Editor’s Note: Elisabeth Hyde is the author of In the Heart of the Canyon, just published by Knopf, and two other novels.

At the age of 50 – with a husband, three teenagers, a nice house and a novel in progress – I found myself wanting to run away and become a river guide.

And not just any river guide! Forget those cold training rivers up north – I wanted to be a Grand Canyon river guide, with a beat-up straw hat and a permanent Teva tan. A woman who could read the current and row her 18-foot raft through some major hydraulics. A guide who knew where to find watercress in the desert, who went to sleep every night floating on her raft underneath a river of stars.

And no, I didn’t think I was just being romantic.

Perhaps I should back up. When I was 49, my family went rafting down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. I hadn’t wanted to go; I have a habit of sinking boats, for one thing, and I felt it would be too hot. But I got outvoted, and thus found myself on a blistering day in late June at Lee’s Ferry, AZ, squeezing into a lifejacket and clumsily climbing into a raft. As we pushed off, I white-knuckled the side ropes and wondered how I was going to endure two weeks in this inferno.

For the next eight days, we floated down through layers of rock. Towering red cliffs shot sky-high from the deep green river, which flowed serenely for miles at a stretch before exploding into whitewater chaos for a few brief seconds. We saw California condors and bighorn sheep nudging their lambs toward the water’s edge. We swam in the warm turquoise waters of the Little Colorado, sliding down little waterfalls in trains, our lifejackets fastened diaper-style to protect us from the crusty travertine dams. And boy, did we eat: stacks of pancakes; thick sandwiches of meat, cheese, vegetables and jalapenos; grilled salmon and pesto and cheesecake and, yes, ice cream.

By the halfway point, I was having a pretty good time. But just that. Nothing more.

Then on day nine – kaboom. I was in the paddle boat, and we hit a pretty big rapid at the wrong angle, and I got tossed from the boat. The next 60 seconds were a blur as I got sucked down and spun around in a ferocious galaxy of bubbles, briefly surfacing before getting yanked back down for another wash cycle. I gulped tons of water and couldn’t figure out which way was up and my chest was ready to explode – until finally the river spat me out for good. Nothing ever tasted so exquisite as that first lungful of air, and when they hauled me up, I slid into the well of the boat like a newborn.

And I don’t use that term lightly. It was a kind of rebirth, because from that point on I became completely obsessed with both the river and the Grand Canyon itself. I wanted to spend the rest of my life down there. And the best way to do that, I decided, was to become a river guide.