By the time I got the horses moved and a crippled bull hauled to the sale on that Thursday morning, it was no longer Thursday morning. Thursday afternoon was bearing down on me, and we still had a 500-plus-mile trip in front of us. To the surprise of nobody, my morning plans had been waylaid by various uncooperative critters and equipment. By 2 o’clock, however, we were on the road and on our way to southern Utah. The destination: a reunion with our kids and grandkids.
I hesitate to use the term family reunion because that seems to imply several generations over which there must certainly be a grand patriarch of some sort. This was just us and our kids and their kids. I’m not quite ready to take on the role of revered patriarch, so to me it was just a cool road trip. And though I initially shied away from the title of Grandpa because, you know, I’m not that old, my reticence melted like the foothills snow in an April rainstorm when I met my first grandchild a dozen years ago. Now, there isn’t a group of people in the world I’d rather be around than my grandkids. Of course, they’re all still young enough to think I’m a cool hang, but regardless of what their teen years may bring, the die is cast and the bonds are formed. They know I love them and somehow, reciprocation is unavoidable.
So, with the promise of some good times at the end of the road and despite a dreaded foray down I-15 through Utah’s now overpopulated Wasatch Front, I considered myself on the road to happiness. I absolutely hate the traffic through Salt Lake, and the stretch where the traffic is awful now extends several dozen miles farther than it did just a few years ago. As I sped through the mayhem among the crazies that we rural Idahoans have come to know as urban Utah drivers, I reminded myself that I’d made several trips through Dallas, Atlanta, Louisville and Nashville. I could surely survive Salt Lake and Provo.
As we descended farther south, past the chaos and into central Utah, I was flooded with memories, most of them fond ones, from the five years we’d spent in the ranch country of Millard County when we were just starting out with three of our five kids. As the sun set to my right out beyond the once-again-familiar west desert, I glanced to my left at the mountains on the east side of the valley where I’d spent a fair chunk of five summers cowboying and stumbling my way through learning how to be a responsible adult.
I was reminded of the dreadfully long days, many of them spent alone, gathering cows out of the draws, and pushing them up canyons and across ridges, cussing the evil she-devils when they’d sneak down the sidehills and into the merciless tangles of mahogany and gamble oak. It’s where I perfected and groomed my profanity addiction. Those recollections led me to reflect on the days of my own childhood and subsequently, the days of my kids’ youth spent doing the same thing in scattered remote locales in Utah, Nevada and finally, our beloved Idaho home. In the midst of those many drives, I doubt that I very often really fully appreciated the journey. Heck, not only did I not appreciate it, I probably, more accurately, loathed it. Trailing a jag of cantankerous, ungrateful cows in the gritty dust or soaking rain seldom offers much joy in the moment.
As we continued our drive south, past Kanosh and Beaver and into Iron County, a song I didn’t recognize, yet instantly relished, serendipitously flowed through the speakers. It was by country artist Cam. The chorus instantly resonated with the mood of my contented melancholy.
It's the wild unknown
It's a ball-and-chain
It's a no-end destination
We keep drivin' anyway
Is the future that we're chasin'
worth the right-nows that we miss
On this road to happiness?
I’ve often thought the “enjoy the journey” mantra is probably an overused cliché. The journey is often quite miserable. On the other hand, the journey is, perhaps just as often, underappreciated, the joys and benefits of which entirely missed. But, just like most of life, the journey, as well as the destination, is probably loaded with both good and bad, joy and misery. The thing is – neither is mutually exclusive, and too often, I believe, we’ve conditioned ourselves to believe that we can’t experience one in the proximity of the other.
Just like navigating urban Utah’s treacherous traffic on a trip to see the grandbabies or trailing 300 irascible cows through greasewood deserts or up rocky, overgrown canyons on the way to green, open meadows, despair need not control our ability to cherish happiness. There may not be much in this life that I can guarantee, but I can promise you that you’ll be crushed and disappointed on the “road to happiness.” But as long as you keep moving and keep looking, I can also promise that you’ll find the good, right there with the bad – sometimes in the very same place.
