While driving up the canyon of the Colorado River in Moab, Utah, I realize that all the postcard-perfect images of the red rock mountains in this desert could have been taken from almost anywhere. Spires of stone shoot up from the earth in every direction; some are tall, thin, and come to a sharp point at the top, and others are miles wide, flat top mesas that dominate the skyline for large chunks of the horizon. At the bottom of the valley below, the murky water of the Colorado River flows briskly, a wide oasis of life cutting through the unforgiving desert. In the distance, high above all else, snow-capped mountains tower into the blue sky. Their white peeks are a reminder of how powerful nature is and how small I am in this sunbaked desert. My neck doesn’t stop craning for a better view during the entirety of the forty-five-minute ride to our launching point.
We’re rolling with an unusually large group today – thirty-eight of us ranging in age from twenty-two to eighty-five. All of us in Moab to celebrate the same wedding. We’ve rented six rafts to divide ourselves into. It feels like half the people who came to this wedding are, or were at one point, river raft guides. It’s easy to find six volunteers to take up the guide position in the rear of each boat.
This water is powerful. All the rapids on our course today are fairly easy. There are no crazy waterfall drops, tight channels, or major holes to get trapped in. Nonetheless, the force of the river below the boat is immediately obvious.
“Two paddles forward,” the guide of my boat, Emily, calls out. In unison, all six of us reach the ends of our paddles low and pull back hard against the frigid water. The motion triggers years-old memories inside of my brain. I’m transported back to my college days when I was lucky enough to get lost in the great expanse of Adirondack rivers.
Although I’ve never considered myself a “water person”, one of those intriguing individuals whose spirit seems akin to the fluid movement of rivers through the landscape, I’m having a moment here on this river. Six weeks of living in the desert have given me a new appreciation for being surrounded by this amount of water. Couple that with the fact that everywhere I look stands a cliff, tower, or rolling hill of red rock, and it is hard not to appreciate how incredible this moment is.
Only a few minutes into our trip down the river, I start to hear the rumbling noise of the first rapid. White, churning water is just visible far down the river. I sit up straight, jam my right foot into the crevasse between the raft’s bottom and side, and patiently wait to act on any command Emily gives. My mind becomes more conscious of my breath. Inhale. The water is choppier and stirs around us. We’re just feet from the start of the rapid now. Exhale. The raft’s front end plunges down into the white water, sending a frigid splash over our heads and down onto us.
“Paddle forward,” Emily shouts, battling the chaos of crashing water with her voice.
We all do as we’re told, as the boat tips backwards in an attempt to climb over a rock below. My side of the raft is tilted upwards to the point that it feels like I’m catching nothing but air with my paddle attempts, but I persist nonetheless, reaching deeper and deeper in hopes of contacting some actual water. Each second in the roaring water feels like an eternity. It is sensory overload – voices yellings, waves throwing the boat in every direction, each of us fighting to keep balanced enough to stay inside the boat, and all the while walls of freezing water crash over us from all sides. Maybe we are only in the rapids for thirty seconds or so, but I feel like I’ve lived an entire lifetime by the time we reach the calm water downstream.
Over the next few miles, we cover some flat water and then another rapid similar to the first. Having now arrived safely at the bottom of the second rapid, we know we have a few mile stretch of calm water. “I think I really would regret it if I didn’t take the chance to swim in the Colorado River,” I say to my boatmates. They all look at me like I’m a little bit crazy.
“Go for it,” Emily says.
Not wanting to give myself too much time to overthink it, I hand off my paddle and hat, plug my nose, and lean backwards over the side of the raft. My entire body goes numb the moment I enter the river. I’m swept downstream briskly, passing by the other boats that were ahead of us. My friend Adam is one of the only others voluntary in the water with me. I swim hard to reach him. “Tag, you’re it,” I shout, slapping my tingling arm onto his shoulder. Both of our laughs are brief and quickly replaced with the sound of our chattering teeth.
