For the one year anniversary of Ian’s passing, I returned to the meadow below Hesperus where the search took place.

When deciding what to do and where to be on the year mark, there were feelings of resistance and avoidance when I thought of returning to Hesperus.

Then I remembered the years that followed my dad’s death. I spent four, maybe five years (okay maybe seven years) avoiding grief. I did a fantastic job distracting myself through extensive traveling, partying, and challenging outdoor adventures.

Eventually, I learned that adding shame and regret into unprocessed anger, sadness, and grief was a hell of a lot harder than just sitting on a rock and having a good cry. 

While packing Trish the Tank in preparation for Colorado, a mantra repeated over and over again in my head: avoid avoidance. Avoid avoidance. Avoid avoidance. 

So I went to Hesperus to feel all the feelings. Deep sadness and a burning curiosity for his last moments. Devastation and acceptance. Deep love and longing for a different life. Fear and anxiety. Awe and gratitude. Joy, laughter, and frustration with the excessive rain. Wonder. Connection and appreciation. Anger, confusion, understanding, compassion.  

It was honestly a treat to return to Ian’s resting place. Welcomed by fields of golden sunflowers, the creatures of the forest delighted in our return. The birds sang my praises. Marmots poked their cute little heads out from behind rocks and waved, while pikas squealed in surprise to see me. The elk and deer nodded as I passed by and the cows respectfully kept their distance from the meadow.

And Hesperus…oh Hesperus gave us a show! A myriad of clouds took turns concealing and revealing the peak. Fluffy white clouds, wispy fast clouds, thunderheads and lightning, soft pink and red sunset clouds. The mountain changed colors many times as the clouds rolled in and out. Rain turned the mountain dark blue and purple under the tremendous weight of weather. When storms passed, we were graced with rainbows! Double rainbows high in the sky above the peak, singular beams of color that spilled into the field we were standing in. Rainbows that curled over Hesperus and faded into the sky. 

The sunset cast red onto the tops of the trees and pink onto the basin. Mid day sunshine showed off the horizontal bands of Hesperus: black, grey, tan, red, and blue in the rocks. Above all, the most obvious thing about Hesperus was it’s lack of snow. The bare peak, which was covered in rapidly melting snow last year, snow that continued to melt and rise the river levels as we searched. The snow had moved on already, revealing a ridge line of green covering the rocky scree field. 

And then the river.

The fatal river that Ian crossed and did not come out of alive was of utmost importance for me to visit. I bit my lip as we approached the creek, expecting to see the same raging waters from last summer.

Last summer, the West Mancos River was a source of great fear, anxiety, and worry as we navigated how to cross the roaring white water. We set up hand lines over aspen logs and crossed the creek that flowed above my waist. It was dangerously swift. 

Rivers are measured by cubic feet per second (CFS) and there is not a gauging station at the exact spot where Ian’s body was found. (A gauging station is set up downstream in Mancos, so the measurements I’m about to share won’t be exact).

The historic average flow (recorded since the 1930’s-now) of the West Mancos River on June 24th is about 60 CFS.

The day that Ian crossed in 2023 it was flowing at 175 CFS. The peak flow of 2023 was over 250 CFS.

This year on June 24, 2024, the West Mancos River flowed at 28 CFS. All data can be found here.

I arrived on June 20th and the West Mancos River was flowing at 33 CFS, then it spiked to 90 CFS in a matter of hours the next day. As we crouched underneath a tarp waiting for a six hour hail and rain storm to let up, the river collected water and started gushing. When we hiked down to the river the next morning, crossing wasn’t as easy. What was ankle deep yesterday, we had to carry Mallow through thigh deep water.

It was an important reminder that this place can change in an instant.

The West Mancos River was the only part of the entire ecosystem that seemed unfamiliar upon returning. Ankle deep crossings didn’t look the same as the waist deep white water that we crossed last year. Where there was a roar last summer, a gentle trickle was in it’s place. The smell was different too- less damp this year. The sweet smell of spruce rivaled the pungent waters passing.

To swim naked and play in the same river bed that Ian drowned in was the most radical and natural thing we could think to do.

Basking in the sun and plunging into the cold waters with glee, we swam in the same river bed, but not the same river. The waters that drowned Ian have moved on past Mancos, into New Mexico and Utah to meet the San Juan River and out into irrigation ditches across the southwest. The water that killed Ian is making it’s way downstream toward my home at Lake Powell.

In this way, Ian is everywhere.  

Reclaiming the space not as a search zone, but recognizing it for what it is: a beautiful wilderness, was healing.

I laughed as I hiked on the trails, connecting miles in mere hours that took days to line search. What felt huge and impossible to search last summer felt intimate and familiar this year. 

These mountains are so much more than a search zone to me and to Ian. When we lived in Trish the Tank, we parked her in that very same meadow for days. This was new to me but reminiscent to Ian, who parked in various spots all along the road up to Hesperus when he lived in his truck. Our community threw a rave in the woods with lasers, fire spinning, and house music in this meadow. 

Both Ian and I backpacked these woods extensively when we worked for Open Sky Wilderness Therapy. We spent three summers wandering these mountains, living under a tarp through monsoon season, always squealing in delight when the La Plata Mountains peeked out from behind the trees. These mountains shaped who we are and were, and they continue to shape me.

Parking in the meadow still feels like home. One day this past week, I was admiring the iris blooms in the meadow when a Forest Service truck pulled up. A woman stepped out and apologized for entering our campsite, but said she needed to look around and conduct a study. I asked her what she was looking for and she said, “Any cultural sites that could damaged by a wedding here.” We nodded, and she continued on her way. 

A few days later, we were sitting around a campfire re-hashing the story when our friends revealed to us that they were the ones who were getting married in that field. Tears welled up in my eyes when they spoke about wondering if it felt right after the search. “This place needs more love,” they agreed, and I agreed too. 

The meadow will continue to hold us through love and grief. 

I think Ian would feel really bummed out if I avoided Hesperus or this meadow. I can imagine him scrunching up his nose, looking me dead in the eye and asking, “Why? Because I died?” And I would nod, to which he would respond, “But that’s silly!” and we would both laugh because avoiding something that’s uncomfortable, sad, bad, or scary was the opposite of how we lived our lives together. One of my favorite qualities of Ian was his ability to face hard shit with a brazen smile.

So I decided not to just look up at Hesperus and sit around in the meadow where it felt safe. Jaden, Chris and I set our alarms for 4:00 a.m. to summit the elusive 13,000 foot peak. There’s no official trail to the top, but trails around the base of the mountain, so we hiked on trail for about 3 miles then started bushwhacking. We shocked ourselves with how well we knew the area because of searching for Ian. 

All day we said things like:

“Oh yeah, I remember this boulder field, let’s go left.” 

“Wasn’t there a huge snow patch here last year?”

“I took a break on that aspen log.”

“This creek bed was flowing last year.” 

And the best part was that we didn’t need a map for any of the days we spent hiking in these mountains. We learned every nook and cranny of this place from searching, and now we have that knowledge to carry with us. I don’t know if I’ll ever know a backcountry place as intimately ever again. 

We summitted Hesperus and took in the view of the four corners: more connected mountain ranges in Colorado, high mesas in New Mexico, desert towers poked up from Arizona, and a long plateau with the Bears Ears in Utah. Standing on top of one of Ian’s favorite mountains that he summitted it many times throughout his life was special. 

When Ian and I pulled up to the meadow on June 24, 2023, we looked up at Hesperus and said, “Woah.” 

“I don’t think we can summit with all that snow. Might be too early in the season still,” I said.

“Nooooo,” Ian complained. “I’ve never seen this much snow up there this late in the season.” He really wanted to take me up the mountain. How three years of dating had passed without summitting together was beyond me. Though we spent most of our time living in Colorado driving to Utah instead. 

That was going to be the trip that we climbed Hesperus together. 

Ian laced up his shoes to go for a run with ambigious plans. “I want to scout the ridge line to see if we can do it tomorrow or not. If it’s too snowy, I’ll hit the Owen’s Basin trail, or maybe I’ll do a loop on the Box Canyon trail.”

“Alrighty,” I said, thinking the ridge line would definitely have too much snow to summit. I had already written it off as not possible when he left. 

When I got a GPS message from him that said he had reached the summit, I shook my head and smiled. “Hell yeah,” I nodded, mentally preparing for our summit the next day. But he never returned, and it took me a year to want to try and summit without him. 

Retracing Ian’s last steps felt like an honor. We wore dresses to the summit and giggled when it wasn’t practical on the scree field. We kept saying things like, “Wow, I can see why Ian loved this mountain so much,” all day. It was stunning and beautiful. The tears came once we turned around and began our decent. You can see the meadow we camped in from the top of Hesperus and the entire ridge line down. I cried thinking of Ian’s excitement to get back to the meadow and prove me wrong. I cried thinking of all the stories I never got to hear about his day. I cried thinking of his hands touching the same rocks that mine did whenever I leaned on one for stabilization. 

The tears flowed with my footsteps down the mountain until they ran out, and my feet kept on walking. 

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