The Wild Ride

My husband Gene, 63, was adopted, and it wasn’t until after his adoptive parents had both passed away that he found his birth parents. We connected with his biological mother in 2022, and then his biological father, Bill, in early 2023. So we’re still learning about these people who share Gene’s DNA but not his childhood.

We recently visited Bill and his wife, Laura, in South Fork, Colorado.

Gene is a quiet guy, and his biological dad, Bill, is quiet, too. So most evenings, I’m the one lobbing questions across the dinner table at this man who looks so much like my husband, just 20 years further down the road. Bill answers everything with patience and thoughtfulness. Laura keeps the conversation going, adding in interesting details here and there. We love these moments together so much, learning about these two people we have come to love.

South Fork is a little mountain vacation town tucked against the Rio Grande National Forest, full of summer visitors chasing the outdoors. The mornings felt like autumn— cool enough that I needed sleeves to sit on the back porch with Laura to watch the dogs play and the sunlight creep across the mountains as we sipped coffee from mugs glazed with the letters, J, K, B, and L. By afternoon, it warmed into that clean, dry sunshine we don’t get here in Georgia, where the horizon usually wears a haze of humidity.

On Saturday, Bill hitched their Polaris RZR to their big, white truck, and we met up with Laura’s son Shaun and his family, who brought their own utility terrain vehicle (UTV). If you don’t know what a RZR is, think souped-up, open-air dune buggy—roll cage, bucket seats, full-body seat belts, built for chewing up rough mountain roads and rocky terrain. We unloaded at a parking area and headed out for Platoro, a tiny seasonal village at nearly 9,900 feet, open only about half the year because the snow can get deep there.

Bill drove—the brim of his ball cap pulled low on his brow. Gene rode shotgun. Laura and I held on in the back for dear life. The road was narrow, a mix of dirt and gravel, climbing and climbing along the edge of the mountain. Three of us put in earplugs because the engine roared loudly. The fourth member of our party grinned and said, “Earplugs are for sissies.”

Now, I don’t know if Bill meant to scare us that day or not, but he had a habit of hugging the right edge of that road—right along the dropoff— even with nobody coming the other way. Laura kept swatting his shoulder, hollering “Slow down!” and “Get over!” I looked down just to my right and saw nothing but the cliff’s edge with a few conifers and aspens clamped onto the side with their roots in a death grip. There were also rocks—lots of rocks—and hundreds of feet below was a tiny, thin, sparkling stream, also full of rocks. I thought about the hundreds of times I saw Wile E. Coyote disappear over similar ledges as he pursued the Road Runner, falling into oblivion. I thought to myself, “It’ll be fast. I’ve had a good life. I am thankful.” I made my peace with the Lord more than once on that ride.

We made it to Platoro, and I ate a fine lunch of chicken strips, fries, and gravy, and then we turned around— right as rain clouds began rolling over the mountain. Naturally, we picked up speed to beat the storm, which meant flying down that same skinny road, now wet, with a windshield so dusty and rain-blotched that we couldn’t see 10 feet in front of the UTV, and not a wiper blade in sight.

We never slowed down. We stopped at Summitville—an old mining ghost town with its weathered buildings still standing watch over the mountainside—to catch our breath, stretch our legs and thank God for watching over us. continued from page

Well, in case you are wondering, we made it down in one piece, and since we all survived, I can say this now: That wild ride was a lot of fun. That evening, as we recalled the more frightening moments of the day, Bill looked at Laura, dead serious, and said, “You were never in danger.” I took note of his comment. Maybe we weren’t. He did fly cargo planes in the Air Force, after all, so he’s probably right.

So, we lived, we laughed, and we bonded some more, which is the whole point of these visits— spending more time with these people we’ve grown to love, getting to know them, and connecting. Plus, we’ve got one heck of a family story to tell now.