Out in the desert they wandered

Once upon a midnight dreary…

13 people went out to play, two minivans carried the fun.

Geodes twinkled in every eye and glistened every hope.

We started an hour late,  not too bad really.

Cruising down a badly paved road near the city of Faust the first disaster struck.

Potholes.

One big enough to swallow a camel ate a tire on the second minivan.

Eight boys easily pulled out the spare and changed the tire, only one ranger stopped to give advice.

Rain was imminent but the sunset was beautiful

We continued the trek deep into the desert stopping at one of the Great Basin ranges known as Lookout! Pass to camp for the night.

The camping was wonderful

After a midnight stop by the local pet cemetery I retired to my tent to sleep some four hours.

At 4:40 am I awoke and wakened my sorrowing companions so that they might gaze into a cloudy sky.

There we saw a bright light speeding across the sky, t’was the Space Ship Endeavor docked with the International Space Station.

Seeing the lighten dawn we determined to climb a hill and welcome the day.

The clouds delayed the dawn so we found three trees for our morning fire.

Banana pancakes with chocolate chips brightened the pending division of our unlucky number.

Due to the lack of a spare, one carload had to sacrifice future adventure for a while. Six souls sacrificed the remain trip, although in the end their choice might have been wiser.

After a harrowing group picture at the Pony Express we went our gravely way.

A bumpy hour and a half later my group arrived at the bedding group of treasure.

Joyfully we dug, for hours, in the colored clay for rounded-crystalline balls

Gold fever hit some harder than others as one by one we resulted in lazily shifting through the wet clay.

At 3:30 we hit the road again, drifting slowly over the rocky roads.

I let someone else drive as three hours of sleep the night before overtook me.

I awoke to a miracle, our cell phones buzzed to life as we rocked into range.

The batteries were not strong but we were able to call out and cancel the appointments we were doomed to miss.

Seconds later the miracle became more apparent. We blew our tire.

We rolled to a stop, somewhere between two ranges in the Great Basin desert.

Okay, no big deal, we had already done this once before. Change the tire. Five minutes, tops.

45 minutes later the Mazda Anti-theft lug nut had defeated us.

Luckily Joey had AAA, we placed a call with one of the two cell phones which still had battery.

“What is your address?”

“Well, you see, the middle of nowhere doesn’t have a street address”

“Then what city are you in”

“Remember how I said middle of nowhere? Not in the city limits.”

The closest landmark we could give them was 10 miles away.

A passing car with a star wrench removed the tricky nut and we joyfully hung up on AAA and installed the spare.

As we lowered the jack our hearts hissed out along with the air in the tire.

Flat as desert around us.

I got back on the phone with AAA.

They took our plea just as my phone died. I realized that she had said that the tow truck would there in an hour.

We were more than an hour away from the closest…anything.

I called back with our last phone which had only one bar of battery remaining.

The AAA Operator looked up our call but refused to give us the phone number of the tow truck or tell us where it was coming from.

So we gave her the new number and settled in to wait.

Five minutes later she called back to tell us that tow trucks don’t visit nowhere, She gave us another number to call.

Mr Tow was less than enthusiastic. Same story with the other tow trucks within 100 miles.

A red-clad driver stopped and offered to give us his spare, it didn’t fit.

That was that. No spare, no tow truck. A cold drizzle penetrated our skin. It was time to scuttle the ship.

We called (on our last phone which had only one bar of battery left) my brother Isaac and gave him a list a people to call to come rescue us.

Soon our apartment complex was mobilized in our defense and our bishop was notified of our crisis.

Then another miracle happened in the form of a quiet savior named Matt.

He had also driven to the geode beds that day, but he was in a nine-passenger suburban by himself.

and he was from Orem.

If he had arrived 20 minutes later our rescue would have been on the road. 20 minutes earlier we would have still been waiting for a non-existent tow truck.

Matt drove all seven of us back to Provo, leaving our Mazda minivan in a ditch on the side of the road with a crippled spare and disbanding the Park Plaza rescue team.

We arrived home around 9 pm, tired, carless, but with an awesome story to tell.

 

The next day my dad drove to Provo with the car rescue kit. We determined to attend sacrament meeting before heading out.

All three speakers spoke on the prodigal son, saving the lost coin, or rescuing the lost sheep.

At the end of the meeting we sang

“Out in the desert they wander,
Hungry and helpless and cold;
Off to the rescue He hastens,
Bringing them back to the fold.”

I only made it two or three lines in. The bishopric met my eye with a grin. I proceeded to sink down in my chair, my ego resting somewhere near the liquid core of the earth.

As we left the meeting the first counselor came out and offered to drive us back out there in his large red truck. He informed us that is had been raining the night before and the roads were now full of potholes and soaked in mud.

We took him up on the offer and arranged a time to hasten to the rescue.

We used our morning to acquire a new tire (justified in that our van was stuck in the mire that Sunday morning) and eat a simple lunch of tuna and salmon.

That’s how I found myself hurtling across the west desert of Utah with my father, brother, bishop, and his first counselor.

It had snowed the night before leaving a trace on the van and a nice coating on our campsite.

We managed to install the new tire without much incident and returned home to South Jordan with no lasting damage save my reputation and ego.

I do not know why we had that adventure but I do feel like we were protected and guided through the experience. Our cell phones worked just long enough. Matt came with just the right equipment at just the right time. The tires were already worn and ready to be replaced. Best yet, our group of seven was galvanized a little tighter together with the promise of future friendship forged in common trying experience. How grateful I am to the generous adventurers who stopped to help us, the kindness of our singles ward bishopric, and the sanity and patience of good friends and family.

I hope this experience will better prepare me to sing that last verse of our sacrament meeting hymn.

“Green are the pastures inviting,
Sweet are the waters and “still”;
Lord, we will answer Thee gladly,
“Yes, blessèd Master, we will!
Make us Thy true under-shepherds,
Give us a love that is deep;
Send us out into the desert,
Seeking Thy wandering sheep.””