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I’d already identified the Robbers Roost area east of Hanksville for my Saturday adventure, but I hadn’t picked out a specific canyon. I wanted to position myself for the Saturday-night rendezvous, and the Roost was ideal—two hours from Moab and two hours from Goblin Valley. Since I wouldn’t be back in the vicinity of a grocery or convenience store for two days, I needed to stock up on water and food before I left civilization for the weekend. So I wouldn’t have to carry the entire guidebook with me, I photocopied the pages of three canyons in the Robbers Roost that offered the best opportunities for narrow slots and petroglyphs. Topping off my gas tank, I was ready for an extended desert foray. I left Moab in the late evening, driving north to the interstate. I set the cruise control and read through the canyon-guide photocopies. Piecing together two descriptions of adjoining canyons, I created a unique loop that would take me on a fifteen-mile bike ride from my truck at the Canyonlands National Park trailhead to the head of Blue John Canyon, through two narrow and deep slots, over a twenty-meter rappel, and out to the confluence with Horseshoe Canyon, past the petroglyph alcoves of the Great Gallery, finally returning to my vehicle. A thirty-mile day. I figured if I started by nine A.M., I would be out by five P.M.

At mile 162 on I-70, I exited for Green River, recognizing the sign warning travelers that the next available gas and food services were 110 miles to the west. I stopped at a convenience store in Green River and considered whether to call Brad and Leah for a final confirmation on the Goblin Valley party. Because of the late hour, I deferred the call, thinking I would get in touch the next afternoon from Hanksville. Brad would be getting up early in the morning to ski, and I didn’t want to wake them. I bought two bottles of Gatorade in the store and then made a lap up and down Green River’s main street until I found the Bureau of Land Management access road heading south out of town.

At the southwest edge of Green River, I pass the empty parking lot of a yellow aluminum-sided building, the Emery County sheriff’s office. After hooking a right on Airport Road, I drive under the interstate into a landscape of obscurity. Not a single light perforates the absolute blackness of the San Rafael Desert.

I drive over weeds growing obstinately in the unstriped and roughly paved road, wondering if their presence is a sign of the tenacity of life or of the laxness of county maintenance. Slowing at an intersection, I turn left onto the graded dirt road leading into the Roost. It’s just after ten P.M. A BLM sign indicates that the Horseshoe Canyon Trailhead is forty-seven miles ahead through the desert darkness. My truck obliterates a tumbling tumbleweed as I pass a yellow triangular sign cautioning, ROADS MAY BE IMPASSABLE DUE TO STORMS. I get the feeling I’m headed out into nowhere. Jackrabbits dart onto the road in my headlights, racing me, scurrying left then right, then heading straight down the road in front of my tires before dashing back into the hardscrabble badlands.

Cresting a swale at high speed, my headlights drop off into an arroyo, and I nearly follow the beams into the gully before I blindly swerve left and find the road cut again. The rear of my truck fishtails madly for the first of many times. Dozens of curves, swoops, and sandy washes try to catapult my truck off the road, but each time I correct my tack and make the save. I feel like I’m driving an off-road rally: skidding my tires through the corners, kicking up dust clouds, accelerating after the curves, launching over humps in the terrain. Stuff’s flying all over the place in my cab as the rock music on the stereo eggs me on. The road is like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. I’m driving with my brights on to help me anticipate the curves hidden on the backside of the hilltops, but they barely help. I could slow down, except I’m averaging only 30 mph as it is, I’m tired, and I want to get to sleep before