Cornering Consciousness

Two weeks to go before Summer semester begins and there’s a break in my days, a perfect time for a quick trip to knock off some bucket list items, like the Shafer Trail, Valley of the Gods, Moki Dugway, Halls Crossing and a bonus – the Burr Trail. Other things had come together as well, the Tiger for one, and the right gear for this 902 mile trip in three days, from 1200 feet to almost 10,000, 56F degrees to 103. After living and riding in Southern Utah for twenty years it’s a switch to start my travels now from the Wasatch Front with cooler temps that tease you into thinking status quo on weather conditions and temperatures, all of which are amplified on a motorcycle. The Tiger is packed for the range of temps mentioned above, along with gear for the random squalls that pop up down south. My route south took me through Emigration Canyon, over Parley’s to Heber, through Starvation State Park to Duchesne, on to Green River and then to the Canyonlands National Park turn...

Scale is as elusive sometimes as color. Your brain thinks it has it dialed in and the light changes or another contrast or scope obliterates your original references and you're left to sort it all out again. I wish I could just let it be. Some of us humans are embedded with a primordial drive that tries to makes sense of things including our relationship with the environment and when that relationship is diminished on the human side, far be it for us to admit our own insignificance. I believe that's the key to peace. I'm puny and I'm fine with that. Try to fit scale to something as transparent as the wind and admitting defeat is more difficult, at least for me, and such was the demise of our first big outing in this Montero. I had already logged ten thousand miles on this '98 Montero in the last four months and had a reasonable amount of trust in its mechanical integrity. Purchased with 121k miles, I did all the maintenance necessary to baseline its s...