The shift from summer into fall brought me to the desert; to that endless expanse of flaming sandstone where Utah and Arizona meet. I’d spent a fair amount of time trolling blog posts and articles from online paddling magazines stemming from Google searches like “top places to kayak” and “best multi-day paddling destinations.” As I experienced as a guide for day trips on the Chicago River, it seems kayaking is extremely popular as a novel way to spend an afternoon, but information catered to those wanting to spend multiple days on the water “yak-packing” is less prevalent. Yet, these searches led me to Lake Powell, a web-like body of water where the Glen Canyon Dam starkly separates lake from the Colorado River.
I’d had it in my mind to paddle the lake for over a year, even despite the little information gathered from random forums on making a multi-day trip of it. After several days of low hanging clouds that poured over Jackson until they finally broke to reveal freshly snow-covered Tetons, I left Wyoming and headed south, Lake Powell and the promise of more consistent sunshine in mind. Passing tree-lined ridges awash in greens, yellows, and reds, I zig zagged the borders of Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah before definitively leaving the borderlands and following Utah’s beehive shaped highway signs south.
A water tank refill at a Moab gas station, a night in the Valley of the Gods, before finally making my way to Page, Arizona- one of the gateways to Lake Powell, whose spindly canyon fingers claw their way up from the northern edge of Arizona and stretch into Utah. I’d spent a little time in Indian Creek, outside Monticello, Utah last fall, but I’d forgotten the enormity of the Southwest’s red desert: the towering nature of buttes and mesas, rising up from undulating layers of sandstone- few trees or vegetation to provide any context of their hugeness.
I launched at Antelope Point, surrounded by day kayakers in sit-on-top boats, multi-level house boats, and roaring speed boats. Antelope sits along a winding path of narrow water that feels more river-like than lake, framed by steep canyon walls that- along with the wake of the motor boats- pushes the water in unpredictable reverberating patterns. Sharp bends, ever present boat traffic, and persistent waves made for difficult paddling. But after miles in this claustrophobic environment, it suddenly opens and the desert reemerges, seated on a wide blanket of water.
It feels strange to paddle in the desert. Even paddling in the ocean, where drinking water is a sparse resource, there is a sense of the lushness that comes with water in the surrounding landscape. In the desert, lushness is replaced by hard scrabble tenacity seen in hearty sagebrush, spiny plants, and rough-skinned lizards flitting across the rock. Despite its presence, the water brings no oasis, instead it is a sparkling blue anomaly amidst dusty red stone. It’s these contrasts that seem to define the land: red and blue, narrow slot canyons and infinite expanses, cool liquid water and dry sand.
Even time feels somewhat bizarre. Traversing the border of Utah and Arizona in my boat, my phone flips erratically between each state’s time zone until I’m not sure what’s “right.” But regardless of what humans dictate, time defines this environment. Evidence of shrinking water levels, a landscape that itself has been so drastically carved by the ebb and flow of water over years and years. I may not have had a sense of time as it appears on the face of a clock, but each morning and night with clockwork consistency, the sun first climbed over and later dipped behind the mesas, a bookend of golden light that set the desert on fire. Perhaps paddling in the desert is an irony, but also how appropriate to move through this fissure in the earth via boat, this place where the land split open and water sculpted something so breathtaking.