Floating down the Colorado river, time quickly began to fold back on itself. Within just a few miles, I was entering Marble Canyon, named by the man with one arm who had first explored these waters in 1869, John Wesley Powell. A few miles into our adventure, my iphone, packed at the bottom of my duffle bag was of no use. I was now in the land of Big History, measured in Eras, not years, with names like Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. We began to speak of millions of years ago, not last century. The small history, I had been so accustomed to basing my life on simply vanished. For this stretch, in a land barely touched my modern civilization, election cycles, breaking news, monthly bills, algorithms and daily schedules simply vanished into the ether. For the next 185 miles, I would watch as geologic formations pushed their way upward, the sands of times forming deep canyons and magnificent mountain formations, one layer at a time.

In the scorching August sun, we floated and in the icy cold water of the rapids we cooled off. Our concerns were now measured by the number of ounces of water we consumed and the electrolytes that kept us balanced, instead of the appointments that needed to be kept or the calls that should be returned.

Hours measured by a clock simply lost all meaning. The Sun ruled the day and we all became experts on how to protected ourselves from his rays. The Moon helped us find our way as we navigated our campsite at night. The stars continued to rotated and orient us to the cardinal directions we were traveling. We awoke each morning to a rousing, “coffee is served” as the very first pink rays struck the highest canyon walls, and we fell asleep exhausted, just as the bats filled the sky, heading out for their nightly feast. The only measurement of time we brought with us from our outside lives were breakfast, lunch and dinner, and stops to communally pee in the river.

The miles along the way were marked by Blue Herons, each standing sentry to their little piece of the river. These liminal birds, always standing on the edge, between water and land, between the stillness of fishing and the freedom of flight, reminded me that I, too, was standing at the edge of something so much bigger and more powerful than my own time bound life.

The shores were also occasionally punctuated by the Big Horn Sheep, those masters of climbing precarious sheer canyon walls and surviving under very harsh conditions.

Gentle reminders pervaded the trip as we hiked to ancient ancestral pueblo ruins, that nothing lasts forever and civilizations, even great ones, come and go leaving only traces of the communities that once existed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

But here amid the ruins, a reminder that love has a much more enduring quality.

Perhaps the hardest part of our adventure was plugging my phone back into the 21st century when we reached Page, Arizona.