Guide Love Stories: A Dirtbag Cinderella

It was February 2014. My best friend Taryn and I had just departed Tucson, Arizona, on a massively ambitious bicycle tour. The plan? Ride north up the West Coast, then follow the US/Canada border, and ride the Rockies back south to Tucson. We were armed with hodge-podged homemade gear, very little money, and a lot of optimism.

A few weeks into the trip, we rolled into the south entrance of Joshua Tree National Park. We needed a place to camp, so I asked the ranger at the desk for suggestions. I remember looking her dead in the eye and saying:

"I want to stay where the rock climbers stay. I'm going to meet my future husband."

Little did I know, the universe—and the weather—were conspiring to make that happen.

Traversing the park was a battle. We were hit by a storm so fierce that a single gust of wind was enough to tip over our loaded-down bikes (with us still on them!) into the ditch. Rain and wind prevailed for two days until, exhausted and soaked, we finally pulled into the Hidden Valley Campground—the home of the esteemed climbers.

And there he was.

My first sighting of my future husband wasn’t a slow-motion movie moment. It was a young man making a mad dash from a shabby old motorhome to the community pit toilet. He was wearing a grey bathrobe and matching neon orange beanie and Crocs.

We were drenched. He had a dry RV.

We met Nathan, a welcoming hippy climber, in the middle of that torrential downpour. He invited Taryn and me into his 28-foot motorhome to wait out the rain.

I had been dying to climb in Joshua Tree, but carrying climbing gear on a long-distance bike tour was out of the question. I had resigned myself to just watching from the ground.

But then, the magic happened. Nathan mentioned he had found a pair of climbing shoes. He brought them out. I tried them on.

They fit perfectly.

It was a true dirtbag Cinderella story. (To this day, they remain my favorite climbing shoes; the OGs are long gone, but I order a replica pair every few years). The clouds cleared, the rock dried, and my climbing career began.

Every good love story has two perspectives. Here is how Nathan remembers that winter in the desert, taken from our 2014 Christmas letter:

"In January, I worked out a deal with my mother that left me the proud owner of a 28ft motorhome. I named my beloved companion Sir Crag-A-Lot and did what any climber with a motorhome would do... I hit the road.

While in Joshua Tree, waiting out a storm that had me (a boy from Washington) wondering if I should have bought a boat instead, I met a girl. She was traveling on a bike she dubbed 'The Scorpion Queen.' Ironically, Jillian and her best friend had departed Tucson the same day I left Washington.

I invited them aboard to escape the rain. There was an instant spark. A few weeks later, Jillian took a break from the bike tour, and we went backpacking in Sequoia National Park. That spark grew to a healthy flame. But yet again, Jillian and I parted ways as she continued up the coast on her bike and I returned to my Sir Crag-A-Lot. I had exactly 52 cents remaining in my bank account."

After our backpacking trip and the depletion of Nathan's already meager life savings, we parted ways again. I continued my bike tour to San Francisco, and Nathan stayed in the desert, working odd jobs remodeling a house for a new friend to build up some cash.

But the magnet had already been turned on.

When my tour unexpectedly ended early near San Francisco, I called Nathan in a panic. I had no money to leave the city and no desire to stay. Nathan and Sir Crag just so happened to be cruising up the interstate, windows down, Dr Hook blaring through the speakers, and golden locks blowing in the wind, just an hour from where I was stuck. He permitted me to place my stinky, dirty gear and my stinky, dirty self into the RV, and we headed toward a new adventure.

Nathan had decided to face his uncertainty about water and become a white water raft guide. I joined him. We spent that summer guiding on the Wenatchee River in Leavenworth, Washington—a lazy mountain town turned Bavarian-themed tourist destination.

Here is how Nathan remembers our move to the desert, taken from our 2014 Christmas letter:

"August rolled around and the water began to trickle. We figured we were due for another adventure, so we packed up and hit the open road, headed east to Utah. With the promise of work, 5 national parks, and seemingly limitless rock, I was not one to oppose. And what an adventure it was. After 4 flat tires, a serpentine belt, a thermostat, a radiator flush, a front hub assembly, and a mysterious overheating engine that turned out to be a stuck brake caliper, so add two brake assemblies to the list, we arrived in Utah. If ever a state could be worth all that trouble, this is it. We’ve just begun to scrape the top of this state sized, world class, outdoor playground.”

Between the broken down vehicles, the endless public lands, and scrounging a living together out of Sir Crag-A-Lot, we built a life. And now, after 12 years, not much has changed. We’re still just scraping the surface of adventure in our Utah home and holding everything together with zip ties and a prayer. In 2014, I went searching for a life partner with the belief that if you’re resigned to a mediocre life, you will find someone else who is doing the same thing. But if you’re taking the risk to lean into your dreams, you’ll find those people who are stumbling down that same path in search of the best that this one short life has to offer.

Just before our wedding ceremony in 2020, Nathan surprised me with the grey bathrobe and orange beanie for old times sake. Keeping things fresh...