BedRock Sandals x Through the canyon with diirt

Should you ever be graced with an invitation to raft the Grand Canyon, the first thing to do is say yes. Without hesitation. 

Spanning 280 river miles from Lee’s Ferry to Pearce Ferry, this trip is a portal into Earth’s oldest geological history, some of the rowdiest whitewater in North America and endless exploration around every bend. 

My recent and third voyage through the big ditch left me with that very same feeling I discovered at age six when I first passengered a raft: prolifically expanded and awe-strikingly inspired in the same breath. 

The Colorado River begins in the snowfields of the Rocky Mountains. It travels nearly 1,500 miles toward the sea in Mexico (although every last drop claimed before the river finds the coast). This watershed passes through the driest, hottest country on the continent, sustaining cities that would otherwise not exist. It is the circulatory system of the American West, supplying water to roughly 40 million people and irrigating 5.5 million acres of farmland. More water is exported from the Colorado than from any other river in the United States. While many lives depend on this essential water-shed, fewer may understand just how this river endows life. 

Pushing rubber down a river had a strange way of cracking us open: by beauty, by community, by the sheer improbability of being alive. The travertine-tinted turquoise water of the Little Colorado River or the gut-plunging feeling of cliff jumping off a rock named "The Diving Board” - these moments don't accumulate into memory so much as they rewire something. They strip away the unnecessary. Time moves differently - measured not in hours but in miles, in rapids, in the way the light hits the 6,000 foot canyon walls. By day three, my hands remembered each knot with ease. By day five, the thin coat of dirt on my skin was a comfort. By day ten, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be anywhere else. 

In the quiet moments between rapids, in the way someone hands you a cup of coffee before you've asked, in the shared laughter that echoes through the canyon that has seen 2,000 years of human life come and go, this experience has a way of deepening the richness of life.

This river does not just move water. It moves something in each of us — the sediment of ordinary life that needs dislodging. Where the Colorado has carved through two billion years of Earth's story, you begin to understand that it has always been doing more than sustaining life. It has been calling it back to itself.