerful “good mornings” with other women entering and exiting the small camp bathroom to wash their faces and brush their teeth.

I spent the morning at a coffee shop in Cave City, drinking a chai latte. I could have been back at home, hanging out at my usual breakfast spot on Main Street. The world felt normal.

*The view during the start of the historic cave tour*

In the afternoon I took a guided tour of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave in the world at 426 miles long. I learned about pioneers - or rather, the enslaved African Americans they leased to conduct the grueling work - sourcing saltpeter for gunpowder during the war of 1812. While that alone seemed like ancient history, we learned that nearly 4,800 years prior, Native Americans had explored the cave, mining gypsum for 3,000 years for reasons that are now unknown to us.

Toward the midpoint of the tour, after making our way through “Fat Man’s Misery,” a tight section of the cave that takes either a small or brave person to maneuver, we reached “Level 5,” which sits 310 feet below the surface. One level below, the Green River - one of the rivers that has spent more than 10 million years carving out the cave - could be found running through. Our tour guide shared, “The Green River goes out to the Ohio River, to the Mississippi River, to the Gulf of Mexi- I mean, Gulf of America.” The crowd laughed, me included, though I wasn’t sure which side of the joke we were laughing at.

My second and final night at Mammoth Cave Camp Ground I bolted awake at 4:30 a.m. from a nightmare. I dreamt that I went to sleep in my tent at my campsite, only to wake up in my tent but in a faraway and unfamiliar place that someone else had moved me to. In the dream I felt drugged and repeatedly asked where I was, and the man who had moved me continued to dodge the question, making me feel increasingly trapped, the walls of the tent moving in and getting smaller. I dreamt this same dream what felt like 20 times in a row.

Then I went from dream state to fully awake in a fraction of a second, suddenly aware of a rhythmic sound. I laid with my eyes open, listening. Something was rustling. Not rustling, scratching. Metallic scratching. It was coming from the far side of my car.

I sat up and looked out the mesh at the front of my tent at Darla’s nose, but could see nothing other than the reflection of the moon through the trees on her windshield. The scratching became more incessant.

I felt frozen, my legs as heavy as stone under my sleeping bag. For nearly 10 minutes I sat listening, imagining what, or who, might be on the other side of my car.

I grabbed my bear spray and exited the tent.

I turned the corner of the car, holding my breath.

Nothing.

*A bridge path guides visitors through the woods in Mammoth Cave National Park*

I climbed into the drivers seat of Darla and sat incredibly still, listening, for the next hour. Nothing.

I wondered if I had imagined it but knew I hadn’t. I needed to be sure I hadn’t. I hoped I had. As the sky gave way from night to blue hour I popped the hood and looked through all the plastic and metal and wires with my flashlight, finding no signs of squirrels or mice. But as I got down by the driver’s side wheel well, the scratching turned frantic. My eyes found no evidence but my ears confirmed.

I spent the next full day in a heightened anxious state, imagining the wires in my car being chewed by a stowaway and getting stuck at my next destination, 13 hours from home.

When I got to an area with service I searched “what repels animals from car” and found mixed reviews about mothballs - my least favorite scent. I made a quick stop at the dollar store to pick some up before continuing on, putting myself even deeper into the center of the continent. I would check again and place the mothballs when I arrived in St. Louis.

I drove, feeling like an ant without an ant hill.

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky

Gateway Arch, Missouri