My companion (Dan) had yet to arrive at camp but he had texted me minutes ago to let me to let me know that he was on-track to make our 5p.m. rendezvous. Dan, a close friend for over 45 years, was traveling south from his and his wife’s home in Bozeman, Montana while I, a resident of Pinetop, Arizona, had been traveling nearly due north for the past two days. Mine had been easy driving days of less than 325 miles per day.

Nonetheless, I had cabin fever -- pickup truck cabin fever, that is. So, despite the drizzle, I decided I would walk along the Rim of the Gorge for an hour or so, given that that was the amount of time I had to “kill.” I chuckled to myself at the use of the term; recalling a line from Walden where Thoreau passionately states: “As if you could kill time, without injuring eternity.”

Back in High School (when I had initially begun a lifetime of periodic camping and backpacking with Dan), I had first read Thoreau and his words and ideas had struck me like a clap of thunder. Back then, Dan and I enthusiastically traded books on a regular basis: I read -- and then gave hi --m Walden which he swapped it for Hesse’s “Siddhartha;” he finished “The Firmament of Time” by Eiseley and I exchanged it for Ardery’s “African Genesis.” To this day, we still occasionally barter books, although more frequently, we just recommend titles, given the physical distance between us.

Donning first a wool sweater and then a rain jacket, I flipped the jacket’s hood over my baseball cap and set off at a brisk clip. The cold, fresh air took me out of my sluggish, driving-mode mental state and, if I wasn’t suffering from a sore back, I would have positively sprinted the 50 yards to the Rim. I reached the overlook soon enough and, given my perpetually aggrieved nature, thought: “Yes, it is an amazingly beautiful gorge but I wonder what it looked like before they dammed it.”

When it comes to the way we humans live within our natural world, I can’t help myself, I tend to think along the lines of David Brower, who once caustically quipped: “All environmental victories are temporary; all defeats, permanent.” I am, however, the first to admit , if I didn’t acknowledge that I am an equal partner in humankind’s treatment of this planet, well, then I would deserve to be branded with a Scarlet “H” (as in Hypocrite).

Despite the drizzle, both ravens and turkey vultures were on the wing. Hunger waits not for sunny skies. What a view they must have -- one moment atop a column of air as high as a thunderhead’s crown, then to swoop low and survey the sea-green, flattened river from a distance of less than the span of their own wing tips.

I’m not one to fear heights, assuming I’m on a stable perch. So, I stepped from one flat boulder to the next until my view of the abyss was as wide and all-encompassing as could be. Since there was no one about, I spread my arms, splayed my fingers and imagined for a moment I was a soaring vulture. (There are probably some who would say I have the disposition of one.)

I admit to occasional gloomy thoughts and here, on the threshold of a doubtlessly calamitous fall, I soon found myself wondering about those who would swan dive their way into eternity. I can’t really imagine myself of such a mind but, nonetheless, given the choice between vaulting from the Verrazzano Bridge versus an unhurried and graceful leap from a mighty precipice in the wild country, I have absolutely no doubt as to which I would choose. To put it another way, I would rather fly with the eagles -- if just for a few seconds -- than thrash around with some nasty pigeons flapping about amongst rusty, grimy girders.

I stepped back from the ledge and commenced hiking along the Rim. Occasionally, I would turn to look inland, back toward the mountains and once, upon doing so, I noticed a small group of bighorn sheep foraging in the camping area.

On the drive here, once I had left the infernal Vernal area, an area of mostly rock and scrub, I had quickly climbed into Ponderosa and Doug fir forests. Here and there I had seen deer and elk and I figured that once I got close enough to Flaming Gorge, I might see sheep. And so I was happy to see that this little band of ewes were accommodating of my presence and I watched them through my binoculars as they fed on the rain-enriched grasses of the campground. The sheep were shedding and sported patchy, bedraggled coats. They nibbled on the plants like urbanites eating hors d’oeuvres at a catered cocktail party.

Soon, an hour had passed so I made my way back to my truck. Sure enough, Dan had arrived and, since there was now a break in the rain, was already setting up his tent. We happily greeted each other and gave the obligatory, awkward, guy hug before setting into a brief and animated recounting of our drives. Dan had already taken in the view from the Rim and we both agreed that we were incredibly lucky to have such a grand site all to ourselves.

Neither Dan nor I are the type to normally stay in a formal campground but, since we hadn’t ever been to the Flaming Gorge area before, Dan figured it would be best if he booked in advance a campsite for the first two nights. Then, if we found it not to our liking, we could seek out a “dispersed camping” area and spend our final two evenings there. We had no specific hikes planned -- we just wanted to keep the friendship alive and knew that the best way to do that was to spend our time in a place where mountains, rivers and forests all came together.

A tip to any who would visit America’s famous National Parks (or their near equivalents): Pick a time when the weather is at its most inclement and you might find that you get to have the park all to yourself. Such was the case for our trip to that portion of the Green River Gorge that is administered as a “National Recreation Area.”

It was simply inconceivable to us that we should have such good fortune as to find the official campgrounds virtually devoid of fellow campers. A few showed up over the following days but even those, once they discovered the Forest Service was having water quality problems with their ice ruptured water pipes, cut their losses and high-tailed it to more full-service campgrounds. Since we had thought we might move from formal campgrounds to dispersed camping, we had each brought plenty of water so the fact that the local spigots were shut down didn’t faze us in the slightest.

Over the course of the next four days, we hiked many miles under gray and threatening skies. Often, we hiked in gentle rains. We took an 8- mile hike along the Green River below the dam that was utterly stunning. We marched a 9- mile roundtrip trail from the Rim down to the unpopulated shores of the lake-like portion of the river and skipped stones along its rocky banks. We sojourned near and far from camp along the Gorge’s Rim and took in one spectacular vista after another. All of it, we did with nary a tourist in sight. In fact, of the few tourists we encountered, there was a couple from France and ,since Dan had long ago lived a year in France and spoke their language fluently, they all had a chummy chat which I could tell made the couple less homesick and more inclined to marvel at our American wild lands.

And when we weren’t hiking, we enjoyed campfires made large enough to withstand the fickle weather and its occasional impromptu showers. There was no danger of a spark igniting the normally xeric habitat (the Ponderosa, pinyon and juniper reminded me that this particular Utah biome was not really so different from the Pinetop area) and we had brought abundant dry wood from each of our homes so, from approximately 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. every night, we had crackling fires to take away the chill and inspire many a free-wheeling conversation.

Mostly we talked about our respective families and friends that we had in common from the old days. We also discussed our recent adventures in wildlands, both domestic and foreign. Not infrequently, we commiserated at the current state of the American political landscape. We agreed that we seemed to have entered a new era of what Hunter S. Thompson dubbed “a generation of swine.”

Yet, when one is outdoors, in wild lands, surrounded by firs hundreds of years old and rocks of untold eons,