Nate and I spent Labor Day weekend, riding a Can-Am Maverick Trail over and between Utah’s beautiful mountains. At every turn, we saw rugged beauty—sometimes in robust forests and other times in barren dirt. We challenged ourselves along precarious ledges and over obstacles that required careful crawling. We came home having conquered anxious moments and having cheered each other on while we did. The title of this album came from all the times we paused to consider whether we should try a “high consequence” stretch of trail. Almost every time, Nate would pause, survey the situation, and say, “The worst thing that happens is we die.” Haha.
As I age, I’m learning to let lulls in conversations linger. I work to let silence punctuate interactions instead of trying to fill that space. I’ve found that campfires make that way easier—especially campfires in remote locations. Nate and I watched the stars come out as our Saturday faded to black.
The desert baked us in temperatures above 90ºF. So, creek crossing proved refreshing respites from that. In the clean creeks, we rinsed our hands & faces and dipped our gators to have cold water against our necks. Oh, and we unfettered our inner 4-four-year-olds to make big splashes.
This trail wasn’t on the map, but I had a faded memory of how Logan and I got here the last time I played on the Paiute Trail. My foggy recollections cost us a couple hours of playtime at my favorite spot later in the day; but in this moment, I was thankful for the part of my hard drive that still worked.
Sunday morning, while my friends worshipped two time zones from our campsite, we luxuriated in beautiful morning rays of a sabbath morning.
This trip introduced my friend, Nate, to vistas he’d never seen in a time zone he’d never visited. My heart expanded as I watched him absorb the remote wilderness landscapes of the American west.
When Nate and I got here, we ate a late dinner of sandwiches from our cooler and then got out a Bluetooth speaker for Maverick City to serenade our sunset. Then, Nate prayed a beautiful prayer over the moment. We had church.
This scene called out something in me. No other tree around in this arid expanse of high elevation wilderness. I’d like to think I could stand alone in an inhospitable place, but I’ve not always passed that test. I’ve seen that character and discipline in my wife often and am inspired by her. When someone does stand up and stands out, the contrast often reveals a beauty in courage.
Manning Meadows expanded the meaning of “drive up campsite.” We had this spot all to ourselves at 10,000± feet above sea level. I’ve backpacked to a lot of remote campsites; but the older I get, the more I’m liking the ones with room for OHV parking.
I woke to a chilly Sunday morning and enough light to see all of the downed branches to start a simple fire. I turned on my Desert Devotions playlist and stood here for a while. Nate joined me after a few songs, and we made breakfast and hot cocoa as the sun made its daily debut.
Due to my poor memory, we weren’t able to get to the place where Logan and I had enjoyed some technical rock crawling during my last Paiute Trail trip. There was one rock situation on this trip so precarious that I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned way off the side of the machine (like sailors while trapezing) to keep it from tipping over while Nate maneuvered it back to flat ground. We didn’t get any pictures or video of that moment; so, this posed shot will have to do.
Until recently, Nate and our machine would’ve been under water in this alpine reservoir. The overflow drain was 10 feet above our heads. Thanks to drought, this area was now a meadow instead of the bottom of a lake. I asked Nate to stop for a few minutes of reflection. He got out the Bluetooth speaker, and I introduced him to two songs that have been healing for my heart back home, especially on mountain trails. I told him about some acidic words that have been spoken over me by stakeholders in my life; and he replied, “You know that’s not true, right?” I did, and I’m thankful for friends that regularly remind me of truth, my worth, and the healing that Jesus has done and is doing in and around me.
I frequent places that make me feel small—that put the size of my accomplishments and worries in perspective. That scale reminds me that my ego is laughable, that my questions aren’t big enough, and that my world is always bigger than my daily existence. It did my heart good to bring Nate to multiple places that ministered to his heart in the same way.
Nate and I encountered a lot of traffic on this holiday weekend. Our clothes, our hair, and our duffels got caked with dust. We bought these 2022 Paiute Trail neck gators before we took off the first morning, and they mitigated that reality for our respiratory system.
This picture is blurry because I didn’t ask Nate to stop and pull over, but this view will long be burned into my memory. Over and over again on this trip, we saw the juxtaposition of verdant life against dusty and barren surroundings. Just a little bit of water brought greens, yellows, reds, and purples to life amidst browns and grays. I know I can’t irrigate the world in my newsfeed or even my whole church, but I was reminded on these Utah trails that what I can pour into the dry souls around me isn’t nothing. My life doesn’t reach far, but it can nourish the lives mine touches.
We covered 250± miles of trails in two days. Some of those miles came at a crawl. Others like this open road came at more than 50mph. (Nate got our Can-Am up to 65mph at one point.) At every turn, the view dramatically changed. We encountered several different ecosystems, multiple types of dirt and rock and flowers. The diversity represented in such a concentrated place wowed me over and over again.
I let Nate do most of the driving. He was more adept at high speeds. His ability helped us traverse large, open spaces and winding fire roads between the remote playgrounds where we reveled in technical driving and high-exposure trails.
I refused to ride with Nate down this. He was right: I would’ve been totally fine. Part of me wishes I’d have given in to his multiple invitations. The other part of me is glad someone could record this moment, even though this photo fails to capture the scale of the accomplishment. Nate dropped 100 feet in a few seconds.
Here’s the video evidence of the drop. We don’t have photos or videos of our sketchiest riding, because both of us were holding on with two hands. And mine were comically sweaty. Wow. We got everything out of this experience we could ask for and then some. We found tons of moments that turned riding a UTV into an adventure.
We spent two hours trying to find this canyon. (It wasn’t on the map.) We finally got there with only a couple hours of play time before we had to turn the machine around and put the hammer down to return our rental. If we ever come back, this is the place where we want to play. So many cool features and driving challenges! And just gorgeous at every turn.
On the way out, we stole a few minutes to play on this feature. Nate got at least one tire off the ground on every pass.
Here’s what the video of that playtime looked like. On the last pass, I jumped in and recorded it. We almost rolled, as Nate put us well up on two wheels. I couldn’t keep my phone steady as he counter-steered to drop us back on all fours.
As you can see and hear, I was caught a little off guard when I was in the passenger seat on this playground. Haha. I’m grateful Nate was doing the driving. I don’t know that I could’ve saved us from the roll. At the same time, I wouldn’t have hit it as fast as we did and put us in that situation to being with. I was uncomfortable often while Nate was driving, but I wanted to challenge myself in that way—much like how I lean into other adrenaline-fueled moneys in airplanes, in whitewater, and on racetracks. I got more out of the experience because I surrendered control to someone braver and more talented than I am. Over the last 15 years, I’ve found that reward almost always follows that surrender—physically, relationally, and spiritually.
We saw this in multiple places: trees with a donut ring of juniper at their base. I’d never seen that before and wondered if there was something symbiotically beneficial in that relationship.
When Logan and I came here a couple years ago in June, wild flowers were everywhere. I didn’t expect to see much floral colors on this Labor Day trip, but these bushes provided vibrant yellows on a lot of the arid trails we rode. I don’t think we have these on the east coast—so cool. Over our two days in the desert, you’d have heard this exchange a dozen or more times. Me: “That’s so pretty.” Nate: “Beautiful!”
This trip checked a lot of boxes: adrenaline rushes, natural beauty, sense of scale, time with a good friend, jokes that made me bend over laughing, worshipful reflection, new experiences. When I got home, Crystal asked, “Did you have a good time?” Yes. Yes, we did.
Check out
this beautiful, short video from right after we snapped this photo. All afternoon, we were timing our trail selections to make sure we could get to Monroe Peak (11,000+ feet ASL) by sunset. This video shows you why that would be a priority.
We said “goodbye” to Monroe Peak about 30 minutes after sunset to have a little light on our 28-minute trek back to our campsite. I looked over my shoulder one last time to see this.
Nate and I stopped to play a couple rounds at the memorial course dedicated to the guy who invented the Frisbee®. Disc golf has evolved a LOT since its early days, and disc golf courses have hosted more than 100 hours of conversations with Nate, Bailey, and their girls. This course gave us Utah for our disc golf map.
Nate had brought two discs: a midrange and a putter. We took turns playing a round with only one of those. Surprisingly, even though the holes were standard distance for what we often play back home, we both through our best rounds with the putter on this windy night.
I wanted to climb to the top ledge, but the surfaces were a bit slippery. We both decided our buddy, Josh Etheridge, could make it happen. I stopped here.
We froze some of our Gatorades to serve as the ice for our cooler the next day. What was wild is that these two bottles were the same flavor, but the one on the left was frozen.
