On Thursday night, we tied all three houseboats together in a raft. We had a generator running string lights across the bows. Someone produced a guitar that had miraculously survived the journey in a dry bag. The playlist was peak 2018: Sicko Mode , This Is America , Africa by Weezer (the cover, which caused a debate), and way too much Mr. Brightside .

One of the fire fighters, a guy named Mike, pointed out a satellite moving slowly across the void. He said, "Look at that. There are people up there, right now, looking down at this desert. And we are looking up at them. We are the anomaly."

Around midnight, someone killed the generator. The silence was deafening. Then, the stars turned on.

There is a specific kind of magic that happens when you turn off your phone, point a houseboat south, and let the red rock canyons swallow you whole. For most college students, Spring Break 2018 meant crowded condos in Cabo, humidity in Panama City Beach, or wristbands for dingy clubs in South Padre. But for a small, sun-drunk tribe of adventurers, the real party wasn't on a dance floor. It was anchored in the middle of a flooded desert.

I remember waking up at 6:00 AM on Wednesday. The water looked like black oil. The reflection of the canyon walls was so perfect that when a fish jumped, it looked like the rock face was coming apart. A few of us took a paddleboard out before the wind came up. We drifted silently into a narrow slot canyon. The walls rose 300 feet on either side. The sound of the paddle dipping into the water echoed for four seconds.

Because there is zero light pollution in the middle of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, the Milky Way looked like a crack in the universe. You could see the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye. We lay on the top deck sleeping bags, passing a bottle of Fireball, not talking. A shooting star crossed every thirty seconds. It felt scripted. It felt like the sky was putting on a show for us .