On our first morning, I found myself nudging in between a group of cows, trying to fill my water bottle with their brown, smelly water supply. We had been away from civilization for a day already, and there was little sign of water. We were hoping that one creek on the map would still be running, but no luck there. Our only option was the local watering hole for the cows. I swished my murky water around, filtered it, and plopped in an orange peel to mitigate the taste of god know what. I was a not-so doe-eyed high schooler at the time and was ready to take on whatever challenges the next week offered, along side seven of my classmates.
On our second morning we were given half of a day to do "solos", where each of us would wander off in a different direction and be alone for a few hours. During my solo time, I started climbing up some of the canyons, found a sunny spot, and got naked. It felt so good to bask in the sun without the constraint of clothes and just have some me time. I meditated, danced, did some yoga, and just stared at the sky, all while getting a pretty nice tan. When we all came back we asked each other how the solos had been...it turned out the first thing every one had done during their solo was take off their clothes!
On our third day we hiked out four hours to a canyon area with petroglyphs. We studied the petroglyphs for a while, and I thought about the fact that people used to live out there. They didn't just go out into nature for the week-long backpacking trip. No, they lived with nature, and the earth was their home in the rawest sense. It made me realize how disconnected we are from the earth these days, thinking of "nature" as a place we only go out to to visit every now and then.
On our fourth morning we were camped on a plateau right where two river beds met. The rivers were completely dried up, however it had rained the night before. I woke up early, crawled myself out of the tent, and opened my eyes to see two flash floods coming straight towards us. Luckily our tents were high enough that we did not get hit, but seeing two flash floods meet where the river beds converged was a magical, magical morning.
On our fifth day we found out that it was our leader, Peter's, birthday. We were bummed that we had just found out, because had we known earlier we would have prepared something special for him. As we were tramping along with our 40 lb backpacks, we stumbled upon old, deflated birthday balloons! In the middle of nowhere! Imagine our surprise, and the serendipity of it all (also it made me realize that when a balloon flies away it usually ends up in the middle of no where, disintegrating and polluting the surrounding environment). But back to a happier topic...we were so stoked to give Peter these balloons. Later that night, we pooled our resources together (these resources consisted of graham crackers, marshmellows, and chocolate), and somehow managed to surprise Peter with a makeshift birthday cake using small twigs as the candles.
On our sixth and last night I was having a really hard time thinking about going back home. I loved the silence and simplicity of backpacking and of the desert. I didn't want to enter back into the rat race. I asked my mentor, Peter, how he managed to go back after every backpacking trip. He told me, "Anwen, you have to understand that the reason we come out here is so that we can go back home a better version of ourselves for those that we love".