Friday I took a group of young people out to do a hike and cook out in the hills near Fish Lake mountain. This was normal, I do something similar about 4 days a week with different groups. I discovered I'm a pretty good wilderness guide when I started guiding in the jungle many years ago, and with everything else I've done since I've moved here to Utah, it seems I always go back to guiding in some way.
This day as we were hiking from the program headquarters, east toward Fish Lake mountain, an older man drove by on our small dirt road in his pick up, and though we didn't know each other he stopped to talk to me and tell me about a place on the side of the mountain a few miles above where we were planning to go where his older brother - now deceased, had found a huge rock that had been hollowed out by nature, and where they had 70 years before made a kind of cabin attached to this hollow rock, and he said you still might find some of the cedar poles and some of the tie wire attached to them. I thanked him, and as he drove away I told the boys I was with what he had said. Their immediate response was, "Let's go for it" I said "Really? You guys are up for this adventure? Knowing we might or might not find this place and it will mean several extra miles of hiking up the mountain?" They unanimously assured me they were game.
We quickly hiked to the spot where we were planning to cook lunch. I taught them the ratio for making crepe batter - 1 liquid, 1 flour, 2 eggs, and also to prepare the right kind of fire and how to tip the frying pans to spread the batter and how to do the right wrist action to flip the crepes without having to use a spatula. We started with savory crepes - potato, ham and cheese filling topped with sour creme, then followed with raspberry jam filling for dessert. We quickly packed up, drank lots of water, and giving them all the directions I had been given, we chose a course and took off up the mountain.
The side of the mountain was blue with blue flax flowers, and dotted with the showy white prickly poppy flowers. Being June, the month when fawns are born here, the does had left their babies tucked away in hiding , and since we were far from any trails or roads we disturbed a few of the fawns from their hiding places, and watch fascinated as baby deer only twice the size of jackrabbits ran a little ways from us and found new spots to hide.
As we neared the area where the rock should be found, I gathered all the boys together and instructed them on staying within sight of each other as we entered the pinion juniper belt. It's not dense growth, but if you're not used to it, and even if you are, it kind of all looks the same when you're in there and a fellow can easily get turned around if you don't keep track of north and south etc.
We knew we were to follow a ridge of rocks along the mountain side. Only there turned out to be several ridges of rocks. We had gone quite a ways along two ridges and because our time was getting short, I told the boys that we would drop down to the ridge below us and circle back that direction. One boy shouted back that there was a ridge above him, and he had a really good feeling about it. I didn't have much confidence in his "feeling" but I told him we would the rest of us would stay where we were as a reference point for him - we couldn't see each other at that point, and that he could go ahead and check it out. Three minutes later I heard a very loud "Yes!" He guided us to the spot with his voice, and sure enough there it was, a huge hollowed out rock with some old poles in front on the ground with wires still attached. The old man had said they used to call it "The look out point" and it was obvious why when we climbed on top of the rock and could see the whole world from up there.
We were only able to stay about 10 or 15 minutes. Time was a factor. I chose our return route from up on the rock, designated one of the boys as the "sweep" meaning he would be in charge of coming behind everyone else and making sure no one was left behind, and also yelling to me up ahead if I needed to slow down for anyone.
We took off at a trot following narrow deer trails, up and down the hills, breaking out suddenly of the tree cover into the open, and continuing at a trot down to the dirt road where we started.
This was adventure. These boys are troubled youth, the kind you don't generally want your kids to hang out with, but as I told them - I would go on adventure with them any day.