Every summer some friends and I drive an hour outside of Vegas, rent boats, and go camping on the Colorado River. It's good to get away from the tourists, the lights and sounds and smells of the city. It's good to spend time with friends you feel comfortable with, in the middle of nowhere. We've been going out there for four years now, and somehow I've ended up as the one who puts the trips together. I call Willow Beach Marina, reserve the boats, let everyone know when they're booked for, sign the paperwork, and drive one of the boats. I love getting out there, leaving life behind for a while. . .and almost every trip I tell myself it's the last time I'm organizing one. We've had anywhere from 11 to 37 people go on the trips. We've wrecked propellers, beached a boat, and nearly drowned a dog. Making sure 'so and so' isn't on the same boat as 'that guy' because of something that went on in a bar between them two months ago gets tiring, especially if I'm one of them (and I have been, I'll admit it). So why do I keep planning these trips? We try to get to Willow Beach between 11am and noon on a Tuesday. It's just over an hour from Vegas, and most of us work until midnight, so that means getting up painfully early. Tents, sleeping bags, camp chairs, coolers, we probably take enough stuff to last us for a week out there, but roughing it is much better if you can do it in comfort. I fill out the paperwork, go through the check lists for the boats, then we all load up our gear and set out downstream. The first beer is cracked, sunscreen applied, cheers and cheerses, and for me a sigh of relief that we're out there again. Our first stop is almost always a cliff jump. About a mile down the river from the marina the boats pull to the Nevada side of the river, and those who are about to jump swim ashore. The rest of us sit below ready to pick them up, take pictures, and mock if anyone takes too long to jump. I did the jump once. Looking up at fifty feet is a lot easier than looking down at it. You have to take a bit of a run, launch yourself in the air, and anticipate hitting the cold river feet first. I was glad I did it, because there's something about launching yourself into space, unattached to anything for that short time, that is fantastically liberating. Having said that, I don't think I'll ever feel the need to do it again. Apart from the windmill impression I did on the way down, there's only so much liberation I can take. After the jumpers have been picked up, and any lost flipflops mourned and bruises admired, we'll head down the river either to stop and swim somewhere, or tie up in the middle and just float for a while. A couple of hours after leaving Willow Beach we'll get to one of a few campsites we've used in the past, and unload all our gear. We'll pitch out tents, stow our gear, some people go off for a hike while others go back out on the river in one or two of the boats, and we generally let the feeling of living in Vegas wash away.

It truly is stunning out there. The red, grey and yellow of the cliffs, rocks and boulders, the blue of the sky and the water, and the occasional vibrant splashes of green along the river bank are gorgeous. The river winds away from you and the sky stretches on forever, and it really makes you stop and think: 'What the hell did the first pioneers think when they got to this river? I can imagine a conversation that went sort of like this. . .

'At last, water! Thank God!'

'We're saved!'

'Uh, guys. . .'

'Who said this land was barren and inhospitable? We can make this place work!'

'Uh, guys. . .'

'What is it?'

'How are we going to get across?'

'Oh. Bugger.'

Okay, so that didn't happen because the river followed a different path before the Hoover Dam was built. But hiking through the desert out there you have to think about the courage, perseverance, and sheer bloody-mindedness that made us as a species feel the need to explore, to find out what lays over the next ridge, what we're going to see around the river bend. Scrambling over rocks, avoiding wizened cactii and keeping an eye out for snakes, it's not really something you should do alone, but it draws you on. One more ridge. I'll just see what's down this gulley. There's shade up there big enough for me to sit down in for ten minutes. And eventually the river is a small blue reflection of sky in the distance. It's peaceful, calming, and bloody hot. In the middle of nowhere, being alone with yourself and your thoughts, well if you can't work out who you are out there then you'll probably never know. And if the desert in daylight opens your mind, night time cuts the top off your head. The surrounding hills disappear, the river turns black, and the sky looks down at you with what seems like an infiinte number of tiny eyes. If the desert can draw me in, make me want to go further, see what comes next, then how do you think I feel about the stars? A billion stars with a billion stories, and I want to find out about all of them. I want to spend a million lifetimes seeing what's around the river bend on a galactic scale. Unfortunately I'm not going to live forever, and we don't have the technology to do what I want to do, so for now I'll continue to organize boat trips for myself and my friends as an excuse to get away from it all. I'll find time to get away from everyone for a little bit, to be alone with myself, the hot night air, and my billions of stars.