by Clint Thomsen

GUEST COLUMNIST

A reader in Kansas recently e-mailed me and referenced a photograph on the front page of my Web site. It's a picture of me and my 2-year-old son, Coulter, taken on a hike through an aspen forest in Sanpete County. The beaming toddler is strapped to my back in a child carrier that he calls his "pack-pack."

The reader wrote, "He looks like a little ground squirrel popping up and smiling back there on Dad's back."

He does look like a little squirrel in that picture, which makes me chuckle because my nickname was "squirrel" when I was his age -- not so much for the way I looked as for my eccentric personality. Like his dad, Coulter is a little nuts himself. He's a combination of Curious George and Jack Sparrow with a slight Tasmanian devil twist. When he's not pretending our cat is a horse or creating Sharpie artwork on our walls, he's scouring the house in search of pirate treasure.

But beneath the craziness lies the most thoughtful and loyal pal a dad could have. A daddy's boy from birth, Coulter is my trusty companion on most of my adventures. From boggy Louisiana swamps to High Uintas lakes, rarely do I wander into wilderness without my bright-eyed boy on my back.

So when I set out last Saturday to hike in South Willow Canyon and try out a pair of prototype snowshoes, he naturally grabbed his Diego hat, gloves, and "pack-pack" to join me. He knew the drill -- a stop at the Maverick for some hiking treats, then west on SR-138 with country music playing on the car stereo.

A light rain in Grantsville meant snow in the mountains, and we drove along the canyon road through a light but foggy storm. We parked in a pull-off just below the National Forest boundary and I loaded Coulter into the child carrier. Our destination was Cottonwood Campground, about a mile past the gate.

Since I began writing these columns, I've become accustomed to pausing to gather my thoughts on a place and jot them down later. Coulter vocalized my thoughts in toddlerspeak when I set him down to strap on the snow shoes.

"Woo-woo. I love it, my mountains," he said.

South Willow Canyon is one of my favorite places in the Stansbury Mountains. I usually camp there at least once every summer, but wintertime mountaineering isn't the easiest form of recreation. It takes extra time, extra equipment, extra layers of clothing and extra caution. With easy-going shorts and t-shirt camps still months away, the cold peaks stood silent -- echoes of the canyon's annual warm-weather boom cryogenically frozen among the bare branches of creekside brush.

The snow covering the road beyond the forest gate was moderately packed with snowmobile tracks and snowshoe prints, and occasional deer tracks jutted off into deep, untouched drifts on either side of the road. I stopped to listen for the creek, but could only hear my heartbeat and the stretching of backpack straps as Coulter reached to catch snowflakes in his mouth.

I saw the creek for the first time just below Cottonwood Campground, where it pools up at a small weir. We left the road at the campground and walked down to the creek. The snow off the road was several feet deep. Walking toward the water, I stepped on what felt like a hollow surface. I dug with my snow shoe and discovered I was walking along the top of a picnic bench. Aside from the bench, an outhouse and a bridge across the creek were the only visible evidence of the campground. I've been there dozens of times before, but the snow disguised the trees and natural landmarks, making it seem like I was exploring an entirely different canyon.

The banks of the creek were muddy, but exposed, so I took Coulter out of the carrier to let him stretch out and throw a few rocks. Boys come prepackaged with three innate characteristics which seem to inevitably express themselves independent of nature or nurture: a love for fire, the urge to climb stuff, and the impulse to throw rocks into bodies of water. In the case of rock-throwing, the larger the better.

"Check this out, Daddy-O!" Coulter exclaimed, mustering all the strength his 30-pound frame could harness to hoist boulder after boulder into the icy flow.

The snowstorm ended and the air remained still and unexpectedly warm. I bundled the boy back up and lifted him onto my back to make the return hike. Halfway back to the gate, I felt his head slowly fall onto my shoulder as he drifted to sleep. As he dreamed -- no doubt about finding pirate treasure -- I finished the hike and bid farewell to "his mountains" -- at least until spring.

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.