by Clint Thomsen

GUEST COLUMNIST

"Dad, how does somebody get 'stuck in a moment?'"

Four-year-old Weston had evidently been contemplating the U2 song by that name playing on the minivan stereo as we approached the road to White Rock in a southeastern pocket of Skull Valley. Last Saturday's sun was too refreshing to pass up, so we had driven to the desert to scope out future adventures and pay an overdue visit to an old nemesis.

I have long been at odds with the web of dusty roads surrounding the domed igneous formation appropriately named White Rock. Every time I venture out that way, something seems to go wrong. And as I turned onto the snowy road I found myself stuck in a moment of my own, recalling an old battle that these roads nearly won.

After a particularly stressful day at work several years ago, I had driven to this place one afternoon to clear my mind. My trusty companion was a tired 1986 Isuzu Trooper, whose rusty blue panels had seen over 160,000 miles. She had no heater, her windows leaked, and her dying manual transmission shifted like a WW II-era Sherman tank. Though it seemed like every drive might very well be her last, she sputtered to life each time I turned the key, delivering me safely (and reeking of gasoline) to each destination.

With all of my time exploring lonely corners of this valley, the irregular mountain called White Rock had always eluded me. The road there starts just two miles north of the eastern entrance to Dugway Proving Grounds -- farther south in the valley than most casual explorers venture. If not for the unassuming sign, the road might be indistinguishable from the countless others that jut off SR-96 and wind westward for untold miles.

The sun set as I drove the 11-mile dirt road across the valley and along the southern reaches of the Cedar Mountains. Just before arriving at White Rock, a group of mule deer ambled across the road and stopped to stare at me, their curious eyes reflecting my dim headlights -- no doubt wondering why I was passing this way so late.

After some half-hearted climbing around the base of White Rock, I got back in the Trooper, intending to ride a few ATV trails and follow Rydalen Canyon Road back to the highway.

I should have known better than to explore unfamiliar desert terrain alone at night.

The White Rock area is a hot spot for climbing, off-roading, and ATVing. On summer weekends it's often tough to find an empty spot to pitch a tent. But during the colder months the place is seldom visited. That night it was just me and the Trooper.

I turned onto what I thought was my planned return route, but was baffled when it veered in the wrong direction and petered off into a faint trail, eventually disappearing altogether in the brush. I got out of the Trooper and looked at the trail in disbelief. It was at that moment that I realized just how dark the night was. The crisp, juniper-scented air I normally relished now only heightened an already acute sense of aloneness. Solitude is bliss, but only when you know where you are and how to get back.

I was lost -- a phenomenon I pride myself on having rarely experienced. But at that moment, my sense of direction was more wrecked than my pride. Roads looked like ATV trails, and ATV trails like roads. Nothing behind me looked like where I thought I had come from, and nothing ahead of me looked like where I thought I should go. Yearning for some sense of civilization, I turned on the radio. I spent the next two hours following trail after trail, listening to KSL host Clark Howard talk about how dollar store batteries are just as good as the name brands.

My panic turned to horror as I turned a corner and unexpectedly slid a good distance into a large gully. At the bottom were the remains of two older vehicles whose drivers presumably made the same tragic turn before abandoning them. Looking up at the trail I slid down, I was certain my old Trooper would meet the same fate. I could conceive of no way that she could make that steep a climb. I would bid her farewell, I figured, and wander madly until I finally fell lifeless on the desert floor -- probably beside the skeletons of the drivers of the other cars.

A KSL sports bulletin jerked me back to reality, and I aimed the vehicle upward. I engaged the four-wheel-drive and started creeping up slowly, the engine repeatedly backfiring the whole way. To my amazement, I made it back to the top.

Cresting the gully's edge filled me with a sense of victory and clarity. The adrenaline must have triggered a surge of fresh sanity, because as I backtracked, I started recognizing things like turns and trees and shapes of ruts -- the way a man does when he's pitted against nature. I found my way back to White Rock around 11 p.m. -- I had been two miles off course -- where I picked up the road and followed it back to the highway.

My Isuzu Trooper is now gone, but my conflict with these roads lives on. A trip to White Rock a few years later threw my car hopelessly out of alignment, and I blew a tire there two summers ago.

"Some day I'll return and make peace with this place," I thought as I gazed at the road in front of me and back at wide-eyed Weston. Deep tracks left by a truck made it clear that the road was still impassable. A wise man picks his battles. Reconciliation would have to wait for another day.

Clint Thomsen is a Stansbury Park resident who grew up climbing mountains, wandering desert paths and exploring Utah's wilds. He may be contacted via his Web site at www.bonnevillemariner.com.