The Apogee
For the last three years, we have ventured to Utah’s West Desert to shoot model rockets with several families. It’s a bit of a throwback to our own childhood, since both my partner and I built and launched rockets when we were young too. Back then, we sent those rockets into the skies of Texas from soccer fields and real estate for sale; this is a whole different level of landscape.
First you drive through the metropolis of Salt Lake City and just as the buildings fall away, you’re balanced on the low bridges that span the southern foot of the Great Salt Lake. Then onto a dirt road that narrows as the miles tick by. Half the drive is on this road, well maintained for where it goes, which is into the heart of the basin and range. There’s a military operation with appropriately forbidding signage and piles of tumbleweeds stacked on the chainlink, razor-wired fence.
Then it’s the just the road and the wild mustangs and some sheep and a campground near a Pony Express station. Imagining riding a horse across this desert with nothing but a buckskin pouch full of water is foundationally frightening - it’s impossible to determine whether the next range is 2, 20, or 200 miles away.
But at the campground there’s a water spigot and surprisingly nice firepits and, for at least this weekend, campsites full of friends. It’s on the shoulder of a hill going down into the “range” and there’s snowy mountains from Nevada in the distance. The clouds doff their caps from the mountaintops just long enough to nod at us and then cover once again.
After setting up our campsites, we set up the launcher and a table for repairs. We find the moments between the wind and spotty rain the children say “the range is hot” and count down 3-2-1. They run through the sagebrush and rabbitbush. They dodge the craggy pink granite and the holes in the ground occupied by snakes unwilling to drop their body temperatures by emerging on such a day. They chase and sometimes catch the rockets returning to earth.
But some rockets are lost. Wind makes trajectories inconsistent and the distances stretch longer than their legs can handle. Some we hunt for hours and locate, some we never find. Perhaps we'll encounter them next year, or maybe a curious stranger will happen upon that orange rocket fallen in the crack between stone and earth and prickly desert bushes. Maybe only the ranging sheep will find it and continue grazing.
Regardless, it is out there now being soaked and frozen and baked. Not yet forgotten but soon. But it was loved in its making and for those glorious seconds it flew to the clouds so low it touched them.
It's okay. It had a moment. Some of us don't even get that.
