Out of Office & Out of Reach: Eight Days on the Big Ditch

This past July, I did something I had never done since becoming a licensed Colorado attorney: I disconnected from the world for eight full days. No email. No filings. No deadlines. No news alerts. Not even the false hope of a rogue bar of cell service.

To be clear, I didn’t go quietly. The night before I was shuttled to Lees Ferry, I stayed up far too late finishing a legal brief so I could leave town with the deadline met and nothing lingering. Nothing says “vacation mode” like frantically uploading a pleading while your standard-issue dry bag sits half-packed on your Las Vegas hotel room floor.

But by sunrise, my laptop was closed, the river gear was loaded, and my Chacos and I were en route to a long-planned private guided rafting trip through the Grand Canyon with Grand Canyon Expeditions to celebrate my dear friend Stephanie’s 40th birthday, a milestone deserving of something truly unforgettable.  What I didn’t expect was how quickly eight days in the canyon would reset the pace I keep in daily life and, in some ways, my relationship to work.

The Gift of True Disconnection

As attorneys, and especially as women in the legal field, we are conditioned to be reachable, responsive, and relentlessly prepared. Our profession quietly rewards immediacy, even though the best strategic thinking often requires room to breathe (preferably air, not the gallon of river water that hit me in the face whilst traversing Sockdolager Rapid at Mile 78).

Rafting the Grand Canyon does not give you that space gently. It quite literally drags you into its current.

When the outside world finally went quiet, I felt a brief spike of panic followed by a surprising wave of relief. For the next eight days, the only schedules that mattered were the Colorado River’s coursing tempo and the Arizona sun’s predictable arc across carved rocks older than any legal system I ever worked in. Our group of 14 encountered more wildlife than people: families of bighorn sheep, a single unimpressed rattlesnake, lizards sprinting over warm sandstone, and blue herons gliding low across the water. Looking back now, there was a resplendent silence that would fill the canyon, making every wildlife encounter feel even more vivid. And imagine, for a second, being a sheep or a heron who knows no other address, whose entire universe is this canyon as the quiet backdrop of everyday life (only to be randomly interrupted by a bunch of river rats pointing with great enthusiasm).

We hiked to hidden waterfalls like Elves Chasm, floated in the warm turquoise water of the Little Colorado River, and visited an ancient Puebloan granary tucked high into a cliff wall, which served as a reminder of how long humans have tried to carve out meaning and stability in our natural Western landscapes.

And then there was Chordle — my friend Chad’s highly creative attempt to keep a few of our group members playing Wordle offline using handwritten grids and river-themed clues. It turned out to be both challenging and slightly competitive. It almost helped soften the blow of losing my 800+ day Duolingo streak, which apparently cannot survive eight days on a river without Wi-Fi.

Women Who Carved Their Own Place in the Canyon

Before the trip, I read about Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, botanists who, back in 1938, became the first two women to successfully run the full length of the Grand Canyon by wooden boat. They undertook the journey not for spectacle but for science by carefully cataloging plant life while navigating a river that many seasoned boatmen warned them not to attempt.

Elzada and Lois also, unbelievably, were expected to cook for the men on the expedition and faced criticism if their meals weren’t up to par. Scientific plant pioneers and camp cooks. A familiar dual-expectation for women in many fields, even now in 2025. You can read more about their story in Brave the Wild River if you’re interested!

On the trip, I also learned about Georgie White, the first woman to own and run commercial trips through the canyon. Her grit and eccentricity helped carve out space for women in outdoor adventure industries long before inclusion was widely embraced. Georgie was also known for her leopard-print leotard. Regrettably, I had left mine back in Colorado, having concluded it did not meet appropriate river gear standards (hindsight is 20/20).

This experience reminded me of the support networks built within the CWBA and among women attorneys generally: places where we can show up as our full selves, lean on one another, and keep pushing forward in professional terrain that can feel unpredictable, uneven, and occasionally like a Class IV rapid.

At Lava Falls, all the women in our group marched up to the front of the raft in a combination of solidarity, questionable raft physics, and pure delight.

Navigating a legal proceeding or a giant 35-foot raft often comes down to the same thing: knowing when to take the helm and when to let the current do some of the work.

Coming Back Changed

When the trip ended and my phone reawakened somewhere in the Arizona desert with an immediate swarm of notifications, I realized something important: the world had kept turning without me. The filings could wait. My inbox survived. My clients survived. I had returned not only rested, but recalibrated.

I also returned to civilization with a whole new lexicon. Aside from Chordle, this includes: Riffle, Cowboy Camping, Groover, Rim World, Pirate-ish, Nudist Zombies, Drag Bag (not to be confused with a Wag Bag), and Flesh Flood (a horror screenplay I actually need to start working on about those same Nudist Zombies), plus several terms that make perfect sense on the Big Ditch and absolutely none off of it.

The Grand Canyon carved out a truth I need to hold onto: making space to be curious, quiet, and present tends to make everything else work better.

For eight days, I was lucky enough to move through a landscape carved by forces far larger and slower than anything in our professional lives. I was surrounded by a place shaped by time on a scale we rarely let ourselves imagine. I got a reminder of a perspective that no “out-of-office” message could ever deliver. It was thrilling to feel so small in the best possible way and to step outside the frenzied pace that usually governs my weekdays.

I came back with a renewed sense of perspective, which was something I didn’t know I needed until the canyon revealed it to me, bend after bend, vista after vista, across 270+ miles of winding beauty.

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K.C. Cunilio practices in energy, public utility regulation, and tribal law, with a focus on proceedings before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. She represents governmental, nonprofit, and tribal clients in renewable energy and electric and gas utility matters. She is based in Nederland and serves as the Boulder Chapter Representative for the Colorado Women’s Bar Association.