Roadtrip ’99 part 4: Holden Village

Rachael Shores
16 min readAug 28, 2019

I am writing my travel memoir. If you would like to start at the beginning go here.

A day of hiking in to Lyman Lakes from Holden Village, a page from my scrapbook

I left the Yaak, drove across the panhandle of Idaho, which was a longer drive than I expected, and into Wyoming. It was a Friday. I keep Sabbath and didn’t travel on Saturdays so I was looking for a place to settle for 2 nights.

I eventually decided to stop and try to draw and sell my art again. I took the time to trust and enjoy the journey, to remind myself that it would all work out. I was getting too focused on the destination and where I needed be in a few hours. Also, I wasn’t ready to be in a new place. The recent few days wandering the quiet of Montana had me reluctant to be back in the real world. So I sat on the roadside and painted some store fronts that looked like they were out of the wild west. The dive bar that was one of the storefronts was not interested in purchasing my art. I got back on the road a bit dejected. I hadn’t sold any of my art since my first night of in the unknown. I was running low on funds and I might need to pay for a campground soon.

I was no longer on the back roads of Montana. This was a highway. The extra traffic meant there were more breakdowns. Each car I saw along the road I felt more and more guilty for not helping. Sure, I was a young woman on my own but I had a car that was running and I had all the time in the world. I should help. But then the image of the shocked and horrified looks on my parents’ faces would make me pause long enough to drive by and miss my chance to pull over. Still, 4 or 5 break downs later, as the guilt for not helping those in need kept mounting, I felt like I was being tested. “Fine,” I prayed. “I’ll stop at the next car pulled over.”

About half an hour later there was a minivan alongside the road. Ok, this is what I had said I would stop for, and I pulled up behind them. How dangerous can owners of a minivan be? I thought, and then as I pulled up I saw their Minnesota license plate! No way! Here I am in Wyoming and stopping to help fellow Minnesotans! What are the odds? This was definitely a sign. These people would be the ones to help me find my cheap place to sleep for the next couple of nights.

It turned out their roadside emergency was a only a spilled drink. It was a family with a 15 year old girl. We chatted it up like old neighbors, I went right into how I was looking for a cheap place to stay for the night, possibly free. They told me they were heading to a non-profit bed&breakfast and that the place might be willing to do work-for-stay. So they had me follow them. I had fun telling them about my journey so far.

We still probably had an hour of driving West to do. We stopped for gas, maybe something to eat and when we did the dad approached me. “You know,” he said, “We’ve been talking, and the thing is, we are heading out to this Lutheran retreat for a week called Holden Village. Our son was supposed to come with us but he couldn’t make it so we actually have an extra spot if you would like to join us. All you would need to do is pay for the ferry ride, everything else is covered.”

I had no idea what any of this really meant. Where is this ferry ride in the middle of Wyoming? Was the retreat in the woods or the mountains or something? What happens at a Lutheran retreat? How exactly isolated is this? None of that mattered. What I heard was “free week of travel.” The ferry was a hefty $75. “I’ll make that back by selling my art,” I told myself.

My first day of school

Sometimes people ask me what kind of mindset it takes to travel. I reflect and analyze myself, trying to understand my outlooks and beliefs and where they come from, how do they differ from other people’s experiences? Some people say I’m self-absorbed. Oh well, I have this theory that if I can understand how I work, all my ins and outs, I will understand the world better. So I thought back to the beginning and there is one story that seems to explain a lot about what and how my travel outlook has formed. I think this is a good place to share it:

Mom woke me up early one morning, helped me pick out clothes, fed me breakfast, put a backpack on me, gave me a metal box with food in it and then we walked out to the central parking lot of the trailer court and waited. I was 5 years old, maybe 6. I’m sure Mom had been telling me about kindergarten and starting and going to school but I hadn’t really understood, I probably wasn’t really paying attention, and I immediately forgot what she said. Now it was vaguely coming back to me. Mom had told me something important was going to be happening in my life, something about “starting school”. Then a big yellow bus pulled up.

I had seen yellow buses around. That wasn’t such a big deal, but I got on and Mom didn’t follow me. I knew not to get in cars with strangers but here my mom was putting me on this bus and with a driver I had never seen before and there were a bunch more kids on. She seemed happy, the kids didn’t seem to be worried. I don’t think it can really be a kidnapping if a parent is participating, so I accepted this new event and got on.

I used the bus ride to make some deductions. I had heard a story of a kid that was given a backpack and then sent out on the streets to survive on his own, I had heard of schools where you got sent away and lived there, I had heard of camp where you stayed away for a long time. My backpack had no clothes in it so I probably wasn’t going to be gone for anything long term but my lunchbox told me I was going to be gone quite awhile. Mom hadn’t seemed sad when I left, so this was probably going to be a good experience. Everyone was talking about “school” like that explained everything but I had never experienced school, been to a school, seen a school. It was something older kids did and they had the backpacks too, walking around the neighborhood in groups wearing them. I figured it would all make sense when I got to wherever I was going.

When we got to where we were going it still did not make sense. I wandered into a giant building, dark hallways, coats and backpacks hanging up along the walls. Lots of doors and lots of kids everywhere. Eventually the halls got quieter and an adult came and asked me where I was supposed to go. I didn’t know. What grade was I in? I didn’t know. Teacher? I didn’t know. “Come with me,” she said, “I think I know where you belong.” She asked me my name. THAT I could answer and just like that she brought me to a classroom where a teacher welcomed me and took charge from there. When we went home we had signs shaped like busses hung around our necks. Those signs magically told the other adults where to send us on the busses and when the bus driver had me get off the bus there was my mom waiting for me. Right where I had left her.

So, it’s a flawed logic but what this experience taught me is to not worry about the details. It will all work out. There will always be someone that will know. This is how I approach travel. The details don’t matter, just enjoy the ride.

“But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” — Bill Bryson

I have to defend my poor mom. When I retold her my first day of kindergarten story and how it shaped my travel mindset she was horrified. It had never occurred to her how I would perceive this day. We had missed orientation day, that would have helped explain many things, and this was the same way her parents had sent her off to her first day of school. The only minor detail she had forgotten about was that she had an older brother and sister to take her through the whole process.

Holden Village

The next morning we took a ferry on Lake Chelan. It was a long ferry ride on a stunning ice blue glacier lake. The scenery was just like a postcard. We were picked up by a school bus and driven up a steep dirt road full of switch backs until we pulled up in a wooded camp that looked like a little Swiss village. I shared a narrow room with the daughter, we had bunk beds.

It’s probably being raised by the Prairie Home Companion radio show and Garrison Keillor’s “News From Lake Wobegon”, always going on about the somber Lutherans, that I had NO interest in learning anything from Lutherans. Well that, and being told what to believe all my life. It’s too bad. I was never curious what the purpose of Holden Village is. I think I might have gone to one Biblestudy during the whole retreat. I find this comical now. Here I was, on a spiritual quest, barging into plain living communities, reading my Bible every morning before driving, and this religious retreat was handed to me and I side stepped right around the learning opportunities. Part of it was I wasn’t sure what I was given access too. Was there assigned workshops? Can you just drop in? I didn’t receive a schedule and I never asked. I think the family was also trying not to proselytize to me and let me be on my own, very Minnesotan.

It didn’t matter, I knew exactly where to go. The kitchen. It’s the heart of community and the best way to get the feel of a place. We used to do long weekends up in Ore where my dad would help to re-roof cabins at The Church’s summer camp. Two years I came up and both times it rained out all the kids’ activities. I spent 4 days watching the Sound of Music on replay where basketballs and soccer balls in a gymnasium were our ONLY entertainment. I was bored out of my mind. The following year I was proactive. I was not going to be trapped like that ever again, to leave my entertainment to others. I asked to help in the kitchen instead and it was amazing. I was put to work “drying” the dishes out of the dishwasher, an old old black woman showed me her techniques for making bread, I got to help make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and eat the cookie dough until my stomach hurt, and all the adults thought I was just the sweetest for offering to serve, mwahaha. I think I was 11.

So in Holden I went to the kitchen staff and asked if I could pitch in for the week. “Hallelujah!” The supervisor shouted up into the air. “We are short staffed for this week! Our replacement volunteer doesn’t come until the next ferry.” Just like that I was part of the staff. Does this make me an answered prayer? I was right back into my comfort zone, kitchen work in a church camp. I had a schedule, minimal training, I was useful! I used a cloth napkin as my headscarf -and then I kept that napkin as a souvenir.

Bear

My first day exploring I went on a hike. There were hikes and trails everywhere. A father and daughter had gotten lost on some trails for weeks and got delirious from dehydration so it was The Real Deal Wilderness. I was careful to only do a small 2 mile loop. We were also warned that it was active bear country. I sheepishly prayed to see a bear. Who does that? They were black bears, so it was “definitely safe”. Then I went on my quiet walk, listening to the trees, “walking with God.” These huge huge forests are just so spectacular. “Make lots of noise,” they say, “to alert bears that you are coming,” they say. I did not.

I was about halfway around the loop when I heard a rustling in a bush. Nah, I thought. It’s probably not a bear. Then a little nose poked up and 2 black ears. It sniffed at me. Yeah, that certainly looked like a bear. It was perfect, just the way I had hoped to see a bear, a little off the trail, maybe 25 or 30 ft away, just hanging out. I couldn’t tell the size because it was completely behind the large bush. I stayed still while I decided if it was a cub or not. Black bears are already kind of small but I wanted to be certain of my choice of direction before I walked into a mama or something. The bear didn’t run away, it just stayed there looking at me. I finally decided it was big enough to not be a cub and I walked on down the trail. I talked to it, letting it know I was leaving. Are you not supposed to turn your back on a bear? I was heading around the bend in the trail, one side was a big rock wall, I walked around the wall out of site of the bear behind the bush, I got about 20 ft past the bend and then there, right on the trail ahead of me, was most definitely a little cub bear, and it was blocking my path.

SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!

Behind me, out of my view, I now realized was the mother and I had just walked “between a mother and her cub”. Of all the bear safety rules, this is the WORST! And she couldn’t see me or her cub.

I froze to think out possibilities as fast as I could. Do I walk towards the cub and hope I don’t scare it while the mother decides what I’m up to? Do I run towards the cub and try to chase it off the trail and risk it giving it’s little cub cry and have the mom come shred me as I try to outrun her?

It’s just a black bear. It’s just a black. My road trip isn’t going to end with me getting mauled by a bear, I told myself as I ran back to the mother. I ran up to the bend of the trail and then carefully stepped back into her view and just stood there talking to her while I stood still, trying not to look weak, trying not to look threatening. The two snuffed at each other and ever so slowly the cub finally left the trail and trotted into the woods, the mother followed.

Hiking

On one of my free days I went hiking with 2 other staffers, Steve and Alice. Steve had fallen down a waterfall he had tried climbing on. He had broken many bones, had to be rescued and now he was back to hiking. We met at the trailhead at 6 am one morning to do a 17 mile hike to Lyman Lakes. This is before I ever learned of long distance hiking. I didn’t know people walked this many miles in a day. I would have told you that this isn’t possible, and climbing hills was included in that! At one point I thought it might not be possible. We had a steep climb and my legs almost stopped working. It took all my willpower to lift one leg and then the other. I felt so old and out of shape. Up until then I had thought I was strong and reliable. Now I had two people standing around watching me drag myself up inclines. I guess sitting in a car for a summer makes you weak. I survived though and it gave me a better understanding about what my body could endure. It was stronger and more capable than I had ever imagined.

Spoiler alert: 5 years later I hiked 1100 miles on the Appalachian Trail and 4 years after that I completed the 2100 mile trail. But in this moment of my travel journey, when I hiked 13 miles, I didn’t think that this was a life changing event. I really didn’t think a day hike would have any impact on my life at all. It’s barely a story in itself. BUT it gave me a new perspective and confidence about myself and my abilities that had not been there before. It rooted down into one small knowing about myself: I was capable.

Up until that moment I thought only mountain men hiked a number of miles a day and at the max I would have figured they hiked 8 miles in a day. Maybe 12 if they really had to push themselves hard and that was only possible because of their mountain man grit which I would never possess. Even with all my reading about death marches for POWs or the Trail of Tears or Jews being forced to march during the Holocaust, I figured their “all day” marches were less than 20 miles long. I had never really thought about it in distances but I did have it in my head that long distance hikes would kill a person.

So about 18 months later when I discovered the world of the Appalachian Trail, where people actually choose to hike long distances, and I wanted to do it, I knew I was physically capable because I had done this one hike this one time. If I could hike 13 miles in a day, I could hike the Appalachian Trail, at least in a feasible amount of time. Don’t underestimate the little challenges you want to give yourself. They might add up to you believing in yourself.

Travel lesson: Accomplishments add up. If you build on little dreams and goals one day you’ll try bigger dreams and goals and then one day you’ll look back and be shocked at how far you have gone. PS. This works the same way for poor choices as well. Except one day, when you’re sitting at the bottom, wondering how you got there you’ll be able to trace back to all the times you backed down.

Another travel seed is planted

That night was a bonfire for the kitchen staff. We hung out and told stories, and I felt bonded to these near strangers. I’m pretty sure it was this night as we were sharing stories and talking of traveling that someone started talking about former staff members that had been to Antarctica. My ears perked up. Antarctica?

“Yeah, isn’t it interesting, the type of people that end up here in Holden Village often end up finding work in Antarctica.” This guy went on to talk about Antarctica, how it was an isolated camp, similar to this place, just colder and it needed the same sort of support staff that is here in Holden Village. There was a cafeteria in Antarctica. Everyone was trained to be a firefighter because fire was the most dangerous thing to encounter down there. Normal people go to Antarctica! It’s not just a place for scientists and expeditions! My world cracked open. I could go to Antarctica. All these years of seeing the images printed in National Geographic and I thought it would take a career and a lifetime dedicated to studying a subject in Antarctica in order to raise the funds for an expedition and go and yet this guy just said they need dishwashers down there too! Me. Regular me. I could go to Antarctica, if I wanted to. I got his contact info. I asked for the contact info of the person that had gone.

Village Life

There was swing dancing, a talent show — the kitchen boys sang Backstreet Boys ironically. My 15 year old friend was a big fan and didn’t quite realize they were being made fun of at first. There was a Norwegian folk dancing one night, we would stay up late and play pool. The volunteer staff stayed up late and had run of the place. I got the behind-the-scene experience.

I got to participate in a rare kitchen supply delivery. That was such a fun town event. The supplies had to be driven up from the ferry and unloaded into the walk-in coolers and freezers. A long human chain was formed and the head chef called out where items got tossed to. We stood staggered down the hallway so we could toss each item to the next person down the line.

There was also the village artist. She painted AMAZING watercolors of the steep roofed cabins poking out of the trees. I spent hours with her geeking out about paints and techniques and color palettes, she showed me how she took care of her palette. I was so impressed and I am so grateful of the time she took to hang out with me. I still do my palette the way she taught me: squeeze out the entire tube of watercolor onto your palette to dry. No wasted colors drying in the tube.

I practiced my painting and I did what I had set out to do; I sold exactly $75 worth of my watercolors. My regrets is that I never documented the work that I sold. I don’t even remember what it looks like. I hope one day I can be reunited with some images. I know I painted landscapes of Holden Village and I think someone commissioned me to sketch their son.

I made connections too. A family invited me to stop by in Iowa when I was headed home. I told them I would.

The last day I was there was a costume festival. I don’t know why or what it was about, I was just happy to celebrate. I did face painting, there were costumes that we dug out from some storage area and wore. I made a curtain into a head covering, there was Shakespeare and jokes and some music. It was a last celebration of this unique place that I had stumbled into.

We took the ferry back the next Saturday. A strange woodsman had wandered in from the forest. He was wearing all brown, his clothes loose and baggy. He had long tangled hair and a long beard. He sat on a porch stoop sewing something. We talked a bit. I wanted to know all about this strange person. He said he was a trail maintainer and spent weeks out in the woods fixing trails. But barefoot??? He wasn’t too much into answering questions so I drew him instead.

I parted ways with the Mercurios, my hosts for the week. I kept in touch with them throughout my travels. I entered back into reality to seek out a place to camp once again.

Next part 5: Trying to sell my paintings, eating raw potatoes, while my food and money slowly run out. (keep reading)

Rachael Shores is posting her travel story to encourage those that don’t fit in, to explore the world and their inner desires. Your path can be different than the standard options layed out for us. Follow current travel,art, and life on Instagram @sparrowshand.

Do you know 2 people who could use a spark of adventure? Please share.

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Rachael Shores

Live your wildest dreams. You can achieve anything. I’m telling my story of getting to all 7 continents by 27 as a testament for the dreamers. Believe.