This morning, before the sun crested from the canyon, I
walked out into the icy morning with Chico prancing out ahead of me. He loves his morning walks. It is hard to imagine that last year we were
travelling in a van, the year before that we were walking the beaches of
Paredon in Guatemala before each sunrise, and the year before that walking the
snow-covered sidewalks in Logan, UT. My
walks are normally my time. I don’t walk
to write. I walk to meditate, and write
to help clear the mind. This morning I
walk because I need to write. I am
looking for metaphor.
Once, when I was young a friend became an enemy. He was the new kid in a school where the rest
of us knew each other since kindergarten and I befriended him. In fact, I stood up for him one day on the
bus when he was being bullied. A couple
of years later, he would turn on me. I
understand more about why and how. His
family life was not good. And not that
mine was great, but people who love me have always surrounded me and I was, and
am, fortunate enough to have those people remind me. I have always felt loved. I have always felt supported. As we moved into junior high school, this
friend started to skip school, started to smoke, and I wouldn’t partake. While I never liked school, I feared my
mother’s wrath too much to ever not go.
I might have been defiant about my homework, and I checked out most days
while at school, but I surely would never choose to skip. The story of this friendship is a longer
story, too long for this short walk, too long for what I need to tell right
now. Needless to say, eventually this
friend wanted to fight me, and I refused.
He would throw rocks at me while I tried to deliver my newspaper, my job
I had through junior high school. I felt
betrayed and hurt by it all. It happens.
As Chico sniffs out ahead of me, his nose to the ground, he tears
off the trail and I can’t tell why, then I see it. A jackrabbit is bounding off. It runs down to the tall grass by the edge of
the creek and makes a hard left downstream.
Chico runs into the grass but goes straight into the creek bed and loses
the jackrabbit. I love his intensity
when on the hunt. He runs patterns
trying to find it again, but I call to him, and he quickly relents. I love that about him. He is a Zen master. In one moment, he is consumed by something;
he would give life up to the hunt, and in a few seconds it is gone, and he is
sauntering along the trail looking for something else. That is a lesson I need to learn too, but not
what I was looking for.
A lot has happened lately.
I was kicked out of the house I lived in because of an argument over gun
control. It was silly rhetoric about
right and wrong. For me, I know that
everything is more complex than that. We
don’t really draw lines in the sand and tell people they are with us or against
us. For me, I would almost always choose
to be against a person who says that. However,
not because of the person, I am never against a person. I take things as they come. I may agree more lately with one party on
issues, but I am not a true party member.
I am not against guns, but I am more than willing to negotiate and
compromise. That is what our dialogues
are lacking these days. People think
they have the “correct” interpretation and can’t even begin to accept that it
is still an interpretation.
The sun is peaking over the canyon now and I can feel the
warmth on my face. The sun heats the
ground and rooftops appear in smoke to the warming rays. In the distance I see coyotes crossing the
creek and disappearing out into the fields of grass. They are watching us. They see Chico as a threat, but he doesn’t
see them at first. Once he does, they
are too far away to really care. I
wonder if he knows what they are. Are
they just another dog in the distance for now?
I am walking the canyon looking for a metaphor, something to tie this
whole thing together. I seek answers in
nature for everything. Maybe I already
know the answer and I find the metaphor to fit my need, but there it is,
usually waiting for me. Yesterday we
walked the fence line up the canyon. I
am not used to following boundaries.
Only a few such ignorant creatures listen to them. The other side intrigues me, and I just might
jump the fence eventually and venture out to the untraveled. I thought this might be the metaphor I
needed. We walk fence lines and gaze out
to the other side with longing. We
always skirt boundaries: physical, emotional, and even perhaps spiritual,
philosophical and cognitive. This is
something I am wrestling with too. It,
sort of, works. I am deepening my
personal practice, but not what I am looking for right now.
No, the fence line didn’t work. As we came off the canyon in the dark last
night, the gun range was a blaze with shots ringing out into the night. And if I was writing only about guns, this
might work. It is strange the way people
practice to kill. Take aim at targets of
humans. I do think you manifest parts of
life. Maybe it is as simple as the
metaphors you see. You see what you
think about. Maybe, I only pay attention
to the gunshots because of all the news about guns, but that is not what I am
looking for.
Now, I feel I am losing more friends. I was asked recently to get into a heated
debate on campus about Outdoor Education.
I wasn’t seeking this out, but it is something I care about. Everyone knows I love outdoor education. I used to teach for this program before I
left for my PhD. I never thought I would
be back, but here I am. They are having
a communication breakdown. It is some of
the same rhetorical arguments I hear coming from gun people, the same stuff I
hear coming from politicians. You are
with me or you are against me. These
people are evil. These people are
liars. These people are sociopaths. These people have an agenda. We are in Nazi Germany right now. It is rarely true.
Chico and I continue to walk the river. It is an interesting river; most call it a
flood canal now. My friend calls it Mud
Creek, but isn’t sure. However, if you
pull up the topographic maps, you can see it is, or was, a perennial
creek. In fact, if I had to guess, I
would say that many times the Chico Creek actually flowed that way. Most creeks as they reach the alluvial plain
don’t have one direct route. In my
hometown, they decided to maintain the current flow. For Chico, I would guess it went the main
route when John Bidwell first came to the valley, and once they built the mill,
they maintained that route when they could and diverted when they had to. Rivers don’t know they have routes. They act to gravity and force. We walk to where the flood canals
splits. The town has built damns and
levies to maintain a certain flow going a certain direction. Because when a river finds something in the
way, it finds another route. That is what
is does. Sometimes it takes years to
find that other route, but it does.
When Chico and I would climb up
above the Bonneville Shoreline to watch the sunsets over Cache Valley in Logan,
I would dream of watching that lake as it rushed out. What a flood it must have been. They say it broke through on the north and
found its way to the Snake River.
Boulders moved, and banks eroded; I would imagine being down stream and
not knowing the force of water coming your way.
The river is doing what it does.
A professor of Psychology recently
was telling me that water is not wet. A
single water molecule is not wet.
Wetness, as a property, happens only when there are lots of molecules,
and even than, people interpreting it feel the property. Wetness is a human condition…or a dog too,
but he doesn’t seem to think about it the same way I do. He is very willing to jump into bed wet, curl
up, and go to sleep. Damn him and his
Zen life.
Maybe, I am wrong. Water doesn’t have a route, but a river
does…but the river is not the water. It
is a creation of water molecules gliding over surfaces as gravity takes it
down, and as the water falls it drags the mountains down with it.
I came into this Outdoor Education
debate because of what outdoors has done for me. Some might call it nature, but that term is
troubling for me. Everything is natural
to some extent and that is open to interpretation too. Outdoors works for me. It is what is outside of the door, but it
isn’t perfect either. Still, Outdoor
Education is about getting people outside and using the out-of-doors as a
classroom for learning. Some focus on
skills such as kayaking or rock climbing, some use it for communication and
team building, some use it for therapy, healing, and reflection, some use it
for research, preservation, and understanding.
Of course, all of these cross over into each other too. We travel outdoors with friends, or with
family, or with classmates, or co-workers, or complete strangers, or even alone
with just your dog. We hike out, stroll
out, drive out, stumble out, crawl out, saunter out, boat out, climb out, run
out, paddle out, hell…we even parachute out into the unknown for even more
unknown reasons. I have gone for all
these reasons, with all these people, in all these different ways and never
regretted it. For me, there isn’t a
capital “T” truth to it. If there is, I
take it from the great Himalayan climber Willi Unsoeld, we go out there to come
back and help society become better.
That, to me, is the essence of Outdoor Education.
Outdoor Education at Chico has been
a great and wonderful program. In fact,
it has been one of the best programs in the nation if not the world. The professors have been incredible, the
location perfect, but it has reached a dam.
I can’t tell what fist collapsed into the path of the river, what Digger
Pine relented to the force of the river and caved into the path, but there it
is. The water is backing up, more and
more detritus and debris gathers behind.
I like the way water moves. When something is in the way, it finds
another path. If need be, it will sit
and gather strength, it will pool up, pond up, lake up, and eventually break
through and move again. Water will
freeze and expand to break rock, it will carry nutrients to roots, and in the
cycle it creates weather patterns and can move mountains. Waves crash against shores, winter storms
avalanche down mountains, rivers rage, and rain pours, and without it, we do
not exist. We scan other planets for
water. On Mars, we can see ancient
rivers where water might have once made life possible. People migrated searching for water. It is torture and death; it is baptism and
salvation.
Some people think that whatever happens
to the program here, it won’t be the same, and some people think therefore it
won’t be as good. For me, that is too
hard to tell. I don’t know if this works
as the metaphor for which I was searching.
Is this the answer? Everything
changes. Stagnation is death. The water is pooling and if it was up to me I
would do what humans have always done, try to control the destructive forces of
nature and minimize damage. I would send
a little bit of water out each direction and diffuse it. Maybe it won’t work that way. Maybe nobody can come together and we will
simply wait to see where it breaks through and deal with the damage of the
flood.
Right now, the Snow Geese are
migrating. I hear them at night and
throughout the day, squawking to each other high in the sky. I often wonder if there is silence up there,
if they ever simply glide on the winds and watch in awe of the world below
them. No, it is just part of life. They migrate, the seasons change, the
temperature drops, the earth tilts away from the sun, and the water moves. Change is inevitable. Friendships mature. The outdoors doesn’t have answers. I don’t even know if it has questions. The metaphors I see identify me, and are part
of my experiential existence. People
will be upset at me, people are already upset at me, but it is nothing I
created. While this water was backing
up, I was in another ecosystem, but I will work to slowly peal away the debris
and release tension. To do this, I must
stand in front of it, tugging on each root ball and bark-less tree trunk, and
hope that it doesn’t break loose and wash me away.