Last year, my daughter and I (and some other family and friends) did a lot of camping. It was something that was difficult to do while my wife was sick, so it felt like it was a long time coming.

During the beginning of my burnout, I started getting this itch to get out somewhere truly alone — somewhere nobody could reach me and I could just sit with my own thoughts for a while. I decided I was going to go on a solo backpacking trip. The problem was, it was November, and most of our mountain areas were already buried in snow. I also wanted somewhere that would be, in my mind, "solo backpacking training wheels" — so I picked Antelope Island, a little island sitting on the East side of the Great Salt Lake. It has some mountainous terrain, but it's low enough that snow wasn't an issue yet. It's close to civilization, cell service is spotty but present, and the most dangerous thing out there is supposed to be the bison.

I ended up being spectacularly wrong about the "training wheels" part. It was an incredible trip and exactly what I needed, but there were a couple of moments where I genuinely considered hitting the emergency button on my Garmin. As you can see below, I had some unexpected visitors...