Gravity and Magic

KAVU athlete, Steph Davis finds wisdom and wonder in the spring time desert

By KAVU

May 1^st, 2018

As winter turns into spring, life always starts to speed up.…the natural flow as days get longer and the energy rises.

I feel so lucky to spend a little time in remote desert areas I love during the last month, ranging from Indian Creek to Zion to Arizona to Little Colorado Canyon.

While there, the Little Colorado was running powder blue, the famous “mothers milk” color, when we hiked to the bottom of the canyon.

Some years when I visit, after a lot of rain, the river looks chocolate brown like Willy Wonka’s factory, so getting to see that powder turquoise is always a special reward for making the effort to descend and ascend miles of talus in that rugged place!

Although I live in Moab, I have a small off the grid cabin in the desert near Indian Creek, and I’ve been really wanting to take advantage of the magic of gravity to get some running water down there.

I’d acquired some of those wonderful blue barrels a year or so ago and... kind of randomly, a little sink as well, and had it on my list to use these useful items in some way.

So on a visit to Indian Creek, we decided it was time to make it happen on a rest day, and built an outdoor kitchen conveniently located under a little rock perch full of gravity that the water can come down from.

We installed a big blue barrel on top of the rock perch with a hose coming down to the sink, and voila!

Running water!

Because most of my days are spent climbing and flying in some way, I realize that I get to have a lot of truly special experiences through those avenues.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to help out with a team of friends who were passing through Moab on their way to bike the White Rim and climb desert towers along the way.

inspiring friends

Now this is already a once in a lifetime adventure for most people, but one of the guys, Erik Weihenmayer is blind. They decided to make a quick ascent of Ancient Art, one of the most famous towers around here, because an NBC news team was profiling Erik and these adventures.

Erik has climbed Everest, El Cap and a bunch of other major peaks, as well as kayaked the Grand Canyon, so this was pretty much cake for him. However, to see how easily and comfortably he navigated the rocky trail to the base, and how fluidly he climbed and rappelled was really awe inspiring for me.

We got to hang out on a ledge for a while, and I asked him a lot of (hopefully not dumb) questions about echolocation which I’ve always found super interesting to hear about. Erik reminded me that we are all wild creatures and we have many tools to navigate the natural world