I Am The Wolf

I have seen too clearly and felt too deeply 

to live without breaking from the fold.

There is little value in routine, no growth in the norm. 

Only on the edge, out where sanity lets go and madness begins, 

have I found the living to be full enough. 

So how do I pretend to live this half life of work and stability?

Nacirema conformity surrounds me on all sides. 

I rage, I cry, I rebel. 

I am the wolf in sheep's clothing. 

I am the icy north wind, whistling across the high peaks.

I am the flash of lightning in the darkest storm. 

I am the cliff's edge, leading to depths unknown.

I am the rock poised on the mountain's steepest slope, waiting to be unleashed. 

How long do I wait in the shadows?

How long before potential becomes impotence?

October 20, 2008

Clearing the Etowah

It was late spring 1994, North Georgia had been hammered by several tornadoes, clearing swaths of trees, destroying buildings and clogging rivers with acres of downed trees. I'd just moved back to my family's farm in Jackson County to build a house after four years of teaching Inupiaq children in the Bering Strait region of western Alaska. 

I received a phone call from Steve Hicks, my good friend and canoe partner in an aborted attempt to paddle from the North Georgia Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico in August of 1981, but that is another story. Steve related that the Chestatee and Etowah Rivers had tons of tornado debris in them and our friend Ben Lachance, who, with his wife Dana, owned Appalachian Outfitters and rented canoes for day trips on the rivers, was missing a prime chunk of his business season due to the choked river. Would I be interested spending a day clearing parts of the River?

After four years of shoveling snow, walking to work in 70 and 80 below wind chilled mornings, across drifts higher than my head, snow machining and skiing across miles and miles of frozen tundra and ocean, and swimming once in the frigid Bering Sea, did I want to spend a day moving some brush out of a warm, sun kissed Southern mountain stream? What do you think, dear reader?

Steve said he’d meet me at the canoe outpost, early the next day. I asked if we needed tools and he replied that Ben had everything for us. We left the farm, drove through Gainesville, across the upper reaches of Lake Lanier and up GA Highway 60 toward the mountains. Less than an hour later I was pulling into Appalachian Outfitter’s rental outpost on the Chestatee River, a couple of miles outside the home of Georgia’s historic gold rush town, Dahlonega.

After a round of handshakes and back slapping hugs with Steve and Ben, we climbed in Ben’s van. He’d already loaded a canoe and gear in the canoe trailer. He told us that the Etowah drainage had been hit hard by a tornado and there were parts of the river completely blocked. If we could open a route through the blocked parts of the river he could start running rentals again. He wasn’t sure how bad the log jams were in the less accessible parts of the river, but said he’d be grateful for whatever we could clean out. It sounded like an interesting day.

Arriving at the put in, we quickly unloaded the canoe, filled it with chain saws, gas cans, axes, a bow saw, our lunches, a couple of gallons of water, paddles, life vests, and our lunches. Too bad we didn’t have a camera in one of the gear bags, what we encountered and did that day would scarcely be believed by others in later years.

I’d taught Steve some canoeing basics back in 1981. In the intervening thirteen years his passion for whitewater and his paddling skills had far surpassed my own. He’d run and guided rivers all over the southeast and was a master paddler.

I took the bow, Steve the stern and to Ben’s hearty wish of, “Good luck!” we pushed off into the small, swiftly flowing river,

Steve joked that we’d likely be in for a tiring day.

Now I must reveal that Steve and I were both blessed with some uncommon physical skills. I was lean and muscular at 220 lbs. with many years of Olympic style weight lifting behind me. I was fast and powerful. Steve was even more of a physical beast. He was built like the classic powerlifter he’d been, with thick thighs and chest, a mighty back and shoulders, and arms that looked like he could choke a bull. I didn’t expect we’d find much of a challenge on the river that day. Oh how wrong I soon realized I was.

Within a quarter mile of twisted river we came upon a narrow set of riffles with several small trees leaning from the banks, limbs immersed in the water and tops bobbing in the small waves. The river was impassable for forty feet. We pulled alongside the gravel bar and grabbed the chainsaws. We quickly began limbing the trees, cutting up the trunks and tossing the logs and branches onto the gravel bar. Within a few minutes we were left with just a couple of trees down in the water. One was pinning the top of the other in the stream. After a minute’s discussion I ended up shimmying out a fallen tree hanging about six feet above the river with a bow saw, cutting off the tree top so that Steve could wrestle it out of the water and open the channel by a couple of canoe widths.

That done we headed on down the river cutting up fallen trees, moving brush from the stream, sweating in the building heat, laughing, talking about old times and our kids and life the last few years while I’d been away.

It was a beautiful morning with blue skies and a light breeze. Being out on the emerald colored river was intoxicating. We quickly fell into a working rhythm of removing limbs, then one of us lifting, prying or bracing the tree trunks while the other ran a chainsaw to cut up the dense hickories, oaks, and lighter poplars. Most of the trees were small only a few inches in diameter. A few were large, heavy old behemoths that took long minutes of finagling, pushing, lifting, cutting, and balancing to remove them from the river.

My respect for Sthil products grew by the hour as the saws took a beating being pinched and trapped by logs, pulled underwater, and dropped when one of us needed to escape large falling branches. It was a great day to be strong, healthy young men doing a crazy task with nothing but time to worry about. 

We took our lunch on some rocks near a small rapid, stretched out to rest a few minutes then headed on down the river. As we rounded a bend, there stretching across a gravel bar and blocking the river was a massive old red oak. We pulled onto the bar, unloaded the saws and began to work. There was a steel cable, maybe a quarter inch in diameter wrapped around the tree and other smaller logs nearby. We tried to unwrap the cable but had no luck. Before I could start to hack at it with an axe and Steve suddenly pulled out his Leatherman pocket tool, opened up the saw blade and with no problem at all sawed right through the cable. I was amazed.

  After a bit of limbing we were left with the main part of the tree trunk still in the water blocking the river channel. I waded into the moving water just over my knees and began to cut the two-foot diameter log. Steve took off another large branch from under the tree and without warning the rest of the huge tree settled into the river pinching and pulling my running chainsaw completely beneath the water.

Steve yelled, “Don’t, quit!”

Quick as a flash, he positioned himself between me and the gravel bar. In water just below his knees he shoehorned into an impossible position with his thighs under the log. He began to groan and lift with his legs and back. The tree moved imperceptibly. I continued to feed fuel to the submerged saw, with bubbles boiling from the exhaust port. Steve groaned again and shifted to get more of himself under the giant log. The log moved a bit and suddenly I was cutting wood again and moving the saw through the log – under the water. With a crash and a splash the log severed. I yanked the running saw out of the water, where it’d been running for nearly a minute.  Steve released the log and fell back into the river. We both dragged ourselves onto the gravel bar, exhausted and laughing in between our gasps for air.

After a few moments we worked together to move the large logs out of the water, cutting them into more manageable pieces. (The saw, which had been cutting underwater fired right up!)Then we loaded our gear and paddled on downstream, still laughing at the sheer audacity of the situation that we’d just gone through.

            The rest of the afternoon we spent cutting and moving more logs from the river, occasionally using more refined versions of our technique of one lifting a massive log to take pressure off a pinched saw blade while the other ran the saw, sometimes partially in the water, but never completely submerged again. It was brutal, back-breaking work, with hands and forearms cramping from hours with the saws and axes, and canoe paddles.

            Finally, late in the day, we entered a part of the river where the water slowed, the rocks were replaced by muddy riverbanks and old trees leaned far out over the dark, deep water. The river was deceptively calm, and silent. We paddled on enjoying each other’s company and the solitude of the river. We rounded a bend and there before us was the mother of all river blockages.

            Trees, limbs, and bushes of all shapes and sizes stretched thirty yards from one riverbank to the other. The jam was fifteen to twenty feet in width. Logs floated, in the quietly moving water, others were piled over their submerged brethren, tilted at odd angles to the water, with limbs running every which way. In places the logs were packed tightly enough to look like a raft. A raft you’d not want to step on.

We slowly eased the canoe up to the jam. Steve pushed the blade of his 58 inch paddle down into the water until his arm was elbow deep, shook his head at the depth and pulled the paddle up. We looked at each other with wide-eyed expressions.

            Steve whispered, “There’s lot of water moving under this thing.”

            “Plenty of stuff trapped under it too,” I whispered back.

            The shadows of the ancient trees added to the developing sense that we were in the midst of a powerful and dangerous piece of the Etowah.

            With another look at the jam and at each other. Steve said, “portage.”

            I nodded my agreement.

We paddled back up stream a few yards from the jam and ferried over to the muddy riverbank. We unloaded our gear and slipping and sliding up the six foot muddy bank we carried it above and past the spooky jam, then down to the river. We repeated the portage with the seventeen-foot canoe, reloaded the boat, and pushed off into the river. As we looked at the jam from the downstream side, we agreed that rather than risk our lives trying to manually clear that obstacle, dynamite would be the best option.

A half hour later, in dim light, after fourteen hours on the river, we were at the road bridge and there was Ben with his van and trailer waving to us and pointing to the take out.

In the evening’s gloom, with muscles aching and exhausted beyond all reason, we loaded the boat and gear and told Ben that his river was clear except for the giant, scary jam near the end.

He couldn’t believe we’d gotten so much done. As we told him of huge trees and running his chainsaws under water he shook his head and smiled.

I don’t recall where Steve and I ate on the way home that night. I just remember sitting across a table, two men exhausted and sore, nursing beers and laughing tiredly as they rehashed the events of the day.

Today, I’m recovering from a hip replacement and have another one scheduled. Steve is fighting his own health battles and we once more live at opposite ends of the continent, but there was a day by God, there was a day.

Fairbanks, Alaska

February, 2019

The Media and Us

The media, and by media I’m referring to the delivery of news in print, radio and television, has changed dramatically over the last 40+ years. I believe the media is a reflection of our society and the overriding purpose of any business in a competitive economy is to make money, to show a profit, to enrich the owners, shareholders and to the extent that it benefits those two groups, the employees of the business.

As much as we can sing the praises of media for informing us, educating us, and entertaining us, all of those things are provided in order to make a profit. Without that profit individual businesses or entire modes of media cease to exist, outside of museums.  Remember slide strips in elementary school?

How does media do this? How does it gain our attention and hold it in order to advertise to us and cause us to buy things? Let’s consider streaming services, television, and radio, since that is where the majority of folks get their news today.

When the first two forms of media began, the novelty of having information provided over the airways by voice and then later by picture and voice was of great interest to many people. This interest created an easy audience for sponsors to advertise to. Social psychology very quickly began to study the reaction of the listeners and viewers (potential consumers) to various forms of advertising and to various types of entertainment provided by the media. (Yes, dear friends, the news is entertainment, and it is profit driven.) Ferenc Mate in his book, A Reasonable Life, said that unleashing television on an unsuspecting North American public was tantamount to carpet bombing the entire continent with valium. So are we just gullible or are we victims of very clever, very well planned campaigns to turn us into over consuming two legged locusts, destroying the world that hosts us in order to satisfy cravings created by media based advertising?

That is a question I ponder daily.

So what happened to make the news less reliable and in some cases more biased? We humans seem to have a need to find more, newer and different stimulation frequently. The old adds become commonplace and loose their power to captivate and stimulate. This occurs to one degree or another in all aspects of our lives from education, to politics, sex, food, and especially in the realm of entertainment. The typical horror movie of the 1950’s seems rather dull when compared to the modern version with all its bells and whistles added.

As people began to use computers, not just for work, but for entertainment, another type of media instantly began to move across peoples' screens. News services large and small, some just blantantly bias advertising for both conservative and liberal causes. 

The news has always been subject to bias depending on the accuracy of the information, the interest and motivations of the reporter and the purpose of the sponsors.

Despite this drift toward bias, sometimes unintentional, sometimes calculated, the ever increasing competition for our attention has altered the news so as to make a careful observer rightfully suspicious of many news broadcasts. The need to gain and hold our attention is the dominant factor in news broadcasting. 

When regular news stories are no longer enough to hold our focus, the stories are dressed up. They are sensationalized, humorized, made titillating, shortened, expounded upon, even altered. Media appeals to our emotions, our fears, our hopes, our frustrations, our desire to blame others when the world isn’t as we’d like it, and our desire to be entertained. We are told what we want to hear, often with a subtle twist that over time changes our perception of what is real and what is fiction, or what is acceptable and what isn’t. When we hear something that makes us uncomfortable, or that we don't believe we  can find a ready source of counter information, happy to have our attention and expose us to their advertising. Truth has become the casualty of the contest for our focus.  

Almost from the moment we are born we are bombarded with advertising for everything from fast food, to cleaning products, cars, toys, home improvements, medicine, and vacation spots. We become desensitized to this bombardment very quickly; so advertisers must come up with different, more extreme, or more appealing ways to gain and hold our attention. Just like any other program on the radio or, computer or television, the news must engage in these tactics in order to survive, to make a profit.

Conservative news sources, or those sponsored by conservative leaning advertisers, sprinkle their news stories with facts gathered to support their views and hold our attention in order to sell their advertisers’ goods.

Liberal news sources, or those sponsored by liberal leaning advertisers, sprinkle their news stories with facts gathered to support their views and hold our attention in order to sell their advertisers’ goods.

Some news outlets do a much better job of being non-biased than do most. These are becoming harder to find and hold less appeal for the masses

Instead of calmly discussing information and weighing its implications news commentators and their expert guests engage in hyperbole. They argue. They yell. They talk over each other. They distort facts. They give alternative facts. They even lie, often and over and over again.

Why are things this way? 

Because we will watch and listen to them. We find a grain of truth that appeals to our emotions and we end up swallowing the entire message because it is entertaining and we’ve become so desensitized to all the hoopla that we don’t have an opinion of our own. Often our core values become the values of those attempting to attract us to their show in order to sell us their sponsors’ products. This is done so insidiously, so frequently and over such a long period of time that we may not even realize how we’ve changed, because our emotions begin to convince us that only those facts that reinforce our feelings are the right ones.

So how do we escape this vicious cycle of enslavement to the over consuming society. Daniel Quinn, in his novel, Ishmael,  puts forth the idea that we can’t escape. He says we must participate or perish. I understand that argument, but I can’t use it to condone the sins of a way of life run amok.

Daily I must remind myself of what I believe to be true. I must ask myself what is good, what is honest, what is best for all people, not just for me and mine. I look at religion, not the distorted self-promoting version of so many modern churches, and try to weigh my life’s choices based on the ideas of serving others and ensuring that my choices do not damage the options of others. Of course I often fail. I am a product of this crazy North American culture of consumption and no matter how much I wish things were different I can only change a small bit of that culture. But I will keep trying. As long as I live I will seek to share goodness and mercy with all those around me.

Thanks for reading my thoughts. This was a first draft, a stream of consciousness writing; so I’m sure there are flaws and errors. It’s just my ramblings this morning.

 I’d be happy to read your thoughts as well. You can reach me at hadaway.bob@gmail.com

Peace,

                        Bob

Oh, here is a link to a source that rates news outlets as to their political neutrality. I was surprised by some of these selections, not so much by others. Make of it what you will. 

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-biased-is-your-news-source-you-probably-wont-agree-with-this-chart-2018-02-28

Cass

The pain in your head never leaves.
Eight years I've watched you slipping month by month
From the joy and energy of youth
To the constant hurt and lethargy of
unending illness.

You've lost much, too much for one so young.
Friends, school, sports, music,
Oh music! The sounds you created and lived for. 
You've known loss that drives fear and anger
yet sometimes you still smile.

If I could take your pain as my own and free you
To live, and love, and laugh your hurt would
Be gone in a moment.
Alas, tis only a father’s dream,
A wish from the heart.

So all I can offer is to teach you.
Teach you to be strong, to endure, to hope
To always choose what is right,
Though it costs you dearly.
To care for others, 

as I have cared for you.


March 2018

December in Alaska

Late in the day. Standing on the porch. Frost in my beard. Eyelashes getting icy too.
Peering into the depths of an Alaskan winter.

The days are short now, with cold that steals your breath, cracks your skin. 

Old snow's compressed and gray, but more will fall soon. 

Trees, blown free of snow, appear as sentinels across white hills and frozen river valley.
The sky so blue it can't be real.

Night, long and bitter, rolls in with electric colors dancing across the heavens.
The dark pushed back by reflected light from the white cloak looks warmer than it is.

Spring will come, a few seconds, then a few minutes closer each day.
But now, it is dark, cold, and the margin of life oh so slim.
Thank the stars for the house whose foot thick walls seem perilously thin.
Warmth, a near fictional idea, lingers beneath consciousness.

Morning will come, long before the pale sun makes its slim arc across the southern sky.
It's heat returned to space by the white blanket.

The woods wisely sleep, knowing growth and effort will be wasted in the bitter air;
Animal and plant alike patiently wait for the heat, the melting, still long months away.
Yet we Nacirema, bustle and scurry, unable to rest, unwilling to just be
Missing the essence of life, death, rebirth and time. 

Real Facts

Taking a brief look at presidential history over the last half century is most interesting.

Fundamental to almost all political activity is the constant economic struggle between those who would enrich themselves at the expense of others and those who would have a more egalitarian world. The takers and the will shares, if you please. Many seemingly unrelated actions compound over time with other events to shape the struggle for power, privilege, and prestige. (To use Gerhard Lenski's terms.)

A republican administration, Nixon's, even in the midst of recession and national turmoil over the Vietnam War, created the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up our air and water and to protect our natural resources for future generations. Today, that agency is in jeopardy of being dismantled or at least silenced because the traditional energy lobby views it as an obstacle to short term profits, health of the nation be damned.

Despite recession, and the Iran debacle, when Jimmy Carter left office the US was the largest creditor nation on Earth. Despite the fabulous wealth created for a few, from 1981 to 1989, when Ronald Reagan left office the US was the largest debtor nation on Earth and when adjusted for inflation, the purchasing power of US citizens was less than it had been in the early 70's. Interesting contrast.

Under Bush the First we had a recession that was staved off by the gigantic tech boom of the 90's, and perhaps by the Gulf War.

Think what you will of Bill Clinton's proclivity for philandering, his last couple of years in office his administration made unheard of payments to reduce the national debt, not the deficit mind you, the long term national debt.

Bush the Second and his warmongering Vice President ran up trillions of dollars of debt in wars that couldn't be won and filled the coffers of some mega companies. This unsustainable spending, combined with the debt burden, run up by businesses, banks, and the government during the 80's brought us the the recession/depression of 2008 -2011, a situation that lead our nation to the edge of financial ruin.

Barack Obama's administration performed near miracles to keep the country's finances afloat and fought valiantly to bring health, social and economic opportunities to not just a few, but to millions of Americans. This occurred in the face of our national struggle with underlying and seldom acknowledged racism, and a congress so polarized and paralyzed by hatred in their quest to wrest power from the 'other' side, that they seemed ready to cut their own throats, before cooperating with each other or with a black man, who espoused reasonable and needed solutions for our national woes.

Now our antiquated electoral system has allowed a man of highly questionable, well documented sexism, and criminal financial behavior to become President. A man who uses fear, nationalistic rhetoric, fascist talk, bullying and outright lies to get whatever he wants at the moment. A man who would prey on our inflated fears of those who are different and our greed to live a lifestyle that comes at the cost of basic needs for billions around the world. A man who would sacrifice our national environmental treasures and our health for the profit of a few. A man who would push America First at the expense of the delicate balance of world peace. These ideas and actions fly in the face of the teachings of every major religion and humanitarian atheism alike.

The last 45+ years have been most interesting. The next few look to be more so, Perhaps we should be afraid, not of the things that Trump wants us to focus on. Those things will distract us from the truth and allow him and his cronies to further enrich them selves as our freedoms and opportunities for a more open, charitable world erode away. But most frightening of all what Trump's election tells us about ourselves and our bitterly divided country.

Rocking the Baby

The news folks say US troops are encircling Baghdad.
Katie Couric talks with Nick Notle about his new movie.

Words of death and destruction scroll across
the bottom of the screen.
My infant son, five days old, sleeps in my arms.

An Iraqi division is destroyed. The stock market grows.
People here go to work and school.

Fires burn across the desert as buildings burst
from high explosive ordinance.
The sky is clear here in Alaska.

Smiling reporters camp out with soldiers and
point to the plumes of burning towns.

The NBC Book Club recommends a novel.

The stock market grows. 

God turns her head and cries.

Satan looks serious and tells us things are going well 

as he wraps himself in flag and Bible.

Reporters extol of the marvels of military technology.

A maternity hospital has just been bombed.
and my infant son sleeps in my arms.

April 2, 2003

Grew Up Too Fast

I grew up too fast.

Not enough afternoons sleeping on riverbanks

Or nights gazing at the stars with my

Sweetheart on my shoulder.

No, I had to be a gladiator

Training and planning, always working

Too busy to just be.

Too driven to just feel.  

So now the world is calling and life 

Is looming, only two thirds done. 

I think I'll let it all wait a bit

While I watch the stars and listen to the river roll.

June 2015

A Paddler's Life: Part Two

Part Two (If you haven't read part one first, it is immediately below this post. This one won't make much sense if you haven't read the first part.)

            The next morning the old man loaded his boat and shoved off into the river. Paddling through a wide placid section of the stream he thought about other rivers he had paddled, trips he'd made to remote places filled with beautiful mountains and ribbons of white water trailing through them.

            "Trips," he muttered.

"That's all life is," he thought. “Everything is a trip. Getting up in the morning, going to work, falling in love, raising kids, finishing jobs. They are all trips. Some are long, some short, some are wonderful, some not much fun, but they all take you somewhere."

            That afternoon and the next three days, in the calm spots between deadly rapids and while camped, he brooded over the trip that had been his life. He had roamed over the entire damn continent as a young man, looking for adventure, coming to Alaska to strike it rich in the oil fields, finishing college, then starting a geological consulting business. With new computer technology he'd made a fortune, then sold his share of the business to his partner; so he’d have more time to paddle with his family, to write, to adventure.

            They had hit the road the summer the girls were 12 and 13. The paddling had been grand. Camping and canoeing through Mexico, Costa Rica, California, Colorado, the Great Plains, the Deep South, Newfoundland, Boundary Waters, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon. Finally after three years they were back in Fairbanks for the girls to attend high school.

            Jan was ready for college at 16, but he and her mother had insisted on a couple of years of high school to let her mature a bit. Liz, however, never settled down after the three years of tramping. That first trip on the Susitna, followed by their roaming years, had been just the beginning for her.

All through high school Liz chafed at the structure of town life and organized studies. Eventually she dropped out of school at 17 to paddle on a newly developing white water rodeo circuit.

            Liz was great. Her enthusiasm, lack of fear, and natural beauty made her a hit with the fans, the corporate sponsors, and with the boys. As she traveled and competed postcards from West Virginia, Scotland, Zaire, New Zealand, Chile, Oregon, India, and other spots found their way to the mailbox at the family cabin back near Fairbanks.

            The old man smiled as he remembered how angry he'd been at her for quitting school, but how proud he'd been of her independence and success as a vagabond paddler. He remembered when she'd called from Southern Oregon crying, saying she needed money. He wired her twice what she'd asked for and a week later she was home with a beat up kayak, two duffle bags of gear and a broken heart. The boy friend had split after the abortion and the old man swore if he ever found the jerk he'd wring his neck. He would have too.

            Liz spent the next two years guiding trips on several rivers and working odd jobs around Fairbanks. She never seemed content unless she was on a river. Father and daughter canoed together a few times, but her skill had grown so great that she kept wanting to run bigger and wilder rivers than he was capable of. She became obsessed with first descents of steep creeks and with big water. Several times she'd almost been killed in huge rapids with sharp undercut rocks or frothing holes that kept boat and paddler pinned beneath the turbulent water far too long. Her mother believed that she had a death wish. The old man knew she didn't, but feared she'd never be able to control the desire for wildness. He knew the need all too well.

            The old man's writing hadn't gone so well. He'd written some stuff, but never tried more than couple of times to find a publisher. His poetry had been pretty good, and his wife and the girls professed to like the novels, but as much as he loved creating with words he just wasn't into doing the work to get published. He still loved the magic of putting words to paper, and he wrote every day. “Being a writer was both a long and a short trip,” he thought.

            Jan liked the academic life. She'd done well in college and law school. She gravitated to environmental law with a special interest in causes related to rivers. The man smiled to think of his tall red headed daughter. She was always intense, but full of fun too. He was proud of what she'd accomplished with the Seattle firm she worked at.

            He paddled on, reminiscing and feeling good to be on the river, feeling alive, almost young again. He had made slow work of this trip, taking time to work his way back and forth across the river to play in as many rapids as possible. He'd spent afternoons napping, walking up hills near the river and reading from the books he'd packed along. The normal five day trip was turning into ten or more days. It was a good thing he’d packed extra food.

            At camp one night, thinking of his girls, he wondered aloud to the rocks and trees "How is it that two sisters could be so different when they'd had the same upbringing? The mysteries of nature versus nurture," he muttered. “Does our biology determine anything more than the physical form. Perhaps. Perhaps not”

            A meteor shot across the sky and he thought of Liz, blazing through life, burning up in glorious splendor.

            The river had grown wider, deeper, and more powerful over the course of his trip. The late spring run off from the glaciers and snow fields in the surrounding mountains had swelled the water; so that the river roiled and rolled between its banks, crashing off piles of rocks at the base of frequent cliffs.

            The man recognized a tight bend a quarter mile down stream, which hid from view the beginning of the steep walls and narrowing gorge that formed Hell's Canyon. He pulled over on the riverbank between some rocks and climbed out of his canoe. He walked a hundred yards up an open slope along a path, turned and looked back at his canoe, the river, the impossibly blue sky, and down stream toward the mouth of the canyon. He stretched in the morning sun then lay down on a patch of moss and grass. The sun felt good on his tanned, bearded face. He closed his eyes, listened to the sound of the moving water, felt the breeze swirl through his hair. The paddling, the camping, the solitude had all combined to drain the tension and grief from his body. For the first time in a long while the world felt right, almost. In a few minutes he was dozing.           

            The man dreamed during his nap. He dreamed of his wife, dreamed that she had returned from wherever it was she'd gone five years ago. It was a good dream and he smiled while he slept. He dreamed of his daughters when they were young and life was carefree.

             Dreaming more, his mind's eye saw young Liz paddling into a giant hole in the middle of a frothing, rock filled, maelstrom of a rapid. He saw her kayak pop up out of the hole and go bobbing down miles of the most horrifying water a paddler could imagine. Liz never reappeared. Tears rolled down his checks as he fitfully napped. 

            Suddenly, he was startled from his nap by the sound of voices. He sat up and looked toward his canoe.  There were three large rubber rafts on the sand bar just below the rocks where he had beached his canoe. People were climbing out of the rafts and dragging them up the shore. There must have been 14 or 15 brightly clad, noisy customers and guides of Alaska Wild River Outfitters.

            "Damn," he swore softly. He'd been hoping to avoid seeing anyone on this trip. "You just can't get away from the tourists, even in remote Alaska," he said to himself.

            He sat on the slope watching the paddlers mill about. They were talking and laughing, unloading, their gear and deflating the rafts. Obviously they'd had a fun trip. Within a few minutes they began to portage their gear up the hill toward the man. There was an old grass airstrip on a flat ridge less than a mile further up the hill behind the man's napping spot. He guessed they had a couple of planes chartered to pick them up there. There were no roads, no ATV tracks, accessing this part of the river. Actually there were no roads within a hundred in any direction from where he sat.

            Two young men came puffing up the hill carrying a large waterproof box between them.

            "Hi," they sang out as they walked by.

            "Hi," the man replied with a friendly smile.

            A young woman with a dry suit open enough to reveal that she had nothing on underneath came by next carrying a pack and a smaller box. She stopped and stared at the man.

            "Is that your canoe?" she asked, tipping her head back toward the river.

            "Yes, it is," he answered trying not to look at her heaving chest and the breast that kept threatening to slip into the unzipped opening of her paddling suit. Failing miserably he stared anyway.

            She grinned as she turned her head back and noticed his gaze. "These damn suits get so hot when the sun comes out, and every piece of clothing I have is soaking wet. Nearly naked seems better than boiled in the suit," she flirted.

            "I agree," he replied with a sly smile.

            "How long have you been on the river?" she asked.

            "I put in ten days ago at Grub Stake Creek.”

            "Nice trip!"

            "Did you portage the big rapids?"

            "One of them," he said.

            Her eyebrows raised. "That's some darn big water for a canoe, even with the deck covered. And you're paddling solo?"

            "It is exciting," he said as he smiled and stood stretching his long arms to the sky.

            "Do you have a plane coming?" she asked.

            "No," he muttered, picking his hat up from the ground.

            "Surely you aren't going to hike out of here. Why it would take a week to reach the nearest road."

            "At least that long," he agreed.

            "So?"

            "Nice talking with you mam," he smiled again and turned to walk down the hill.

            "So, where are you going?"

            "Down river," he called over his shoulder.

            She stood still, staring after him as he ambled down the trail.

            The old man nodded and exchanged greetings with the rafters as they passed each other. He paused at his canoe and began putting his paddling jacket and life vest back on. He looked up the hill. The woman was talking with one of the river guides and pointing at the man by his canoe.

            "Oh, great, a do-gooder," he whispered to himself.

            The young guide set his pack down and trotted back down the slope to the beach, then over to the rocks where the old man was fastening his paddling helmet.

            "Pardon me, mister," the guide said.

            The man said nothing, but fixed the youngster with a steely, blue-eyed stare.

            "Are you going down stream?" asked the young guide.

            "Planning to."

            "Do you know what's down in that canyon? It's class five and six water with un-runnable falls. It’s ten miles of river hell!"

            "Yes it is." he replied as he stepped into his canoe with one foot and shoved off from the river rocks with the other. He quickly settled in to his canoe saddle, adjusted the thigh straps and picked up his paddle.

            "Man there are monster waves, big as houses, and giant holes down there! The walls are too steep to portage out and the river rocks are undercut. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. With the water this high there's no way anyone can make it through. A couple of folks have died trying," the guide extolled.

            The old man nodded and lifted his hand carved paddle in salute to the young guide.

            "I know," he finally answered, drifting away from the shore, about to be swept up in the quickening current.

            "Do you really know what's down there?" the guide yelled frantically.

            "Dreams and ghosts," the old man shouted back. "That's all there ever is."

            His paddle flashed once, twice. Quickly he was in the channel lining up the entrance to the canyon -- a curling wave between two large rocks. A few more stokes and he was gliding up the face of the wave and plunging down the other side out of sight.

A Paddler's Life: Part One

    The red canoe rocked gently on the gravel beach. Six feet of stern floated in the ripples of the swiftly moving river. The boat was half full of gear; dry bags with tent, sleeping bag, food, clothing, and first aid supplies were all strapped into the bottom of the canoe. Spare paddles were wedged under the webbing holding the floatation bags in place. A few maps, a couple of books, bug spray, all in water proof containers, and water bottles were all secured by Velcro, close to hand. There was even a shotgun in its own water proof case, also within close reach. Like all of Alaska this was bear country. The rest of the boat, save for a spot in the middle where the tall, broad shouldered man would sit and kneel to paddle, was filled by the floatation bags whose purpose was to displace splash from standing waves in the rapids downstream. 

         The man unrolled a piece of plastic, a deck cover to keep water off the gear and hopefully out of the boat. He spread this over the canoe and snapped the caps on the sides down to studs placed every few inches just under the gunwales on the outside of the canoe. After securing the cover he stood upright, stretched his sore lower back and turned his bearded face to the morning sun. He walked down the rock beach running fingers through his long gray hair, picked up an old Filson hat from the boulder where he'd lain it while he washed his hair in the calm pool behind some rocks.

         He walked back up the trail, a full half mile to his old four wheel drive truck. He took three envelopes from the pocket of his down vest and placed them on the front seat of the truck, locked the doors, turned, and strolled back down to the river, alternately eating a peanut butter sandwich and whistling part of Beethoven's Ninth.

         A waterproof paddling jacket went over his fleece jacket, then the life vest. He pushed the canoe into shallow water and shook the sand and rocks from his boots as he stepped gingerly to the center of the craft. A quick swig of water from a bottle hanging by his seat, a straightening of the broad brimmed hat and he was ready.

         He leaned out into the river and with his muscular arms pulled the hand carved wood paddle through the water toward himself in a strong and steady draw stroke. The boat awkwardly slid sideways in the water, then, in response to his powerful stroke, turned upstream into the river. The paddle gracefully parted the water beside the canoe propelling it further from shore and angled it into the rushing water.

         Ten quick strokes pushed the canoe through a cross-stream ferry that sliced the eddy line behind a boulder in mid stream. As the back flow of the eddy held the boat upstream behind the rock the man turned in his seat and looked down stream toward the frothing, boulder strewn, wave filled, cold water. This first rapid was only two hundred yards away and it had eaten many a canoe over the years. It was a long rapid, nearly half a mile in length, not too difficult if you knew what you were doing, but with the water high like today the waves could swamp an open canoe.

         The man grinned to think of the first time he'd brought his daughters here. His oldest, Jan, had just about panicked, digging frantically at the water with her paddle and her 12 year old strength. He'd called out strokes to her, then guided the boat through the rocks, holes, and waves. By the end of the five day trip, when they took out above Hell's Canyon, she was a confident determined young paddler. That was twenty years ago and she still paddled once or twice a summer, but only on lakes or slow streams now, with her own children.

         His younger child, Liz's reaction had been completely different. A year later on her first big water trip, when she was also twelve, she had squealed and laughed with delight from the first rapid to the last. Not as gifted athletically as her older sister she made up for it with enthusiasm and fearlessness. Each rapid was a mini adventure for her. Each bend of the river hid a new wonder of moving water, rocks, swaying trees, and the occasional moose or bear.          

       That trip had done it. She became an avid paddler of both canoes and kayaks. Every spare moment of her teen years  and young adult life was devoted to paddling. When she wasn't on the river she was lifting weights, shopping for gear, ordering maps for future trips, and practicing rolls in the community pool during the winter months. In high school she guided for a couple of wilderness companies, taking eco tourists with lots of money into the Alaskan wilds, working enough to pay her bills and finance her own next paddling adventure.

         As the vision of his daughters' young faces vanished before his mind's eye the man dug his paddle into the water, shot his canoe across the eddy line and peeled out into the mainstream of the big river. The water jerked at his boat straightening it into a down stream trajectory. He held the paddle lightly using it to steer like a side rudder. A flick of the wrists and he lined the bow up with a strong V between two under water rocks. A sudden lean to the side and a powerful draw stroke shifted the boat from its collision path with a couch sized boulder. Around the boulder he cut across the eddy line to rest in the upstream flow behind the rock and scout the river ahead.

         Downstream the river narrowed from over a hundred yards to less then thirty as it  squeezed between massive outcroppings of quartzite on either side of the channel. A six foot standing wave guarded the entrance of a short drop. Thank goodness for the spray cover he thought. 

         A twist of the body, a glance down stream and he was back in the current, cresting the wave, dropping from a four foot ledge into a frothy hole of aerated water with large boulders on either side. Upon hitting the hole he dug through the foam, found the water underneath and stoked mightily. Once, twice, three times his mighty back, shoulders, and arms commanded the canoe to move, but the power of the hole at this high water level kept him. Quickly he shifted his weight far forward, leaned almost parallel to the covered deck and dug once more at the water alongside the canoe. The exaggerated stroke worked, prying the boat from the keeper hole.

         The remainder of the rapid was easy. A few small ledges to drop over, a couple of eddy turns to line up narrow chutes, and then he picked his way through the rock garden at the end of the rapid as the river widened back out.

         The rest of the morning he spent joyfully paddling down the river, working his way through small rapids and occasionally stopping to look at some interesting rocks or animal tracks on the shore. Once he rounded a bend and saw a small grizzly sunning himself on a grassy piece of the river bank. The bear glanced at him and was gone with a "woof" into a dense thicket of alders and willows. 

         At lunch he pulled up on some large rocks in mid stream -- the dense brush on the shore looked too much like bear habitat for him to be comfortable eating and resting there. He stripped the sweaty clothes from his body spread them on the rocks to dry and lay naked in the warm sun for an hour. It had been cool and rainy for days before this trip. Last night was clear and cold. He'd slept rolled in his sleeping bag in the open beside his truck, and woke that morning with frost in his beard; so the warm sun on his old, heavily muscled body felt good.

         He thought of his wife, of the times they'd paddled this river. They'd stopped for lunch here too and of course ended up making love on this very rock, with a ground pad beneath them. Just after the climactic moment they were startled to hear voices and the sounds of paddles in the water. Partially screened from view by the steep upstream side of the rock, they looked over the edge to see two raft loads of floaters not thirty yards from their rock. The rafts were heading straight for their large rock and would likely swing around to it's lower side. The lovers had left their clothes on their canoe tied up to a rock across a shallow pool from the trysting rock. Their was no way to get their clothing without being seen by the rafters who were almost to the rock. In a few seconds they would spy the couple.

         He looked at his wife. She gave him a sly grin, shrugged her shoulders and with complete aplomb stood up, stretched her fit, just loved body for all to see and calmly walked across the shallow pool, past the gawking rafters to the canoe where she began to dress. Smiling and red faced he quickly waded to their boat, put on his life vest, threw his clothing in the bottom of the boat, stepped in and away they paddled.

         He and his mate laughed about the incident the rest of that trip. For years to come every time they paddled the river they had stopped at "Lovers' Rock" for another tryst and a laugh. Now alone, he felt a deepening sadness mixed with long neglected desire.

         "Time to go," he muttered to himself.

         He only paddled another hour that afternoon. A good camping spot presented itself on a small bluff above the river; so he built a fire there, set up his tent against the probability of rain from the thickening clouds, ate some jerky, drank some whiskey, went for a walk up a hill, with the shotgun over his shoulder, and was back at the fire playing his harmonica when the moon crawled up into the southeast sky.

         It wasn't completely dark, "Won't get much dark in late July, even in the middle of the state," he said aloud. "Not like on the North Slope, where the sun stays up all night."      

         After reading in the twilight for half an hour he turned in for a good night's sleep.

Part Two will follow.