A relentless wind swirls sand into my eyes no matter which direction I face. My eyelashes crunch together which each blink. Our white boat with a red stripe across the side is anchored deep in the coral sand. Water laps against the motor and crashes onto the beach from the constant, blasting breeze. 

I climb aboard the bow, wiping my sandy feet against my calves before jumping through the cabin’s open window. The pitter patter of paws follows me, and Disco’s wagging tail whips my face as she dives into the cabin too. I arrange a pillow for her head, then wrap her and my legs inside my sleeping bag. We both sigh, relieved for a reprieve from the wind’s chaos. 

Disco falls asleep with her white paws resting against my arm. She has not yet mastered the art of sleeping among the billowing sand like my seasoned desert husky, Mallow, who’s been asleep for an hour. I prop a few life jackets and a pillow under my head, pull out my computer and get to work writing. Red sand shifts in between the keys as I type. Wet sand clings to the bottom of my feet.

From inside the cabin, I look across the bay to the rounded, flaming fins of sandstone that hold the blue water in place. Ripples remain constant on the surface, blowing toward us as if there were a current bringing the water into our shady alcove. 

We are camping on Lake Powell, anchored in a sandy beach free of Russian thistle, so we walk barefoot. The beach backs up to a heap of boulders that rise until they meet a sheer wall of Entrada Sandstone, stained white by the lake’s high water mark in the 1980’s. 

Ghosts of flash flood waterfalls blemish the white wall, returning a dark magenta streak to the curved alcove. Long vertical streaks tumble from the rim down toward the sand but do not reach the ground. Near the bottom, the water spreads out like a root system plummeting down into the earth, but etched into the rock.

The curve of the sandstone wall blocks the sun all day long and last night, the nearly full moon. The light shone across the bay, illuminating the waves but not on us. It was bright enough to not need a headlamp, which is good because I’m always forgetting to pack one anyway.

My eyes are heavy from a bad night’s sleep. Nothing to do with the wind, that didn’t bother me.

We fell asleep easily after paddling against the wind, so strong it hardly allowed us to leave our cove. If we lifted our paddle for a second, we were sent soaring back toward the beach. We giggled like children, paddling hard just to let go and float back, over and over again until all that was left to do was crack open a bubbly water, eat dinner, and fall asleep.

A damp Disco crawled into the cabin with me and Jaden last night, firmly planting herself between our legs so she could have the most cuddles. Mallow preferred to sleep on the beach next to Shannon on the ground. I shrugged- let her. She prefers to sleep under the Milky Way instead of inside a tent, car, or boat. 

None of us stayed asleep for long. I woke to Jaden shouting, “Mallow! No!” 

He was up and out of his sleeping bag before my eyes peeled open. The skylight window was propped open, in case Mallow wanted to come back in the boat throughout the night. Disco was halfway out, ready to run after whatever Mallow was doing. Grabbing her back legs, I pulled her back into the cabin. 

“Beth!” Jaden shouted as I twisted the knobs to loosen the skylight so it would close completely, but Disco kept trying to escape out the opening.

“Mallow is fighting an animal!”

What? Fuck. 

The window bumped me on the head as I closed it. An animal? Shit. 

Scrambling to find my shoes and a leash in the dark, I heard Shannon say she saw a huge tail. She was standing on top of her sleeping bag while Jaden shined the flashlight at the boulders where Mallow and the mysterious animal disappeared. 

I wasn’t worried, as long as it wasn’t a mountain lion. Mallow could hold her own. Without conversation, I took off, stumbling up the boulders in the direction Mallow was last seen, calling her name, but all was quiet. 

Mallow was gone. I kept climbing over crumbling sandstone boulders, and when I reached the top my breathing was labored. 

“Beth! She’s down here,” Jaden called. Of course she returned to the beach as soon as I submitted this unnecessary sandy slope. 

“Did you hear that hissing?” Jaden asked when I returned to the beach. Mallow was smiling, unscathed. She protected our camp, proud as can be. I couldn’t help but smile too. I adopted her from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, where she ran loose in the canyons for days. She found water, maybe ate lizards, who knows.

They told me she seemed fine on her own, and only handed herself in when she got kicked by a horse. I love her story of surviving in the desert.

“I am not awake,” I mumbled, crawling back into the cabin.  

In the morning over coffee, I listened to Shannon and Jaden retell the tale, deciding that Mallow went head to head with a ringtail cat, which we’ve seen on beaches before on Lake Powell. 

I type all of this on my computer in the boat’s cabin, laying down against life jackets and listening to Disco’s snores become rhythmic. Her proximity keeps me warm. We are here to camp but also to paddle for my 30 day paddling challenge for my 30th birthday. 

Days 3, 4, and 5 were completed some 50 miles uplake from Page.

The wind may have other ideas about how we fill the day. After hours of reading, drinking coffee, and huddling in our sleeping bags facing away from the wind, we decide to swim. The water is warmer than the air temperature. 

The white caps that pushed us toward this camp last night are gone, so we decide to test our luck and boat across the bay to the nearest side canyon. 

When the walls narrow around us, we find a beach with sand, not rock, and anchor again. The dogs jump out the cabin window and chase each other on the slickrock while we inflate our packrafts and paddleboard. 

Mallow jumps in Jaden’s packraft and I sigh, not wanting to be the one with Disco in my boat. She has yet to master sitting in a boat and whines the whole time, where Mallow immediately curls up and rests her chin on the bow, tracking birds with only her eyes.

I am jealous, watching Jaden and Mallow float peacefully into the narrow canyon while Disco whines and jumps from my lap to the front of the boat, threatening to jump off if I don’t hold her harness. 

“Disco, sit,” I say, but I don’t have a treat so she doesn’t listen. She jumps off the front and splashes into the water.

The wind is carrying our boats down the canyon, fast. The canyon walls are tall around us now with no shore to swim toward. Disco doesn’t care. She paddles her little legs beside my boat toward Mallow, who is watching her from her relaxed position. I grab Disco’s harness and pull her up into the boat. She shakes, drenching my dry t-shirt.

When the canyon twists, I shiver as I enter the shade. I do not need to paddle because the wind is carrying us across the water and deep into the canyon. I can’t paddle with Disco anyway, as she turns back and forth, standing on the bow of the packraft or trying to climb into my lap. 

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to paddle against the wind back with Disco,” I admit once we all take a swim break. 

October’s wind is cold but the sun still beats down with late summer’s heat. Jaden decides to paddle back without a dog to retrieve the motor boat. Mallow hops on Shannon’s paddle board, and so does Disco. We shrug, laugh, and float while holding our boats together and let the wind carry us into more narrow, shady and cold sections. 

We want to hike the slot at the end of the canyon where the water runs out and the walls are so narrow you can reach out and touch them both sides with your fingertips or shoulders in some spots. 

Shannon and I find a beach in the sun to dock our boats, warm up, and wait for Jaden. When he arrives we deflate the boats, wrestle a dead fish out of Disco’s mouth and load up to continue around the next bend. 

We watch with horror as the deep blue water underneath us turns into a Granny Smith apple, lime green with long strands of hair floating. Algae.

I have seen this before in the fall, when summer temperatures were too hot and the monsoon season didn’t deliver.

Relief washes over me that we didn’t paddle into this muck, that Disco didn’t jump out and swim or worse, inhale any of this nastiness. We will not be hiking this canyon today, since it would require swimming through the cabbage colored water.

Our last day on the lake is noticeably quiet without the wind. We paddle from our alcove into the bay, with the dogs running on shore next to us. We wonder out loud what the lake would look like at full pool, cranning our necks to peer at the bathtub ring some 150+ feet above us. 

My phone’s map tells us we are underwater when we are standing on shore, loading the boat to go home. I drop a pin of our campsite, which looks like we are swimming deep in the blue waters of Lake Powell’s past.

We wonder what will happen to this place. Will the lake survive another 10 years? It sits at 27% of full pool this October, down 33 feet from this time last year. Will we know when it’s our last time backing the boat down one of the last remaining accessible boat ramps of Powell? Will there be a warning? Will there be a sudden drop of water, leaving the ramp high and dry on the cliff face, meeting the same fate of so many other access points which remain closed?

Not knowing how this place will change is part of why I love Lake Powell so much. It teaches me how fleeting every moment really is. Even a place made of sturdy rock crumbles when it rains. A place of seemingly abundant water has been less than 50% full the entire time I’ve lived here. Lake Powell’s future is uncertain, as is mine, and there’s a little bit of joy I find in that.

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