Five Days of Serenity (well pretty close) with Teens

Last Thursday I left for a five day trip with 13 teens I didn't know, and one friend (co-worker) that I knew well. We were headed for the San Juan River in southern Utah for and Eco Camp trip that is offered by the Garden partnered with Grand Canyon Youth to guide the river trip. It was definitely an experience I will always remember and gladly do again next year.

Thursday night we arrived at Sand Island near Bluff, Utah, 8 hours after leaving Desert Botanical Garden. We met our guides (who were amazing and so much fun) had some dinner and set up camp. The downfall this night and probably the biggest one of the entire trip, was the mosquitoes. Living down here I have gotten used to the luxury of not having any bugs outside. These mosquitoes would have been considered bad even in MN. So our little chitlins got all eaten up that night. Thankfully this was the only night we had to deal with this issue.

The next day we were on our way floating down the river. This riparian area has grand beauty. Geology and history come alive down this river. We saw so many areas where the Anasazi Indians used to live it was easy to place yourself in their times and imagine life back then. We saw petroglyphs and pictographs, river house (a house where many families most likely lived), a field of pottery shards, steps carved into cliffs to climb; all sorts of pieces of history. We walked up Comb Ridge where the Mormons turned around from building their road on their journey west and saw if they came a little further they would have seen they could have gotten through Comb Ridge.

The rocks along the river look so dynamic and ever - moving. The anticlines are alive here along with sandstone, limestone, and many other rocks I could never identify. We saw fossils of ancient creatures along with a lot of wildlife. Many big-horned sheep, deer, blue herons, beavers, and Canada geese (I told them it was called migration and that its summer down here, they have seemed to miss that memo).

These 12-14 year olds I spent the past 5 days with day and night impressed me. They were some of the most intellectual environmentally knowledgeable teens I have ever met. They surprised me with how much they wanted to just sit down and have a good conversation with you. They renewed me about having faith in our next generation to be able to care for earth and other issues our world has. I was also renewed in loving this age group. They are still kids in many ways but are trying to figure out who they are and the people they form strong relationships with will have a strong impression on who they become.

The entire group on top of Comb Ridge



This is a petroglyph that the Navajo "chipped" out because they believed this one panel (out of the entire Navajo Nation) was responsible for causing Small Pox among their people. So they came back to it and scratched it out.

If you look closely you can see some more petroglyphs above the kids' heads on the cliff


One of our campsites

Our lovely restroom - the views were amazing :) The orange bucket was for pee and the white ("groover") was for anything with a T...

River House

Pottery shard museum - there were pieces of pottery lying all over this field that you could easily find and pick up. This is a sampling of how diverse the pieces were and a great illustration to how pottery changed over time.

On the river in a tandem duckie