I’m not technically on lockdown at the moment, but that doesn’t change the fact that I haven’t spent a night outside since March. The last time this much time passed since touching plastic or rock, I had a broken ankle.

These are wild times, but you already knew that. While others have lost their jobs and struggle to find work, I’ve found new opportunities somehow. That being said, I did have to leave an 18-month project in the making just as we reached the point where concept would become creation.

Nowadays, my office is a small table in my already small studio apartment that I share with my lovely partner Lauren and our cats. Each day I stare out the window at the exterior wall of our neighboring apartment building with peeling grayish paint and blind-drawn windows hiding the secret lives of others while I write about being in the outdoors.

For the past several weeks, a few loose pages from my journal have appeared and floated from one pile of papers to the next, and today I finally decided to do something with them. The pages are covered in words squeezed from the soggy sponge of experience, and in reading those words, I hoped to revisit that space and time, if only for a moment in my mind.

Perhaps they will do the same for you.

October 22, 2018

The Confluence of Bullet Canyon and Grand Gulch, SE Utah

The rain drops; they’d already started, no doubt, but I didn’t notice until I stopped to fill water in the most humble of puddles. I’d been listening to music, which is rare but I needed to put down a few miles to beat the impending storm.

The forecast was somewhat shitty; 40 mph outflow winds and T-storms. They forgot to mention hail.

As I pump water at a miserably slow rate - the puddle not deep enough to allow the filter’s intake to submerge fully - I see the flash and know I’m late. Running, racing the storm, I start counting between flash and boom. Five seconds is the average, some closer, some farther away. The rain just a pitter-patter, nothing concerning, but it would be great if camp showed itself soon.

Suddenly, I’m at the confluence of Grand Gulch and Bullet Canyon. The rain is here now, full force and I have no interest in camping anywhere remotely close to the wash, so I seek out Sam’s camp, or where he said he might be. I find the trail under the big cottonwood which takes me up onto a bench, now more exposed as lightning crashes around me.

I’m getting a bit desperate.

There are clearly decent campsites but no Sam. I skirt the edge of the canyon wall calling into the storm, pure foolishness. As I round the corner, I spot a waterfall pouring one thousand feet from the top of the canyon.

Actually, that’s wrong. I round the corner, and suddenly the downpour turns to hail. Big hail. Marble size or bigger. It hurts, I need somewhere to hide. I spy a human-sized hueco comprised of rotting sandstone and hop inside. “Better than a cave,” I hope, as the lighting continues. I shrink back to avoid the barrage from above as the sandstone calves and sheds layers under my feet.

Then I see the waterfall.

Massive. The kind that only reveal themselves when it’s really shitty out, especially here. I wonder if one is going to fall in front of me. As the hail turns back to rain, I abscond from my tiny shelter to find a place to pitch my tarp. I go back to the cottonwoods, but can’t convince myself it’s safe. There’s a lull in the rain, and I head back up to the shelf, scanning the cliff sides to ensure my camp isn’t in line with natural drainages. I stake the tarp out as it sprinkles, barely able to feel my hands. I’m wearing running shorts, a synthetic t-shirt baselayer and a rain jacket. I want to keep everything else dry.

I sit under the tarp on the bare ground. Finally out of the rain I just, sit. The lightning is closer. So close, I sit on my pack and tell myself it will be ok. Flash, bang! So loud I want to cover my ears, but like all storms, this one passes too.

Now it’s quiet. A lone cricket chirps its song.

I wonder what it’s saying.