I leave my urban enclave and approach the West Desert with authority. My ancestors blazed across this territory on the backs of horses, sometimes newly broken wild mustangs.

They were the Egan men, a long way from their Irish homeland, and they ran the mail route of the Pony Express through the most difficult and dangerous stretches.

Utah’s West Desert is classic Basin and Range topography. It is like a bowlful of mountains, hundreds of ranges running north to south, resembling gigantic ocean swells in a sagebrush-dotted sea. Vantage points in these parts always reveal the same thing: This land is uninhabited. It is one of the few wild frontiers left in the world.

Each time I sign my name in the visitor log, I feel my place in history refocused. I feel humbled — humbled like the first time I met a bristlecone pine in Utah’s West Desert, which the National Park Service says are among the oldest living organisms in the world. I remember my dad describing them as being “older than Jesus.” He isn’t exaggerating. The bristlecone pines teach me that the Egan brothers’ pre-telegraph communication service doesn’t even begin to approach archaic. We’re all new to these parts.

— Excerpt from What Hasn’t Been Found by Rosie Gochnour Serago