Note: I'm not quite sure what to title this piece. I'm torn between these titles:

"Shitbox Shenanigans"

"Just Jeep Things"

"A Wild Jeep in its Natural Habitat"

"That's not Our Tow Strap, Is It?"

"That's not the Clutch, is it?"

"Snow Wheelin"

"Whose Bad Idea Was This?"

"Where the hell even are we?"

Under the roof of my front porch, I sat cross-legged with a mug of hot green tea (sweetened with lots of honey) in my hands and my phone in my lap blaring out the local news, a warming sun burning off the morning dew from the foliage. Nearby, in the giant blue spruce guarding my driveway, a small red-headed house finch was perched on a limb, chirping occasionally. A handful of bees zipped across my lawn, busily pollinating the damn dandelions I couldn’t get rid of, instead of paying any attention to my scraggly apple tree just feet away. Across the road, groups of tennis players loudly practiced in the courts, disrupting the otherwise quiet ambience of the early summer morning. Every now and then, a car would quietly pass by.

But, the familiar distant rumble of an engine caught my ears long before I saw it. Almost immediately, I finished the last of my tea, leaving the blue ceramic mug on the small glass table next to me (I’d already locked the front door, so I figured it would be safe to leave the mug outside, under a roof, till I returned hours later), and stood up with my essential things. 

“Phone? Check. Wallet? Check. Charger pack? Check. Snacks? Check…” I listed in my mind just as my dad’s weathered 1992 YJ came barrelling around the corner, coming a little too close to my Xterra for comfort. 

I approached the vehicle with a cheerful grin and threw open the passenger-side door to get in. 

“Ya ready to break this thing in?” my dad asked with a shit-eating grin stretched across his face. 

“Of course!” I answered as I clambered into the jeep and tossed my stuff into the backseat. 

I expected us to speed off, but my dad instead got out of the idling jeep. I watched him through the rear-view mirror as he ducked behind my Xterra, and emerged a moment later with my D-ring hitch, which he then installed on the jeep. Dad got back into the jeep announcing that he was stealing my hitch until further notice, and I just shrugged. 

“As long as I get it back in the winter, I’m cool with that.” I said. 

With that, we headed off. Unlike last time I rode in the jeep, it was much less shaky, but still louder than someone ripping ass in the middle of an exam. 

“Ya like how smooth it is now?” my dad shouted over the rumbling.

“Yeah, it feels great!” 

“I should’ve done this sooner! Y’know, before the tire fell off...” My dad rambled. 

Indeed, just a couple weeks before, the front passenger’s side tire fell off while my dad was driving through his neighborhood. I wasn’t with him, but it turns out the vibrations of the unstable jeep shook out all of the lug nuts from that one tire, and loosened the others. My dad managed to find just enough of the fallen nuts to make it home in one piece. Miraculously, almost no damage was dealt to the jeep despite it riding on the rotor for a good twenty feet or so.

Of course, my dad got to work right away to fix the tire and resolve the unnecessary vibrations. He did an impressive job doing so! But, I’ll admit, I was a little more nervous than usual in the jeep knowing that story, especially when we merged onto the highway and followed it into the mountains. That jeep wasn’t built for speed, but we were still hauling ass. I was amazed as the speedometer ticked all the way up to 75 mph and we hadn't started death wobbling. Of course, by then it was far too loud to talk. So, dad and I just rode without speaking, nervous excitement hanging in the air between us. Much like the scent of dust, oil, gasoline, and pine trees.

I really had no idea what lay ahead of us that day. All I knew was my dad rounded up a friend or two, and we were going to do some early-season off-roading. Based on that, I figured we’d ride near and/or above the tree line, hitting waist-high snowdrifts, washed-out and/or entirely wiped out trails, fallen trees, and all sorts of hazards and death-traps. I supposed someone had a winch (we didn’t), but wasn’t entirely sure. We didn’t really have any recovery equipment ourselves. We forgot the tow straps in my Xterra. All we really had besides D-rings was a shovel and a hi-jack, and perhaps a quarter can of WD40. Nothing very useful without tow straps when it came to getting ourselves unstuck (getting stuck was inevitable). 

In other words, I was about to be in my element. After over fourteen months of abstinence from danger and adrenaline, I was back to doing one of my most cherished activities; stupid redneck shit in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, enduring misery and anxiety with loved ones, hardly assured by the fact that the adventure would be enjoyable only when I returned home safe and sound. Until then, I’d be grinding my teeth and cussing like an ox driver, not entirely sure if I’d make it home before dusk unscathed. 

While we were charging up the highway, fighting traffic caused by a herd of bighorn sheep hugging the granite mountainside just feet above the road, my dad bragged about how his wife was convinced we would get hopelessly lost in the wilderness, and/or get clobbered to death by an angry mama moose. On the surface, I laughed. But, deep down inside, I was starting to freak out a bit (as I do before anything slightly sketchy or dangerous). 

I was haunted by images and stories of off-roading, hiking, and hunting gone horrifically wrong, as well as the worry that I might actually run into an angry mama moose. It was calving season after all. Our off-road shitbox wouldn’t protect us much from 800 pounds of raging retribution. Let alone whatever the hell we were about to do that day.