The Need to Be Outside!2 min read time

Well, I know I promised to bring you home to an Idaho Spring for this blog. But…on my way back from Joshua Tree, there’s so much more to explore! And my thirst to be outside has not been quenched. So I decided to take you to a couple of favorite spots for Chasing Spring in the desert.

The Southern Utah Desert is a very special place. And that’s an understatement. We’ve been going there as young adventurous adults, as a young family with children, and now again as older adults, for at least 40 years. We are looking forward to continuing the tradition with our grandchildren soon. Forty years into our explorations of this place and we still find new unchartered territory every time we go.

Fisher Towers just outside of Moab Utah

There’s something about the vast, open and very clear spaces that calls me back nearly every spring. By March I am feeling the effects of cabin fever: that cooped up, closed in, contracted state one gets to in a looooong winter. NEEED to get outside! But I do get outside, all winter, with my love of nordic and alpine skiing, I try to get out there every day. So I guess it’s more than that, it’s a need to LIVE outside. Hard to do in snowstorms and freezing temps. Hence, the desert’s siren call. It’s tricky though. Tricky to find the right window of spring-like weather. I’ve been snowed on plenty of times in the Utah desert.

Leading Lines in Zion, with a little snow for accent

Regardless of whether it snows or not, I’m there. I’m living in it. I’m expanding into those vast open spaces. Finding stillness. Now that’s sweet. It is the essence of these desert spaces, its Spirit.

Park Avenue in Arches Nat’l Park

And even though it’s a desert, there is plenty of water. In fact, there are rivers of it!  As I described in The Ultimate River Trip blog, they are a spectacular highway through wilderness seen only by a few who answer the challenges unique to running small desert rivers. Like this one, the Dirty Devil.

The Dirty Devil Drag (dragging the boat, that is)

And waterfalls too:

Calf Creek Falls in the Escalante Wilderness

After a couple of weeks or more in the desertscapes of Utah, I find I can return to indoor living with a sated heart. But the Need to Be Outside comes again soon, only now it’s becoming a much easer proposition in Idaho.

Living Outside on the Dirty Devil River