River Trip

Every year, two of my closest friends (Sam, a filmmaker, and Bryant, a first-generation organic farmer) and I go on a week-long stand-up paddleboard trip down a river in the American west.

This year, we ran a 60-mile stretch of the San Juan river in southern Utah before it emptied into Lake Powell, paddling through Class III and IV rapids with our gear strapped in drybags to our boards, breaking for peanut butter-banana sandwiches on banks at the base of leaning sandstone cliffs, and staring into outer space at night, tracking shooting stars and orbiting satellites.

We tried to make sense of this unprecedented year, we sang aloud in canyons with ricocheting echoes, we transcribed intentions for our friendship into our dusty journals, and I’ve never felt more filled up by the austere beauty of the desert and by the richness that comes from decade-long friendships. Sam made a one-minute video of the trip with his drone here.