Rings and Rapids

You may wonder what rings and rapids have to do with each other. Well, in the fall of 1988 the loss of one while in the midst of the other led to an epic tale.

It was the latter part of October, the leaves were turning and the air was starting to feel crisp in the evenings. My ex-wife and I had accepted an invitation to go canoeing with two other couples, our friends Steve and Nanci and Ben and Dana. We were looking forward to a relaxing, fun afternoon.

Steve had become an expert paddler since we’d last paddled together thirteen years before. Ben and Dana were both excellent paddlers, as they owned a canoe rental business on the Chestatee River just outside Dahlonega, Georgia. Nanci was a good paddler as was I. My ex, Pat, was a good athlete, but hadn’t had much experience in canoes. This will be a critical factor later in our story.

We met at Ben and Dana’s rental outpost, Appalachian Adventures, on a cool Sunday afternoon, put our gear in three canoes, then shoved off into the quickly flowing stream. It had not rained in a few days; so the water was crystal clear. There was a light breeze ruffling the leaves and swirling those that were falling. It was a beautiful, day to be on the river. As we followed each other from riffles to rapids to slow backwater we talked and laughed and enjoyed the afternoon with fine friends.

After a bit we pulled out on a sandbar to stretch and rest. As the shadows were getting long we only stayed a few minutes, then got back on the river. Around the next bend, in a swift, narrow part of the river, there was a small set of riffels with a fallen tree hanging out over the main part of the channel. Ben and Dana maneuvered around the hanging tree; so did Steve and Nanci. As Pat and I entered the faster water, she was in the bow, I told her to draw stroke left as we got near the tree. Unfortunately she waited too late and as the tree branches were approaching her face, she bailed to the left, upsetting the canoe and sending us both into the water.

A few minutes later we were naked and shivering on the gravel bar as we changed into warm, dry clothing. Suddenly my ex exclaimed that her wedding ring was not on her finger. Upset, she recalled her hand hitting the gunwale on the canoe as she went over the side and that must have stripped the ring from her finger. We all commiserated with her loss, then decided we needed to resume paddling in order to get to the take out before dark.

After dinner at Dana and Ben’s house, we had a glum ride back to our home. We talked about buying another ring, but I’d taken the year off work to complete a master’s degree at the University of Georgia and although my ex was teaching and I was working part time, money was tight. We both agreed that someday we’d get her another ring.

All week I brooded about the loss of the ring. As I thought about the ring a plan to find it began to form in my head. As the next weekend approached, I called Steve and asked if I could borrow his wetsuit, and scuba mask. He quickly figured out what I was planning to do and said, “of course." Next I called Ben and explained that I planned to look for the ring and would he be willing to rent me a canoe and pick me up at the take out on the river. Ben refused to accept any money for the canoe, but quickly agreed to loan me a boat and run shuttle for me.

The last Sunday of October saw me leaving the house telling Pat that I was going to search for her ring and with her wishing me luck. I could tell she didn't have much hope of my finding it. I thought it might be possible, but I kept my plan to myself.

In the canoe, I had a length of rope, a change of clothes, Steve’s wetsuit and goggles, two paddles, a life vest, my trusty wide brimmed hat, a sandwich, and two quarts of water.

Ben pushed me off from the boat launch at his outfitters shop and I began to paddle down the river on another perfect, golden, fall afternoon. After a few minutes of paddling, I approached a huge, old river birch leaning way out over the water. Suddenly a large hawk startled from the tree. He flapped his wings and flew a hundred yards ahead and lit in another tree. When I approached that tree the hawk again screeched and took off down river. The pattern repeated over and over as I paddled down the river, almost as if the great bird was leading me. Every time I rounded a bend in the river the hawk would launch itself into the air, sometimes crying out, usually there was just the sound of its broad wings powering through the air announcing that he was still there. I smiled each time the bird flew up, enjoying our game of tag.

The gorgeous day continued, with fall's soft sunlight filtering through the trees and a light breeze blowing. This was a day to be on the river, paddling a canoe down a stream empty of people. The sounds of the water making its way downstream and that of my paddle dipping over and over into the river made for a relaxing trip.

After running some little riffles I reached the place where the ring had been lost the week before. I pulled out onto the gravel bar across the river, and quickly began to put my plan into action. I shed my clothes, pulled on Steve’s wetsuit, and goggles, tied my old river shoes (an ancient pair of Chuck Taylor’s) and grabbed the rope from the canoe.The river was a bit lower than it had been the week before and with no rain, ergo, no runoff, the water was even clearer than it had been the week before. I was hopeful. 

I tied a loop at the end of the rope, measured from the stern seat where I’d been to the bow seat where my ex had been sitting. I tied another loop in the rope at the spot she’d been sitting. There was a limb from the downed tree sticking out about even from where I’d gone into the water. I walked up stream a few yards above the limb, waded across the current into the chilly chest deep water. I quickly warmed up in the wet suit and picked up my feet allowing the current to carry me to the tree limb. I grabbed the limb and reset my feet on the gravel river bottom. I hooked the loop of the rope over the thick tree limb, then held onto the the rope as I let myself flow down the rope following the current of the river to the second loop. which was right at the part of the tree where Pat had ditched into the water.

Holding the loop in my left hand I dove down and scooped a couple of pebbles from the stream bed. They were each about the diameter of a ring. Continuing to hold the rope I let my legs float downstream and with my goggle encased face looking down at the gravel covered river bottom.The gravel ranged from pea size to ping-pong ball size. Most of it had been worn smooth from many decades of water running over it. The clear water reflected the color of the rocks giving everything a light brownish tint. 

With my free hand I reached upstream above my head and released one of the pebbles. I watched as it drifted while sinking, settling six or seven feet down stream from where I’d released it. I let go of the loop in the rope and allowed my hand to slip down the rope as the river current moved my floating body down stream a few feet.

I began to search the gravel bottom, moving my eyes back and forth across a grid several feet wide and a yard in length. Each time I came up for air I made sure to note a prominent pebble to resume my search at. I moved back up the floating rope to the loop marking where my ex had gone into the water and dropped the second pebble. It drifted to a spot near the first one. I searched a few more minutes, with no luck. I began to believe the ring had been covered by rocks and that I would not find it.

Staring through the goggles at the river bottom, it suddenly hit me. The ring was gold, much denser than the pebbles. It also was a ‘ring’ and water could flow through its center, thus reducing the surface area to be pushed on by the river current. It would not have drifted as far downstream as the rocks did. 

I quickly moved back down the rope to the loop I had tied approximate to my ex’s seat. I looked down and began to shift my gaze back and forth. After half a minute, there was the ring, nestled on the gravel bed. I reached down and plucked it from the bottom. I leapt straight up shouting in exultation, with the ring held over my head.

I had not believed it was actually possible that I could return to the river a week later, locate the spot where the ring had been lost and then find it resting on the river bottom. I practically danced across the water back to the canoe on the gravel bar, where I continued to leap about whooping and hollering. Had some stranger been watching they'd have thought me mad.

In the cool air I unbuckled the life vest, peeled off the wetsuit and put back on my shorts and t-shirt, with a light jacket. As I picked up my the paddle I heard the hawk flapping his wings. I looked up to the trees and he suddenly lifted off a limb, and with a screech flew off down the river. I did not see him again.

I met Ben at the Georgia Highway 400 bridge and we celebrated the found ring with some hearty back slapping and excited conversation. I thanked him over and over for the use of his canoe and his running shuttle. 

I called Steve, when I got back home that evening. I told him about the day and how much I appreciated using his gear. I told him of how the hawk led me down the river, then took off for good, right after I’d found the ring. He said it was a spirit bird and it had led me to the ring. I said, "maybe so." At the time I thought of myself as an empirical sort of person. I only believed what I could observe. The idea of a spirit bird seemed pretty fanciful. A nice idea, but…

With the passing of 35 years since the finding of the ring I’ve grown a bit more accepting of the idea that some mystical things may actually exist. I’ve come to think that maybe Steve was right, and there was something special about that hawk and the connection we shared that October afternoon. 

Untitled #1-17

It seems we all must sometimes sink

to depths we never knew existed,

must sometimes feel the pain of a dream we've lost 

and known no comfort for.

Yet we need that pain to strip us bare 

of all life's false ambitions, 

to bring us back to face ourselves

in a place before beginnings.

And when we're there we change somehow,

we come to see just who we are and where we've been,

and maybe where we're going. 

January 17, 1982

Billings, Montana

Taking A Stand January 2021

I've not often used Facebook to express my political views, other than to like some posts and subscribe to and repost a couple of things from certain political and religious blogs. I've long felt it is too easy to get pulled into Facebook algorithms that only support one's own views; so I've been cautious about my posts and I try to read some things by writers of different sides of the political and social spectrums.  I eschew a hostile, angry, conflict filled environment and believe that honest dialog and the willingness to work with people of various beliefs is paramount to our survival as a free people. Doing this in a calm, respectful manner seems necessary for people to feel good about working with others with divergent viewpoints. 

In the wake of what is happening after the recent elections in our country, and the horrible strife and conflict that has filled our nation, and our media feeds the past few years I feel compelled to share my views and take a stand. I don't know that I have any more insight than others, but my first degree was in Anthropology and Sociology and I learned to compare and evaluate systems of cultures and social changes; so maybe I have something useful to say. You can be the judge of that. 

I do not write this to argue with anyone, nor with the expectation that I will change anyone's mind. I write this to fulfill what I believe is my obligation to participate in our nation's democratic/representative process. I fear that this may cost me some friends. I hope it does not. The value of a true friend is irreplaceable and to be treasured, despite, or maybe because of our differences. Taking a stand, for me, has become necessary, albeit a bit tardy, but still necessary. 

The changes in our country over the last 65+ years have been far too numerous to list outside of a sociology text. Suffice it to say that many of the ideas and events of the 50's, 60's and 70's to move our country toward being a more equitable, just, and open place are still being played out now with minority groups, slowly moving into positions of power and more people able to act on the promises of the American dream. Although unfair discrepancies in income, housing, health care, and education, still maintain the vast racial and social divides in our country, progress is occurring. 

We like to believe that we live in a country where people care about others and are willing to sacrifice to help others, where newcomers can make a fresh start and contribute to the greater good. There are millions of individual examples that support this view. However, the reality is that we live in a highly competitive culture. In competition there are winners and there are losers. What makes a wealthy competitive society a moral one, is the willingness of the winners to assist the losers, to prevent the have nots from living lives of drudgery and constant fear, of making sure quality education and basic necessities are available to all. 

It often seems that the winners (the haves) in our country are unwilling to give up any bit of their comfortable lives to enable others to have a chance at having better lives. Was our nation a more equitable place before the rise of the middle class, when many more were poor? Did the rise of the middle class, and the zeal for having more and more stuff, merely create a buffer between the rich and the poor and temporarily satisfy the majority while allowing the wealthy to become super wealthy? Did the middle class become so fearful of losing what they gained that they believed the poor and disenfranchised would take what they had if they couldn't stop those who were different from finding their own way to the table of prosperity? What a perfect scenario this was for the rich to exploit the time, labor and income of everyone else. If you don't believe that happened, think about Voodoo Economics (Reganomics), the creation of enormous wealth with borrowed money under the guise of trickle down economics. Only the crumbs trickle down and the bills on that borrowed money have to be paid sometime, think - the 2007-08 economic crash. 

As the poor became further marginalized, and those who could play the game of being middle class became more consumed in the greed they were told was expected of them, the super rich became wealthier and wealthier. Since the 1970s we've seen the buying power of the middle class dramatically erode and the promise of General Electric's World of Tomorrow (see 1964 World's Fair exhibit) become a remote fantasy, lost to the greed of everyone. The stratification between the poor and the rich grew greater and greater. In other words the poor got poorer and the rich got richer and the middle class got complacent and developed a compulsive consuming way of life, without even realizing it.   

Ok, enough social and economic stuff. I could write all day about this and never explain it all. 

This brings us to the election of 2016 and the rise of a master con man and his willingness and ability to exploit the fear and greed that has grown wild in our culture. 

In case you don't know me well, I've always thought Donald Trump was a con man, a terribly flawed person, and not fit to lead anything, much less to care for the interests and needs of a nation. Perhaps the fantasy of great wealth that we've all succumbed to in one way or another, and Trump's TV presence made him seem legitimate to many people who were afraid of their lives changing and losing the way of living they wanted. Many Americans bought the fantasy that everyone can have all they want or close to it, everyone can be rich, that hard work and luck are all that is needed. After all it is hard to imagine things being different from what we've experienced and expected - from what television has convinced us is the way we should live. Yet, there are winners and their are losers. Not everyone can be rich. Maybe anyone can be, but not everyone. 

But I think Trump and other narcissistic, psychopathic oligarchs like him, (Yes, I believe the man is sick with greed and with the success he's had at conning, bullying, and intimidating people his entire life.) Trump and those like him understand the fear that most people have of not having enough, and fear of others taking what they have. Trump and those of his ilk are brilliant at exploiting and using such fear to pit various groups of people against each other. Within that conflict and tension, which they promote and encourage, there is tremendous room for them to take from everyone, in all aspects of society - business, environment, education, religion, civil rights, and social mobility. Trump, and others like him, will do whatever it takes to get what will fuel their accumulation of riches and power. They will lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate people and laws to get what they want. They will sacrifice everything that is good and right about our country to be rich and powerful. 

I know many of my conservative Christian friends believe that God can still use someone like Trump to achieve the plans of the Divine. I can't believe that a loving, caring god would allow someone to perpetuate the suffering of others just to achieve the Almighty's plan. I cannot be a part of an organization that believes in such a scheming deity. Supporting someone like Trump is antithetical to my understanding of all major faiths and is in reality just a way for people to justify their own lust for money, power, and possessions. When you factor in our conditioned desire believe in an America and a world that never was, then you have a populace ripe for the fleecing. 

Trump's need to hang on to power for ego, for wealth, and for power's sake itself, has become more glaring than ever in the last few months. His willingness to corrupt the outcome of the election in order to stay in power strikes at the very foundation of our republic. He would allow untold numbers to die from a preventable illness out of his own fear of losing power. I find no truth in Donald Trump. There is only an insatiable craving for more - more at any cost, even the cost of our votes, our choice, the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands. He and his close followers would discount the votes of millions in order to get their way and to continue their attack against much of the good that has been hard won in our country. Such actions should strike fear into the hearts of us all. 

Here is My Stand. 

Politically I am an Alaskan independent. That puts me in a very ambiguous political category. The terms Liberal and Conservative have lost so much of their meaning in the garbled, overused way we apply them, that I cannot fully identify with either. I believe in issues, in people, not in party. 

I steadfastly believe in the rights of women to chose what they want for their own bodies and in laws that enable them to have such choices. 

I believe in the obligation of the strong and the wealthy to help those in need; this includes those who are hungry, those who are sick, those who need education and opportunity, and those who need shelter from persecution. 

I believe that wealth and privilege must be earned in a fair and just manner, not by exploitation, and stoking the fires of greed and fear. 

I also believe that I have a right to keep my own guns for hunting, recreation, and protection, yet I do not believe that private citizens should have military weapons. I also do not believe that registering my guns will allow our government to take the right to own them from me. 

I believe we the people must work to create and ensure that government, on all levels, is responsible to all people.

 I believe that people have a right to love, live with, and marry whomever they choose and to express that love without fear of being harmed, shunned, or denied their right to fully participate in our society. 

I believe our tax system is badly broken, and that the poor and the middle class carry far too much of the financial responsibility for running our nation. 

I believe that we the people have the right to practice our religion without interference from the government. This must apply to all religions, but that right must be tempered by the necessity to be responsible, caring citizens and by the need of all people to have access to a better life. 

I believe that the need to protect and preserve the Earth for the benefit of all people and creatures, including future generations, must supersede the consumptive lust that we have to accumulate more and more. 

I believe that our desire to live as we want must allow room for others to live as they want. 

I believe that we can work beyond our fears to reach out to those who are different and find ways to live together in cooperation and harmony.

Lastly I must condemn and repudiate Donald J. Trump's behavior, ideas, and policies. His actions reveal a person willing to set friend against friend, brother against sister, father against children, mother against parent, race against race, religion against religion, class against class, and nation against nation. He is firmly in the lineage of tyrants who have come before him. It is likely that only our nation's reliance on law and our governmental system of checks and balances has spared us the horrors other countries have experienced from history's long line of despots. 

To what purpose has he done these things, you may ask? 

The accumulation of wealth, greed, status, lust, and unbridled power, I must answer. And I resolutely stand against him and those who would enact and share in his ideas. As the large number of votes Trump received in this November's election reveals, if we want an open, truthful, fair government for all, then we have much to be concerned about in the coming years and a great deal of work ahead of us. 

I know this was long and wordy. As I stated in the beginning you may choose to unfriend me over what I have written. If you do, please let me know. Although it may sting a little, I will not think badly of you. What I have written is important to me. I feel that I've remained silent too long. This writing is part of who I am. It is truth that I believe. It is for love of country and my fellow man and woman that I must write these things.

Peace be with you all. 

Bob

 

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.