The weather was mostly rain this past week. It is getting colder and fall's brilliant colors are fading, leaves dropping everywhere. The mountain peaks are now topped with snow, while the summer grasses that cover the hills near Salt Lake City have lapsed into their dormant yellows and browns. Winter is coming, and this means the best Boxster roads in the area will soon close. We have fine all-season roads that lead up to Park City and other major ski resorts, but the two lane highways that are nothing but twisties leading to the many lakes and camping areas in the national forests will soon close. These are the roads where the Boxster and I have played for the past few months.

This morning was a surprise. Blazing blue sky, bright sun, and fluffy white clouds towering over the mountains. I had intended to catch up on some work, but the Boxster sat in the garage all week and this could be the last day our familiar haunts are open. I quickly threw on my clothes and headed for a favorite road, East Canyon.

Even though it was sunny, the ambient temperature was only 56 when I hit the road. Top was down anyway, and with the heated seats on, I was comfortable in a long sleeve shirt and a fleece vest. This is really the best way to enjoy a sports car, the vast sky overhead, the smell of the surroundings, and the feeling of being immersed in the landscape, not peering out at it.

I started the trip driving up Emigration Canyon, which is very popular with cyclists and joggers. I took it slow going up this canyon, then sprinted up Little Mountain Pass with its sweeping view of the Salt Lake Valley. The upper road was deserted on a Sunday morning and the car warm. I stretched it out a little, hitting 80 in third gear in the short straights, then back into second to take the switchbacks at 40. The car reacted with glee, gliding through the turns as precisely as an acrobat, the engine winding up to redline as the car accelerated into the next straight.

Mountain Dell Canyon from Little Mountain Pass

Over the top and down the other side of the pass into Mountain Dell Canyon, the valley expands before me as I round the rolling hills and the vista comes into view. Three weeks ago the mountains were a riot of fall colors. Today, all the leaves have fallen and the forests are a stark display of white aspen trunks intermingled with dark evergreens. The roads are dry and empty, the surface smooth and well-maintained. I am very cautious and will never do anything to put anyone else in harm's way, but today the park is empty. The season is over and it has rained all week. The straights in the canyon are a little longer than through the pass, so the speeds are higher. It is absolutely quiet other than the wail of the horizontal six running between 6,000 and 7,000 rpm.

At the end of Mountain Dell Canyon, the road is a series of switchbacks climbing up a sheer wall. No shoulders, but the road surface is pristine. The road hugs the hillside, serpentine twisting in the climbs, then a switchback that seems like a back flip. Down into first, then back into second for the next set of slalom turns. The climb is about 1500 vertical feet in a couple of miles. From the top the view is of mountains stretching in every direction, most topped with snow, but winter has not yet taken full hold of the landscape. Soon the irregular ridges and sharp angles of the rocks will be a soft, white landscape of snow.

Mountain Dell Canyon from Big Mountain Pass

Going over Big Mountain Pass, the road enters Morgan County and Little Dutch Hollow. The road surface is still excellent, but there are no longer any road signs to give a clue about the curves ahead. The road runs down the side of the mountain, but the course is an irregular mix of increasing and decreasing radius turns, short straights, switchbacks, and blind esses. Today the road is empty.

This road demands full concentration. There are no shoulders, and the curves are not always what they seem to be, sometimes turning into a switchback as you come around what at first appears to be a gentle sweeper. I am back and forth between second and third, keeping the revs up for exit speed, while at the same time trying to stay in the right gear for the 90 degree curves that come out of nowhere. This section of road is through a dense stand of conifers on the north side of a ridge, so the landscape is a dark mix of greens and shadows. The temperature drops to the low 40s as the car hunkers down through the twists and turns of this roller coaster ride, around me the deep musk of the regal evergreens.

As I drive, I notice the silence. The only sound is the distinctive Porsche wail as the car moves up and down between 4,000 and 7,000 rpms. There are no echoes here, as the sounds cannot carry through the dense forest. The sound of the engine is not out of place. If anything, it has a purity that blends well with the stillness of the forest, a melody that finds full expression in the distinctive stillness of this concert hall.

Out of the mountains, I am driving the shore of East Canyon Reservoir. During warm weather, there are ski boats and campers all over the area, but today a lone fisherman has the entire lake. The road hugs the narrow space between the shoreline and the canyon wall. I take a cutoff that continues north along the shoreline and through a small section of red rock country.

The road is deserted and the route a continuous slalom. Back and forth, slipping a curve where visibility permits. My hands are in constant motion as I wind through the canyon carved by East Canyon Creek over a million years, the car completely composed, even relaxed as it moves lithely through the unending turns.

Please let this be what heaven is like. An open road that is nothing but turn after turn, acceleration and braking, second to third, then down to second, down to first, engine's melody wailing off the canyon walls, second, third, brakes and heel-toe to second, brakes and heel-toe to first, on the gas and back into second. It is a symphony, it is a dance, it is why I am out on a Sunday morning driving my Porsche.