“No one who has been down the entire river can fail to be changed somehow.” – There’s This River

How do you describe something that is indescribable?

How do you write about something in which words simply can’t do it justice?

The things I saw, the feelings I felt, the bonds I created during my past week on the river are beyond description. Spiritual is really the only word I can think to adequately define my Grand Canyon rafting trip.

It was 88 miles down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon with 21 strangers who quickly became friends. It was four days without a shower or a toilet, sleeping under the stars on a cot with no ceiling or tent to separate me from the Earth. It was days spent in a motorized raft traversing 28 rated rapids that dumped 49-degree (Fahrenheit) water on you, chilling you to the core but keeping you begging for more. It culminated in a 10-mile hike from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top of the South Rim, climbing more than 6,300 vertical feet carrying a 25-pound pack on our back. It was not wanting to say goodbye after 5 hours of ascending to the top of the canyon and parting ways with our new-found friends.

It’s going to take some time to put it all into words. Don’t worry, there will be a detailed recap, all the unladylike moments (of which there were many) and what the days were really like. WATCH this 30-second sneak peek (and yes, the last photo is when I finally got to a shower!):

For now, I leave you with this. It’s a passage from a book called There’s This River … edited by Christa Sadler. The book is a collection of Grand Canyon boatmen stories. On the last night of our trip as we were sitting in camping chairs along the shoreline, stuffed from dinner and brownies made in a dutch oven over a fire, one of our river guides read us a short story called All the Way. Today, these are the only words I have to embody my past week in the Grand Canyon.

“It’s one of the great experiences of a lifetime: a river trip all the way through the Grand Canyon. You’re going to climb into a boat and float, motor, paddle or row all the way down … During this time you will come to know your fellow voyagers and your environment better than you ever expected, and you become comfortable sleeping on sand and rocky ledges. The routine of loading and unloading the boats is simple and welcome. You begin to believe the old superstition about river karma and start helping with the dishes. After all, ‘clean dishes, clean runs,’ right?

“Something happens to one’s sense of time on a full-canyon trip. The length of days begins to melt into the walls of the canyon and the rushing water … The light feels more natural than [you] have experienced since [you] were children. [You] wake up with the dawn and go to bed with the dark, learn stars never seen at home …

“People who are together for a whole trip often become fast friends. Sometimes events conspire to create a situation in which everyone, guides and passengers alike, learn something. Guides help guests stretch their limits. Guests help guides continue to appreciate the canyon. No one who has been down the entire river can fail to be changed somehow. The length of time you are on the river matters some, but what is more important is seeing a canyon begin, deepen and wind its way across the land until it reaches its end. It is a powerful experience to watch a landscape be shaped, and you come to understand something of the span of years this place has been under construction. That depth of time makes one feel at once insignificant and infinite.

“You may only see the canyon once, and those images will remain imprinted in your mind as images of an unchanging place. We all take these images home with us. We’ll be reminded how it felt to wake in the early light to the sound of the canyon wrens. We think of how good that cold drink of water tasted after the hike we thought would never end … And we remember how surprised and proud we were to be using our bodies, pushing our boundaries, recalling skills long unused. These memories won’t change, yet the canyon will ever change: day to day, season to season, year to year. Boatmen and women who have done fifty or a hundred trips are not bored; they keep coming back to a different world every time they arrive. There are as many reasons for returning as there are travelers, yet the ultimate reason remains the same: the river and her canyon keep calling us back.”