Morning shower

Before each hike in the hot dry Arizona air, I would lie down in the silty brown river to get my hair and clothes sopping wet. The icy cold water always felt great. Even so, after just a few minutes of hiking, I'd be hot and dry again. "This is just like hiking through a pizza oven," one of the other hikers commented.

Sometimes the canyons were dry and curving, with little stones that crunched under our feet. Non-fiction Writer sometimes brought his flute and would sit on a rock playing, the music echoing throughout the canyon. But often in a side canyon, we were following a creek and the sound of rushing water. I've lost track of how many beautiful waterfalls we saw. I don't have photos of many of them because I found it was hard to bring a camera on hikes that required me to swim through pools and scramble up rocks that looked like water slides.

I love the language of a waterfall, all that churning and tumbling, but on this trip I especially grew to appreciate what it feels like to plunge my hot tired body into all that tumbling clear water.

Note: I'm in this photo. Can anyone guess which one I am?