Trying to Buy a Ticket to the Sunrise

A dispatch from The Road™

It’s 9:55am and I’m sitting at the desk in my North Adams hotel room constantly refreshing recreation.gov waiting for the clock to strike 10; all so I can buy a timed-entry pass to drive my car up Cadillac Mountain at 4:30am and watch the sun rise. I feel like I’m trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets. 10 o’clock hits, the page refreshes saying there are 112 passes available, and before I could even put it in my cart, they were all gone. (I tried again the next day to the same results.)

A funny thing happened some time towards the tail end of the pandemic. We now needed Disney FastPass-style reservations to experience Nature’s Wonders®. It was my Ted Kaczynski breaking point. I don’t know why it affected me the way it did, (I would have been miserable waking up at 4am,) but it made me want to shoot a gun at the moon (or at least, disassemble some snowmobiles.)

I talked to my former room mate who had just returned from a camping excursion in the Pacific Northwest, and she said everything is controlled by reservations doled out by the cursed recreation.gov and people ruthlessly use bots like ticket scalpers to scoop up all the reservations. There may even be a black market for camp sites out there on the dark web. A Silk Road paved in moss, and run by the Granola Mafia driving blacked out Subaru Foresters. (I really am showing restraint not running this bit into the ground.)

My last road trip took place peak pandemic in the fall of 2020 and it really colored my expectations. I had enjoyed Acadia so much because I had it all to myself. It would be rare to see more than 3 other groups at any various location within the park. There were no lines of cars backed up while one person waits for the family of 5 to pack all their kids in their SUV in hopes of taking over their parking spot. There were no queues to see the cove that rumbles like thunder when the rising tide smacks against it. Most of all, there were no additional cost timed tickets to purchase in advance to catch a glimpse of Mother Nature waking up.

The interesting thing about nature photography: We want it to be devoid of humanity. It’s not something I thought about before this trip, but there is an inherit urge to photograph a landscape seemingly without the existence of ourselves. Without humans like garbage, littering the frame. When a person is in the composition, without them being the subject or being used to show scale, they become a distraction.

It really gave me conflicted feelings about a place I thought I loved, but instead maybe I loved the isolation. Maybe I just loved it like it was a secret I got to have. Hogging all the beauty for myself. My mood turned when I started looking for more quiet areas of the park, and places I hadn’t been before in the search for those small, secluded moments.

I managed to sweet talk the guard (No Invite style) into letting me drive up Cadillac Mountain for the sunset since it was cloudy and less crowded than it would normally be. As the light began to fade and all the road warriors retired to their respective RV parks, I realized I had the park to myself. That feeling I was holding on to and trying to find again.

In the twilight you can drive yourself down that mountain, stopping at every vista to catch the fading views. The pink half moon glowing through the hazy night. The islands in the distance like shadows looming on the horizon. Ignoring the GPS trying to push you home, constantly redirecting after each side street. The twilight turns to darkness, and the high beams come on while you’re singing the first Manchester Orchestra LP. The windows down breathing in the damp sea air and singing until your voice turns into a strained Bruce Springsteen impersonation. Park Loop road twists through the woods with breaks in the trees looking out to nothing but blue. You feel like you’re infinite. You return to your hotel that kinda sucks and smells a bit like mildew. You sit down at the desk and try to find a place to plug in the lamp. You open up Substack to write about your experiences. You restrain yourself from running with the bit for too long.