I love camping in the desert. The nights are cool, and clear enough that sometimes the stars seem so close and so far and all encompassing. I feel insignificant and yet completely connected. I love falling asleep to that. So, I didn’t even have a tent. I brought a tarp though. And, of course, shortly after I fell asleep it began to rain. I quickly set up the tarp with my trekking poles, tying the corners to rocks, and gathered my sleeping bag and gear and fled underneath. The sky opened up. Four inches of rain dropped that night. I, by some fantastic luck, stayed dry and slept through almost all of it. Everything else was completely soaked, including my sleeping pad, which somehow had water inside of it.
The road was washed out and a new small river ran across where the road should have been. I remember standing there with other campers watching as a big 4×4 tried and ultimately failed to cross. That day I decided to hike the canyon in and alongside the knee-deep Paria river. What a beautiful day that was.
