There were eleven of us on this grand adventure. The plan was to spend five days backpacking in Grand Gulch and then drive to the Grand Canyon for an epic hike to the Colorado River. I'll admit I was a little nervous for this trip. Eight days with eleven people— that was a big crowd for me. But I somehow knew that once we were far off the grid and deep in canyon country, I would be just fine.
The desert has become comforting, like an old friend who you can spend months apart from, but once you're together again it's like you never left each other. Its beauty doesn't necessarily surprise me anymore, but I refuse to take it for granted.
I knew after day one that our group of eleven was something special. We were all here for something more than an adventure. We were here to learn about ourselves and to connect with one another. There were countless conversations at night, under the stars, where we'd let each other in to our thoughts and opinions on life. There were spiritual conversations, talks about our greatest fears, and stories about where we found love.
I told our group that I was incredibly thankful for their presence on our trip. It was so refreshing to hear that other people cared about the same things I do. In college, it's hard to weed out the genuine, they get lost in the masses of the selfish, the morally blind and the corrupt. In a way, these eleven people renewed my faith in humanity.
On our first night in Grand Gulch, everyone except for four of us went to bed relatively early. We decided to adventure in the dark and climbed up on top of an overhanging cliff above our campsite. We sat down for a bit of extra stargazing. The moon was almost full, so the stars were minimal, but the shadows on the canyon walls were exceptional. We used our limited astronomy knowledge to pick out a few constellations and eventually resorted to making up our own. If the Greeks could do it, why couldn't we?
Eventually we returned to our sleeping bags laid out on the slick-rock and fell asleep. There would be no tent for us this week, I forgot it at home in the midst of the pre-spring break chaos. But our packs were lighter, it was relatively warm, and the night sky was beautiful.
These late stargazing sessions became a nightly event, complete with scrambling in the dark, chacos and socks, and made-up constellations. Once, one of us hauled his sleeping bag and pad up to a lookout, as he thought we were sleeping up there. We weren't, but out of laziness, he decided to build a "retaining wall" out of a few rocks and spent the night alone, on the edge of a cliff. Once, our late-night destination was right next to a site of Native American ruins, their ancient bedrooms, and we accidentally stayed up past midnight.
I'll never forget the magic of our five days in Grand Gulch, our night-hikes, and our desire for more than just an adventure.