A warm, soft breeze greets visitors to Evan Evans' new shop facility just a mile or so from downtown Crandon. The air is pungent with newly cut grass and blooming foliage of another brilliant late summer day in the American Midwest. For now, the brutal chill of winter is still months away, a very special time when the Northern Wisconsin woods may indeed be one of the most beautiful places anywhere.

It is Labor Day weekend 2007, and one of off-road racing's truest, most purely heroic heroes wants to show off his new Wisconsin headquarters before all hell breaks loose just down the road at Crandon International Raceway. For more than 40 years, these final three days of summer have meant just one thing around these parts, the highly revered, not to be duplicated (and might we suggest holy) ritual, better known as the Off-Road World Championships.

OVERVIEW OF AN EMPIRE: Ok, it may not be the Ponderosa and his last name is not Cartwright, but Evan Evans enjoys surveying the new shop he has built near Crandon, Wisconsin. The highly popular driver knew the purchase was an investment, one he hopes will pay off handsomely in 2008 and beyond.

Despite the fact that short-course racing's "big show" is just hours away, wheelchair-bound Evan Evans is the picture of the overused term "calm and collected." For just a little while, today one of our sport's most popular and inspirational icons somehow magically transcends his well-publicized physical challenges to share an even bigger struggle with us–maintaining that rarified status of "professional off-road racer."

Evan Evans is nothing if not a professional off-road racer. By that definition alone, he certainly has followed in the legendary footsteps laid down by his father, Walker Evans. But unlike those vaunted days of yore, the prodigal son's current struggle in matching his dad's legacy is a story of challenge, success and–at least up until now–the cruel reality that climbing a career ladder as a professional may have been reserved for another time and place.

And yet, whether unencumbered or unaware of today's harsh reality, Evan Evans the racer moves ever forward toward his vision. The shop in Crandon, a full 60x80-foot beauty with heated floors, fulfills his destiny, at least for now. So does the intimate, but expertly suppressed knowledge that the impressive spread he worked so hard to obtain may have come at just the wrong time. But, for him, it's just the right time. Such is the walking paradox named Evan Evans.