During this 6-day adventure in Utah's beautiful Cataract Canyon, Page helped participants explore Native American ruins, hike up secret side canyons, raft under red rock monuments, all while floating on the mighty Colorado River.
Wilderness landscapes stir us in intimate, life-changing ways. We become lost in their grandeur and in the getting lost rediscover a vital part of ourselves. Nowhere else besides the river is this transformation so enabled. Each time I’m on the river, I rediscover the joy of simple things—a cool drink of water, a playful mud bath, the taste of a fresh tomato, sliced avocado, sweet summer corn. But it’s the evenings I love the most, when our tents are pitched, the guides are done cooking, and we’re gathered beneath a red canyon sunset. Whether the women on the trip are professional writers, experienced outdoor enthusiasts, or have never before written, rafted, or camped, each brings a unique gift.
A few years ago, Susan, an underwater photographer for National Geographic whose job took her to the depths of the ocean, joined the trip. “I figured the other women were bound to be interesting," she told me. Yet she felt far more at home with a camera than a pen. One evening, she shared her journaling from earlier that day. She waited for one of the other women to finish reading, then began. Shaking, she admitted how nervous she was. “Last year,” she said, “I was diving off the coast of Florida, and came nose to nose with a shark.” As she continued reading, the story of her brother’s untimely death several months ago unfolded. She compared the darkness of her grief as she stared into the shark’s cold eyes, to the grip of fear she felt as a deadly sea serpent coiled itself around her flippers. Her story ended as a canyon wren sang the last song of the evening.
Memories like these, coupled with the memories of laughter while floating down the river, or quiet conversation as we rest in the shade after a great hike, make these river trips unforgettable. Something very magical always happens—the combination of women alone in the wilderness, writing and sharing, creates such a unique atmosphere of trust and openness. We play. We hike. We swim. We write. We run rapids. We talk about the creative process. We write some more. We share. We get wonderfully silly. We get profoundly serious. We get silly all over again. We’re in and out of the water, up and down the canyon walls, in and out of each other’s stories. From sun to shade, dark to light – in every metaphorical way you can imagine.
~ excerpt from Page’s Journal, Day Two, Westwater Canyon, Black Schist Camp
“The cliffs of this camp are varnished with swaths of black, weathered and cracked, lined with centuries of upheaval, fissures and faults, boulders that flake away like desiccated skin cells, cedars that sprout from the cliff face like whiskers. We see beauty in all these signs of ancientness, why is it then that we so often fail to honor the beauty in ourselves, and in our ancient ones? I hope that when I am weathered with another quarter century of living, that someone will find beauty in my wrinkled skin, in the slack muscles that hang loosely from the bone, like meat tenderized by a long, slow heat. I hope they will look into my eyes, and see the light of seventy-five years of sunrises, hear the slow rumble of a thousand rainstorms in my old and husky voice. I hope they will feel in the unsteady grasp of my arthritic fingers the memory of a thousand gentle caresses. And when I smile, and they see that I am long in tooth and short of breath, I hope they will recognize the passion in my heart, and know that my lips still remember the touch of a thousand kisses…”
