The best bison burger I’ve ever had was in Jackson Hole, WY. Actually, the first bison burger I ever had was in Jackson Hole, WY. I’d never even seen a bison (burger or otherwise) until Jackson Hole, WY. I’d flown in to the airport in Grand Teton National park that morning, from Denver, CO (another first) and couldn’t really move my left arm. The woman next to me (read: a stranger) was gripping my wrist every time we seemed to get a little too close to a mountain top, which was often. Though who could blame her, it was a helluva view.

Here’s the thing about the way I travel: I’ve been doing it since I was born (or from whenever the legal/doctor recommended age to bring a baby on a plane is), I have two passports (UK & US), can pack in under four minutes, and am already half-undressed before I even make it to the security line. I know what to pack for long train rides and am a pro at running through terminals to make tight connections. Big international airports with signs in four different languages? Feels like home. Small airports with 3 departure gates, even smaller planes, and a landing so close to a mountain top that you become intimately acquainted with a stranger? Not so much.

“It was the sort of sight that makes you re-examine everything you’d ever believed to be true. It was like coming out of Plato’s cave and seeing light for the first time.”

A friend of mine had taken the summerout in Wyoming and had invited me to visit for an extended weekend. You know those people who have stories about stalking tigers in Nepal, or climbing Machu Picchu, or backpacking through China and befriending a Tibetan monk? She’s one of those people. Me, I’m more of the people who sleeps on trains, packs too many (paper) books, and gets lost because one of those was not a map. It’s not that I don’t seek out adventure (I did grow up bi-coastally between the UK and Puerto Rico, after all), and I am generally on board with most things; it’s just usually the sea-level food-based sort—not the karabiner-climbing-a-mountain sort—but I’ve digressed from the burger.

We land. The woman in 9B lets go of my wrist and we de-plane. To call the view from the tarmac breathtaking seems unfair, but well, sometimes words fail or are over-used and now breathtaking doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic. But it was breathtaking. After a quick stop at the cabin to dump my duffle and change in to outdoor gear (NB: I have no ‘outdoor’ gear), and some light haggling on the tram price, I was on Rendezvous Peak: 10,00ft above sea level and in the Southern Teton Range. Now I can be dramatic: If standing at the base was ‘breathtaking’ standing at the peak was earth-shattering. It was the sort of sight that makes you re-examine everything you’d ever believed to be true. It was like coming out of Plato’s cave and seeing light for the first time.

“Traveling has always been such an important part of my life that, in a way, it had become its own comfort zone.”

Before that summer, the idea of hanging out in a mountain range hadn’t even been on my radar, which is what made the experience all the more thrilling. Traveling has always been such an important part of my life that, in a way, it had become its own comfort zone. Wyoming was a good reminder to mix it up; it needn’t all be all hitchhiking train rides and food tours. The next day we went to Yellowstone and saw park-goers get way too close to wild animals and hot springs (seriously, the statistics of how many people are mauled, or gored, or burned at the park each year start to make sense after visiting), smelt more sulphur than I ever thought possible to produce, and recorded the famed ‘Old Faithful’ erupting; all firsts.

The more I see the more I realize there is left to see. I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean, for instance, or eaten a Guinea Pig in Peru, and I haven’t been to Asia (unless you count the Asian side of Turkey, which apparently some people don’t). One day I may be able to do all of those things, I just need to make sure I throw in the occasional ‘never-saw-myself-doing this-and-now-I’m-on-top-of-a-mountain’ trip as well. “We are torn between the nostalgia for the familiar, and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known” (Carson McMullers). I remember thinking a much less articulate version of this on Rendezvous Peak and I wanted more time to think about it, but the last tram down was leaving, and I had a Bison burger to try.