Almost 20 years ago, I was given the gift of a lifetime: two berths on a 28-day trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. It was 1986. I was a second-year art student, newly married, naïve, young; trying in so many ways to define myself. The trip, for me, as it is for many others, was a life-changing experience. Those lucky enough to raft the Grand Canyon inevitably become fiercely protective of its magical presence. A trip of any duration in the Canyon leaves its impression on the soul. At that tender age, I found myself confronted for the very first time with the strange sense of both belonging to nature and of being completely unnecessary in the “grander” scheme of things. At twenty-one I began the trip at the the center of my own universe. When I took out, almost a month later, I was a changed person; I felt as if I were just one small and insignificant grain of sand in the middle of a vast sedimentary plateau.

A trip through the Canyon is like 28 days of time travel. I floated back millions of years in the span of a few miles, leaving behind my life and family on the Kaibab Plateau. I connected to an amazing and often violent past, often by simply touching the rocks of the Canyon or sifting the soft sand through my fingers.

For 18 years, my Grand Canyon trip has kept its rank as one of the best experiences of my life and one experience I thought I ‘d never relive. Then, this past spring, a lifelong friend called with an invitation to spend three weeks floating through the Canyon with a group of total strangers. Without a second thought, I excused myself from the soccer carpool, blew off my garden, packed my art supplies in a York Pack and kissed my family good-bye. For the next month, I would revert to single-human-being status, beholden to no one, and certainly no longer a mother, wife, teacher or employee (sorry, NRS). I was a lone woman, armed with a paintbrush and a deep, abiding passion for something completely beyond what can be captured on paper.

A few short weeks after I accepted the invitation, I found myself floating under Navaho Bridge, a scant four miles into the 226 it would take for us to reach Diamond Creek. On my first trip, the rafting industry had been in its infancy. Boat design and manufacture was still heavily influenced by military applications. All our perishables had to be packed using the ever-handy “rocket box”. Even our toilet system consisted of two rocket boxes: one to contain the unmentionable, and the other to hold paper products, hand-washing supplies, an old toilet seat and black (not clear, mind you) plastic bags. (The pejorative Grand Canyon term for this type of river toilet is “groover”. Without the toilet seat, we soon would have had the tell-tale grooves from the hard sides of the rocket box on our poor backsides.) Nothing fancy, but very practical.

Back then, our only state-of-the-art gear items were the newly available Bill’s Bags, (the bags’ inventor, Bill Parks, owns NRS and is responsible for quite a few river-running innovations). In 1986, most of us didn’t even have the option of river sandals or neoprene booties! We made do with a couple of pairs of tennis shoes, which were soon soggy and useless. By the end of the trip, my feet were covered with cuts from sharp rocks I encountered while walking around camp barefoot. Painful infections from thorns and insect bites festered from ankle to toe, all while my feet were so sunburned I could hardly walk. Today, we are endlessly indebted to the competitive nature of the recreational footwear industry and the multitude of choices available for river runners. In fact, NRS has entered the footwear fray with our own well thought-out design, the Pursuit sandal.

When I committed to the 2004 trip, I thought I would once again experience a month of shredded, painful feet. It hadn’t occurred to me that the advances in footwear and sunblock would eliminate a great deal of this misery. But they certainly didn’t eliminate all of the hardship. For, I made the unfortunate mistake of deciding not to break in my brand new Chacos and as a result wound up with a brand new collection of blisters. Fortunately, one gentleman on the trip had been a guide in the Grand Canyon for nine years and understood its pitfalls intimately. He generously - and literally - shared one bit of river wisdom with all of us: his tub of Bag Balm. After one application of this wonderful substance, we were all willing to bargain for more with anything from backrubs to our last can of cola.

For optimal results, start with clean, dry feet. Apply a liberal amount of Bag Balm and massage it into all surfaces of your feet, making sure to coat the spaces between the toes, the soles of the feet, the tops and the ankles. Next, cover the whole slimy mess with a pair of cotton socks purchased and packed for this very purpose. Finally, go to bed and stay there till morning. (A note of caution: if you hop up and go for a stroll, in no time your Bag-Balmed feet will be coated with sand and the whole thing will turn into a very unpleasant, exfoliating goo.)

Another great thing to pack is a tube of zinc oxide. This stuff feels fantastic on sunburned feet and is a nice alternative to wearing a pair of socks under river sandals to avoid the sun’s rays. Another word of caution: it’s really hard to get the stuff off of your sandals, so you might think twice about zinc oxide if you’re concerned with how they look. Nevertheless, chances are good that after eighteen days in the Canyon, your sandals are going to look well broken-in anyway.

On our 2004 May Day launch, we were as loaded to the gills as in 1986, but with a couple of important differences. Almost all of our boats were self-bailers, and all but one had been manufactured by NRS. Our stoves, tables, tents, toilets and everything else imaginable had all been updated with the decisive stamp of progress and efficiency.

My own gear ensured that I would hardly know that I was camping. At the recommendation of my husband, who’d been through the Canyon the previous summer, I purchased a Roll-A-Cot (to be used with my Paco Pad), a Dura-Mesh Chair, two bags made by Watershed, a York Pack 80 to keep my brushes, palettes and expensive watercolor paper dry, and a RiverMaps guide to the Grand.

Of all of these items, I have to admit that I was most impressed with the RiverMaps guide. It contained an amazing amount of information. It was laid out in a logical progression with the text reading from the bottom up, the same way you read the river map located on the facing page. My fellow river runners were skeptical at first, their primary concern being its size. Most other river guides fit nicely into a small dry bag or rocket box. The RiverMaps guide, however, is large and won’t stow away easily, so I simply decided not to bother. I kept it out for the duration of the trip, tucked neatly under a two-inch-wide strap used to hold the Paco Pad in place over a dry box. Its water-resistant paper survived 18 days of exposure just fine. In short order, the RiverMaps Guide became the “flavor of the month”, as it was always at hand and always contained fantastic and entertaining information; information not limited to flows and hazards, flora and fauna. It’s clearly a book put together by folks who love rivers and love running them.

By the spring of 2004, along with most of the gear, the kinds of people on the trip had changed a good deal. On this trip we had wonderful variety of folks from all walks of life. Most notable was a brilliant and passionate young geologist and teacher. Over coffee in the mornings, she would prepare us for the geological highlights in store for the day. On the river, she could often be found lecturing happily from the back of her raft to a gaggle of kayakers who had brought her a cool-looking rock. And after about a week of Canyon life, I began to understand her passion - what made her wiggle with joy when she caught a glimpse of a new formation around a bend in the river. Sometimes she was actually so overcome with emotion that she would end up kissing the rocks around her. In fact, by the end of the trip, I found that, strange as it may sound, I wanted to kiss them too. If my first trip down the Colorado had been an epiphany, my second trip was filled with understanding.

Most people who paint, draw, photograph or sculpt realize the value of knowing your subject. Having my own personal geologist in my “back pocket” on this trip gave me new insight into what I was creating with my paintings. In my mid-twenties, I saw a watercolor show at the Denver Art Museum by someone who had floated the Grand Canyon, painting as he went. I spent the entire afternoon in that exhibit, appreciating his use of color and how he handled his brush, while also seething on some very superficial level at the fact that he had gotten to go and do what I wanted to do. As I attempted my first few paintings in the Canyon, I found that I had become preoccupied with his style. They were awful. I was trying to paint according to someone else’s vision.

And, sure enough, it took a geologist to bring me back to where I ought to be. I needed to kiss the rocks and feel the sand; I needed to understand the amazing forces behind the colors and forms I saw, before attempting to visually express them. Once I figured that out, I could do what all true river rats (including painters) do in a gorgeous canyon: I could play.

On both trips, my time spent in the Canyon was amazing and transformative. The first time through, I emerged with a deeper understanding of myself and my place in the world. By the end of the second, I felt as if I was visiting an old friend, holding conversations with her, using paint instead of words. And, I sadly saw something that I didn’t see on my first take: a tired canyon plagued by heavy use, unable to replenish her beaches or remove the tamarisk shrubs clogging her shores - humankind’s attempt to harness and control something beyond our ability to do so.

The Hopi have traditionally held the belief that the Grand Canyon is a sipapu, a place from which all people emerged from another world into this one. Well, “emerged” we did. But the Colorado River moving through the Grand Canyon Corridor will outlast us all in one form or another. What matters now is what we can do to help her retain her dignity - not just to survive, but to thrive. Many efforts are being made to this end. At the Rim, an extensive Ponderosa Pine ecosystem restoration is under way. In Page, Arizona, the Navaho Power Plant has installed expensive scrubbers in an attempt to decrease the haze of pollution that obscures the sky on many days. Then, there is my own effort. The trip geologist and I have decided to team up, share our areas of expertise and work together to create an art installation that will pair my paintings and drawings with her extensive knowledge of the geological and ecological forces that continue to shape the Grand Canyon. It may not be on the same level as, say, installing scrubbers or restoring ecosystems, but it is a way for us to give back to something that’s given so much to both of us.

Story by Amy McMurtry - NRS Customer Service

Photos by Angela Coleman - Geologist