As I peer up the rocky ridge that rises over Mill A Gulch, I can hear the faint echo of a proclamation I made two years ago at this very spot:

"Hell, no."

My friends howled at me as I dawdled in the shadow of Mount Raymond.

"WHAT?!" they squawked. "No. You can't quit now."

That was my first hike in the Wasatch. I puked after a quarter mile. A blister on my heel ripped open a few minutes later. I gasped for oxygen with each trudging step while my friends hopped over the rocks like deer.

To reach Baker Pass was itself a feat for me. I looked down into Big Cottonwood Canyon with a little bump of pride. But to my friends' raised eyebrows and the craggy summit looming before us, I could offer only the feeblest of objections.

"I'm from Iowa."

Let the world join my friends in a great pshaw.

They talked me into the 900-foot climb and introduced me to the love of my life.

You see, I have moved eight times in the past nine years. Each new place was exhilarating at first, but eventually my day-to-day adventures would seem less adventurous. I never imagined staying anywhere for good because, sooner or later, every landscape started to get old.

But from the top of Mount Raymond, I could see a landscape that would never get old.

Those peaks, man. Layer upon layer, to every horizon. I knew I'd always look forward to exploring more. I felt the kind of certainty and excitement people probably feel when they're proposed to.

It is really something to find yourself in a place where you should stay.

Then a thunderstorm blew in. My friends and I scampered away.

Now I am back to see what I saw two years ago. A renewal of vows, if you will.

The hike is even better this time. After such a rainy June, our hills are bursting with columbines and bluebells and a green that might detonate your retinal cones. I am exhausted, sunburned, amazed.

And you, improbably, are reading a mountain sports column by an artsy-fartsy nonathlete of the plains. In months to come, look for lessons by trail and by current. By sand and by snow. By flora, by fauna. By earth, wind and fire. There is something for all of us in the contours and colors of our backyard.

For now I'll just let a shimmering pile of rocks keep its own promise.

For more Utah adventures and musings, visit Erin's blog, www.poorpenmanship.com.