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Thanks, Dad, for your gift of
the San Rafael Swell
By Ashley
Schiller
September 15, 2008 | Once when I was in fourth grade,
my father repaired my Camping Ken's leg with real surgical
steel. It was then that I knew he was a genius. And
like most geniuses, he is a little crazy.
Although he's always willing to heal a wounded Ken
doll or repair a vehicle, he gets his real fix exploring
and creating camp sites throughout the San Rafael Swell,
a lonely desert located in southeastern Utah.
Most people don't care much about the Swell. For my
Dad, it may as well be the Garden of Eden. The "Secret
Camp" is his most advanced camp site and has been years
in the making. If you make it to the site without rolling
your vehicle, you will find a lovely tent pad, impeccable
stone fire ring with a grill, a gazebo and the beloved
"outhouse without walls."
This famous outhouse is supported by a mostly-buried
Oscar-the-Grouch-style garbage can my father pillaged
from our old home. About six inches of the silver rim
stick out above the surface and an old toilet seat is
attached to the top. The view from the outhouse overlooks
a wide valley shadowed by seven rusty plateaus. If you
happen to be utilizing the facility in the early morning,
you may see wild horses.
My father loves exploring the Swell on our dirt bikes.
If he had lived in the 19th century, he would have undoubtedly
been one of those guys who lived in the wilderness and
mapped out unknown country. There are more than 2,000
square feet of wash canyons, buttes and gorges to discover,
so this pursuit will likely continue until his death.
Ideally, he would die in the Swell, surrounded by all
of his children and grandchildren who had learned to
truly love the geological wonder. His deepest desire
is to open the eyes of others to its beauty. It's so
much a part of him, I don't think a person can completely
love my dad without being partly in love with the Swell
also.
He does everything he can to make my mom like camping
there. But she just doesn't like camping, period. She
is a pristine woman, a modern-day Scarlett O'Hara who
frankly doesn't give a -- well, you know (she would
never say such a naughty word). She keeps herself even
cleaner than our house, which is known as "the museum."
She wears more stylish clothes than I do and has maybe
300 pieces of jewelry coordinated by color in her dresser
drawer. Camping is just not her thing. And even after
my Dad finishes the shower he is building at the Secret
Camp, or buys her the perfect four-wheeler, she still
won't like it. But no one has a chance of convincing
him.
Honestly, I didn't always love camping at the Swell
either. Sometimes my Dad would get a little carried
away with our explorations and we would get lost or
barely make it back to camp before running out of fuel.
Once we did run out of fuel, and I had to wait alone
for him for two hours in the middle of the desert while
he went back to get the truck.
As I hugged the meager shade offered by some unconquerable
cedar not yet suffocated by the thirsty sand, I thought
how unfair my life was. I was angry at him for his poor
planning and for dragging me out there again. "Stuff
like this always happens and he never changes," I thought,
feeling very bad for myself. I didn't care about the
San Rafael Knob or Family Butte or the abandoned Lucky
Strike mine. I wanted to go to Disneyland like every
other kid I knew.
As I grew older, I slowly began to realize that my
Dad's quirks provided unrivaled entertainment and that
I did indeed love the Swell.
I lived in southern Spain for a year and a half, serving
as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. I mostly only communicated with my family via
e-mail and letters. My Dad began to take a large yellow
notepad on his trips to the Swell and document the whole
trip for me. Sometimes the letters were six pages long,
telling me absolutely everything he did.
Some of my favorite letters described the atrocities
of The Rat Wars, which described the process of exterminating
some precocious pack rats that had to nerve to move
into the gazebo. My dad placed "Happy Meals" (rat poison)
at various locations throughout their den, eventually
ridding the Secret Camp of its unwelcome vermin.
Those letters were the most cherished of my mission.
They made me laugh when the work was heavy. They reminded
me of the sweetness of my life and the goodness of God.
His words often brought me to tears with laugher or
tenderness. I began telling those around me about his
current adventures and all the crazy things we had done
in the past. I realized that I truly had fallen in love
with both the Swell and my father.
It wasn't until I went to Spain that I truly learned
to appreciate the richness of my childhood.
NW
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