sean coolican

AVOID THE CROWDS, EMBRACE THE HEARTACHE: THE BEST NATIONAL PARKS TO VISIT AFTER YOUR BREAKUP

1. Great Sand Dunes, Colorado

This big ol’ bucket of sand features the tallest dunes in North America. Feel the smooth grains pour in between fingers as your hands reach for the ridges and hiking boots find their footing. Climb yourself to the top, and you (might) forget all about her. The way she smiled at you during sunset at the pier last summer. The way she cried when you gave her the heart-shaped rock from the beach.

2. Pinnacles, California

Imagine standing on a volcanic peak pushed hundreds of miles north from its original spot near Los Angeles. It’s almost like the San Andreas faultline is carrying you towards San Francisco, where your ex-partner (who dumped you) recently moved. Try not to think about how you imagined that person (who dumped you) being your soulmate. While bouldering over limestone ledges, don’t look in that direction.

3. Congaree, South Carolina

Wildlife alert! The wild pigs will come out into the swamp around sunset and their squeals can give you the willies. But the barred owl’s call of who-cooks-for-you from the tupelos overhead might get so stuck in your ears that you’ll be humming who-LOOKS-for-you as you return to the trailhead. By the way, who does look for you, anymore, anyways? You know she doesn’t. She hardly even texts you nowadays.

4. Big Bend, Texas

Yee haw, it’s quite a drive down here to the southern edge of the country! But once you climb Emory Peak and look out onto those orange tablelands at sunset, you won’t even be questioning why you drove all the way from California. But you know the reason. What’s funny—your ex-partner didn’t like the outdoors. That time, you both got stuck hiking in the dark? She was sore as hell about you forgetting the flashlight and didn’t seem to care about listening for the great-horned owl.

5. Great Basin, Nevada

Now this is a lonely place. Located off Highway 50, dubbed “The Loneliest Road in America,” this park has mountains, snow, and pine trees—all surrounded by desert. You can fly hundreds of miles down the blacktop in the afternoon sun, windows of your green Honda Civic rolled down, no radio on, breathing in the silence.

6. Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado

While the Grand Canyon gets all the visitors, this great chasm in western Colorado has clear roads, empty campsites, and trails where you won’t see another hiker. The place is so empty, dark, and desolate, that as you shift your car into first gear to handle the steep decline, you’ll feel like you’re lowering yourself into the Earth’s core. A few days ago, she texted you, told you about the new boyfriend. She said she even loves him, and that really killed. In the canyon, the stone walls look down on your small figure.

7. Dry Tortugas, Florida

When John Donne said “No man is an island,” he wasn’t thinking of you! Any park on an island is bound to keep visitors away, and you’ll have paddling, swimming, and snorkeling all to yourself. Accessible only by a boat from Key West, you’ll visit a tropical island that holds Fort Jefferson, a Civil-War prison. Known for famous residents like John Wilkes Booth’s surgeon, the blocks and bars will make you think of the rebound relationship you’re in. That person who kind of looks like your ex? But is boring and doesn’t like the outdoors either? Prison break!

8. Isle Royale, Michigan

There’s no funny business about this park. When it’s been a few years and you hear your ex-partner is getting married and it still tears you up, the only thing left to do is pack up your camp back home in Southern California and start driving across the country, searching for another park to hang your head. If you want the perfect place to hop off the grid for a while, drive up the lower arm of the Minnesota shore to that northern fingertip that points towards Isle Royale. After a two-hour boat ride over frigid Lake Superior, you’ll linger along pine-needled trails on a foggy island. Before global warming, wolves and moose used to cross yearly over the ice into the park from the mainland, but now that connection is gone.

9. Channel Islands, California

These islands off the Pacific Coast capture how Southern California used to look. No freeways, housing developments, or neon plazas here; these golden hills with long grasses and shady pockets of oak showcase what the state was before Spanish galleons appeared along her shores. After hiking over the rugged backbone of one of the islands and venturing down to the cool surf, you reach down to the sea, feeling its foam in your fingers. Lifting up a stone that looks like one you’ve seen before, you realize you haven’t thought about her the whole day. Cabrillo, the explorer, is rumored to be buried on one of the islands after a bout with gangrene, and you, too, can pretend to perish like him. After taking the boat back to Ventura Harbor, you hear from the park office that they misread your pick-up date, thinking you were missing for a few days in the wild. You surprise them all by stepping onto their dock and returning from the dead. What a wonderful feeling: coming back to life.

10. Wrangell-St. Elias, Alaska

When driving across the Lower 48 isn’t enough anymore, head north along the Alaska Highway, witnessing what’s left of the North American frontier. Reached only by a gravel road that takes two hours to navigate, the park’s visitor center is a former mining building that shoulders up to massive Root Glacier. In your tent, you’ll huddle down into your sleeping bag from the cold, listening to the glacier’s bone-cracking sounds throughout the night. And in the afternoon sun, you’ll walk out onto the snowy shelf, taking in the toothy ring of mountains around you, and you’ll think of the ex-partner, and how it’s alright that there really aren’t soulmates, and how she wouldn’t have driven a few weeks up to the Arctic and stood with you here, on top of the world.

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SEAN COOLICAN IS A WRITER ORIGINALLY FROM UPSTATE NEW YORK. A FORMER HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH TEACHER, HE RECEIVED HIS MFA FROM SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY AND IS CURRENTLY IN THE PHD ENGLISH PROGRAM AT OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY. HIS STORIES AND ESSAYS HAVE APPEARED IN POETRY INTERNATIONAL, THE PACIFIC REVIEW, AND THE NORTHRIDGE REVIEW. HE’S ALSO VISITED EVERY NATIONAL PARK IN THE LOWER 48.