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What does it mean to be a good man? What about a healthy and balanced one? How can we wake up a bit?
(Photo: Courtesy Chris Velasco/Wildernes)
What does it mean to be a good man? What about a healthy and balanced one? How can we wake up a bit?
What does it mean to be a good man? What about a healthy and balanced one? How can we wake up a bit? (Photo: Courtesy Chris Velasco/Wildernes)

Can the Outdoors Save Guys from Themselves?


Published: 

Men suffer higher rates of suicide and drug abuse than women. Many are anxious and lonely鈥攁nd, as a result, they鈥檙e all too often angry and violent. Wilderness Collective thinks the solution lies in open spaces, UTVs, and fireside talks. But is that enough?


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O tender child of but six years: may this massive motocross-style helmet, complete with 14 intake vents, fit and protect you, for I understand not the ways of the online sizing chart.

I clicked purchase, and two weeks later my son, Casper, and I were roaring across a high sage desert, darkness falling, canyons plunging, chunky rocks looming, frigid wind howling, expensive epic of cinematic masculinity unfolding.

What in the end does a father want for his child? I wanted Casper to not get pneumonia on the first fucking day of our trip. But in his infinite wisdom, the god of the utility terrain vehicle (or UTV) forsook windshields, windows, climate control, and, for that matter, an effective muffler. I draped my coat across the boy鈥檚 little lap.

鈥淒on鈥檛 let this blow away!鈥 I yelled.

鈥淲丑补迟?鈥

鈥淒on鈥檛 let this blow away!鈥

鈥淲丑补迟?鈥澛

Our conversation might鈥檝e continued in this vein had I not been so caught up in staying upright. I鈥檇 been driving this bizarre vehicle鈥攅ssentially a small, high-octane dune buggy鈥攆or an hour now and was steadily getting worse at it. We were in northwest Arizona, sloshing along a canyon somewhere between the Colorado Plateau and the Mojave Desert. Yucca and scrub oak blurred past as we fishtailed wildly across gravelly BLM two-track. The natural thing to do would be to slow down, but the light was fading, and we had another hour, or maybe five, until we reached camp. So I gunned it, swerving into the lonesome western landscape, hunched dementedly over the wheel, an off-road, neon-helmeted Neal Cassady.

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(Courtesy Drew Martin/Wilderness Collective)
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(Courtesy Drew Martin/Wilderness Collective)
The author his six-year-old son, Casper, outside Saint George, Utah
The author his six-year-old son, Casper, outside Saint George, Utah (Courtesy Mart铆n Vielma/Wilderness Collective)

I first heard about , the group putting on our mechanical foray, when it launched in 2011. Ostensibly, the Los Angeles outfitter offers $3,500 high-horsepower adventures for stylish urban dudes. But that鈥檚 only the wrapper. The essence of the brand is the invisible skein of brotherhood and truth stretched between the snowmobiles and dirt bikes. 鈥淲ilderness makes you better鈥濃攖hat鈥檚 the motto. During trips to Yosemite, Alaska, and Death Valley, men rev into a higher echelon of manhood, growing closer as fathers and sons and friends and bros. Whatever ails us is no match for the improving power of wild lands plus loud machines.

In 2019, the group launched its first child-friendly outing, 鈥渁 four-day off-road adventure to the Grand Canyon designed for fathers and their kids to have the adventure of a lifetime.鈥 Each day would involve two to four hours of driving, periodic stops, and backcountry camping in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, and eventually we鈥檇 end at the North Rim. Four staffers would prepare our food and document us assiduously. Along the way, a dozen dads would undergo unspecified man-growth.

鈥淒on鈥檛 roll your vehicle,鈥 Mart铆n Vielma, our chill, ponytailed guide told us at the start of the voyage. We dads and our kids, most under ten, had fanned out around him in a giant UTV warehouse in Saint George, Utah. We were a mostly white group, middle-aged, and all straight, as far I could tell: some sporty Dallas guys who went to church together, some LA guys with tattoos, a tech guy from San Francisco. Vielma reviewed a few additional points of UTV operation, but the essence was: don鈥檛 be stupid.

During trips to Yosemite, Alaska, and Death Valley, men rev into a higher echelon of manhood, growing closer as fathers and sons and friends and bros. Whatever ails us is no match for the improving power of wild lands plus loud machines.
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(Courtesy Drew Martin/Wilderness Collective)

In the run-up to the trip, I had envisioned long days of contemplation and connection. The scrubby hills and low plains of red-brown, the washed-out stretches of prickly pear and cholla鈥攖his is the type of country where you figure out a thing or two. The minute I punched the gas, I realized the idea was laughable. The drone of the motor and the roar of the wind obliterate everything鈥攅very thought, every idea, every word spoken. We were quivering husks when at last we rumbled up to a small plateau in Mohave County, Arizona.

While I pitched our tent, the Wilderness Collective crew built a fire nearby, and in time everyone drifted over for dinner and warmth. I let Casper get to know the other kids鈥攎ostly boys, though not all鈥攁s the grown-ups chatted around the blaze. There was talk of jobs, motorcycle projects, whose kid was killing it in soccer, and, as occurs on every guy trip, epic adventures past.

But we were here for the future. A father thrums with a deep and weary hope, after all: You, my child, shall fuck things up slightly less than I did. That鈥檚 a heavy burden in its own right; add a widespread overhaul of masculinity to the proceedings and things get extra complicated. In , the French philosopher and sociologist Rapha毛l Liogier describes the strange fog men find themselves in after #MeToo, 鈥渟truggling to redefine our ambitions as men, our fantasies as men, our behavior as men, our desires as men. In short, our place in the world.鈥

Frankly, anyone so disoriented by the current landscape strikes me as either willfully obtuse or weirdly dim. Toxic masculinity, as we now call it, has always oozed through civilization. For your average halfway-颅reflective guy, the recent wave of bad-men stories shined a new kind of light on an old situation. The challenge isn鈥檛 knowing our place in the world, it鈥檚 helping each other get there, starting with the youngest among us.

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(Courtesy Chris Velasco/Wilderness Collective)

I suppose this is a good opportunity to acknowledge the leftist San Francisco bubble in which I raise my children, a realm where progressive values are de rigueur and off-road-vehicle riding happens only in commercials, which we don鈥檛 actually see because we鈥檙e busy watching documentaries about tofu. Casper, for his part, is just a normal kid in this world, kind and thoughtful and funny and rambunctious. He has a guileless jack-o鈥-lantern smile, and his dreams generally feature Messi. He dictated sweetly off-message signs when I took him to the Women鈥檚 March (TAKE CARE OF SNOWY OWLS), and once I heard him ask his big sister how her day was. He鈥檚 also a kid in a changing world. At six, he has more trans and queer people in his life than I did in my first 20 years. His first-grade class talks about conflict resolution, intent versus impact, and equity versus equality.

But healthy masculinity is about more than simply not groping your way up the ladder. I want my son to be joyful, emotionally mature, resilient, giving, and actualized鈥攋ust like his elder sister. Already among his little friends, I see cruddy guy tics creeping in: a flash of fragile ego here, a facade of invulnerability there. I try to model the good stuff, but sometimes it seems that stronger medicine is needed. Which is how we ended up sitting around a fire with a bunch of strangers on a cold night in Arizona.

I don鈥檛 know what time we staggered off to bed鈥攕tep one of a Wilderness Collective trip is surrendering your phone. A wind had risen, and it howled along the desert floor, shaking our tent. I pulled the boy close, his little frog legs tucked against his chest.

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(Courtesy Mart铆n Vielma/Wilderness Collective)
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(Courtesy Brian Fernandez/Wilderness Collective)
Wilderness Collective founder Steve Dubbeldam (with his son, Judah) believes adventure is 鈥渁 shortcut into guys鈥 hearts.鈥
Wilderness Collective founder Steve Dubbeldam (with his son, Judah) believes adventure is 鈥渁 shortcut into guys鈥 hearts.鈥 (Courtesy Chris Velasco/Wilderness Collective)

Wilderness makes you better. It鈥檚 written on the company鈥檚 mugs and shirts and hats, on the artsy yet rugged magazine it publishes, and on the short films it produces about its trips (nearly 100 so far). It鈥檚 a small empire of betterness that founder Steve Dubbeldam runs from his office in LA. Dubbeldam, 37, is an everyman for our times, if every man were handsome and also a former clothing entrepreneur. He鈥檚 laid-back, friendly, and eminently reasonable鈥攖hat is, Canadian鈥攁nd one day nearly a decade ago, he looked up and spotted a troubling gap in the cultural landscape. Where there should be character improvement plus machine-based adventure for sophisticated young men, he saw nothing.

鈥淭here鈥檚 an idea I throw around: 国产吃瓜黑料 is a shortcut into guys鈥 hearts. It鈥檚 a chink in the armor. You can go deeper faster,鈥 Dubbeldam later told me. (Having just done a trial version of the Dads and Kiddos trip with his three-year-old, he was sitting ours out.) Where other men鈥檚 groups might devote more time to explicit emoting, Wilderness Collective guys mostly shred all day, capped by a check-in around the fire about what brought them there. That conversation, in turn, generally opens onto larger ones about how life is going. Then: more shredding.

鈥淚 understand the paradox, exploring masculinity while doing these traditionally manly activities,鈥 Dubbeldam says. 鈥淭he idea is to put a new idea in a familiar container. New idea, new container鈥攖hat鈥檚 too much for people.鈥

He wanted to start finding answers to questions not getting asked enough. What does it mean to be a good man? What about a healthy and balanced one? How can we wake up a bit? Something, after all, is clearly wrong. Men suffer higher rates of self-harm than women, ditto addiction, ditto incarceration. Men with mental illness seek help less often than women. The men perpetrating the vast majority of violence鈥攖hey鈥檙e suffering, too. And then there鈥檚 whatever small-bore distress doesn鈥檛 rise to the level of measurement. For all these concerns, Dubbeldam says, 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 see a lot of people elevating the conversation about men.鈥

A six-year-old boy is a laboratory, every parental decision a political and ethical minefield. If it seems ridiculous that a four-day UTV romp might help navigate a segment of that minefield, well, parents are ridiculous.
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(Courtesy Drew Martin/Wilderness Collective)

That has changed, of course. The past few years have been marked by greater interest in the subject, if interest is the word for blearily noticing a global sprawl of garbage fires. But for guys not Weinsteining their way through life, nuanced conversations about man stuff seemed to be trickier business. What if you鈥檙e just, like, partly broken? Aside from not being an asshole, how does one improve?

Which helps explain the cottage industry that has emerged in recent years, devoted to various areas of neglected growth. Picking up where men鈥檚 groups of the eighties and nineties left off鈥攖he mythopoetic movement, for example, forever associated with Robert Bly鈥搒tyle drumming sessions鈥斅璷rganizations like Evryman, Junto, and Wilderness Collective have blossomed, creating communities where men can discuss their anger, achieve 鈥渆motional mastery,鈥 or otherwise evolve. These exist against a broader cultural backdrop of podcasts, books, assorted articles heralding 鈥渢he new masculinity,鈥 and that inexplicably controversial Gillette ad that dared to suggest that bullying, catcalling, brawling, and other boys-will-be-boys pursuits aren鈥檛 actually 鈥渢he best a man can get.鈥 In one mode or another, everyone鈥檚 suddenly talking about masculinity.

I have carefully avoided that shit. In my experience, the guys most preoccupied with manhood invariably have the screwiest ideas about it. What鈥檚 more, the broadly defined men鈥檚 movement has a tortuous intellectual history, swerving from a generally feminist sensibility into beleaguered victimization, and often moving into outright misogyny. As a result, you never know when a benign chat about gender will veer into crazy town. (鈥淵eah, fatherhood is tough! Anyway, my white-nationalist flat-earth newsletter comes out monthly.鈥︹)

More to the point, explorations of masculinity tend to be tediously abstract. Discussing 鈥渉ow to be a good man鈥 strikes me as an outdated way of discussing how to be a good person, and I already had a rough answer for that: be kind, redistribute all forms of power, and learn an instrument. Beyond that, who had time to ponder manliness when there鈥檚 dinner to be cooked?

This was my jam until the birth of my son converted the theoretical topic of masculinity into an array of actual concrete questions. When Casper鈥檚 sister egged him on and he went ballistic, was that on her or him? When we consoled him during a tantrum, was that respecting his natural sensitivity or encouraging male brittleness? When we told him to stop kicking the seat, were we stifling some important inner boyhood energy, or were we helping teach a future man about impulse control? A six-year-old boy is a laboratory, every parental decision a political and ethical minefield. If it seems ridiculous that a four-day UTV romp might help navigate a segment of that minefield, well, parents are ridiculous.

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(Courtesy Chris Velasco/Wilderness Collective)
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(Courtesy Drew Martin/Wilderness Collective)
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(Courtesy Alex Ritz/Wilderness Collective)

One can get a handle on UTV operation, but the insane noise never goes away. I had many things I wanted to say to Casper鈥攇eology things, camping things, what-do-you-think-of-this-trip things鈥攂ut it was impossible. Was this a giant metaphor for fatherhood and its rivers of unspoken words? I was pondering this on day two when an abandoned dollop of civilization appeared on the featureless horizon.

It was in 1917 that homesteaders first arrived in these parts, and the Mount Trumbull schoolhouse became the center of civic life. Doubling as a town hall, church, and dance hall, it saw the population peak in the thirties, then gradually plummet, as it occured in many such places. The last full-time resident left in 1984. The single-room building we rolled up to was simple and white, and had been unused for decades.

As the kids explored some rusty playground equipment out back, the dads looked inside the building. We could鈥檝e been in any western ghost town. During Mount Trumbull鈥檚 heyday, a thousand other Mount Trumbulls sprang to life, and with them a certain version of maleness, born of an earlier masculinity crisis.

The closing of the American frontier in 1890 marked a peculiar pivot in the young nation鈥檚 psyche. With the most savage and fearsome territories officially tamed, the conquering impulse was replaced by something closer to nostalgia. 鈥淚deas of the American West became increasingly idyllic,鈥 Laurel Braitman writes in , a book that鈥檚 only partly about nonhuman mental illness. Suddenly, new anxieties arose. Who were men without their ruggedness? What would they do without bears and Indians to defeat?

By 1910, the Boy Scouts had been created, in part a bulwark against the softening of our citified young lads, and gradually a new ideal of American maleness鈥攁rguably the floor-model American man鈥攖ook shape. If you鈥檝e seen a John Wayne movie, a Marlboro Man billboard, or any of the ten million slightly less cartoonish variants that permeated the culture for decades, you are familiar.

The way Dubbeldam sees it, a better version of man is within reach. What鈥檚 more, getting there isn鈥檛 all that complicated鈥攎erely being away from our phones and humbled by nature will kick-start the process. Deep talks are not required, breakthroughs not necessarily evident; the metamorphosis happens beneath the surface. Having put in my time with the homeopaths and the acupuncturists, I know what it鈥檚 like to await a cure that might never present itself. Was it working? Was this snake oil? On we hurtled, madly yet hopefully self-颅improving, through assorted terrified habitats. Think Walden meets Mad Max.

That afternoon, after a decent rumble south of the schoolhouse, one of the staffers waved for us to make another stop. One by one, the dads pulled their vehicles off the dirt road and everyone climbed out. A brief period of sandwich eating and football tossing followed, and then Vielma announced that we鈥檇 be taking a walk. We crossed a narrow gully and made our way to a wall of boulders. Vielma pointed up. Here and there on the sides of the rocks were some ancient-looking markings鈥攖he Nampaweap petroglyphs.

A child鈥檚 natural relationship to 1,500-year-old rock art is one of casual defacement. But we reeled them in quickly, and then we stood there taking it in. It was hard to know what to make of it. Was it heartening, seeing that people all those centuries ago had thoughts and feelings just like us? Was it sad, seeing how far we haven鈥檛 come in the intervening years?

鈥淭hey all look like the St眉ssy logo,鈥 one of the dads said after a while.

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(Courtesy Alex Ritz/Wilderness Collective)
Psychotherapist James (with his son, Elijah) brings clients on Wilderness Collective trips to help foster 鈥渨holehearted鈥 men.
Psychotherapist James (with his son, Elijah) brings clients on Wilderness Collective trips to help foster 鈥渨holehearted鈥 men. (Courtesy Chris Velasco/Wilderness Collective)
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(Courtesy Samson Hatae/Wilderness Collective)

Many years ago, at a dark bar in San Francisco, some friends and I fell into a troubled conversation about the future of men. I don鈥檛 mean we foresaw #MeToo or the ascension of Brett Kavanaugh. It was our own fates we prophesied. We anticipated, with the bitter clarity of youth, the vacancy and inflexibility that take hold of men as they age, perhaps even blooming from within. We saw the unaccountable anger and emotional stuntedness posing as stoicism. The isolation and the defensiveness and the joylessness. The technological bewilderment and the many World War II books. The weirdness around women. The weirdness around men.

We did not like this, but like Wilderness Collective, we had a plan. Staving it all off was just a matter of locking in some inoculative habits: regular conversation, emotional accessibility, pushing back on each other when necessary. By the end of the night, a monthly gathering had been willed into existence.

This past year, we marked the 20th anniversary of our Man Club, and for all our efforts, I鈥檓 not sure what we鈥檝e achieved. No corpse of ingrained maleness lies at our feet; we do stupid man stuff all the time. So what does that bode for men鈥檚 groups in general? Are we really the ones who can change us?

Stephen James thinks so. A psychotherapist and leadership consultant in Nashville, he takes his clients on Wilderness Collective trips鈥攕omething about them, he told me, helps the guys be more open, honest, brave, and understanding. In addition to running a private practice, James is the author of . As he sees it, these trips counteract the atomization that both suburban and urban living have wrought in men. We live too internally, he said, and no longer 鈥渉ave strong voices inspiring us to be wholehearted men.鈥

I felt that old tingle at first鈥攚as 鈥渨holehearted鈥 code for some kind of essentialist patriarchal nonsense? But what followed felt uncontroversial: modern domestic life has gotten too comfortable for some men, and they are the worse for it. 鈥淲e鈥檙e numb to celebration and protected from struggle,鈥 he said. 鈥淥ur lives get sanitized, and that leads to anxiety and depression. Our hearts are made to live a bigger life than comfort.鈥

Dubbeldam described his job as waking guys up鈥攇etting them to pay attention to their lives and not just their work, their phones, or whatever else we pour too much of our lives into.

鈥淥ne of my biggest goals on these trips is to spark introspection,鈥 he said. 鈥淕et them to stop and think, What direction am I going in? If I keep sailing at this angle, where does that get me in ten years?鈥

As Dubbeldam sees it, men are prone to tunnel vision鈥斺淚鈥檓 not going to take a breath until I get fired or acquired,鈥 as he put it. Even more troubling, he explained, is the tendency 鈥渢o wait until something really terrible happens before doing some introspection.鈥

Though, when that鈥檚 the case, Wilderness Collective is there for them. Dubbeldam and James told me of campers past admitting to explosions of heartache: illness, the unraveling of a marriage, the loss of a child. Meanwhile, there鈥檚 the everyday man stuff that makes everything harder. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a way men struggle with shame that鈥檚 different from how women do,鈥 James said. 鈥淒o I measure up? Is my value what I achieve? Men seem to identify with those questions more. The question they have is, If I take my mask off, am I the same as you?鈥

Some time back, Dubbeldam was on a Grand Canyon expedition with a client who nine months earlier had lost his wife after a long illness. The man鈥檚 life had essentially been on hold for years as her condition worsened. Then, on the third day of the trip, something changed.

鈥淗e was driving around this corner, and he took it way too fast and rolled his machine down a ravine,鈥 Dubbeldam told me. 鈥淚 saw him crawl out of the bushes. Thankfully, he was OK. Around the fire that night, it woke him up. He was vibrating. Crashing and basically destroying his machine was the best thing that could鈥檝e happened to him. He鈥檇 spent the past six or seven years playing it safe. And finally he wasn鈥檛.鈥

I thought about that man for a long time. On the final night of our trip, we camped 15 feet from the edge of the Grand Canyon. (About that 277-mile-long, six-million-year-old chasm I will only say: it鈥檚 worth a look.) But nobody rolled their machine that day or any other, nobody vibrated with newfound feeling. One of the guys confessed to me that he had something of a reading addiction; otherwise we kept it on the surface. After the long trek from the canyon to the UTV warehouse in Utah, we parted with more handshakes than hugs. We agreed to keep in touch, but we haven鈥檛.

The whole thing seemed like an ad for a brand called Man. Man is hip and brash, Man is solemn when appropriate, but above all Man is aspirational. If you are a man, you鈥檙e gonna wanna be Man. Isn鈥檛 that how men screw themselves up in the first place?
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(Courtesy Mart铆n Vielma/Wilderness Collective)

A few weeks later, just as the trip was fading, Casper and I clicked a link that appeared in my inbox. Immediately we were walloped with the opening licks of 鈥淰oodoo Chile鈥 screaming over jagged shots of our machines whipping along the edge of a mountain and bouncing up rocky paths. The film version of our trip was highly professional, gorgeously shot, and strangely jarring. Mundane moments鈥攚aiting for dinner, grabbing a beer鈥攈ad been stylized into something visually familiar but viscerally alien. The vibe pivoted to elegiac indie rock and grainy sunset shots. There was Casper lighting a fire with Vielma; what felt nice the first time suddenly looked weirdly meaningful. Rather than garden-variety dads who鈥檇 forked over money for a fun weekend, we were heroes of a now legendary adventure.

Watching our Wilderness Collective friends tool around in their vehicles was a hoot. But it was hard not to see how desperately epic everything looked. Manliness for the camera, manliness for the subsequent anecdotes, manliness for reclaiming some inner human void. What felt strange wasn鈥檛 the marketing of adventure but the marketing of the emotions that accompany adventure. The whole thing seemed like an ad for a brand called Man. Man is hip and brash, Man is solemn when appropriate, but above all Man is aspirational. If you are a man, you鈥檙e gonna wanna be Man. I found it all a little perturbing. Driving a wedge between our real selves and some anxious idealized version of us鈥攊sn鈥檛 that how men screw themselves up in the first place?

Were it that simple, we鈥檇 have our masculinity crises solved in half an hour. But this much was also true: somewhere around mile 17 on the last day of our trip, Casper and I hit a bump and my inner purist bounced right out of the vehicle. For reasons I did not grasp, the cameras and the engine noise and the occasionally forced bonhomie melted away in that final hour. Zipping along a bouncy road at 60 miles per hour, hand on Casper鈥檚 knee, I found that I was having a ball. But not just any ball. I was a boy again, speeding through the woods near my childhood home on a brisk fall afternoon, branches whipping my arms and untold Virginia ecosystems yielding to my BMX. It鈥檚 possible I鈥檇 had passing thoughts about my life, my parents鈥 separation, or some confounding teen behavior I鈥檇 glimpsed in the 7-Eleven parking lot. But mostly I had no thoughts at all. I was free.

I鈥檓 not saying that men should start acting more like boys. We more or less built a civilization on that, and look. But maybe I was looking at things all wrong out there with Casper. Instead of teaching him how to be a good man, maybe I needed to figure out how to be a child. There鈥檚 a tiny window of our lives before all the brokenness of our warped society seeps in, a window where the world is just big and strange and wonderful鈥攁nd exalting in that world is purer than anything.

At the start of our trip, I had offered Casper a dollar a day for his observations. It was a way to wrangle thoughts out of a sometimes circumspect soul, plus I figured he鈥檇 appreciate an assignment, given all the UTV-driving monotony.

鈥淎 lot of dry grass and a lot of trees. You let me drive sometimes,鈥 he told me on that last day. We鈥檇 made a final pit stop. Scrub and parched earth stretched out to red canyon walls in the hazy distance. The light was saturated, everything extra vivid, like an acid trip.

鈥淎nd do you think you鈥檙e getting better?鈥 I asked. 鈥淵ou know how all those signs say Wilderness makes you better.鈥

鈥淲hat do they mean, makes you better?鈥 Casper asked.

鈥淲hat do you think?鈥

鈥淏etter at camping?鈥

鈥淢aybe. Or a better man? What do you think being a good man means?鈥

He was quiet a while. I thought maybe he鈥檇 lost interest. But then he rattled off, 鈥淏eing nice, not selfish, liking nature, knowing how to swim, knowing how to camp.鈥

鈥淚 like those!鈥 I said. 鈥淚s that different from what a woman should be?鈥

鈥淣o. What do you mean?鈥

Then one of Casper鈥檚 buddies came over with a stick, which meant it was time to start whacking weeds. That鈥檚 what they did for a good 15 minutes, the dads all watching them, making small talk about football and work as we did.

Corrections: (10/05/2021) An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated that men have higher rates of depression than women. This claim has now been deleted. 国产吃瓜黑料 regrets the error.聽
Lead Photo: Courtesy Chris Velasco/Wildernes