Safe Space - As a child, I was a professional fort builder. A combination of bed sheets, kitchen tables and cutlery-based catapults kept me safe from homework and other outrageous offences. These days, I'm doing my best to appear adult and have opted for the Tiger Wall 2 from the folks at Big Agnes. Weighing just 500 grams, this ingenious wedding of Dynema and carbon fiber is large enough for two people, or just one person who farts a lot.

Staying in-Charge - Making a bad-ass documentary while trying to execute a world-class expedition is tougher than I could have imagined. Rigging cameras, managing storage and getting the shots is tough enough. Fortunately, the one thing I never need to worry about is power.

So far, the silver lining to the stable weather I've seen is the seemingly limitless hours of sun I have to charge all the items that matter most.

Like a Lion in Zion - Zion, like all National Parks, deny paragliders the privilege of launching or landing within their boundaries. Fortunately, they're beautiful so having to walk across them is a gift.

A whole new world - Never having flown, or ever having been, in the desert before, I often felt like I was stepping foot on an entirely new planet. Similar to the earth I knew in terms of gravity and oxygen, the heat, lack of water and strange formations told me that this was something completely 'Other.'

This feeling was only intensified upon taking the skies. Floating above the matte, brown and red landscape, my childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut had finally come true.

Desert Cold - Though scorching hot throughout the day, the mid-April mornings would remain frosty cold until about an hour after sunrise. While brief, these 60-minute episodes reminded me of my home in the great white north and motivated me to make the most of each day so that I may finally return to its crisp, cold, mountain air.

Counting Calories - Long waits between flights in these remote parts means; 1. Making sure I don't eat more than my daily food ration and 2: I'm losing weight like it was going out of style.

Striking a balance between unsupported expeditions like this one and proper nutrition has never been straightforward, but in cases like these, I just feel lucky to be camped beside a lake, not having to worry about water on top of everything else.