Cirrus clouds stretched thinly across the blue morning skies, and a warm sun reflected off our white Jeep as we followed a winding backroad through the great red rocks of the Front Range.

We kept the windows rolled down to keep the air cool, fresh, and smelling of wildflowers and fresh spring grass, and bags full of snacks, waters, and sodas shifted ever-so-often in the backseat. Dad kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the gear stick, while I had one hand resting on the windowsill, and the other clasped around an ice cold bottle of water. 

Life was good. 

Under the Jeep’s rattling and roar of the wind, I heard a faint, peculiar buzzing near my right shoulder. At first, I ignored it (it was 7:30 in the morning, so I was still groggy as all hell) till it stopped. But, when I heard it again, I just had to diagnose the noise. 

“You hearin’ a buzzing, Dad?” I asked first. 

“No, why?” he replied. 

“Cuz I keep hearing buzzing over to my right…” I answered just as my eyes drifted over to my right shoulder. 

Perched on my shoulder like a parrot was a fucking yellowjacket wasp. 

“OH SHIT!” I startled then froze. 

“What?! What?!” my dad began to freak out too. 

“There’s a wasp, there’s a wasp, there’s a wasp and itscomingfuckin’closeritsgonnabitemeohmygod!” I panicked mostly incoherently.

Thankfully, my dad spotted the wasp and quickly flicked it off my shoulder before it crawled under my hoodie. Crisis adverted. Oh, and I was now fully awake. 

“My God, you’re such a little wuss!” my dad laughed, “It was just a little wasp.”

“It was just a little wasp?!” I whined between panicked breaths.

“Yeah,” my dad shook his head, “Wasp stings suck but crashin’ the jeep would suck more.” 

“You’ve… got a point…” I trailed off as I reached for my water. 

“I might have to revoke your Redneck card after that.” My dad continued to taunt, laughing to himself still.

“Ha ha, very funny…” I rolled my eyes. 

We fell silent as we got on the highway, and the wind became too loud to talk over. It had been a few weeks since I last rode in the jeep, and during those few weeks away, my dad had put in quite a lot of work in preparation for the off-roading season. Aside from new tires, my dad had cleaned up the driveshaft and replaced a few rusty nuts and bolts holding the front driveshaft to the yoke. He had also replaced the struts, bought a portable air compressor, and strapped some new “oh shit” handles to the roll-cage inside the jeep. Thanks to my dad’s work, the Jeep no longer death-wobbled at 60 miles per hour, though it was still louder than a jet engine especially with the windows rolled down. 

Soon (thankfully), we arrived in Idaho Springs. We pulled into an empty parking lot, whipped out our phones, and began to plan our journey. It was exceptionally warm and dry in the mountains, so we weren’t concerned about mud or snow. Plus, the town was teeming with off-road toys. It seemed like everyone with a Jeep or a dirtbike had come to Idaho Springs from Denver to raise hell. The chances of us getting lost and dying a horrible death were pretty low. 

“What do you think about taking Virginia Canyon Road to Two Brothers Road, then driving that till we find Bald Mountain Road, which should turn to dirt and take us all the way to Yankee Hill…” Dad asked. 

“Works for me.” I shrugged, “I’m just along for the ride.”

“Ok, can you remember 1-7-5-1? That’s the trail that takes us to Yankee Hill. Cuz, I sure as hell ain’t gonna remember it.”

“Yup. Got it down!” I smiled. 

“Alright, let’s do this! Oh, and play some music through the Blutooth.” Dad shouted. 

“Hell ya!”

Onto the steep, mountain backroads we began, nodding our heads to the song “Curse of the Cajun Queen” by The Legendary Shack Shakers, hyped up and ready to conquer the mountains in our old, rusty YJ once again!

The drive on the paved, winding roads was easy. While Dad kept the jeep going, I leaned out the window to take in the sights and smells of the mountains I was born and raised to love. Remnants of Colorado's rich mountain history were everywhere. The road we were on was once a well-traveled mule trail. Entrances to mineshafts were still clearly visible in the rock right alongside the road. Many had long since collapsed, but a few were still too deep for the sun to shine completely through. Rusted pieces of ancient mining equipment were still scattered on the side of the road. And, every quarter mile or so, we'd come across old mining tailings that had poured down the side of the mountains, some with ponderosas rising up out of them.

Even older history was visible, too. Before European settlers encroached on Colorado's gold-rich mountains, the Mouache band of the Ute tribe primarily resided in the area of the mountains my Dad and I were exploring. Many of the trails my Dad and I would travel that day were initially carved out by the Indigenous population hundreds of years before the first white settlers arrived. They, along with the Arapahoe tribe, were the first people to find and establish what is now called the Indian Hot Springs, nearby Idaho Springs. They considered (and still do consider) the mountains of Colorado sacred. And, I can see why.  

Out of all the places around the world I've been to and lived in, those Rocky Mountains and the red rocks to the east will forever be my favorite place to be. Those rocks and those mountains are millions, if not billions, of years old. They seem to have been specially crafted by God Himself. There's nothing quite like laying one's hand on rocks and landscapes that have virtually been unchanged for millions, if not billions of years. Those rocks, that land, has remained virtually the same since man still had a tail and lived in trees somewhere in modern-day Africa, seven-million-or-so years ago. 

As Dad and I ascended further and further up the mountain roads, I sat transfixed on how the layers of mountain rock seemed to move like waves as we drove by. Within those layers weren't just deposits of valuable metals and minerals. There were probably countless fossils left behind by life that went extinct millions of years ago, smashed between those layers and layers of slate, granite, and clay. 

And there I was, twenty-one years old, riding up those ancient mountains in a 1992 Jeep, feeling ancient myself. In a strange, strange sort of way. I know I'm only twenty-one years old, but I often feel like I'm ninety, emotionally at least. I guess Cystic Fibrosis does that to a person, among other things. 

But, I digress. 

We crested one of the many mountains and paused to take in the scenery from the top. A cool wind hissed through the Ponderosas, and a nearby Magpie added its gravelly call to the ambience. Dad and I stepped out into the sun to appreciate where we were. Together, we stood just a foot or so from a near-vertical dropoff into the Ponderosas below, and Dad pointed out a small, distant ski mountain. 

"You see that little bare patch of snow on that mountain?" he asked. 

"Yeah?"

"That's Echo mountain. Wanna give skiing another shot there? It's an easy run!"

"Nah, I'm good." I shook my head. 

"Oh c'mon!" Dad teased, "You can't be that bad at skiing. Just give it one more try. I'm sure you'll figure it out." 

"Last time I went skiing, I slid all the way down the mountain in Breckinridge in the pizza position and couldn't walk for an hour." 

"Well, unlike Clarke, I'm not just gonna stick you on the lift and send you down the mountain without some practice." my dad rolled his eyes. 

"Fine. I will think about skiing this coming season." I muttered. 

"Yes!" my dad shouted, his voice echoing through the mountains and scaring off the annoying Magpie, "I will get you a pair of skis for this coming season, too. I'll spend some money on them so you'll feel bad if you don't use them."

"Wait? What?" I glared. 

My dad laughed and headed back into the jeep, never clarifying his promise to buy me expensive skis to guilt-trip me into trying skiing again. 

The jeep rattled and roared to life just as I slammed my door shut, and we continued on our journey back down the mountain. After a few hairpin turns, we rounded a wide bend and came across an abandoned mine quarry, with white and yellow shale tailings nearly burying half of the structure. 

"Behold!" my dad began, "Pewabic mountain!"

"What mountain?!" I raised my eyebrows. 

"Pewabic mountain." Dad replied. 

"Oh. I thought you called it something else..." I giggled. 

I could feel the disappointment in my dad's eyes as he gave me a serious side glare. He then reached to turn the Blutooth speaker up till all we could hear was Ray Wylie Hubbard singing "Outlaw Blood", over the rattling Jeep and roaring wind. I sat back and rested my right arm on the windowsill, knocking my fist against the metal door to the beat of the music. 

The road soon turned from washboarded dirt to cracked and potholed asphalt, and the thick Ponderosas and Grand Firs cleared up revealing a mostly abandoned mining town. Some structures were reduced to rubble from years of neglect and rough weather, but many still stood, though barely. Of course, Dad and I had to stop and explore a little bit, though we still obeyed the bullet-laden No Trespassing signs stuck to nearly every post and doorframe we saw. We may have been the only two living beings within a ten mile radius, but it wasn't worth the risk of being shot at by some shotgun-brandishing mountain man to explore some of those rickety mining buildings further, no matter how tempting it was. 

Soon after we paused for a moment in Central City to eat a snack and rest, we drove onto a dirt road that cut down the middle of a very old (and probably very haunted) graveyard.

"How many dead people do you suppose are in there?" Dad smirked.