Why Dandy Crossing? Obvious: because it was a dandy place to cross the river. So, one day in July 1953 we loaded the tow chain and the spare spare, the water cans and gas cans, the bedrolls and bacon and beans and boots into the back of the truck and bolted off. For the unknown. Well, unknown to us.

Discovered that, also unbeknownst to us, the pavement had been surreptitiously extended from Monticello down to Blanding while we weren’t looking, some twenty miles of irrelevant tar and gravel. A trifling matter? Perhaps. But I felt even then (thirty years ago) a shudder of alarm. Something alien was moving in, something queer and out of place in the desert.

At Blanding we left the pavement and turned west on a dirt track into the sweet wilderness. Wilderness? It seemed like wilderness to us. Till we reached the town of Green River 180 miles beyond, we would not see another telephone pole. Behind us now was the last drugstore, the final power line, the ultimate policeman, the end of all asphalt, the very tip of the monster’s tentacle.

We drove through several miles of pygmy forest—pinyon pine and juniper—and down into Cottonwood Wash, past Zeke’s Hole and onward to the crest of Comb Ridge. Again we stopped to survey the scene. But no turning back this time. While two of my friends walked down the steep and twisting road to remove rocks and fill in holes, I followed with the pickup in compound low, riding the brake pedal. Cliff on one side, the usual thousand-foot drop on the other. I held the wheel firmly in both hands and stared out the window at my side, admiring the scenery. My girl friend watched the road.

The valley of Comb Wash looked like a form of paradise to me. There was a little stream running through the bright sand, a grove of cottonwoods, patches of grass, the color-banded cliffs on either side, the woods above—and not a house in sight, not even a cow or horse. Eden at the dawn of creation. What joy it was to know that such places still existed, waiting for us when the need arose.

We ate lunch by the stream, under the cottonwood trees, attended by a few buzzing flies and the songs of canyon wren and pinyon jay. Midsummer: the cattle were presumably all up in the mountains now, fattening on larkspur and lupine and purple penstemon. God bless them—the flowers, I mean. The wine passed back and forth among the four of us, the birds called now and then, the thin clear stream gurgled over the pebbles, bound for the San Juan River (which it would not reach, of course; sand and evaporation would see to that). Above our heads an umbrella of living, lucent green sheltered us from the July sun. We enjoyed the shade as much as the wine, the birds and flies and one another.

For another twenty miles we drove through the pinyon-juniper woods, across the high mesa south of the Abajo Mountains. The road was rough, full of ruts and rocks and potholes, and we had to stop a few times, get out the shovel and do a little roadwork, but this was more a pleasure than otherwise. Each such stop gave all hands a chance to stretch, breathe deep, ramble, look—and see. Why hurry? It made no difference to us where nightfall might catch us. We were ready and willing to make camp anywhere. And in this splendid country, still untouched by development and industrialism, almost any spot would have made a good campsite.