Chasing the Traverse

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

There is a brewing storm inside me. A rolling mass of ambition and idealism. The perfect route, the perfect ride. It exists only in daydreams, fantasy, and on paper. It is epic, challenging, beautiful and dreadful. It is far beyond anything I have ever accomplished. Anything I have ever attempted.

~

Facing northward, the heat of the day sinking below the horizon, I start to travel. Behind me Lake Powell grows small, and eventually vanishes in a sea of canyons. The sun dips low and darkness engulfs the massive Kaiparowits Plateau. I press on into the gloom.

Eventually I find myself in the high county. A hundred hundred miles rolled over. Or at least it feels that way. Ahead the Wasatch stretches out, dwarfing me and my audacity. I climb into the rare air, feeling the pain and fatigue, the joy and freedom. I am surrounded by wild and remote country. My home. My land. Behind me a pair of tire treads leave dimples in the dirt, all the way back to Big Water.

~

Someday, I will traverse this great state of Utah. From Big Water to Wallsburg to Park City. And maybe on further. The trail lies quietly waiting, tempting, teasing. From the heat of the desert, to the chill of the Wasatch, sand and snow…

The Utah Traverse.