Category: Water

adventure, Adventure Tourism, Bryce Canyon National Park, Camping, Creation, Creator, Desert, God, hiking, Hope, Lessons from the Wilderness, Mountains, Nature, Outdoor Adventures, Praise, River, Starry Skies, Uncategorized, Water, wisdom, Zion National Park

Thin Air, Thick Dust, Beauty All Around

This Side of the River

It is good to be home in Michigan after a 3-week spell in Arizona and Utah. Here, I can drink deep draughts of the autumnal palette of green, vermillion, orange and gold, reveling in this bounty of colors so much rarer in the western landscape.

Phoenix was particularly hot and dry where the greenish-yellow of the prickly pear and saguaro cacti stands in base-relief against the purple of distant mountains. Here, the only deep greens are on the golf course, watered with precious and dwindling flows from the Colorado River, and on the cell phone towers painted green to look like giant saguaros.

Climbing out of the desert into the high mesas to the north, the landscape changes in an instant. The cactus and sand give way to rock and bristlecone pine at the higher elevations. In appearance it seems an unforgiving landscape, but

the Hopi and Navajo have lived here for a thousand years, “thriving long in adverse conditions: poor soil, drought, temperature extremes, high winds.”*

Past the Grand Canyon and on into southern Utah, aspen join the autumn chorus, waving golden, glittering arms in gladness. Here, the weathered rock cathedrals tower, where sandstone is king, and sagebrush his queen as they reign over free-ranging cattle on a thousand hills. Here is the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers, those life-giving ribbons of water, home to the pronghorn antelope, nattering prairie dog, and swift peregrine falcon. Here, too, is Zion, a river-carved fortress of sheer honeyed walls, and Bryce, with its colorful hoodoo armies blown by winds like fine glass.( Zion National Park   and Bryce Canyon National Park )

It is an entirely different kind of wilderness than what we experience in northern Michigan and southern Ontario.  Here, damp, verdant, fertile. Out west, thin air thick with dust, where the only immediately visible abundance for hundreds of miles is rock. To be sure, both are beautiful in their own ways. Both point to an imaginative Creator, who paints with a bold and vibrant palette.  Both give us the same gifts that wilderness always gives: delight in its bigness, contentedness with our own smallness, hope that life and beauty abound wherever we find ourselves, and that

nothing on this earth is godforsaken at all.

~ J.A.P. Walton

* William Least Heat Moon. Blue Highways. Chapter 2.

adventure, Blessings, Campfires, Creation, Darkness, death, Faithful Living, Forest, Henry David Thoreau, hiking, Hope, Lessons from the Wilderness, Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson, River, Trees, Uncategorized, Water, wilderness

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

This Side of the River

We spent the past week at Tahquamenon Falls State Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This park is an emerald gem set between Lake Superior’s Whitefish Bay and the wide and placid Tahquamenon River. One day we hiked from the river’s lower falls about 5 miles up to the upper falls along a well-loved trail that follows the river, traversing low wet bogs, and high dry forested ridges of cedar, hemlock, and oak. Each step along the river’s edge had me looking into dark, calm pools that surely were teeming with brook trout-oh for my fishing pole! The late summer flowers were lush despite the season’s lack of rain, mostly yellow and orange as the late bloomers tend to be- black-eyed Susan, butter-and-eggs (a sore throat treatment in the old days), tall, spiky mullein, and the delicate jewelweed. We saw little wildlife, though the pileated woodpeckers laughed at us all along the trail.

Near the upper falls we came across a large hemlock about 10” in diameter with a sign that said a hemlock with a circumference the size of a soda can would be about 100 years old. Things grow slowly where the arctic winds and snows of Lake Superior have hammered at the terrain for thousands upon thousands of years.

Nature is not in a hurry it seems, and we have much to learn about the virtues of taking life more slowly.

All in all, this was a hopeful walk, the kind of hike Thoreau or Emerson would approve. In his treatise on nature, Emerson noted that a walk in the woods helps us become young again, where the “air is a cordial” and we find ourselves wrapped in an “uncontained and immortal beauty.” [1]  On this day, the trail, labeled by the park service as strenuous and challenging because it is crisscrossed by fingerlike tree roots, muddy and slick in places, was, for us, a delight, a hushed forest canvas caressed by the river, filled with beauty, harmony, grace, and peace.

Day’s end brought a leisurely campfire enjoyed in good company with mugfuls of hot tea. As always, there isn’t much to say as the fire pulls us in and rearranges our thoughts.

I thought about the wood, not unlike my own life, so many long, patient years in the making.

The wood roars to life in a last, bursting fling, sparks rising up in joyous mutiny as if they could escape a foregone conclusion: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

We repeated these words recently as we committed my husband’s mom to her earthly grave. I can only hope that, at the end of my days, I might rise up and light the night in one last delighted burst of joy, willowy arms reaching for heaven just like flames that lick away the darkness-a supplication of praise and thanksgiving for my life and my rebirth.

~J.A.P. Walton

[1]Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nature.1836.

adventure, canoeing, Creation, death, Faithful Living, Lessons from the Wilderness, Life's Storms, Outdoor Adventures, Peace, Perseverence, Ralph Waldo Emerson, River, Sacrifice, Travel, Uncategorized, Water, wilderness, Wilderness Paddling, wisdom

The Cosmic Indifference of the Wilderness

This Side of the River

It takes months of planning for a paddling journey into the wilderness.  The Walton brothers toss around ideas, the maps come out, the routes, and access to them are studied, dates are penciled in, then, finally, train and campground reservations are made. In the month preceding any trip, my husband begins an internal transition from here to there as the necessary equipment comes out of storage to join the growing pile in our living room. Sleeping pad and bag. Cook stove. Dry bags. Bear bag. Throw bag. Cooler. Camp chair. Hammock. Swiss army knife. Food list. Boots. Water shoes. Dri-fit clothing. Camera. Tent and fly. Fishing pole. Hat. Rain gear. Maps. You get the idea.  Just now, Mark and Hugh and two more of their brothers are in the early phase of staging their September trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, a trip three years in the planning.

Why so much planning? The wilderness is, by necessity, wild and weathered, unsympathetic to the needs of a paddler. The wilds don’t care about your life or your death.

I call this the cosmic indifference of the wilderness.

Yes, the wilderness is untamed and unfettered. And all around, usually invisible in the  forest deeps, and the dark swirls of river and lake is the predatory character that drives all creatures to eat, shelter, reproduce and live – as good a description of survival that you can conjure. If you are going to test yourself against the elements of the wilderness – its fire, air, water, rock, flora, and fauna, then you better know what you are doing.

So, when wilderness paddling, you learn to be on the lookout for threats like underwater rocks or deadfall trees, swirling eddies, confused currents, high water, low water, storms, lightning, fires, bears, moose, and poison ivy, to name a few.

Daily life is actually not all that different. It goes merrily along like a calm, placid river, and, unawares, we become lulled into forgetting our creaturely vulnerability to hidden threats to our wellbeing:  sickness, accident, injury, infidelity, terror, poverty, and death. We can go from flourishing to foundering in an instant.  This was true for Hugh when his leukemia diagnosis came out of the blue, followed by the ten-year slog of treatments before a life-saving bone marrow transplant. You simply can’t plan for that.

Even with maps, you don’t always know where you are.

Food can’t satisfy your deepest hungers- for life to have meaning and purpose, to belong, and to be loved.

It’s true: all the planning in the world can’t prevent you from incurring harm in the vicissitudes of this life.  Just ask anyone who’s come within a bear’s breath of dying.

Still. We learn from the wilderness that there is a flip side to almost everything.

Beauty masks pain. Tenacity is a product of frailty. Love necessitates sacrifice. Suffering is never meaningless.   Meekness and tenderness makes for strength. The water can bear you up or take you down.

Time in the wilderness confirms the relationship between the sober realities of life and its loveliness, courage, and peace. The virtues are God-inspired, and there for us to cultivate if we would only abdicate our need to control.  Yes, life is fragile. But, our own can be enlarged, enriched, and emboldened if we embrace it in all its grit and grace. Yes, life is demanding. How will you traverse it? Emerson wrote that the dowry of the wilderness is precious to any who seek it.  When will you start planning to get out and go?

~J.A.P. Walton

adventure, Blessings, Blue Skies, canoeing, childhood, Creation, Creator, God, Lake Michigan, Nature, Outdoor Adventures, Uncategorized, Water, wilderness, Wilderness Paddling

When the Blue Blue Sky is Your Cape

This Side of the River

There are particular and rare days in Michigan when a cloudless sky dawns a crisp, brilliant blue. We call that a ‘Michigan Day’ in our family.  Being so close to the lake, we are most used to clouds, fog, and haze. So, when the barometer abruptly rises, the immensity and intensity of a blue-blue-blue dome overhead brings a euphoria that can’t be contained.

We relished two such days this past week.  The heat and humidity were swept away by invisible winds, surrounding our part of the world in that uniquely ultramarine blue so favored by painters like Vincent Van Gogh, who once said that he never tired of the blue sky (as most of his paintings illustrate).

Such a sky, so sharp yet inviting, is alive with birds and insects, an expanse that welcomes all comers with its blue benevolence. These are days that make me want to wrap the sky around my shoulders like a cobalt cape, and remind me of my early childhood when I secretly thought I could fly. Oh to join the birds! I’ve settled for sailing and rowing instead. These kinds of days are energizing too. Maybe that is because of all the colors of the visible spectrum, the blue rays have the most energy. As a result, the blues are also the most easily scattered by atmospheric particles, thus we see a generally all-blue sky on days of unfettered sun.

In summer, the Walton brothers haunt the barometer with quiet intensity for these extraordinary days where water and sky are twins, when winds and waves are steady, the sun boundless, and the itch to paddle strong.  This time, they canoed from Point Betsie lighthouse to Otter Creek, just south of the Sleeping Bear (and back), a trip of about 20 miles. They were able to raft their Kruger canoes together and sail with the westerly wind most of the way, mesmerized by the sights, smells, and sounds that accompany a hearty day on the water.

When the wind moves you under the yellow eye of the sun, with that expansive ultramarine sky reflected in the cold, cobalt waters, it would seem that it might make you feel small and insignificant. Not so! Your heart swells in an inexplicably spacious way when riding upon the deeps with the sky around your shoulders.

It is like drinking bottomless draughts of beauty from the wellspring of the cosmos.

Some call it a high. For a time, you can understand that this is how God meant us to experience his Creation and appreciate that he gave us all this to enjoy and care for.

In my camp days, we sang a song about blue skies. I leave it with you as a benediction.

May all of your days bloom like daisies in the sun. May you always have stars in your eyes. May you not stop running, not until your race is won. May you always have blue skies.

~J.A.P. Walton

Photo Credit: MLWalton 7/7/2018

 

adventure, Backpacking, Costa Rica, death, Dying to Self, Forest, Lessons from the Wilderness, Nature, Outdoor Adventures, Outward Bound, Perseverence, Rainforest, Risk Taking, River, Uncategorized, Water, wilderness

Over, Under, Around or Through?

This Side of the River

It is a fact that the human being is easily dehydrated, because our physiological thirst mechanism is not very reliable. So, often, we go through a day thirsty for water without even knowing it. The brain can override the thirst signal so that we can keep on chug-chugging without stopping for water. The headache and fatigue we attribute to stress and overwork may just be the natural fallout of being dehydrated. In the longer term, it becomes downright dangerous.

When we went to Costa Rica on an Outward Bound trip (see blog post of Feb. 6, 2018), our weather was hot, humid, steamy and stifling. All of our drinking water had to be tediously filtered. One day my group hiked high along a rainforest ridge, then descended quickly to find our way blocked by a swiftly moving river. The only bridge was up and over a mountain a ways downstream. After walking up and down the riverbank looking for a place to cross, our guide taught us how to cross together. We hitched our backpacks as high onto our shoulders as possible, squaring off our appearance so that we looked like so many Sponge Bob Square Pants characters. This left our hands free, but she warned us that this also raised our center of gravity and, when in the water, buoyancy, in itself an added challenge to balance. We sent one person far downstream with the emergency rope bag to throw in the event someone lost footing and was swept away. Then we lined up, interlocked forearms, and walked-in our boots- one by one into the icy river at an angle to the current. I thought the challenge quite enjoyable until the water rose to meet my rib cage and the footing among boulders dicey. But, the tight grip on and of my nearest companions was enough to stay upright and walk across and out of that river. It was an altogether exhilarating experience to test those waters.

My husband’s group leader later reached that same spot and decided a river crossing was too dangerous. So they went up and over that high mountain, short on drinking water, on the hottest day yet of the trip. It took them a long time in unrelenting sun, and it was a desperate slog. My husband, the oldest in that group, became severely dehydrated, and, at one point simply had to lie down unable to breathe.  He recalls that he very nearly panicked. He was suffocating.  The guide plied him with fluids, and about an hour later he was able to continue.

Water. Life-giving. Life-taking.

There are always decisions we must make when faced with daunting barriers; do we go up-over-around, or just plow right on through?

Do we take the long view (and route) though ill-equipped for the endurance and time required, only to be forced flat onto our back unable to breathe, living in breathless panic? Or do we risk the shortcut, get floated off our feet, maybe even swept away?

Either way, it is our companions in life that make the difference. They hold us tight, guide us as wisely as they can, recognize our needs, and offer assistance. They hold out their hands, to steady us or offer us a drink. This is one reason Jesus established the church, so that we’d never have to face our challenges alone.  So we’d have others who could recognize our deep thirst for love and belonging, and hand us the only water that satisfies.

Keep a tight grip on your life companions. You need each other along the way.

~J.A.P. Walton