1
ANOTHER BOOK?!
I wasn't planning on writing about it, I wasn't even sure I was going to read it, but late Saturday night Kevin Fedarko described the experience of running the river... Being at one with the water, checking the flow, charting a path, that reminded me exactly of skiing.
Not that you would know it if you haven't experienced it.
But if you have...
People throw away their entire lives to go skiing, to go river rafting. And if you asked my father, that's exactly what he would say, throwing away your life, wasting your time, but the experience, the adrenaline, the hit...
They're at the top of a rapid, the oarsman is steeling himself, getting focused, ready to dive in at 100%, with this run the only thing that matters. That's the same experience I have skiing. Not every run. But you're standing atop a couloir, a field of bumps, and you know the only way you'll make it is by nailing it, there's no room for error. That if you pussyfoot, you're f*cked. Either do it right or not at all.
But you could get hurt, you could die. And in truth, many people do.
And it's one thing to base jump, to do something where the odds are not good. But quite another to develop your skill to the point where you know you can execute.
And to do that you have to do it every day. You can't be a weekend warrior.
I used to say it took thirty days straight. Now I'm thinking I can get in the groove a little bit sooner. But I go out every day until I get that fine edge. It's not about how I look, it's about the feeling of control, the ability to recover, to stay the course.
And what dividend does that pay?
Only food for the soul, that's it.
Sure, there are professional ski racers, even professional freestyle skiers, but that's something different. Forget that it's a competition, a lot of the time you're not even skiing. You're traveling, waiting, getting ready to throw down your run and put down a time.
But I can still remember this run on Wilbere Ridge back in '76, where I hit every bump perfectly, when the lift was already closed, when there was nobody else on the slope. I'm constantly in search of that feeling.
2
So I stumbled on to Kevin Fedarko's work. I read about his new book and reserved it at the library. It came out last spring, it's entitled:
"A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon": t.ly/CW5LM
In it Fedarko does just that, have a misadventure walking the length of the Grand Canyon, which is rare feat. Despite being in the continental United States, the Grand Canyon is to a great degree unexplored. Sure, people run the river, but the gullies, the tributaries, the sun, the heat, the shale, the scree...that's too much for almost anybody.
And the funny thing about Fedarko is he's Ivy League educated. And despite only writing two books, he's got a lot of skill, and to make it simple, I will say he uses big words. Some you'll definitely have to look up. Was this necessary? I don't know. All I do know is it's worth plowing through. Although I thought I was going to stop a time or two reading "A Walk in the Park."
But writing about that book I got e-mail saying I had to read Fedarko's previous book, "The Emerald Mile." I reserved it, but did I really want to slog through another tome?
And when I ultimately cracked it... I was just not prepared for the adventure. It's a commitment. But then...
3
You see Fedarko writes like I talk, with digression. He knows where he's going, but there are side trips, that at first will have you scratching your head, wondering why they're relevant.
You get the history of John Wesley Powell traveling down the river from Wyoming all the way through the canyon in 1869. You wonder why this is necessary. But then you start to marvel, this guy with one arm went on this expedition, and it's nowhere near as well known as the Lewis & Clark trek, but should it be?
Not that a lot of people follow in Powell's footsteps.
But then comes the U.S. government. They're damming up rivers left and right, in order to generate power. And there's this writer in L.A. who gets a bug up his ass, believing this is a bridge too far, it's the beginning of the conservation movement, the early sixties, when most people hadn't even heard of the Sierra Club.
But this guy Litton hooks up with the Sierra Club and gets it, reluctantly, on board, and they stop the construction of a dam in Dinosaur National Monument. It's a compromise, the government won't build that one if the Sierra Club lets them build another dam further down in Glen Canyon.
But after agreeing to this, the Sierra Club majordomo realizes this is a big mistake, what will be lost as the reservoir fills up is unique. And from that day forward the strategy is changed. No compromise, ever.
And thank god they felt this way, because the U.S. government was going to build multiple dams within the Grand Canyon. That's right, they were going to flood the Grand Canyon! Kaput! You can't stop progress, you know.
But the Sierra Club did. And reading this book will make you a conservationist.
4
So Litton ultimately goes into the business of running dory trips down the Canyon. While everybody is running these massive rubber pontoons. And these wooden dories... They bang into rocks, they get broken up, you've got to repair them as you go... But you just can't barrel through the rapids, you've got to navigate, there's finesse involved, and a dory trip takes three weeks, whereas a motorized pontoon trip can be done in a third of the time.
And this guy Kenton Grua gets the bug, he gets hooked.
If you've lived in the wilderness you know these people. They oftentimes come from the suburbs. But they experienced something in the woods, in the wilderness, and their whole life takes a left turn, this is all they care about.
So Kenton Grua dedicates his entire life to running the Grand Canyon in a wooden dory.
Let's be clear. The canyon doesn't change. Well, there are the equivalent of avalanches, there is movement of the rapids, but it's still one river, it's still in one place, but for Grua, that's enough. He doesn't have to run every river in the world. He's dedicated just to the Grand Canyon. I love going to new ski areas, but I can tell you where every bump, every nook and cranny is at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, Bromley Mountain and Vail. Because I've gone down these runs hundreds of times. Like on Pickeroon... Sometimes I go left, sometimes I go right. If I go left, I drop in where the chair used to be, a narrow passageway. And then there are these giant rollers, you speed along and make a turn on top of each one, you're flying. And if I go on the right, there's a roll near the top and another at the bottom but the key is going around the trees in the middle, that exist just a few meters from the woods. One false move and... But it's the tightness and the turn that give me that feeling. I could almost run it blind.
5
So now we go back to the dams. One dam in particular, Glen Canyon Dam.
Well, first we go into a description of an El Niño. Live in California, live in the Rockies long enough, and you'll become familiar with El Niño and its counterpart La Niña. Bottom line, in an El Niño year, in this one in particular, 1983, it rains and rains and rains and rains. And in the mountains it snows and snows and snows and snows. And come spring this snow starts to melt and...
The rivers start to flow, the reservoirs starts to fill up and...
Glen Canyon dam can't cope.
The passageways... Are literally falling apart. There's a chance the water will breach the dam. Some people even think the dam itself is in jeopardy.
And for all those who hate the government... You'll learn why we need it, you'll appreciate the people who work for it, after you read this book.
But, as they're trying to forestall catastrophe, they're allowing water to run through and it's moving fast at a higher level than ever before and Grua...
Decides to set a speed record. Yup, he's gonna do it faster than anybody before, which in this case was him. He isn't filming a movie, there's no trophy, no book, no story, it was a personal quest.
The water is high, they take off surreptitiously, and...
6
Now Kevin Grua died riding his mountain bike. "...he suffered an aortic dissection, a tear in the inner layer of the large blood vessel branching off his heart."
He was 52.
It's unclear if this was related to trauma. But when you're a dirtbag river rat you probably don't have health insurance.
Grua was a child of the seventies. When you could survive as a dirtbag. You can't anymore.
Used to be there were ski bums. Now all the help at ski areas comes from South America or Down Under, it's just too expensive to live in ski town. Furthermore, the longer you stay in the mountains, the further you fall behind in the rat race, sans a career you're going to be behind the financial 8-ball, and you'd be surprised how savvy today's youngsters are. People like me used to graduate from college and head for the mountains. Almost no one does that anymore.
Not that Grua was getting rich running the river, but he could survive, he could make ends meet, and he could get that amazing feeling.
7
Now I'm going to quote a few passages, because they stuck out to me.
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."
Ain't that the truth. Few take the risk today. At least physically. Out in the wilderness. Although it will never again be the way it used to be, no one is off the grid anymore, even your iPhone has satellite capability.
But if you're not testing limits, pushing the envelope, you're missing out.
"'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever."
This is kind of like Nike's "Just Do It," but softer. Or Warren Miller's...if you don't do it this year, you'll just be one year older when you do. Step out your front door, put yourself in an unfamiliar position, you'll encounter the unexpected, and that's when you'll feel really alive.
"Among many other things, those dirtbag river runners uphold the virtue of disobedience: the principle that in a free society, defiance for its own sake sometimes carries value and meaning, if only because power in all its forms—commercial, governmental, and moral—should not always and without question be handed what it demands."
This is the essence of the other, the essence of rock and roll, the essence of the sixties, whose philosophy bled into the seventies, and then Reagan came along and legitimized greed and everybody bought in.
Everybody wants to buy in today. You want those privates, those brand extensions. The music is not enough, there must be perfume, and clothing. And if something makes a ton of bread, what is driving it, what is at the core, is irrelevant.
In many ways society is empty, we're lacking leaders.
I'm not talking about the free speech movement online. That's not the same. What you've got to know about defiance is it's always been based on the lone individual. Who points the way but doesn't insist you follow, who just continues to go on their own hejira. Politicians lead parties, musicians...those who change the world...they're just following their instincts, and if they don't align with society's rules, too bad.
For a while there the techies embodied this. But then they came to believe that they were the establishment, that they were entitled to set the rules...meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
But to do that which is not approved, to risk everybody's wrath, to not care about the money...that's rare in today's society.
But that's what the dirtbags are all about, all they live for, they put their finger to the wind and...
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