BLOG: I Can't Make This Shit Up! | River God... | Jeffe Aronson

Hiking Down the Bright Angel Trail

Wed, 02 May 2012 09:01:58 -0700

Hiking down the Bright Angel Trail to meet a Dory trip (taken by a client)

Book Chapters being published!

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:43:50 -0800

Publishing my stories on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Messing-About-Boats-Chapter-ebook/dp/B006QIDUXE/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1325027834&sr=1-2

Here's the first installment: Sinyala Fault. I'm still trying to figure out this narrative arc thing. In the meantime, you can buy each of my stories at Amazon CHEAP! A buck and a half. Pass it along, review it, critique it. Hope you like it!

Jeffe, December 28, 2011

The Great Tuolumne River, California, spring high water 2011

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:59:48 -0800

Check out how big and fun the "T" can be! A jewel of a river, I grew up on it. My first class 4-5 in 1976. Great rapids, beautiful scenery, awesome hikes. I love this place.

Havasu Canyon Hike: What's it like from the boats?

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:35:32 -0800

Here's a quick video of what it looks like to hike from your boat in the mouth of Havasu up to the "Big Kids Pool".

Anasazi Magic published in October Boatman's Quarterly Review (BQR), two other stories win awards!

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:34:45 -0800

Ok. I get to brag once in a while. Better than whining when I keep getting rejections, no?

Go to the Grand Canyon River Guide's Association website and become a member to read the Boatman's Quarterly Review http://www.gcrg.org/bqr.php

It's a great way to read my article, not to mention support the activities of the GCRG. Or check the archives of this blog; "I Can't Make This Shit Up!" Anasazi of the Grand Canyon.

This story has been brewing in my spirit for over 15 years, tearing me up. After the marketing manager at OARS innocently requested an article on the Anasazi for the 2012 OARS catalogue, http://www.oars.com/, It came pouring out. Hope you like it.

As for the awards, I won the "Bad Trip, Gold Winner" prize at The Solas Awards Best Travel Writing site; http://www.besttravelwriting.com/btw-blog/great-stories/bad-trip-gold-winner-sinyala-fault/#comments

That story is also on my Home page: Sinyala Fault.

Another award from the Traveler's Tales site was the Editor's Choice for Best Travel Writing: http://www.besttravelwriting.com/btw-blog/great-stories/bad-trip-gold-winner-sinyala-fault/#comments for the tale: Beyond Thunder, which is also available on my site here: "Beyond Thunder"

Yippee. And I will be spending some time this winter self-publishing some of my stories on Amazon. Stay tuned. Its all starting to happen. As my colleague Bruce Keller likes to say about life and boating: "You know you're committed when your legs are up in the air".

Send In Your River Booty!

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:50:54 -0700

Find an interesting site on rivers? Cool river video, or photos? Powerful stories? Send the links to me, and I'll post them! Anyone sending a good link gets a free copy of my first book once published!

Last Of The Great Unknown PreviewCanyoneering 22 slot Canyons in Grand Canyon Feb 2011

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:09:42 -0700

Wooohoooo! Deer Creek Falls from the top! 150 mile, and more!

POP - A New Story About Caring For My Father After His Stroke

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:40:20 -0700

It's taken years for me to take my notes from those days and clean them up, make them readable. Well, here it is, finally.

The sorrow and joy of caring for an aging parent. The deterioration, conflicts, laughter. Its all there. Some in the publishing industry say nobody cares about this stuff unless you're famous. Others say it can't be me-me-me, but it must be universal. Well, lets see...

Go to: river-god.com home page, look on the left sidebar for Personal Chapters, and click POP.

And let me know. Cheers.

Check out the previous Youtu.Be video on Chef James running Tappan Falls on the Middle Fork Salmon river in Idaho in a duckie with OARS.

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:33:44 -0700

I told him to lean into the wave! But he's a darn great cook for our gourmet-wine trips! Ironstone winery loves him, too!

Do We Make Ourselves Sick?Reprint of a hard-to-find article from long ago in the New Age Journal. Veddy controversial, veddy interestink, and, from a cancer surviver, veddy veddy good.

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:58:17 -0700

Do We Make Ourselves Sick?

By Ken and Treya Wilber

From New Age Journal, Sept. 1988

Here's a provocative counterargument to the trendy notion that we cause and can cure our own illnesses.

By Ken and Treya Wilber

Ever since Shirley MacLaine went out on a limb and described her newfound spiritual powers, the slogan "we create our own reality" has become something of a self-help panacea.

Clearly, a strong sense of personal empowerment offers a healthy alternative to a passive fatalism about life, a point convincingly argued by Yale surgeon Bernie Siegel in his bestselling book Love, Medicine and Miracles. However, in recent years a more extreme interpretation has taken hold in the alternative health field, a belief that we are personally responsible - on a conscious or unconscious level - for everything that happens to us.

This idea is touted not only in MacLaine's work, but also in a plethora of self-help books, perhaps most notably Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life, a surprise bestseller that made it onto The New York Times self-help list. Hay, who says she used this philosophy to cure her own cancer, holds that "we are each 100 percent responsible for all of our experiences," "we create every so-called 'illness' in our body," and "when we really love ourselves, everything in our life works." This unqualified assessment of human healing potential, apparently based on interpretations of metaphysical ideas such as karma and reincarnation, would be an understandable comfort to those facing serious illness - unless, of course, they fail to think themselves well.

In the following conversation (adapted by the author from several past interviews on the subject), Ken Wilber, an expert in transpersonal psychology, offers a more sophisticated - and perhaps more compassionate view of the role we may playcreating and healing our own, illnesses. Wilber, the author of eleven books and some two hundred articles on spiritual and psychological subjects, has not relied solely on scholarship in forming his provocative theories: Just ten days after his 1984 wedding, his Wife, Treya, was told she had breast cancer.

In an accompanying piece that begins on page 54, Treya, the cofounder of The Cancer Support Community in San Francisco, describes how she came to see her illness not as a spiritual punishment, but as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

-The Editors

The authors at their home near Boulder, Colorado: "Life is too wonderfully complex," says Treya, "and we are all too interconnected - both with each other and with our environment - for a simple statement like 'you create your own reality' to be literally true,"

A conversation with Ken Wilber

There is a popular "new age" notion that illness is something you have deliberately but unconsciously brought on yourself to teach yourself an important lesson. What do you think of that?

Like most new age ideas, I find that to be a rather narcissistic notion, in addition to being simply wrong.

You'd better elaborate on that...

The "new age stance," as I have come to see it, is largely defined by its narcissistic, grandiose, and omnipotent fantasies. And one of these grandiose fantasies is that, if we want to, we can "visualize" disease as going away and the disease will simply go away.

But sometimes that does happen

Sometimes that does happen, definitely. And, in 99 percent of the cases, it doesn't. You have to account for that vast majority where it doesn't. And any careful examination of this field shows that that vast majority is shot through with magical or wish-fulfillment thinking. "I can think my disease away." That's pure fixation on the magical level.

But I don't see how you can say that. You already have admitted that at least sometimes - even if in just 1 percent of the cases actual healing happens because of visualization, for example. Therefore, if it can happen, I would be an idiot not to at least give it a shot. That's not wish-fulfillment or magical thinking. That's hard-headed and completely rational thought.

Everything you say is true. That's not quite what I'm talking about. You are talking about the genuine but rare instances - I don't know if it's actually 1 percent or 5 percent or 10 percent, but we all agree it's fairly rare but definitely real nonetheless - you are talking about those rare instances in which apparently, the mind can initiate a direct and immediate healing response through, say, visualization techniques. That's not at issue.

At issue is the notion that, unless something is spiritually wrong with you, you should be able to do this

all the time. And that if you can't, you should feel profound guilt. You have brought this disease on

yourself, you see, to teach yourself some sort of lesson, and if you get that lesson, then in all cases

you should be able to cure the disease by thinking it away, by visualizing it away, poof! And that "poof"is pure magical thinking.

O.K. I see the distinction.

And that magical thinking, which is narcissistic and grandiose, has a troublesome downside. Namely, if you can't think the disease away, then you really are spiritually rotten - you should feel profound embarrassment and guilt and shame. New age types gather around you and say things like, "Well, what are you trying to teach yourself with this disease?" You might have, say, eye cancer, and they'll say, "What are you trying to avoid seeing?" Or you might have a broken leg, and they'll say, "Why are you avoiding standing up for yourself?" Or you might have a headache, and they'll say, "Guess whose sixth chakra isn't opened?" Or you might have some heart problems, and they'll say, "Why are you avoiding God's love?" And all of this is completely magical, narcissistic, infantile, new age nonsense.

There is no support whatsoever for this type of thinking in the world's great mystical traditions. The only support for this type of thinking is in the mind of the four-year-old, where magic rules and narcissistic orderingthe-world-around is king. That's its fundamental support.

You know, I thought the psychiatrists pretty much had a corner on the guilt market, until the new agers came along. What the new agers managed to do, with regard to diseases physical in origin, was to not just misinterpret them as psychological in origin, which the psychiatrists could manage, but to go one step higher and interpret these diseases as spiritual in origin, as "lessons" you are giving yourself.

The psychiatrists didn't believe in soul and spirit, so the highest they could go, and the most guilt they could induce, was on the mental level. There would be a substantial amount of iatrogenic [doctor-caused] guilt, but because it was only half way up the great chain it was in some ways limited and its damage contained.

By great chain you mean…

The Great Chain of Being - a hierarchy of matter, body, mind. soul, and spirit - or we could say physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimension, with spirit being both the highest dimension of being and the ground or reality of all dimensions of being. As Huston Smith has pointed out, the Great Chain of Being is the central core of the perennial philosophy, or the world's great wisdom traditions.

So how does this relate to new age guilt?

The new agers acknowledge the existence of soul and spirit - their version anyway - so they can extend the guilt to infinite proportions: All the way up to soul and spirit. And that's exactly what they have done. I call it neotrogenic guilt - guilt caused by the new age mentality. You create your own reality, your thoughts are in control of the entire world, and, thus, if you get a disease of any sort, you have caused it. You have given yourself this disease, whether it be a cold, anxiety, a broken bone, gout, cancer. or the flu.

But, you know, the new agers really believe that stuff.

Yes, I know, and it's so unfortunate, so tragic. Because, one, it really is wrong; and, two, it kills people. I mean that literally. By thinking that all disease has its origins solely or exclusively on the spiritual level, you actually and completely cease looking for causes on the physical. And therefore you give up or bypass or fail to take advantage of physical-level cures, which are, in fact, the only ones that are going to work for genuinely physical-level diseases.

I know a lot of new age types. Well, my entire generation is new age to some degree - I'm new age to some degree - it was an occupational hazard of the '60s. Anyway, many of these people are now at the age where they are starting to face serious illnesses, such as cancer.

And, if having cancer is not devastating enough, they have the added burden, the neotrogenic burden of thinking they have somehow brought this thing on themselves, that they somehow are spiritually rotten to the core. Never mind that arguably the three most important and enlightened figures of our time - Sri Ramana Maharshi, Suzuki Roshi, and the Karmapa - all died of cancer. Your cancer is proof of spiritual rottenness.

And then, worst of all, the new agers think they should try to cure the cancer with just visualization and meditation and psychotherapy. Those can be very important adjuncts, but they are not cures, because they address the wrong levels.

And the people who use just those approaches, only those approaches, unfortunately, they die. They were killed by the new age, by this insane idea that I create my own reality, that only spiritual causes are

operative in the world, that I should be able to order the world around in thought, that physical-level

cures are a source of shame and weakness.

This whole new age position can be historically demonstrated to be an unconscious offshoot or derivative of such movements as Christian Science. which itself was a misinterpretation of the New England Transcendentalists, Thoreau and Emerson. It mistakes the correct notion, "Godhead creates all," for the narcissistic notion "Since I am one with God, I create all." That's very wrong.

That position makes two profound mistakes, which both Thoreau and Emerson would have strongly disagreed with. Namely: one, that God is an intervening parent for the universe, instead of its impartial reality or suchness; and, two, that your ego is one with that parental god, and therefore can intervene and order the universe around. Those are both fundamentally and profoundly wrong; and the particular new age notions that we mentioned, consciously or unconsciously based on them, are equally wrong. And that wrongness, very sad to say, can kill you.

I see. That's frightening. Now, if I understand your position correctly, you also are saying that many diseases of, say, the spiritual level also can have a physical component, and that component should be

treated with physical-level interventions, in addition to all the higher-level techniques and so on. So you should tackle any disease with a multi-leveled approach.

Yes, exactly. There are almost no "purely one-level" diseases. Even a predominantly physical-level injury, say, a broken bone, has emotional and psychological and sometimes even spiritual ramifications. And many, I would even say most, "higher-level" diseases have physical or lower-level components. In fact, many diseases that once were thought to have a purely spiritual or psychological origin, we now know have major physical or genetic causes - for example, gout, alcoholism, cancer, diabetes, manic depression, panic disorders, even certain phobias. All of these diseases once were ascribed to moral weakness. And now, alas, are ascribed by the new agers to spiritual weakness.

So, in addition to iatrogenic diseases, we now have a whole new battery of neotrogenic diseases. And at the top of this list is death. Second is infinite guilt. Third is massive low self-esteem. Fourth is wheatgrassjuice poisoning.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but I want to try to salvage the few grains of truth from the new age approach. I mean, you have agreed that visualization, for example, might actually be curative, or at least help in the cure, of at least 1 percent or 5 percent or whatever of some diseases. Now, this seems to me to be very important. Could you discuss that?

O.K. In the Great Chain of Being, we have both "upward" and "downward" causation. With regard to disease, upward causation means, in essence, and with regard to disease, that a lower level is mostly causing the disease, and this is infecting or disrupting the higher levels as well. For example, if I have chronic mononucleosis, which is accompanied by physical fatigue, this is going to dispose me to mental depression, and in some cases actually cause it. That's upward causation.

Downward causation is simply a higher level causing a disease on a lower level, or at least significantly contributing to it. For example, Type A mental behavior has been implicated in physical heart disease. Or, as another example, it now is widely known that mental or emotional depression can directly depress the physical immune system. Thus, depression has been moderately but significantly correlated with increased rates of colds, flu, cancer, and so forth. In other words, mental depression might increase your chance of getting a cold by, say, 5 percent. Same with cancer.

Now, that is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the same as saying your thoughts directly caused the cancer. That is simply not true. First of all, you have to have a physical base that already is primed or genetically loaded for cancer. Second, you need a whole series of physical-level risk factors, such as smoking or repeated over-exposure to the sun. Third, you need a physical-level failure in the immune system to recognize the cancer proliferation. This can be due to genetics, to vitamin deficiency, to free radical proliferation, and - in maybe 5 percent to 20 percent of cases - this factor might be contributed to by psychological or mental mindsets, mostly depression.

So the mental factor is maybe 20 percent of the third factor, or 20 percent of 33 percent. That's roughly 7 percent. So I'm saying that, roughly, genetics is 20 or 30 percent, risk factors are 20 or 30 percent, immunodeficiency is 20 or 30 percent, and mindsets (as part of the latter category) might be 10 percent or so. Now 10 percent is important, and you'd be a fool not to take it into consideration. But mindsets are not the sole or major causes. And they certainly aren't some sort of "lessons."

So there is no such thing as a "cancer personality"?

No. And there is no credible evidence that there is. What has been shown, more or less across the board, is that there is only one "mood" that consistently has an effect on health or illness, or the immune system in general, and that is depression. Depression, as the name implies, depresses your mood, and it depresses your immune system - to a slight but not insignificant degree. And, therefore, research shows it might play a 5 or 10 percent role in increasing your risk of colds, flus, or cancers. But that doesn't mean there is a "flu personality" or a "cold personality" or a "cancer personality."

If all the other risk factors are not in place, you can be significantly depressed for years and you simply will not get cancer. You see? This whole notion of a "cancer personality" is a horrible thing to do

to a human being. Tuberculosis used to be ascribed to a "consumptive personality." Read Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor.

I should point out that this is not just academic to you. Ten days after you were married, you found out your wife had cancer. And you've spent much of the last four years helping her fight her cancer. And I take it you used this multidimensional approach?

Yes, but it wasn't that I had this theory and told my wife, Treya, what to do. She looked into the situation very thoroughly and arrived at the same conclusion herself start with the physical. She did surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy - then added emotional, psychological, and spiritual work as adjuncts.

But it was tough for her; she, like most of our generation, was a new age type, so in addition to cancer itself, she had to deal with "new age shame" and a lot of new age friends who were really trying to help, bless them, but they kept asking her what she was trying to teach herself by giving herself cancer. Their hearts were (and are) in the right place, but on this particular issue, their minds were out to lunch.

I still have a few questions about downward causation and its role in healing and illness. How exactly do you see visualization, for example, helping to strengthen the immune system? Granted, it may have only about a 10 percent effect, but that is still an effect.

Yes, and in a tight election 10 percent can make all the difference in the world. Even 1 percent can. So of course I recommend this as an adjunct for physical disease treatment. Also, if your disease actually is originating on the mental level, then visualization might be one of the direct and immediate remedies itself, and not just an adjunct, because it also originates on that level. For example, if you have low self-esteem, due to psychological and not physical causes, then visualizing yourself as capable, lovable, and competent is an appropriate and fairly quick cure; it's a decent same-level cure.

But trying to cure a physical-level illness by using mental-level techniques, such as visualization, can be a problem because by themselves they're just too slow. You see, upward and downward causation are sometimes quick and immediate, but when it comes to disease they are rather slow and laborious. They have to go "up" and "down" the Great Chain, and they are dampened and absorbed by that movement. For example, you might have to have a Type A mental set for thirty years before it finally works its way down to the physical and gives you a heart attack. This is not something that is going to happen overnight, or even in a year or two or five.

Well, the same is true of most mental or attitudinal cures for physical illness, or cures by downward causation. They work - it just takes a decade or so, usually, and you just don't have that kind of time. So you want to intervene directly and immediately at the actual level of origin, using same-level techniques, elements, and therapies. Then, as an adjunct, you can use secondary techniques on all the other levels that are involved or implicated in the particular disease in your case.

How do you see visualization having an effect on the immune system, no matter how slowly it might work?

Well, if you look at our expanded version of the Great Chain, notice where in the hierarchy "image" occurs: matter, sensation, perception, emotion, image, symbol, concept, rule, and so on. Image is the lowest part of the mind, putting it directly in touch with the highest part of the body. Image, in other words, is the mind's direct connection with the body - its moods, its impulses, its depressions and its elations.

Images are the missing link between mind and body. And, as research has suggested, images also are plugged into the body's immune system. Images are not totally in control of the immune system; it's simply that they have an influence, a moderate but not insignificant influence. Images, therefore, are exactly the point in downward causation that the mind actually and concretely touches the body.

And because we can consciously control our images to some extent, we can consciously have a modest amount of influence on our immune system. This is true. If you want a really good book, sane and balanced, on this topic, I would recommend Imagery in Healing, by Jeanne Achterberg-Lawlis.

So, if you are confronted by a disease in a friend, say, how do you proceed? This friend comes to you and says, "I've got such and such symptoms." What do you do?

Well, it varies tremendously, of course, depending on the individual and the circumstances. But, as a general answer, I would say this: When you are looking for the causes of a particular disease, start at the lowest level and work up. That's one of the few hard and fast rules I have. And the reason is: If you go even one level too high, if you ascribe the actual cause to any level higher than it is in fact, then you will generate guilt in the person. Moral guilt.

Moreover, you will prescribe an inappropriate or too-slow-acting cure for the disease. In other words, in addition to the original disease, you will have afflicted this person with a second disease, an iatrogenic or neotrogenic disease. These sometimes are more fatal than the original.

So start at the bottom. Exhaust the physical possibilities and the physical-level cures or techniques. Do this first, and do it exhaustively. Play the materialist for a while. Then move up to the emotional - to the confused feelings and impulses and fears that might be contributing to the problem. And look for ways to work these out, to express bottled-up emotions or, conversely, restrain your acting-out tendencies.

Then move up to the mental - to all of our beliefs and myths and stories, sometimes false and distorting and plain mean and vicious - and work with those. In particular, learn to replace these beliefs with more positive mental "affirmations."

Then move to the spiritual, and look at your whole approach to spirit or godhead. Is it still infantile and childish and narcissistic? Do you think God is a big parent who rules over this world? Do you think God is punishing you with this disease? Do you think you are giving yourself this disease as a lesson? Do you think you create your own reality, that your ego can order the universe around?

To the extent you can, jettison those infantile beliefs - they once were appropriate, but no more - and replace them with a more genuinely contemplative and mature approach to spirit, spirit as the reality and suchness and luminosity of all that is, not as a punishing or rewarding parent. The view of God as a punishing parent is a seed for a particularly vicious downward causation that, over the years, can slowly poison all levels, So maybe you should take up an authentic meditative discipline.

Earlier you said something about using illness as a metaphor.

Yes. What I said was that it is not true that, for example, cancer is something you are giving yourself in order to learn some sort of lesson, and that you had better spiritually straighten yourself out. If you accidentally inhale radioactive plutonium, for example, you and 99.99 percent of the people who do so are going to get lung cancer. I don't care if you have spent your entire life reading A Course in Miracles; you are going to get lung cancer.

There’s no spiritual lesson here. I mean, don't inhale plutonium. Fine. That's no spiritual lesson: that's a simple piece of concrete information.

But - and here's my point - no matter what the actual cause of whatever disease you have, or no matter what level that disease primarily issues from, you always can use your disease as a metaphor for the things about your life you wanted to change anyway, or should change anyway.

The disease, in that case, can be a real spur to take creative action in your life, to change or improve things such as – going up the chain - your diet, your exercise program, your mental attitude and outlook, your spiritual relationships and practices. Diseases don't have to have a mental or spiritual cause to spur mental or spiritual action, action that would be a good idea anyway, whether or not you were sick.

So, in that sense, disease can be a real opportunity, and it can be an opportunity without your having to lay a guilt trip on yourself. In other words, disease is not caused by a lesson you are giving yourself, but,

if you choose. You can turn disease into something to learn from, or something to motivate you toward more balance and harmony in your life.

So, for example, you might get hit by a truck and break your leg, and use that occasion to learn to slow down, or take up meditation.

Yes, exactly. Your mental or spiritual set did not cause the truck to hit you - it's not a lesson in that sense. But there might be some mental or spiritual things you should be changing in any case, and you can use that sickness as a metaphor, a symbol, and a spur to change them. You might say, for example, "I'm going to choose to see that truck hitting me as an example of life running over me, and I'm going to try to take more charge of my life, using diet, meditation, etc." Or you might have cancer, for strictly physical reasons, but use it as a spur to be more compassionate toward others who are in pain. You did not get cancer because you lack compassion, but you can use cancer to develop compassion.

But, what about the notion of karma? Wouldn't karma say that, in fact, you got run over by the truck because of past karma? In other words, your past actions, your karma, actually did cause the truck to hit you? It's your karma.

Well, yes and no. This is an enormously complicated topic, and can't be dealt with in passing. But I can say this: With regard to illness, it is true that the Hindus and Buddhists and Gnostics would maintain that

any illness you have now, or in this life, is a product of past karma in your past lives or past actions, actions that are carried in your "continuum," your "eternally indestructible drop," your soul. This karma will have to come to fruition; it necessarily will have its effects.

The idea of karma-which I think is essentially correct - is that you have to experience the results of your own actions. Your actions will have results, and these results will come to fruition. Maybe not in this lifetime; but it will happen, sooner or later. And much illness in this lifetime therefore is ascribed to past karma, or evil actions in past lives whose impressions still remain in the soul and, in this lifetime, exert a downward causation that comes to fruition in various diseases.

If you have killed someone in a past life, that killing, because it is an ontological offense against the moral grain of the universe, is going to have a correspondingly bad effect on the structure of your very soul. It will come to retributive fruition, and you will pay - usually, it is said, by a short life riddled with disease and illness. Now, whether or not you believe the exact specifics of the Buddhist and Hindu notion, I think the overall idea is absolutely correct. This is simply a notion of "conditioning" on the spiritual dimension. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

So, in that sense, illness is your own doing.

Well, not quite. First of all, there are all sorts of karma - not just individual, but also collective. If you end up at Treb1inka or Dachau, it's not necessarily only, or even predominantly, your bad karma. It's mostly Hitler's and Himmler's and Heydrich's. If major industries dump carcinogenic toxins into your environment and you get cancer, it's not primarily your bad karma. It's theirs. And so on. In other words, all diseases have causes or are a result of karma, but the karma is not always yours and therefore may not be your fault or "your own doing."

And, anyway, the whole notion of karma as described by the Buddhist or Hindu spiritual traditions has an intent that is exactly the opposite of making you feel guilty. The point is this: We all have karma, and we all have a fair amount of bad karma, karma that has to come to fruition before we can achieve any sort of enlightenment or make any sort of higher spiritual progress. In other words, each of us is going to have to grab enough courage to face past actions and experience their results, and this, in many cases, will involve going through difficult illnesses and discomforts.

But, once a major illness actually happens to you, a more useful response might be, to use my wife's particular wording of it: "Congratulations, You are finally burning off a major chunk of the negative karma that afflicts us all. We will all have to go through this sooner or later, because we all have 'sinned,' we all have substantial negative karma. But you are doing this right now, and that is admirable! Again, congratulations!" You see the difference?

Night and day.

And the really important point about karma and illness, as Kalu Rinpoche himself has pointed out, is this:

Illness itself does not generate new karma. Illness is the fruition of karma, the burning off of karma, You should be delighted that this is finally happening! Illness doesn't generate new karma or more karma, but - and this is very important your attitude to illness can generate new karma.

So, if you are accepting of illness, if you see it as an important evolutionary development, if you don't see it as some sort of punishment from God or some sort of wretched lesson you are inflicting on yourself, then illness can be a relatively positively event. Illness then can be an occasion to burn off past karma, to right some imbalances that have crept into your overall system, to spur yourself to make the types of higher changes that you should be anyway, and thus to introduce a little more harmony into your life.

Illness doesn't generate new karma or more karma, but - and this is very important - your attitude to illness can generate new karma.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

A compassionate response to illness.

By Treya Killam Wilber

Five years ago I was sitting at my kitchen table having tea with an old friend, when he told me that, some months earlier, he had learned he had thyroid cancer. I told him about my mother, who had surgery for colon cancer fifteen years ago and has been fine ever since. I then described the various theories my sisters and I had come up with to explain why she had gotten cancer.

We had a number of explanations, our favorite being that she had been too much my father's wife and not enough her own person. (For example, had she not married a cattleman, we speculated, she might have become a vegetarian and avoided the dietary fats linked to colon cancer.) We also theorized that her family's difficulty expressing emotions had played a role. We were probably influenced by Woody Allen's line, "I don't get angry, I grow tumors instead."

My friend, who obviously had thought deeply about the implications of his illness, then said something that shook me deeply. "Don't you see what you're doing?" he asked. "You're treating your mother like an object, spinning theories about her. Other people's theories about you can feel like a violation. I know, because in my case the reasons my friends have come up with about why I have cancer have felt like an imposition and a burden. I don't feel they're offered solely out of concern for me. Rather, the thought of my having cancer must have frightened them so much they needed to find a reason, an explanation, a meaning for it. The theories were to help them, not to help me, and they caused me a lot of pain."

I was shocked. I had never looked at what was behind my theorizing, never speculated about how my theories affected my mother. Even though none of us in the family ever told her about our ideas, I'm quite certain she sensed how we felt. That kind of climate, I realized, wouldn't encourage trust or openness, I suddenly saw that my attitude had kept me distant from my mother during the greatest crisis of her life.

Since that conversation with my friend, I have been learning to become more compassionate toward people who are sick, more respectful of their integrity, more kindly in my approach - and more humble about my own ideas. I now see it was really fear - unacknowledged, hidden fear - that motivated me to believe the universe made sense and that its forces were more or less within my control. In such a reasonable universe, staying healthy would be a simple matter of avoiding stress or changing my personality or becoming a vegetarian.

But I soon had the opportunity to find out - in a personal and painful way - that life is not that simple. Less than a year after this talk with my friend and just ten days after my marriage to Ken, I discovered I had breast cancer.

When my mother was sick, my theorizing was motivated by fear and a desire for self-protection. When I got cancer myself, my theorizing initially was fueled by the now-popular idea that we create our own reality, a philosophy that in my case generated primarily feelings of guilt and failure for getting sick. It also implied that if I somehow could find "the cause" of my cancer I should be able to root out the mistake, cleanse my past, change my future, and thus cure myself.

Probably everyone who becomes ill, especially when he or she is young (l was 37), will struggle with questions such as, "Why did this happen?" or "How was I responsible?" These can be helpful issues to raise, especially if we tend to deny responsibility for our lives or feel like victims of fate. But I have found that such questions are helpful only when asked without judgment, and only when the answers are taken lightly and recognized as probably only partially true.

I feel certain I played a role in my becoming ill, a role that was mostly unconscious and unintentional, and I know that I play a large role, this one very conscious and very intentional, in continuing to work

with this disease. In the last four-and-a-half years I have had two rounds of surgery, six weeks of radiation, and eight months of chemotherapy. I've seen a psychic healer, a Philippine healer, a hypnotist, and an acupuncturist. I practice meditation; I've been in therapy; I practice visualization and do imagery work. I take mega vitamins under a doctor's supervision and am currently on a metabolic enzyme program. I exercise daily and am very careful about my diet.

My experience has been at once frightening, challenging, and rewarding. Above all it has taught me a great deal about what kind of help from others truly helps, and what kind is actually harmful.

What I have learned has proven invaluable in my work helping cancer patients at The Cancer Support Community (CSC), a nonprofit organization I started in San Francisco with a close friend who also had cancer.Now almost two years old, CSC provides support groups, educational programs, and special events for people with cancer and their families - all completely free of charge.

The decisions I have made in the course of my illness have not been easy; I know the decisions all people with life-threatening illnesses have to make are among the toughest we ever face. I have come to realize I never could know in advance what decision I would make if I were faced with anyone else's difficult choices. This knowledge has encouraged me to be genuinely supportive of whatever choices others make.

A friend who was a great help to me during chemotherapy, who made me feel beautiful even when my hair fell out, recently said, "You didn't choose what I would have chosen, but that didn't matter. " I appreciated her for not letting that come between us during what was clearly the most difficult time of my life. Then I said, "But you can't know what you would have chosen; I didn't choose what you think you would have chosen. I didn't choose what I thought I would have chosen either.

I never thought I would agree to chemotherapy. I had tremendous fears about putting poisons into my body and about the long-term effects on my immune system. I resisted until the very end but ultimately decided that, despite its many drawbacks, chemotherapy offered my best chance for a cure.

There have been many times during my treatment when I have envied people who have more faith in mainstream medicine, people who do not have to deal with the avalanche of doubts about traditional medicine or the flood of unproven, nontraditional alternatives that I live with daily. Part of me wants to try everything that might help, but I simply do not have the time, energy, desire, or money to pursue each new suggestion.

When decisions about treatment options loom ahead of them, people want information. They may want to know about alternatives or need help researching conventional therapies, Once they've chosen their treatment plan, however, they usually don't need more information, even though it may be the easiest and least threatening thing to give.

They don't need to hear about the dangers of the radiation or chemotherapy or Mexican clinic they've chosen, a choice usually made with great difficulty after long deliberation. Coming to them at this point with new suggestions about healers or techniques or therapies might only cause confusion, might make them feel you doubt the path they've chosen and thus fuel their own doubts.

It didn't help when a friend warned me of the dangers of the radiation treatment I was having; I was already well aware of the dangers and was struggling with my fears daily. It was not helpful when people warned me that worrying about a recurrence might make it happen, or when they pressed me to think positively. I needed to plunge into the depths of my fear, to face the truth squarely; only then could a genuinely positive attitude emerge.

I especially needed to be around people who loved me as I was, not people who were trying to motivate me or change me or sell me on their favorite idea or theory, And I needed friends whose definition of health didn't stop at the physical level, friends who understood that true healing has to do with how each of us lives our lives on all levels, and that physical health is clearly no more important than emotional or spiritual health.

We've all heard stories about people who I have used a confrontation with catastrophic illness to change themselves radically, to turn their lives more toward service, to learn to treat themselves and others with I greater kindness and compassion, That is the sign of true healing, and it may or may not manifest on the level of physical health.

Sometimes I needed someone who would simply be there for me or hold me, someone who didn't push me to emote or bare my soul or be honest about my fears. And sometimes I needed someone to be with me as I struggled with these fears, someone who could listen to me talk about pain or euthanasia or suicide or death without retreating into his or her own fears or pressing me to think more positively.

In trying to understand my own cancer and in working with others, I have come to see that the causes of cancer are many and varied, that they are different for each person and each situation, and that cancer is a complex disease we are only beginning to understand. It helps me to picture the causes of the disease on a pie chart where the various wedges represent genetics, lifestyle, diet, environmental influences, past medical treatments, social factors such as strength of social connections, and so on. We don't know how large each wedge might be - we don't even know how many there are - and the chart will look different for each individual and for each type of cancer.

Research indicates that one of these wedges should represent personality factors – ways of responding to stress is the favorite example. I certainly have found it helpful to be aware of this dimension, because it is one place my actions and my conscious choices can clearly affect my health. What is not helpful, and actually is harmful, is when I oversimplify a complex situation and believe the personality slice is the whole pie, ignoring the role other factors play.

In some cases, working on this slice making changes in your personality and attitude - can indeed be enough to tip the balance toward healing; in other cases, however, the outcome maybe already determined by factors such as the type of cancer or the stage of the disease at diagnosis.

I have come to see that life is too wonderfully complex and we are all too interconnected - both with each other and with our environment - for a simple statement like "you create your own reality" to be literally true. In fact, a belief that I control or create my own reality actually attempts to rip me out of the rich, complex, mysterious, and supportive context of my life. It attempts, in the name of control, to deny the web of relationships that nurtures each of us daily,

As a correction to the belief that we are at the mercy of larger forces or that illness is solely caused by external agents, this idea that we create our own reality and therefore our illness is important and valuable. But it goes too far. It is an overreaction, based on an oversimplification. In fact, I have come to feel that the harm caused when this idea is taken to its extreme - as it frequently is negates what benefits it otherwise may offer. Too often it is used in a narrow-minded, narcissistic, divisive, and dangerous way. I think we are ready for a more mature approach to this idea. As author Stephen Levine says, this statement is a half-truth, dangerous in its incompleteness. It is more accurate to say we affect our reality.

This is closer to the whole truth; it leaves room for both effective personal action and for the wondrous, rich mysteriousness of life.

It is difficult when someone who not sick asks me a question like, “Why did you choose to give yourself cancer?" They seem distant from me, safe in their wellness, sometimes even righteous. I don't raise this question with people who have cancer unless they do, unless it is something they worry about. "Why" questions too often lead to feelings of guilt and self-blame, to regrets about the past, to fierce resolutions about the future that only cause more guilt if broken.

More often than not it helps to move on from "why" questions to the "what" and "how" of the disease. When I look at what is happening now, how I feel about it, and what I can do about it, and when I help others do the same, we move away from blame and judgment into the present, where we can consciously choose how we want to live our lives.

In our Judeo-Christian culture, with its pervasive emphasis on guilt and blame, illness too often is seen as punishment for wrongdoing. Rather than approach life from the perspective that we create our own reality, I prefer a Buddhist approach, where everything that happens is taken as an opportunity for bodhisattvic activity, for serving others. I can look at "bad" things that happen to me not as punishment for past actions but as my chance to work through the karma of the past, to cleanse the slate, to be done with it.

From a "new age" perspective I might be tempted to ask someone who's ill, "What did you do wrong to give yourself cancer?" Whereas, from a Buddhist perspective, I'm more likely to approach someone with a life-threatening illness, even someone working with it in a way I do not think I would choose, and say something that conveys the thought: "Congratulations, you obviously have the courage to take this one on, the willingness to work this through. I admire you for that."

When I talk to someone who's been newly diagnosed with cancer, who has had a recurrence, or who is growing tired after years of dealing with the disease, I remind myself that I don't have to give concrete ideas or advice to be of help. Listening alone is helpful.

I try to steer clear of the temptation to define imperatives for others, even imperatives such as "fight for your life," "change yourself," or "die consciously." I try not to push people to move in directions I think I might choose for myself. I try to stay in touch with my own fear that I might one day find myself in a similar situation.

I find I must constantly relearn how to make friends with illness, to not see it as failure. I remind myself to use my own setbacks, weaknesses, and illnesses to develop compassion for others and for myself. I try to stay open to the many moments of humor and joy in life, open to the many opportunities for psychological and spiritual healing all around me, open to the pain and suffering that call for our compassion.

Announcing New Grand Canyon Website!

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 10:44:28 -0700

I'm working on building a new, interactive Grand Canyon website. Photos, paintings, stories, poetry, interviews, podcasts, helpful links, the works. Its for both commercial clients, private boaters, and guides. I'm looking for potential contributors. If you're interested in the concept and want more info, contact me via this website with your phone and email details, and what your contribution might be. I'll contact you pronto! Cheers and wish us luck!

An Aside to the Following the Anasazi Story

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:41:11 -0700

I have seen pots, painted with the reds, whites, blacks of the earth, stuffed in cracks. Woven baskets, hidden in caves. Bits of this, pieces of that. Badgerpaw prints and sheep, all hand painted with hematite-red and ochre-black, a little fat and blood mixed in to preserve for the great-great grandchildren, under protective overhangs (how could they have known our skin would be pale and unworn?). Airy routes pocked with “Moki steps”, gouged out of improbable heights. Tiny spray-painted white handprints haloed by mouth-blown chewed plant roots. They’re still there, for the intrepid. Granaries with imprints of newborn’s feet in the mortar, perfect rock doors that once kept out intruding thieves–mice and men alike, laid aside, no longer needed.

More recently I found some digging sticks, untouched for millennia. Not even the archeologists have ever seen such treasure. I show the unfound to no-one, leaving their spirits undisturbed, my atonement. However, a great deal can be digested from bones already picked over. Ask any Raven.

Much remains, despite our intrusions. All over the Great Southwest, throughout all the Canyons of the Colorado. Enchanted New Mexico. Magic Utah. And, of course, in my Canyon. As guides, we will take you there, show you things, try and explain the surface of it all. Like Wesley, the reluctant Shaman, it’s up to you to dig deeper, shadows and ghosts, sitting by that same rushing, moonlit river.

I Can't Make This Shit Up!

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:34:07 -0700

Welcome to my Grand Canyon River Stories Blog. Join the debate, river guides, commercial clients, and private boaters alike!

Anasazi of the Grand Canyon

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:45:36 -0700

THE ANCIENT ONES OF GRAND CANYON

By Jeffe Aronson

Fine, powder dust. My running shoes land like imploding meteors with each footstep, sinking an inch into confection-sugar earth. A million years of desiccated desert, blown in by the random dust-devil through the subway tunnel-sized cave opening. Poof. Poof.

We breathe hard, not from the dizzying speed-climb up through the Redwall Limestone verticality, hearts and spirits leaning towards this. No, we’re young and fit. Heroes in our world of guiding. “Bronzed River Gods”, as they say: half naked in shorts and maybe torn t-shirts, floppy sunhats, mirrored sunglasses and runners. Daypacks half-full: a liter water bottle, headlamp, high-carb snacks, a band aid. Nothing else.

Nothing else is necessary. If we peel, we die. Twist our ankle, we wait for our pards to jog back for help, or limping slowly, cling to each razor-sharp handhold and stumble down in the dark. Or not. Like in a firefight or mountain climb–your comrade will absolutely have your back. If at all possible in any sort of physical universe, including the superhuman sort. It is, however, dumber than snot to kill yourself whilst also failing miserably to save your pard, like in those bad news clips. You’re on your own in the final assessment to get your ass there and back again.

Or not.

What do we seek? What indeed. Might as well ask the meaning of reality. Well, we’re going to the mountain cave, for real.

Hans told me not to tell, all those years ago. Not anyone. Secret.

Promise.

But he told me. Probably others as well?

I promise.

And Wesley. He’s going to die young. Wants it, in fact. A wounded spirit, killing himself with liquor to be crouching back through the jungles of Vietnam, sensing the tripwires for comrades who no longer need that. I cannot give this man much, he who gives all, like a Shaman demanding nothing but your acceptance of his mischief and understanding for his failures. I try not to enable, but like most, cannot help it. Tripwires.

So, I cannot help but show him this. The “Ancient Ones” left the “split twiggers” here in this chilly darkness five thousand years ago. Shrine? Probably. Magic. Definitely. They didn’t like caves, it is said. Scary. Where the dreadful flying mice hang upside-down. Dark.

Wesley says of these things: “They’re trying to show you something. Trying to give it to you. Take it. Its OK.”

He hangs with the local natives, smokes their pipes, sweats, sings. Nothing pretentious. He just needs that camaraderie. The deeper kind he had back there. Why he’s with us, as well.

Along with us there’s this otherriver guide. One I trust less. We work together, have shared whitewater and whiskey and adventure. I cannot show Wesley and not show her. You just don’t do that. So I exact a promise I myself have already broken: do not share this.

Especially with a mutual friend who couldn’t keep a secret in his child-like, irrepressible soul if his life depended on it. One who moved a basket once to keep it from being “collected” by Park archeologists, promptly forgetting where he put it. (I told him there were too many rocks in this land of rocks.) He accused me of stealing it myself, then found it again, then gave it up for the dead museum up there on the swarming South Rim. What else did he give up?

Don’t tell anyone, I pleaded. Especially that one. Made her promise, spine tingling, sensing a wrong stroke. Into the rocks.

I do not have many regrets in my life. Life is too short, too full, too demanding. Like Crystal Rapids I suppose, you shouldn’t make a move that you will later regret mightily. We all do it, though. Fragile, just like our crafts.

We three feel the power, here and now. My heart thumps my chest, though I’ve been here before. No one speaks. I’ve been there, before, too. Thunderous river in the desert. Oasis amidst sand and rock. Cliffs blazing in the hot desert sun, everything ashimmer. Food. Life. What can you possibly say?

Split-twig figurines. You take a willow stem, river-fed and green and pliable as only youth can be. Tear it right up the middle, but not the whole way, like being born. Then weave life into it, forming a sheep, a deer. Food, life. Maybe stick a sliver of jasper or obsidian through its heart like a spear. Will the hunt bring meat? Will my children survive another winter? My clan? Will I?

Where to leave it? Out there in the sun, most likely gone in a few years at best, eaten by mice for the salt or dried and blown like an old man’s bones. Under a rock? Hard to find in such a land of rocks. Constellations of them, forever shifting with the wind and water. Kinda like us boatmen.

No wind. Sacred silence. Most fear to tread here, so less chance of being fiddled with. Cool and dark. Things last better in such places. Maybe some mice, the ground kind, but if we bury it…

So, from the river two thousand feet below and maybe three miles away, they brought the woven willows, up those unmarked cliffs, careful to leave neither footprint nor cairn, half naked in breech-cloths, braids, water gourds, some high-carb pemmican, black paint under eyes and yucca sandals. Nothing else.

Nothing else was necessary.

I know where to look, yet still I must hunt. They look to me, the one who’s been before, and I am confused. I put it out of my mind, as usual. I just know they’re here, somewhere.

We stand motionless, no lights, adjusting to the dark, the scant illumination from the world outside forming shadows and ghosts. Somehow electric lights will spoil this, and we have no living flame save in our breasts. The cool on the skin, the quiet. So quiet I can hear my own blood coursing through my veins. It smells, what? Not musty. Something cleaner, older. I can feel the burden of rock above, pressing in. I am not afraid.

Ah! That rock pile. Just there. And there.

So, gently, with respect, I lift, one at a time, trying to remember their exact placement as best I can so as to try and fix things afterwards. I feel like I’m an interloper. Desecrating an ancient church. This doesn’t stop me. I have to look. I have to see. They’re trying to give it to me.

And all our breaths catch at once. It is too much. Too powerful. I have said these words before. Will say them again. My heart lies in the desert, too much and too powerful is the air I breathe. I hunt for a little of that very thing deep inside where its dark, am usually disappointed. But not always.

The piles of rock are the size of a coil of bowline, each rock shaped like a rough grinding stone. They are piled in a spiral pattern. Dusty.

I remove them, placing them gently around the perimeter. Underneath are sheep. Deer. Woven spirits with spears through their hearts. Bigger than I expected–about the size of my calloused hand.

Eyes wide, we look. We touch–maybe like the Indians seeing their first looking glass–careful. What’s in there? It might blind or steal our spirit. Or nourish it. Also, the salt and oil from our fingertips might attract hungry rodents. Put them back. Bow your head in thanks and request forgiveness. Return whence we came, to food and sleeping pads and a quiet scotch by the rushing moonlit river, leaving no more than footprints in the dust.

As it turns out, the hungry rodents will have two legs and floppy hats.

Three years later, I hear the tales. I have left the place I love for a time, needing to regroup. Stir up other dusts a bit. Share my love with a human who needs me. Who I need as much as my river. Anywhere else, I am something less. She is not my compromise, she is my love, my food. My Life. I gladly share with her my morsels. But my entrails and bits of hair and skin blow in the wind of my desert.

Shrine Cave? Yes. I know it. There’s a trail to it, now. Two guides were leading clients there on hikes. But not to worry. Nothing left, anyway. Those split twiggers are gone forever.

Five thousand years. Poof.

I am wretched and sorry, Hans. Sorry, ancient ones. My heart is desolate–which is not anything at all like a desert. Deserts flourish–its just harder to see. I will return there, find a hidden, dripping spring in a shady alcove, some maidenhair fern dancing in the afternoon breeze. Wash away the dust.

Attached is a free MP3 written by Rick Byers during the fight to save the Stanislaus river. He's a wonderful song writer and boatman par-excellence, and his (and his wonderfully talented family's) music can be purchased at: rickbyars.com. This is a love song and farewell to the Stanny.

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:47:40 -0700

This browser cannot play the embedded audio file.

Stanislaus River

C G

It starts in the mountains as just a small trickle,

C G

A few drops of fresh melted snow

C G

It jumps o’er the boulders laughing and playing,

C G C

as it heads for the valley below

Chorus:

F C

The Stanislaus River, so wild and so free

G C

I hope for all time that you will be

F C

A free flowing river that man cannot end

G C

I’ll remember you always my friend

C G C G

As it flows onward, it grows rather quickly, it becomes a clear running stream

C G C G C

Fish start to grow there, deer come to water, yes it is everyman’s dream

Chorus

C G

Down in the foothills, it’s become a big river,

C G

it flows thru the canyon it made

C G

Thousands enjoy it as they flow with its beauty,

C G C

they hope that it can be saved

Chorus

C G

Progress is on us, the river’s in danger,

C G

the men want to stop her great flow

C G

We’ve got to stop them, no matter what it takes us,

C G C

Or else they’ll be nothing to show…

Chorus

By Rick Byars

(...I've added my own little postscript verse:

Deep down and silent, the river is patient,

In her dark and watery grave.

In some far-off future, our children will frolick

By a fig-tree, a rope-swing, a cave.

chorus.

Jeffe)

Why Spend All That Money on a Grand Canyon Whitewater River Trip when you could pay half that and go on a cruise?

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:25:11 -0700

Because every world traveler I've ever taken down the river says its the best thing they've ever done. Because nothing compares to staring down Crystal or Hance or Lava Falls, heart in your throat and trying to keep the bile down, listening to your guides plot their course (trying to look cool and keep the bile down), knowing you're completely out of your element, in their hands, and at the mercy of the river gods. Because tomorrow you might be dead, or too damn old, or too damn busy, or all three. Because no matter what river I do, anywhere in the world, I always compare it to THE GRAND, and so does everyone else. Because the heat is intense, the vertical cliffs are intense, the rapids are intense, the talented misfits called boatmen (even the women) are intense, the hikes and waterfalls and damn it everything down there simply demands to be paid attention to.

And that's something sorely missing in our lives.

Or you can go on a cruise and, well, do what you can do right at home: get entertained, get fat(er), listen to people talk drivel, go to the man-made pool, or man-made movie, or man-made shopping mall... and get herded around like so many cattle. Is that what you want? Then go do it then go back to sleep.

But if you really want to feel your heart beat, the sun bake, the water drench your soul, well then, make it happen.

Not that I have an opinion.

email me with your own opinion and you might just get quoted.

Old Boatmen Never Die

Wed, 25 May 2011 15:16:00 -0700

They just get a little dinghy.

This browser cannot play the embedded audio file.

Or so the saying goes. I'm freaking terrified of losing the life I so love. But I'm also bloody well determined not to be the guy who says "I still got it".

Here's a link to a great story from NPR. Says it all, almost.

Historic Downtown Flagstaff restoration slideshow

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:31:33 -0700

Hey, folks... a little off-topic for river running, but here is the slideshow I showed when executive director of the Main Street Flagstaff Foundation, while we were pushing, then directing, the historic restoration of Historic Downtown Flagstaff. Dusted off (mostly) from slides, this shows what the downtown buildings looked like in the 1800s, then after they were ruined by "modernization", then after Main Street, the National Historic Trust, the city of Flagstaff and private property owners worked together to create the first Special Improvement District ever approved on the first vote in Arizona. See the video page to view. Enjoy!

The Line. Heading into the foam.

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:46:38 -0700

THE LINE

“Everybody got their lines?”, I ask.

“Yup”, they respond, some looking more sure than others. We trudge back to our fragile craft, looking within, seeking nerve, strength, cajones.

Most of us need to take a crap, bad.

I silently untie my boat, wrapping up the coils nice and tight, and clipping them on so they won’t come loose into a dangerous, wild watersnake should something go haywire. My little ritual. I try not to think about my line, my passengers, or what’s for dinner. Calm reflection. Gentle, inner quiet. While on the outside of my skull and skin, the river roars and foams, expectant. Yin and Yang. A meditation.

The passengers are also rather expectant. However, they’ve learned real quick not to ask dumb questions in these eddies above huge rapids. When I’m ready, I’ll talk.

I check my rope, my oars, make sure everyone’s helmets and life jackets are secure, then check my own. I dip in the water to my neck, holding on to the gunwale, unless its butt-ass cold outside, in which case I just wipe my wet hands over my face and neck. Getting used to the cold embrace before the spray hits. Maybe just a little superstition, having to do with respect. Respect for something greater than ourselves.

“You guys ready?”, I ask my boat full of tingling spines. Along the shoreline, at every boat, each and every one of my pards are, at present, doing something rather similar.

“OK, here we go.”

And I shove, trying to leap into the boat–now sliding away from me–from the steep, sandy bank with a semblance of grace. Typically, its more like “HI MOM! I’M HOME!” (bang, crash).

Grab the oars, one at a time, settle in my rowing seat, have a look around, checking lines, making sure my folks are holding on tight, focused. Close my eyes, take a deep breath. Look downstream.

The world drops away. As does the fear in my belly. As does the river, down there where all that spray is spitting up from that brink we’re slowly accelerating towards. No matter. All is just as it should be. A few adjustment strokes, maybe a push or pull to get out of the eddy and out into the current, and wait. Smell. Listen. Breathe. Eyes and senses alert.

“Okay. Remember, guys”, I say to the back of the two helmets leaning forward in the bow. “We’ll be sideways, maybe a little backwards at first. That’s on purpose.” The helmets nod. I know the ones behind me are nodding, as well. Lips tight, eyes wide, anal clench.

“I’ll hit that first wave and I’ll be sounding like Andre Agassiz. If we slide over the top, and I’m silent, we’re good.” Another nod.

“If you hear me say something like “shit” or “damn”, hold on. We’re going to have a ride.” Nothing.

“If I start swearing like a sailor and throwing F-bombs, I apologize in advance. Its totally unconscious. I’m from Chicago. But that means we’re going big. Real big. Be ready to high side at any moment. I’ll probably be talking to you, either way, but best to anticipate the waves and lean hard into them before they hit us. I might get kinda busy. I might not even be in the boat.” Again, nothing. But I know they heard.

Then, there is this overwhelming sense of timelessness. The Great Pause. The sun shines above, the cliffs hover, the green riverside vegetation rustles and shines, and the water sparkles like little jewels and floats our souls. Intoxicating.

There is a certain moment where it hits you. My boat has been more or less set up in the angle I want, but now I bend towards the threshold, squinting. Adjustment stroke here and there, trying to get it perfect. Kinda like life.

The world pulls into some connection I cannot explain between me and my boat, and a certain spot in the universe that I’d better hit dead-smack on. I see nothing, hear nothing else. Like The Native Eye of Barry Lopez, if a thunderbolt strikes outside of my focused world, I will be instantly aware, tinglingly ready. But there is a voice, speaking to me. I’ve been lucky enough to have heard this voice, and listened just enough to survive, from a very early age. It was the only one I could hear, then. At least the only one I would pay attention to.

Now its time for action. Its all in the timing. Pull too early, get a little eager, lose your poise, and you may end up in a world of foam and moving like a cannonball, no solid ground under you, boat rocking like an earthquake, oars torn from hands and tossed like a rag doll either onto your wooden rails or into your passengers laps (much to their surprise) or, most heinously, into the drink. Meanwhile, all they know is water. Burly, unforgiving, tsunami-like waves crashing over their heads, one after the other. They don’t even know if we’re still upright. A fragile craft tossed in a perfect storm. Hopefully, they’ve learned to lean into it, like a body-surfer heading out to sea and diving under the waves. If not, and someone leans away, we get low-sided and overturn. (Its not my fault).

Pull too late, and you’re simply not going to get there. Okay, maybe you still have a chance to recover. But in that case, you’re yanking your guts out, frantic to pull your boat over a moving torrent of potent, purposeful liquid. Its important to sense, way deep down, when to quit. When to submit and turn your boat head-on into what’s coming. Maybe you can’t fight your bow around and your boat is backwards. Fine–just don’t fight it. Otherwise you’ll be sideways, which is not a good way to be. Hit it straight and impel, yearn, will yourself over the top. Hopefully, your “intelligent weight”–your passengers, comrades in arms–are doing the same.

I saw a raft once, hit the “Old Crystal Hole” at the biggest water anyone alive had ever seen. Glen Canyon dam was near to bursting. We were secretly praying it would, but with enough warning so we could run uphill six-hundred feet and watch the tsunami from the clifftops, cold beer in hand.

We were on the shuddering shore, observing the carnage. They missed their line. We boatmen knew it right off, though the clients were cheering them on. Two people were on their knees in the bow of the boat, holding on to the lines on the outside perimeter, leaning over the near-vertical tubes, ready. The boatman, hopelessly flailing, never gave up, even after their sixteen foot craft slid up onto the clean, green face of the thirty foot wave.

Their boat stood, for a moment, transfixed by its fate, surfing halfway up, water arcing off the oar blades, boatman straining forward on the handles, the two high-siders facing forward, which at that moment was, in actuality, pretty much up towards the sky and a circling buzzard. What a stunning image it was.

That boat and those spirits and the mountainous water. It lasted forever. Okay. Fifteen or twenty seconds. We held our breath, but it was not to be.

Funny thing was, all of us on shore knew they had screwed the pooch at the exact same moment the boaters did. Combined wills notwithstanding, the high-siders heads whipped around, looking over their shoulders, down into the maw to their left and upstream (and down in elevation, oh, maybe fifteen feet). So did the boatman who was still clutching his oars. So did we.

And it slid down that liquid mountain, against the current but downhill, looking like a surfer in one of those Hawaiian monsters, so fast it seemed to be sucked into hell on Gods command. Whp! Gone. Pretty impressive.

Some time later, it reappeared about twenty feet left of where it had disappeared, and about thirty feet higher, spat out the top of the wave like a sunflower seed, clearing the water, and doing a perfect backwards somersault with a twist, to disappear underwater once again. It later emerged far downstream, upright, to our whoops and hollers. Unfortunately, the former occupants had already surfaced in their life jackets and were around the corner and gone.

But I digress (as boatmen will).

If you’re on your line? There is a point where you just know. It may change with water levels. It may, perhaps, change with experience and age. But its there, and you can sense it. You can know it deep in your bones like when my momma saw my dad at that party for the servicemen about to go to the Philippines and whispered to herself “That’s the man I’m going to marry”.

Calmly, just loud enough to hear over the forgotten roar, “Okay. We’re good. Just keep doing what you’re doing and we’re good.”

Much better than “F………k! HOLD ON! WE’RE GOING BIG!”

Waves crash over the bow, splash over the sides, the boat tilts crazily in a confusion of water. The clients can’t really tell which way they’re moving. Boom! Underwater. Breathe. Boom! Under again. Breathe. Look out! Boom! Hold on and trust. That’s what I’m doing, anyway.

They hear the calming voice of their guide. That ageing hippie they couldn’t believe they were entrusting their life to only days or hours before.

“We’re good. Here comes one on the right. Hold on. Lean right. Good.”

And, at long last (oh, maybe twenty or twenty five seconds), you can see again. Spit out the water. The world is coalescing into something more like a place one could weather. Maybe even inhabit.

Which is about the time you start hearing the whoops and laughter, shouts of joy and life. Not long after that, you realize that some of that was you. The boat is gently rocking and rolling, amongst cliffs and sky and trees and other human beings. And that dang buzzard up there, too, still waiting.

And this is what life is all about. Not death, but the nearness of it. The recognition and sweetness of just that simple act of breathing in, breathing out. Slaps on backs. Laughter shared. Risks taken. One clean, neat shot, just so much.

Excerpt From Upcoming Chapter: Pop: Lessons From Life

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 10:44:50 -0700

This is an excerpt from a personal memoir chapter: about caring for my dad after his stroke.

One evening after work, Jennifer calls. She’s agitated. Her voice is angry, scared. My sister’s family is typically over-dramatic. In our Jewish world, that’s really saying something.

“Papa’s screaming at the washing machine!”

“Excuse me?”

“Papa’s in the garage, screaming at the washing machine!” She’s yelling and crying at the same time. “He’s scaring me!”

“Where’s your mom?”

“She’s gone with her boyfriend for a week. They’re on vacation in Santa Barbara.”

“And she left Pop with you?”

“I told her I didn’t want to take care of him, but she left anyway.”

I take a deep breath. It’s a habit I’ve developed when talking with my family.

“Okay. Now let me get this straight. Your mom’s gone on vacation for a week, and she left Pop in your care. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you told her you didn’t want to take care of him, but she left him with you anyway?”

“Yeah.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to take care of Papa?”

“He just yells at me all the time. He makes me feel worthless. He does weird things and scares me.”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy. That’s okay. I understand. Is he still in the garage?”

“Yeah,” she says, in a tone of voice like she wonders what I’m up to now.

“Is he still yelling at the washing machine?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you tried to talk to him, get him to stop?”

“No. I’m scared.”

“Okay. Listen. You know he’s had a stroke, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know what that means?”

“Um, kinda.”

“That means part of his brain has been injured. He can’t think straight, like he used to. He sometimes doesn’t know what he’s doing, like maybe he’s always half asleep. You understand that?”

“Yeah…” More question than definitive answer.

“Do you have Suzie’s number?”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t want me to call her unless it’s an emergency.”

“Well, what would you call this?”

“I dunno.”

“Okay. Can you put him on the phone please?”

She does. A brief, muffled sound of clunks and fumbling and her voice in the background. Then his voice. He sounds really agitated, frustrated.

“Hello? Who is this? Jeffrey?”

“Hi Pop. How ya doin’?”

“Somebody’s using our washing machine. It’s full of some stranger’s clothes. I can’t get them to stop it.”

“Pop. Nobody’s using your washing machine. It’s okay. Calm down. You’re scaring Jen.”

“What!? What do you mean I’m scaring her?”

“You’ve been yelling at the washing machine. I could hear you over the phone.”

“What!?” Then, more calmly, now scared himself, he continues, “Really?”

“It’s okay Pop. You remember having a stroke?”

Softly, he responds, “Yeah.” Then he starts to cry.

The only time I ever saw him cry, besides when mom died, was in another lifetime. I had just finished telling him that I hated my own mother. Which happened to also be his wife.