Matt

I'm just telling you what happened to me and my two friends in the Utah desert in late September a few years ago.

If you need everything to have a neat explanation or fit neatly into your worldview, you're probably going to think I'm lying.

I wish I was.

I grew up in Salt Lake and the desert was just always… there.

Background.

You drive through it to get to Moab or Zion or Lake Powell.

You see photos of Delicate Arch, tourists crowding around it for sunset, all that.

But what most people don't see are the huge stretches of nothing in between.

No services, no lights at night, dirt roads that go on for hours and don't show up on Google Maps.

That's where this happened.

It started as a bros trip.

The kind of plan you make half-joking until someone actually pulls up the weather and you realize there's no reason not to go.

It was me, Ryan, and Miguel.

I'd known Ryan since middle school.

He's the kind of guy who collects hobbies.

Rock climbing, astrophotography, overlanding, you name it.

He's the one who had the lifted Tacoma with all the recovery gear and the big rooftop tent.

so most of our adventures kind of revolved around whatever he wanted to try next.

Miguel was a friend from work.

Quieter, but he had this dry, dark sense of humor that made everything feel a little less serious.