Above Tumalo Falls

I should say upfront that I moved to Bend three years ago from Chicago specifically because I wanted to feel something different. I had the successful career, the right apartment, the correct opinions about everything, and I was completely hollow inside. So I left. The experience I want to describe happened on a trail above Tumalo Falls, maybe a year after I moved. I had been hiking alone for about two hours, not thinking about anything in particular, just walking, when I sat down on a rock near the ridge to eat something and looked out at the mountains. I do not know how long I sat there. The light was changing. At some point I realized I had been crying without knowing I started. And there was this quality to the moment that I have tried many times to describe and always fail at. Like the world had a depth to it that I normally cannot see. Like everything was more real than usual, and I was more real than usual, and all of it was held inside something enormous that was not indifferent. I moved to Bend to feel something different. I did not expect it to feel like that.