The Wave

THE ESPLIN WAVE REUNION

HONORING OUR FATHER

John Lynn Esplin

1904 – 1947

October 29, 2004

Moses led the Children of Israel out of bondage to the Promised Land.

Brigham Young led the Saints across the Great Plains to the Promised Valley.

Jerry led his Esplin Siblings across the sands to the Promised Wave.

After arriving in St. George on Thursday, October 28, we all walked over to visit with Jerry & Lana.  We had problems.  We were gathering to celebrate Daddy’s 100th year.  Lana and DeRay had ingeniously acquired ten Wave tickets for us nearly seven months ago on the Internet.  Now the BLM office was telling us that due to recent heavy rains and flooding, the road was washed out.  On Wednesday, they told us that the House Rock side was impassable but you might be able to make it from Highway 89 with a 4-wheel drive high clearance vehicle.  Thursday, they had reversed their story and said we couldn’t make it from Highway 89, but we could drive around by House Rock—about 160 miles, 28 miles on dirt roads.

Jerry has a Jimmy so we have one 4-wheel drive vehicle that holds five.

What to do?

Because of the bad roads, we decided to leave around 8 AM instead of 6 AM.  We didn’t get gone until after 9 AM.  Jerry drove his Jimmy with Lana, Carol & Verla.  K’Leena drove Amy’s car with Amy Lyn, Amy Jayne, and Jeanette.  We met Lynn and Juanita in Kanab at Honey’s Jubilee Market.

Leaving Amy’s car in Kanab, Amy Jayne jumped in with Jerry & Group and Amy, K’Leena and I rode with Lynn and Juanita.  Lynn was able to drive down the dirt road for a couple of miles in his touring car, then we came to the place where the road was washed out.  Lynn & Jerry looked it over and decided Jerry could make it in his Jimmy.  He took the first group in:  (the self-appointed slow ones with Lynn to guide them)  Lynn, Juanita, Lana, Carol, and Verla.  Amy Lyn, Amy Jayne, K’Leena and I sat in Lynn’s car (it was windy and cold) and ate our lunch.  By the time Jerry came back and got us down to the trailhead, it was noon.
At the trailhead it was cold.  Amy carried my coat in her backpack.  I wore my fleece and had my rainjacket, hat, gloves.  We caught up with the others after about a mile.  And somehow, even though Jerry had been there before, we didn’t take the right path, staying too low and ended up going up and down up and down—probably five or six miles rather than three—Juanita tired out and found a warm place to wait for us.  The clouds were clearing and we shed coats.  An absolutely perfect hiking day.  Stunning.  The sand was wet so it made it easier to walk.  According to the logbook, not one soul got in on Thursday.  Too stormy.  Flooding.   

     We did sort of wonder if we would ever get there. 

“Lynn, Lynn, take our picture!  Here’s the Wave,” we shouted as we all waved to him.

Jerry went on ahead to find the way.  Lana said he was gone one hour and twenty minutes; he said he was gone 20 minutes, and then in another story, with a twinkle in his eye, he decided it was 10 minutes.  Lynn and Amy Jayne took off one way; and finally we walked in another direction.  So we broke the cardinal rule and split up into five groups:  1) Juanita; 2) Lynn and Amy Jayne; 3) Jerry; 5) Lana, Carol, Verla, Amy, K’Leena, Jeanette; and we didn’t hug a tree.  We started out.  We saw a guy standing on the sandstone edge taking pictures so we asked him where the wave was.  He pointed in the general direction and then we ran into Jerry coming back.  He had been up to the Wave to find the best way in.  Lynn and Amy Jayne had worked their way up the harder route.  In difficult places, we helped pull each other up with the walking sticks.  Verla crawled up one section.  Of course, she fell down in the sand a couple of times too.  I think she did that on purpose.  It was deep and soft.

At the entrance of The Wave, a photographer and his family were just leaving.  He was with the Davis County Clipper so he took Jerry, Carol, Verla and my picture to submit to the paper.  One of the subjects had to be from Davis County.  Maybe we’ll be in the newspaper—hopefully the headlines.  Our cousin, Billy Bolander, was his bishop when he was growing up.  When he was around 8, Billy took a group of them to Orderville for a week.  They visited all the interesting landmarks.  He went down again when he was 12.  Later, he and the new bishop were home teachers to the x-bishop Bolander.  He knew the family well and had a soft spot in his heart for Orderville.  He said that Dorothy had a stroke and was in a home.
Celebrities – Davis County Clipper – November 4, 2004

Some fat politician aced us out for the headlines but we're on A8, right before the obituaries.  Everyone's name is spelled right except mine.
There were two pictures: one of the Wave and one of us.  Photos by Ron L. Brown
Everyday Davis

Janet Hugh of Fruit Heights and her siblings Verla Galloway, Jerry Esplin and Carol Murphy celebrated their father's 100th birthday by hiking into "The Wave". The three-mile hike was a little difficult for these "youngsters" formerly of historic Orderville, Utah

 Photo by Ron L. Brown 04.NOV.04

The Wave is actually located in the Paria Canyon Vermillion Cliffs Wilderness area, straddling and south of the Utah-Arizona border. The wilderness area is south of Kanab, Utah. Photo by Ron L. Brown 04 NOV.04

Because there was a pool of water at the main entrance, we had to walk around and enter the Wave from the less impressive side.  When we got inside the Wave, Carol asked Jerry, “Is this all there is?” 

Amy and K’Leena had taken off their shoes and socks and waded in.

Lynn left just as we were entering so Juanita wouldn’t be so long alone.

We ate our lunch in the warm sun surrounded by the Wave. 

Amy Lyn borrowed some gloves from me, then when Verla and I, bringing up the rear, started up this steep sand hill, we picked up Amy’s gloves that had dropped out of her pocket.  Later, when it got cold, she borrowed them from me for the second time.

After lunch, we climbed up and around and slowly the magnificence and the wonder began to penetrate our beings, and we were enthralled.

We took pictures and found secret formations and marvels.  With all the rain and snow, there were ponds everywhere.  Reflections.  Swirls.  Changing colors, shapes, contours.  Magnificent Artistry.

We sang Happy Birthday to Amy Jayne.  Forty-five today.  We reluctantly left The Wave around 4, hoping to get back before dark.  It had taken us three hours to get there.  Going back, we stayed high on the ridge and we actually made it in two hours.

These are the little demons that got us in trouble going in. We followed the cairns instead of staying high.

“I’ve put my camera away, take pictures of how steep the trail is,” Verla said.  So I took pictures all the way down the trail of everyone’s rear ends.  We did crawl up on our hands and knees and scoot down on our bottoms some.  The walking sticks Amy gave me for Mother’s Day were a big hit.  I started out using both of them.  Carol suggested I let Juanita use one, so she used it until she stopped, then Verla took it.  She said she couldn’t have made it without it.  They take some of the weight off your legs as well as help with balance.  Still, those pictures didn’t show the magnitude of the incline.  Nevertheless, here’s a secret, the pictures are actually more beautiful than the Wave itself.  They seem brighter, more intense, variegated; spectacular synchronization with rhythm, flow.  Picturesque.  Striking.  Why, I don’t know.  Maybe it’s so marvelous, it just takes awhile to sink in.

Lana had just had major surgery in the summer; her back and knees are bad so she slowed way down.  Jerry thought he had better hurry on to shuttle the first group back so Verla and I waited for Lana.  Amy and K’Leena stopped to play in the sand, then they decided to hurry on to catch the first shuttle out.  They passed Carol and she waved to everyone as they pulled out.  By the time we got there, Carol was lying on the cement outside the restroom, without a coat on, with her feet in the air.  She had surgery on her foot about a month ago and her feet were hurting.  She had walked the whole way in a sandal and a surgery shoe.  When we got to her, she was shaking, cold, her breathing was shallow, and she was going into shock.  We all put our coats over her, including the sweatshirt she had tied around her waist, wrapped her feet in a rain jacket; Lana cradled her head in her lap to give her warmth, and we reassured her.  “You’re OK, Carol.”  “Help is on the way.”  “Jerry will be right back.”  (Just like in the Red Cross First Aid manual.)  “Where’s Amy and K’Leena when we need them?”  “Why didn’t you say something to them when they passed you?”  She soon relaxed, quit shaking, and was getting warm.

I walked over to a jeep to ask the guy (the same one Lynn talked to) if he were going out, thinking we had better get her out as soon as possible.  “My sister has gone into shock.  Are you going out?”  “That way,” he said, pointing toward House Rock Valley.  He told me I wasn’t dressed for the weather.  “We put our coats on my sister,” I said.  He proceeded to take his wet, sweaty shirt off and put on a dry shirt and warm coat right in front of me.  He was a photographer from Chicago.  He had come in Tuesday and then again today to take pictures.  He said he was staying in Page.  I told him that he didn’t need to drive all the way through House Rock Valley, (probably 200 miles); when he could be to Page in ½ hour.  In his jeep he could make it.  Just then Jerry drove up and convinced him that he could do it.  We told him that we would follow him and help him if he got in trouble.  Jerry told him to not stop in the wash, to gun it and keep going.  We followed him and he stopped after he got through.  He asked us if that was the only bad place and we told him yes.  He stopped one more time because he thought we were flashing him but it was only the washboard roads.  Now he’s behind us and we forgot to tell him to turn right towards Page when he got to the highway.  We turned left to Kanab.  We don’t know why he turned out his lights just before the highway and stopped.  “Did he have a camera?”  “Was he really a photographer?”  “Did he have a body in the car?”

Everyone waited for us in Kanab at Honey’s Jubilee Market.  I called DeRay to report our safe return.  We knew he, Shirley, and Ed, who had stayed home, would be relieved to hear we had made it after all our apprehension about the weather, the roads, and non-hikers hiking a strenuous trail.  DeRay said the soup was warm, the birthday cake made, and the biscuits were just coming out of the oven.

It was 11 PM when we got back to St. George.  We loved Shirley’s tomato soup and DeRay’s sour dough biscuits.  DeRay ran to the store to buy ice cream while we ate; even though he hadn’t eaten; then Amy Jayne blew out the candles and we sang Happy Birthday for the third time.

I can’t believe it’s over; after all our troubles with the weather and the trail.  In spite of everything, Amy said it best on the way home, “It’s an amazing thing for you to spend a day with your brothers and sisters on such a difficult hike together at your age--helping each other, sharing, caring”—celebrating Daddy’s 100^th birthday doing what he loved to do most.

WE DID THE WAVE!

Dreams Do Come True

DeRay says he’s going to lose 10 years and go next time.

Verla regretted that we didn’t have a picture with everyone in it so we gathered for a group photo—Republicans and Democrats together--one big, happy family.  Ed wouldn’t join us but everyone else was a good sport.  Lynn and Juanita were leaving for Church in Glendale and the rest of us headed for our respective homes, except Amy and K’Leena who stayed down one more night.  Lee went back down to his dad’s in Mesquite; Shirley and Amy to New Castle; and the rest of us to Salt Lake, Fruit Heights and Hyrum.

Shirley, Amy Jayne, Verla, DeRay, Juanita, Jerry, Lynn, Carol, Jeanette, Lee, Amy, Lana 


Dear Souptown Siblings,

I never come home from time spent with you, but what I resolve to make changes in my life - there is and continues to be strength in family solidarity, even after we've long flown the nest.  I see something in each one of you that I would like to emulate and that includes your mates and the next generation down.  Thank you for lifting me up and helping me to be a better person.

I didn't hike to the Wave but from you conversations and from Jeanette's written account, it was as though I had been there with you.  Daddy must have been looking on with admiration.  Mama undoubtedly a little concerned about Carol walking so soon after foot surgery, Verla's asthma, Lana's struggle over the uncertainty of the trail and Juanita's courage.  You were all heroes, as were those of us who knew our limitations well enough to stay at home.

You are all very much in my thoughts.  We had had such a good time. 

Thanks for being such a special family.  You are all so kind to make Amy feel included and welcome when we get together.  Ed and his "Edisms" always adds to our gatherings.  It was great to have two girl scout leaders (Amy Lyn and K'Leena) to add a level of protection beyond the "Watch-care" of Father Moses (Jerry) and the messenger (Lynn) who traversed back and forth between the straggling hikers.  It was so great to have Lee there.  That was the icing on the cake.

Amy and I voted at 7:15.  There were no security guards on hand to handle voting problems.  The judges said they had 7 people waiting to vote before the polls opened.  I tried to imagine how the Floridians could have had dimples and hanging chads as I voted.  We use the same system.  It would have been impossible.

All of my love,  Shirley