This was Brian’s first exploit into the area, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t think these trips are ever something I expect. I retreat to the desert for reasons I don’t understand, maybe in search of what I can’t imagine.

We decide, recalling some definition from the fourth grade, that there’s some lack of annual rainfall that defines a “desert.” But it doesn’t particularly care about our definitions or anything else about us. The desert doesn’t exactly welcome you, but if you bring enough water and tread lightly it might tolerate your presence.

This land is a contradiction, simultaneously sparse and rich. A “wash” can be a dirty, dusty wide path with only the fantasy of anything cleansing. Bright sand swaths narrow to dark slots. It is lifeless, except for the persevering trees between canyon walls, birds that wake me in the morning, fish that have somehow made their way up a narrow side canyon, microbes that build cryptobiotic soil metropolises engineered in the fragile surface. A raven swoops down on us from a rock ledge after delivering food to two insistent chicks.

Lizards scurry in front of our feet, leaving behind a distinctive track in the sand, the trailing tail tracing a path into startled dead leaves. These creatures are the bow wave of our single file line: Adam, Anna, Sam, David, Brian, Bill, John. I look back to make sure we’re all still here, meandering along the canyon bottom. John is staring up at looming red rock walls; Anna is crouched with a frog — maybe a toad, we aren’t sure — inconspicuously making its way through wet sand.

Contrast continues. So much of this is inhospitable, but etchings on rock walls reveal that this place has been inhabited, and we wonder if the wavy squiggle so deliberately traced out is a map of where we’re headed, following in the footsteps of others long past. Land seems to chase the horizon into eternity but abruptly gives way to plummet into a river canyon, which winds its way deeper and deeper until it’s carving out a cathedral not engineered but brought into existence by some higher power. Something made this, water and whimsy in the right proportions.

And yet nothing particularly cares about our presence here, certainly not our comfort. If anything, it’s out to get us. A red desert bloom attacks via extended cactus spines. Vertical drops open up where sandstone has given way. On slickrock slopes, a marked trail is impossible, so only the stacked rocky breadcrumbs, “cairns,” guide your way. These are obvious after you’ve passed them and have to retrace your steps.

We signed up for this long meander. Four miles through the sand on day four, you begin to wonder what you were thinking. The desert doesn’t care, but it might be laughing. It’s a good time to break for lunch on this sandy bank where the dry wash has slowly evolved into the verdant stream that has cut its way into sandstone cliffs. An alcove hovers a couple hundred feet above. Luminous green cottonwoods contrast the deep red of the rock, backed by the radiant blue of the sky.

At least until the clouds move in. David had been wondering when we’d know to get out raingear and pack covers — we told him it would be obvious, and now the prophecy is borne out. What begins as a few sprinkles mutates. The weight of the water above is too much for the sky and it falls out in drops that erupt on the surface of the creek in this bend. We decide we can take a little longer here under this alcove, dry and with a good view of the show.

Moments later, a few dry leaves and a pinecone tumble from the cliff above. And then a tendril of water. It’s the foreshadowing of the waterfall that emerges in this spot where we happened to stop for lunch. Within 20 minutes, this would all be over, but here we were in the midst of the parched landscape transforming before our eyes. Afterward, the sky would be blue again, the waterfall reduced to a few drips off the varnished rock wall, and we would pack away the extra layers and head down the canyon again, wondering what this dry, forbidding landscape would bring next.

Adam Johnston is a professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University, where he helps prepare future teachers and supports educators throughout Utah. This commentary is provided through a partnership with Weber State. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent the institutional values or positions of the university.