Our son, Bridger, was two weeks old
when my wife, Turin, and I decided
to take a road trip. Two weeks later,
we bought a 1988 Ford TransVan, a
converted RV that we dubbed Queen,
and left our home in Los Alamos, New
Mexico.
I had grown up in Oregon, camping
or hiking or canoeing every weekend
with my parents and older brother,
Garrett. At 33, I had worked as a wild-
land firefighter and as a filmmaker,
traveling the world making adventure
TV. I’d stepped on a deadly viper in
Belize, been held up by guerrillas with
AK-47s in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, and dodged a snap-
ping crocodile in Papua New Guinea.
Somehow loose bowels had been my
worst affliction.
Turin’s lust for adventure matched
mine. Since our wedding seven years
before, she had taken 14 interna-
tional trips, some for her work as a
researcher at Los Alamos National
Laboratory, but mostly for fun. Fun
for her is rafting 145 miles through
the Alaskan wilderness, which she did
during her first trimester.
On our road trip, we shivered inCanyonlands National Park, went
canyoneering in Utah’s San Rafael
Swell, and surfed on the Oregon coast.
Bridger wasn’t smiling yet, but we
have photos of him in the West’s most
spectacular places looking, as we in-
terpreted his expressions, happy. He
stayed that way until a few days before
we reached Yosemite National Park,
where we would meet up with my
family on the last stop on our month-
long trip. Then he got a little colicky.
My brother has lived in El Portal,
California, near Yosemite, for about
seven years. Garrett manages the
park’s vegetation—all 748,436 acres.
His wife, Erin, is also a botanist. My
recently retired parents had moved
into their RV, which was parked in
Garrett and Erin’s driveway when previousspread:^ kristianbell/shutterstock^ (snake).^
inset^ andall^ additionalimages:^ courtesy^ kyle^ dickmanO
102 april 2019
Reader’s Digest
Our road trip took us hiking in Utah’s
Canyonlands National Park (inset, previous
page) and to Pacific City, Oregon.