Summer/Fall 2012 by Adventum Magazine

ADVENTUM A LITERARY MAGAZINE

ISSUE III Charlotte Helston - Jon Miceler Rick Mick - Shea Mack - Cheryl Merrill Christopher Martin - Klaus Kranebitter THORPE MOECKEL - Laurie Weed - and more...

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RIDGE TO RIVER

CONTEST WINNER

SUMMER/FALL 2012

ADVENTUM A Literary Magazine

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF / CREATIVE DIRECTOR Naomi Farr EDITORIAL INTERNS Abby Hess Matthew Greene OPERATIONS ASSISTANT Tim Farr CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE Janet Barry, Douglas Campbell, Sylvia ForgesRyan, Charlotte Helston, Klaus Kranebitter, Shea Mack, Christopher Martin, Jenna McCoy, Karla Linn Merrifield, Cheryl Merrill, Jon Miceler, Rick Mick, Thorpe Moeckel, Wally Swist, Laurie Weed EDITORIAL INQUIRIES editor@adventummagazine.com ADVERTISING INQUIRIES advertising@adventummagazine.com

ADVENTUM MAGAZINE Jeffersonville, VT 05464 Digital Issues: Issuu.com/Adventum Facebook: Facebook.com/AdventumMagazine WWW.ADVENTUMMAGAZINE.COM

Right and Back Cover: photo courtesy of Shea Mack. At the bottom of Big Falls, South Fork of the Payette, Idaho.

CONTENTS

Essays JENNA McCOY Cinder and Snow (Ridge to River Contest Winner)

RICK MICK All You Can Eat (Ridge to River Honorable Mention)

LAURIE WEED Riverdance (Ridge to River Honorable Mention) 36 CHERYL MERRILL In the Paw Prints of Lions

JON MICELER On the Importance of George B. Schaller

CHARLOTTE HELSTON Fisherwoman

THORPE MOECKEL Dark April Light

Photo Essay KLAUS KRANEBITTER and MATTHIAS TROTTMAN

Photography SHEA MACK 5/Back CHERYLL MERRILL 42 JON MICELER 58 CHARLOTTE HELSTON 65

Cover photograph and this page by Klaus Kranebitter (Switzerland)

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN Formed by Water

Haiku JANET BARRY 11 DOUGLAS CAMPBELL 13 KARLA LINN MERRIFIELD 35 WALLY SWIST

SYLVIA FORGES-RYAN 75

EDITOR’S NOTE Water has found its way into this issue. I didn’t plan it this way, but I marveled as I saw this theme cut a course through these pages, the way that water will. We explore whitewater paddling culture in Virginia with Thorpe Moeckel, fishing (for the first time) in Laos with Charlotte Helston, a pilgrimage to Thoreau’s Walden with Christopher Martin, and take a teak-hulled riverboat down the Nam Ou with Laurie Weed. Also in this issue, we get to tag along with Rick Mick as he takes on Perkins’ Tremendous Twelve and an ultra-marathon in the Bighorn Mountains, Cheryl Merrill shows us what Game Ranger Training is like in Africa, Klaus Kranebitter wows again with his

photography from a climbing trip in Switzerland, and Jon Miceler reveals what it was like to trek through the Himalayan jungle with the world’s greatest wildlife biologist, Dr. George B. Schaller. We received numerous Ridge to River contest submissions that stopped us in our tracks. A warm thanks to everyone who submitted. I hope you enjoy the winning essay by Jenna McCoy, about hiking near an erupting volcano in Iceland, as much as we do. And if you don’t already own a few Sigur Rós albums, I recommend adding them to your playlist. — Naomi Mahala Farr

CINDER AND SNOW Ridge to River Contest Winner Jenna McCoy

he shuttle from Reykjavík International Airport to the bus station where the group will meet me is a long ride through empty, gray land. Though the images through my window don’t yet match the ones I had imagined, the music playing through my headphones colors the missing hues, shapes the landscape, and fills it. I’m listening to Sigur Rós, an Icelandic band that composes music to capture the landscape of the island they call home. The down-tempo sounds, falsetto singsong, and eerie, unidentifiable instruments are haunting, beautiful, and hard to understand. The music is dynamic to reveal a dynamic island, a land that is not easily defined, but beautiful in inconsistency. Through the glass of the bus, the grayness is broken by street signs and small vehicles racing past until they are lost in the horizon before me. I close my eyes and watch new images of the country against the back of my eyelids, anticipating the change in scenery as we head away from the country’s capital. The gray water of the North Atlantic lapping against basalt rocks and jetty. Brightly colored, tiny homes of fishermen lining the coast of small towns, and children in wool sweaters and rubber boots running home in sudden rainfall. Sea glass and puffin birds,

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porous rock from ancient volcanoes, and ash from active ones. Fjords. Post-rock music and unimaginable wind. Sheep, and moss, and snow. Aloneness. Quiet, cold. A month or so before I leave, Kevin maps out the night’s sky on my bedroom ceiling, places tiny plastic glowing stars in the right shapes to make my favorite constellations, does the math to make sure each celestial giant is in place for a night during my favorite month: December. We make the room as dark as we can and lie down on my bed and look up and name them: Ursa Major, Pleiades, Cygnus, Orion, Canis Major and Sirius, Ursa Minor. He guides my finger to a star that hangs down diagonally from Cassiopeia. “Don’t forget Polaris,” he says. North, Kevin knows, draws me like the needle of a compass, magnetic. When I can’t move in that direction, I read books about the ice and the wilderness, about adventures that end in wild bliss, or death, or missing persons. About the last wild wolves and the Inuit people. One book I read suggests that our movement through the environment around us is metaphor, that the physical landscapes we travel are

actually a manifestation of our interior landscapes. It says that man’s complicated relationship with wilderness—the fear and allure of the wild—speaks to our need of heading blindly into our own minds and souls, to discover the things that are hidden there. Kevin and I are quiet as we look up at the glowing ceiling, both thinking, I think, about the plane ticket I just bought. About spending the summer apart. I’m heading to Iceland, the wild heart, I believe, of the wilderness I long for. The decision to go without Kevin wasn’t an easy one. It’s not really about being apart, but Kevin and I make a habit of taking every long weekend and holiday together, plunging ourselves into mountains, rock-faces, redsand deserts, or rivers by canoe. Hand in hand, we watch one another venture a step or two deeper than before into our own wildernesses, knowing each other is there for times when words like adventure cross with ones like danger, or lack of control. This exploring is what our relationship is founded on—the idea that together we are getting closer to what we need to know about the world around us, what we need to know about ourselves. I never thought I’d travel

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wiry man greets me, his face carved in excitement. He introduces himself as Dave, our group leader, and recites to me a dialogue that sounds like a mission statement. He tells me I am joining a group of geology majors, that we’re here to learn about Iceland’s physical geography, and the history of how it came to be. The island is one of Earth’s youngest places, just 20 million years old, and was formed atop the meeting of what geologists call the Mid-Atlantic Ridge: the place where the North American and European tectonic plates grind against each other above a giant underwater volcano. The constant pulling and pushing of the plates, and the resulting eruptions, make Iceland, geologically speaking, an unpredictable land that is very much alive. Dave tells me that during our ten days here, we’ll walk, literally, between two continents, follow trails on mountains that will spew hot sulfur through vents below our feet, see geysers and active volcanoes, and climb the glaciers that cap them. We will see for ourselves the constant molding of the island.

It’d be easier to stay, to make Iceland another adventure we make together. But my landscape runs a circle 66°N, and Kevin knows what I mean when I say that. north without Kevin, the one who is always checking my ropes, lighting the fire, drawing the trail. When my eyes adjust to the bright plastic stars, I look over towards Kevin, his impossibly long body, big hands, and scruffy red beard perfectly familiar, even in the darkness. It’d be easier to stay, to make Iceland another adventure we make together. But my landscape runs a circle 66°N, and Kevin knows what I mean when I say that. I sit and wait a short while in the station before a tall,

Iceland is not quite Arctic, but its North Atlantic maritime culture, rocky barren landscape, and desperately harsh climate make my heart sore with that same longing I feel for places like Alaska, Greenland, Nunavut, and Norway. A few years before I buy the ticket, before I lie in bed with Kevin and dream about the impossible shapes of icebergs and frozen tundra, before I make my way through the sky towards Reykjavík, I decide that, someday, I will be there: The scene begins in an old friend’s basement, late in the evening as the crowd that has gathered in

Jenna McCoy celebration of something begins dwindling—people finding their way elsewhere into the night. I close my eyes and sink deeper into the sofa, resting my head against its worn corduroy arm, unsure of whether or not I am ready to drive home. Someone lowers the humming monotony of jam-bands that has been monopolizing the stereo all night. I fall deep and dizzy into half-sleep, my mind floating comfortably into the vibrations that now travel through the speakers, into the floor, up the legs of the couch, through the fabric, and into my body. The sound is foreign and hits my nerves hot, like they were left exposed, not expecting. But I know right away that I love this sound, and that’s the first time I hear Sigur Rós. Later, when we arrive at the house Dave has rented for the group, the earthquakes are small enough that we don’t feel them. By the time our other leader, John, tells us of the eruption, Grímsvötn sends the hot insides of Earth into the sky. My group members and I turn on the television in the common room and watch

first level of clouds. It’s hard to tell from here what we are looking at, but the possibility of witnessing the eruption is exciting, so Ellen and I stay out in the cold to watch for signs of it. We walk along the dirt road that leads away from Solheimar, the eco-village we are calling home for the majority of the trip. Away from the tiny commune, the landscape remains unbroken by much but the road itself, and the wire fencing that runs along its sides, marking the boundaries for white sheep that dot the countryside. From what we have seen so far, Iceland is composed of ancient lava flows, purple and jagged, stretching haphazardly across the land, covered in deep varied shades of green moss, brown mountains, ponies—all painted pink now, for a few hours, until morning. “Do you miss him?” Ellen asks, as we round the bend back to our rooms. “Kevin?” “Of course,” I say. “I wonder if he’s watching the news right now.” “Do you think he’s worried?”

What makes me the most anxious, though, is the truth that even volcanologists can’t predict how long the eruption (and potentially, our stranding on Hekla, or the island) will last. until, through the photographs and maps that accompany the broadcast, we learn that we are 90 miles away and not in immediate danger. Though it’s late into the night, May alongside the Arctic Circle means that the sun stays perched high in the sky for nearly the full day, kissing the horizon just long enough to give the landscape a few hours of twilight—a not-quite-sunset—before rising again. Ellen and I run out into the midnight sun and squint east into the horizon. “I think I see it,” she says. “The ash.” We stand and trace our fingers against a faint line of gray that traces the pink, twilit sky, perpendicular with the ground, gradually making its way above the

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“Yeah,” I say. “I do.” We’re quiet for a moment, both of us slowing to a stop as we reach a crossroads, adjusting our layers of wool and gor-tex, wondering, of course, about the eruption behind us. “Are you worried?” I ask. Ellen scrunches her tiny nose and bites her bottom lip with two uncharacteristically large front teeth. She looks back towards the faint, grayish plume that stretches upward, now far above the clouds and drooping sun. “Yeah,” she says. “I kind of am.” The first song I heard is called “Sven-g-englar.” It’s the

second song on the band’s second album, Ágætis byrjun, which was released in 1999—a full decade before the first time I hear it. I fall in love with the other songs on that album, too, and later other albums, but the ten minutes and four seconds of that track becomes my favorite song to listen to while falling asleep, driving alone, and being held. Jónsi writes the soundtrack that lines the ridges, tall trees, and dark spaces of the landscape of my consciousness, and fills it all with Icelandic words, with his own language called Vonlenska. Back in my friend’s basement, this song becomes a catalyst for memories looking for a way back into my head. This song carries me, a willing captive, anywhere. I won’t know for a long time that the English translation of this song’s title is “sleepwalkers,” but I walk, half-asleep into childhood—six or seven, in the snow. I loved snow days because I loved silence. Snow, it seemed, captured all the noise of the neighborhood and kept it hidden, or maybe replaced it with cold soundlessness. Not a lack of sound, but a fullness of it, the way that white light, really, is all of the colors. Like all the tiny fibers that made up the Earth were held perfectly still by the snowfall. I spent full days making tracks in unturned snow through the familiar trails behind my house, feeling, maybe, that I was adventuring through a landscape miles from anywhere I had been before. Feeling, maybe, that this was the closest to quiet and alone I had ever been. It was in these moments that I found myself praying the way my mother taught me to. “Now I lay me,” I would say to the trees, or my dog, or the gray sky, and plop down into the snow. In the morning, John and Dave argue, Dave’s lanky body in strange opposition to John’s short and round one. John’s anxiety towards the eruption illuminates Dave’s ignorance and unyielding optimism for the greatness of the word adventure. Our itinerary places us an hour south of Solheimar for a three-day hike along the glacial ridge between two sister volcanoes: Eyafjallajökull and Hekla. The first of these two was active just last year, erupting for more than a month and stranding travelers for weeks when the ash rose high enough to interfere with air traffic. Connected

Cinder and Snow

in a way that geology majors can explain, Hekla, historically, erupts within a year of her sister—a pattern that has lasted for an unimaginable number of centuries. Icelandic volcanologists keep keen track of Hekla’s bulge, and the blast not only is over-due, but constantly teasing the surface, gurgling high enough to threaten an eruption before settling back down into the ground, leaving Earth’s crust in anticipation for a while longer. Before Grímsvötn erupted, we were given a lecture by a geologist from the University of Iceland, and knowing our plans, he warned us not to make the hike. “I wouldn’t go up there with my own crew right now,” he said. “Too much of a liability. By the time you would have warning, you’d be too far away from shelter to make it safely.” When John reminds Dave of this, Dave begins his defense: “Well, John, we like to let nature be in charge of these things. Imagine the rock-hounding we could do if she goes!” Grímsvötn is nearly a hundred miles away from where we will be, but this hike proves problematic for a number of reasons. Though this eruption’s volcano is not directly linked to the two sisters, activity under the Earth, if it continues, could easily trigger another eruption elsewhere. With Hekla already poised to erupt, this increase in likelihood that she will is not easily measurable, but present. John tells us of another danger: volcanic ash is pluming out of Grímsvötn forcefully enough to cover cloud layers, and rise over twelve miles into the sky. Wind is carrying the ash hundreds of miles from the eruption site, and the direction of the spread is determined upon the direction of the wind—which, in Iceland, is notoriously unpredictable. Being caught in ash clouds during a trek like this could mean no visibility, unsafe air, and serious damage to our eyes and lungs. What makes me the most anxious, though, is the truth that even volcanologists can’t predict how long the eruption (and potentially, our stranding on Hekla, or the island) will last. When Dave pulls the van around for us to load our gear, John is furious, and the rest of the group is, too. But this is Dave’s program, and though the

Jenna McCoy group, aside from me, is composed of John’s own students, no amount of John’s rationality, or the truth that he holds a PhD in volcanology, will sway Dave from his itinerary. I don’t think it’s the Arctic in itself that infatuates me. In my mind I watch images of polar bears meandering against the backdrop of white wilderness, and feel moved by photographs of the harsh landscape, the stark isolation, the truth that this place exists not even a half-world away from mine. The infatuation, I think, is an evolution of the one I felt for snow when I was young. This landscape is free from bias, from the emotion that humans place into natural things, beautiful things, like death—like birds tearing bloody bits of mice into pieces for their fledglings. This landscape is free from the kinds of distractions I ran from as a child, run from now. The kinds of distractions that make me forget to be mindful, to believe in God, or something. To see the goodness in things like change, and the natural unpredictability of existence. I imagine that against the glacial blue tint of the snow and ice, the unforgiving cold, the silence, I could hear the sound of Earth’s fibers vibrating, not soundless, a kind of prayer. Bundled from the cold, huge packs on our backs, we begin our trek from the foot of Hekla. The twelve of us, behind our Icelandic guides, Páll and Rosa, scale the black scree and snow patches under a clear sky. Hekla, though known from the beginning of Iceland’s history as the Gates of Hell, is a pretty climb, and as we head higher and higher towards the ridge and Eyafjallajökull, our view of Iceland expands farther across miles of an incredible bulge of ancient gray and purple lava, a waterfall, brown and snow speckled mountains rolling out in all directions. But the east, towards Grímsvötn, is hazy with ash, and gradually our view, too, is compromised by dust clouds that burn our eyes and make us cough when we suck in air as we hike. The darkening of the sky around us is gradual, but as we trek closer to the yurts that we will stay in tonight, we lose sight of each other in the ash. We hike slower and call to one an-

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other, keeping single file, closing our scratchy, dry eyes when we can reach and hold onto one another’s packs. Páll tells us to wrap our scarves and bandanas over our mouths and noses to act as a filter. The fiberglasslike ash burns all over and smells like sulfur; the sky is now completely opaque around us. Somehow, with Páll and Rosa to guide us, we make it to the shelter. The building is small and wooden, and the fourteen of us struggle to find a place to stretch out our pads and sleeping bags without overlapping into one another’s space. There are no windows in the yurt, but the thin walls do little to insulate from the wind, the smell of ash seeping between the wooden boards with the cold air. We can’t hike on, and we can’t hike back to the van. Even if we could, the air is too thickly brown to see our hands outstretched in front of our faces, let alone the road in front of us. We are stuck here together, barely a mile from Hekla’s hot, volatile center. It isn’t long before the excitement of this seemingly fortuitous adventure turns, for me, into shortness of breath and a panic attack. “How long will it be dark like this?” I want to ask, but I know we can’t know that. The ash could be gone in hours, but just as realistically, we could be stuck here for a week, more even. A black night in an Arctic summer is eerie, not right. I think of Hekla and the threat of an eruption, the truth that, like Dave says, we are powerless against nature, against Earth’s will. I imagine the possibility of us being incinerated in any moment. I think about dying in a way I never have before. I think about Kevin, the fact that I don’t want to die here, in this anonymous yurt, on a tiny, vulnerable island in the North Atlantic, far away from the illusion of safety in a sturdy continent I call home. A continent where, wrapped in Kevin’s arms, I can look at tiny plastic stars with the same amount of love and wonder that I have for bipolar flows of electrons waging war on our atmosphere, blues and greens dancing above ice in a dark Arctic sky. Panic means that my skin feels too tight, more claustrophobic than a tiny yurt full of bodies. The thoughts in my head aren’t rational, but neither

is my circumstance. Neither is the force of cinder, of snow, of the coldness that carries the Earth up into the atmosphere. Neither is the impartialness of the land, the detachment, the blind and unforgiving way it changes, takes away the footing of its travelers, forces them to face the unknowable. Scared, I cry until my eyes are swollen, until I can’t explain to anyone anymore what exactly is wrong. Until all I can do is run from the yurt, out into dark ash, trying somehow to run away from my body across the rocky, uneven ground. I run until I am too tired to think. Until I can’t breathe right, until I cough and cough. Until I’m not sure how far I am from the group, not sure how to get back to them. Until I can ask myself what the hell I am doing. Until I hear Ellen’s voice through the crazy wind, until I can call back to her, the two of us navigating through the dark. Until I see the small, blurry form of her body appear as she hugs me and walks with me, blindly, towards the sound of our group members, closer than we had realized, back in the yurt. Later, as Jónsi’s voice through my headphones calms me into sleep, I leave my body in its sleeping bag and float up over the ash into clear, cloudless atmosphere, my thoughts fading into a kind of lucid dream. When Iceland becomes a small speck of brown and purple terrain, lost in the middle of a gray ocean, I see another island, white with ice, uninterrupted by snowless ground, but specked with glacier blue pools of water at the tops of jagged, frozen mountains. I float onward farther south, back to a continental arctic with brown, grass-covered cliffs that meet the ocean. Herds of caribou, and nomadic, solitary polar bears travel the vast landscape. I move farther south still, until I recognize the mountains I see as Appalachians, until I reach Kevin, home in my bed, under a ceiling of December sky. My body is lost somewhere north, but here in his, I am warm, formless, and blind. I want for him to travel the coordinates of the earthly globe, for me to travel his coordinates, safe from Earth, but still a part of it. I want to move through landscapes as a passive pas-

beneath robin song the watery carcasses of snowbanks

Janet Barry is a musician and poet with works published or forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies including Ragged-Sky Press, Offthe-Coast, Cider Press Review, Canary, Tygerburning, and the Christian Science Monitor. Much of her poetry and life experiences focus on the exploration and celebration of the natural world and our place and impact upon it. She has received a Pushcart Nomination for her poem “Winter Barn,” and holds degrees in organ performance and poetry.

Jenna McCoy

senger, to escape things like change and uncertainty. I want to travel trails through the snow of his being, for those trails to be familiar and permanent. To lay me down in his snow, to watch the Aurora Borealis over his sleepy head. After two days of darkness and panic attacks, Páll and Rosa hike down into the valley and knock on the door of a farmhouse, too far from Hekla’s mouth for us to be incinerated. The couple agrees to take us in for a few days, until the ash lets up, or until we find a way back to Solheimar. When the two return, they have us pack our bags quickly and cover our faces again with bandanas. We clasp the belts of nylon harnesses around our legs and waists and clip onto a long braided rope, each of us in a line, safely attached with Páll and Rosa to lead us down invisible Hekla. And in a few hours, we are safe inside, warm and fed in the farmhouse. With a television in the kitchen, we sit and watch the news, hoping for any. The broadcasts are Icelandic, of course, but we watch the faces of the telecasters, of the people they interview, to learn whether we should be anxious, whether or not the eruption has stopped. It’s a strange feeling, television truly providing our only view at the wider world around our camp at Hekla. We watch images of black ash that flash to a map of the North Atlantic and we see that the whole island is covered. They interview a farmer. Páll explains that the man’s lambs cannot find their mother sheep in the ash, that they are dying. The old man on the screen wipes his eyes, wet tears running down his face, clearing away the ash in stripes of pale skin, revealed from under an otherwise completely sooty complexion. No person has been injured so far in the darkness, but the blast takes a toll on the life of the land. Next they address the question we want to ask, and Páll translates: this eruption has been multiple times bigger than Eyafjallajökull, and is still erupting. Different scientists have made conjectures about when it will stop, when the ash will settle, when the airports will re-open, but the truth is that nobody knows.

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After dinner, the lot of us sits in the kitchen, playing cards and sipping tea. Páll tells us story after story, his thick accent filling the warm, wooden room—his huge bald head, wide-spaced teeth, and glacier blue eyes securing us his willing listeners. He tells us of his second love—the one that falls after hiking and climbing and leading tours of foreigners across the Icelandic lava flows and cinder-cones: music. He and Rosa both studied music in college, which is how they met, and now Páll carves traditional Icelandic instruments from wood and plays folk songs in bars through the winter. Icelandic music, Páll tells us, is a long tradition of folk songs and oral poetry, passed down from the stories of Celtic monks and Viking sagas, sampled, revised, and kept authentically Icelandic. According to Páll, all things Icelandic take form from the physicality of the island, from the constant motion of the land, from the idea that we are witnesses of Earth’s tiny evolutions, of its choice to rise up out of itself. From knowing better than to call it beautiful, but feeling, somewhere a little too deep to touch, the human need to believe it is. At Hekla, a week passes. Grímsvötn relents and lets the wind dissipate the darkness, spreading the ash across the globe until it is invisible, each grain falling to another landscape, becoming lost in the sea or the soil. In the bright Arctic night, as we drive north from Hekla towards Solheimar, I am open to the shifting, to the prospect of change, the thrill of a new landscape. I think of Kevin, across the sea, moving, too, against ever-changing scenery. And of Hekla, behind me, hesitating, bulging. The tectonic plates beneath Earth’s crust quiver, ready to shape the horizon. But atop the mountains before us, to the north, it begins to snow. When we land in Boston, and I make my way through the customs line and find Kevin in the terminal beyond baggage claim. Our bodies fall together, not like couples who wait, flowers in hand, for a marvelous reunion, but rather, like two tired people, glad for

a chance to finally rest. We have a long drive home, along highways labeled with road-signs—familiar, unchanging routes, paved through New England, MidAtlantic once-wilderness. As Kevin drives, I look in the glove box for

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some music to put on and find the case to a Sigur Rós album, Ágætis byrjun, translated: “a good beginning.” I slide the disk into my stereo and trace the veins that run down Kevin’s forearm, looking for True North.

Jenna McCoy is an undergraduate studying literature at Richard Stockton College—a small state school located dangerously close to her hometown of Ocean City, New Jersey. When not in class, and sometimes when she should be, Jenna’s travels take her across the globe. Her most recent adventures have included studying in India-administered Kashmir, glacier climbing in Iceland, and hiking the Appalachian Trail. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Polaris.

wind battered we stood cliff top holding air mason jars collect a ripe and gleaming harvest winter upended

Douglas G. Campbell is a professor of art at George Fox University. His poems have been published in Borderlands, RiverSedge, Bitterroot, and a number of other journals. His first novel Parktails, was published by Wipf and Stock, in 2012.

UNCHARTED TERRITORY Sending Piz dal Nas in the Swiss Alps Photos by Klaus Kranebitter

Words by Sarina KĂźrsteiner,Translated from German by Andy Posser Adapted by Naomi Farr

n the middle of the Swiss Alps is Piz dal Nas, a 500 meter long route with a total of 12 pitches. It overhangs by a staggering 50 meters, requires an extreme variety in climbing style, and it is the most difficult route on any North face in Switzerland to date. Matthias Trottman has climbed some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hardest multi-pitch routes such as Hotel Supramonte, Silbergeier, and The Last Exit Titlis. After multiple attempts, in August 2010 he was the first to top out on Piz dal Nas, and in September 2011 he completed the route. Klaus Kranebitter was there to capture these epic moments.

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The closer you get to the wall the more you feel like a dwarf. The route ends on the distinctive nose.

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Uncharted Territory

Klaus Kranebitter Walking through meadows, across streams, and hiking through a forest in the Hohfad Alps, Matthias and his friends were surrounded by an area of outstanding natural beauty on their approach to the climb. The area of Galtibergboden is a utopian playground with many possibilities of new routes. Matthias along with Martin Jaggi, Matthias König, Thomas König,

and Daniel Schulze found the 30 degree temps and light winds a perfect combination for completing their project. “Not many people believe that you can be on such an awesome wall in such short a drive,” said Matthias. The wall is just 1.5 hours away from Zurich, Matthias’ hometown. Despite the relaxed start, the climbers knew

This was the crux of linking the whole route and the question remained of whether this pitch could be climbed free. they had a difficult task ahead of them and the 8b/8b+ pitch loomed ever larger as they approached. The conditions were perfect, crisp and cool with good friction and the first attempt at unlocking this final puzzle arrived. This was the crux of linking the whole route and the question remained of whether this pitch could be climbed free. There was a small section that evaded Matthias but on his third try he managed to unlock the puzzle and link the pitch. Once through this section, the climbers faced the last pitch where some loose rock and a difficult climb still waited. However, on the last day of the season on the nose, along with strong physical and mental stability the project was completed. The enjoyment of being out in such scenery with friends was the true reason for climbing this

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route, Matthias says. One of the main attractions about this climb was a hole in the rock large enough to house several people. After climbing the pitch, they named it “Hotel Titlis.” The hole gave them shelter during storms and offered protection in an otherwise precarious position 300 meters above the start of the route. The climbing team managed to reach the Hotel just before the arrival of one of the biggest storms they would encounter while climbing. Thunder and lightning surrounded the climbers, waterfalls poured over the route, yet they remained completely dry and sheltered from the wild weather. This hole, or hotel, became an area for rest and relaxation and was used not only in bad weather but also during stable conditions, where the group of friends could relax and tell stories while enjoying the scenery below them. They even went so far as to haul up a number of luxuries such as a coffee machine, a kettle, and stoves. Even better was the ability to collect rain water from the hotel’s tap, a dripping point in the rock where water bottles were strategically placed to collect the precious droplets. To reach the Hotel more easily, a 130 meter long hauling rope was fixed on a pulley down to the first easy pitch of 5c. The haul bag took on the name of “Jack,” or the “boy in our heart.” The hauling team continued to bring in supplies such as cigarettes, wine, and coffee. Before staying in the “Hotel” the group had to inform the local villagers what was going on. They did not want to worry local rescue teams with their headlamps flashing around on the route during the night. The locals soon became accustomed to the lights from the group of friends resting in the “Hotel” on the face of the Titlis. Two accidents delayed the project at Piz dal Nas, one of which happened to Matthias at the Minimum bouldering gym where he fell and broke his heel bone while fastening some holds. In another accident, he was on the Titlis wall with a fixed rope on the section with a small traverse, which he him-

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Klaus Kranebitter self had fixed, but not particularly well. Fortunately, when he fell, the rope caught him after a 10 meter fall, stopping him just before tumbling off a ledge that would have resulted in a 200 meter fall. Eventually, the group called the local rescue services, but this frightening climb gave them a clear

understanding of the severity of danger the route presented and how they should be extremely careful in future attempts. When the REGA rescue team finally arrived they were greeted by a number of white-faced climbers and were confused as to which climber needed to be rescued as they all looked petrified.

DETAILS OF THE CLIMB The climb up to Piz dal Nas is, for the first four pitches, slabby in style with spaced bolts placed on easier areas, but the climber still needs to be comfortable climbing in this style. This grade, with a long run out, can feel rather airy, according to Matthias. After the first four pitches the style and rock changes significantly. The rock has been weathered over the years and one finds small, crimpy holds, especially on the “Hotel Titlis” pitch. After this pitch the rock is similar to that found in the South of France with severely overhanging rock but with good holds. On the “good morning pitch” you literally have a few large holes which link the sequence with no choice of holds out to the left or right of the route. Finally, in the last 5 meters of the climb, the style changes once again, with demanding and technical climbing. From the “good morning pitch” the crux pitch awaits. Going down as a solid 8b this pitch requires good conditions and a strong head as the climber is faced with some crazy movements and sequences. The unusual final pitch, which coincidentally looks like a nose and gave the route the name, is a 45 ° overhanging challenge graded 8a +.

Klaus Kranebitter has been photographing for sixteen years and climbing for twenty. He has a degree in electrical engineering, and is the founder of ww.saac.at and www.snowhow.info. He is an international certified mountain guide, and currently spends most of his time working on guiding projects such as public avalanche education, ski-guiding, and outdoor photography mostly for Marmot, Dynafit, Adidas, the Austrian Alpine Club, and numerous outdoor magazines. He lives in Innsbruck, Austria. Learn more at www.klauskranebitter.com.

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ALL YOU CAN EAT

Honorable Mention, Ridge to River Contest

Rick Mick

robably, you’ve seen it on TV. Or, if lucky, maybe it even happened to you. From behind a restaurant’s kitchen counter, a smiling waitress marched in your direction past a number of other tables, leaving you for the moment unable to talk or even breathe. Atop her tray were several large plates, piled high with four buttermilk pancakes, four sausage links, three eggs, and an order of country-style fried potatoes. That’s right. I’m talking about the Tremendous Twelve from Perkins. For the second night in a row, this is the kind of fare my dad, my older brother Tony, and I sit down to eat. “Were this any other vacation,” Tony explains, “naturally we’d look for a restaurant offering some cultural experience.” Like Mariachis, he suggests, or Indian women with bindis serving naan. But we are in Sheridan, Wyoming, town of 15,000. “Darn near Montana,” as my dad chimes in. Sheridan—a thick slice of rural America trimmed with strip malls, fast food chains, and tractors. We are hungry and food options appear slim. A graduate student on summer break, I have just flown in from Arizona. My dad and

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brother have come out from Ohio and D.C. At this point in the evening, calories—not cultural experience—are key. “Tomorrow morning,” Tony reminds me, “we’ve got to run 52 miles in the Bighorn Mountains.” The look of relief on my dad’s face says, “I don’t have to do shit.” Having recently retired from the postal service, he’s come along this weekend for the ride. 52 miles. In the mountains. At elevation. Slowly, the magnitude of tomorrow’s race sinks in, and makes us giddy, mixed as it is with an element of the grave. In a matter of hours, we could be one animal’s lunch, another’s dessert, and a year of plenty for some colony of ants anxious to cart us off in little pieces. Or so we like to think. More likely, the only dangers we’ll encounter will be ourselves—blisters, moodiness, fatigue—or even more benign seeming, water. A runner who drinks too much of this supposed liquid cure-all, without enough salts to keep the balance, could experience “sausage fingers” that would continue to swell until they burst. They wouldn’t really. I just made that up. But the runner would develop hyponatremia, a

condition that could lead to swelling in the brain, decreased consciousness, and other dissatisfactory symptoms like death. The solution: eat. At the dinner table, I order the Tremendous Twelve. Expecting judgment, possibly ridicule, I shape my request in the form of a question, with tildas for eyebrows and a maze of wrinkles scrambled on my forehead. Our waitress hardly blinks. The magnificent proportions of the food I am about to eat do not register on her face; apparently, this kind of consumption is no longer extreme in America. My dad orders the Down Home Meatloaf, and my brother—a 33-yearold writing professor, the modest one, the nervous one, a vegan—orders three small pancakes with a single side of potatoes. Nothing fancy on this last of nights concluding a 16-week training schedule. The Tremendous Twelve from Perkins. Technically, it’s not a buffet, not all you can eat like at the Golden Corral or Ponderosa, where a feedsack is optional and dessert’s included. Nor is it, to be fair, as ridiculous as some of the challenges taken on these days for entertainment. Adam Richman of the TV series Man vs. Food comes to mind. In past episodes he

All You Can Eat appears. Funny looks from across the table. “What?” I manage, with mouth full. Having long since finished their meals, my dad and brother watch me dab the last few clumps of pancake in a pool of maple syrup. The eggs are gone. The potatoes are gone. Of the sausage links, there is but a trace of grease. “What?” I manage again. Thighs shifting across the booth’s waxy vinyl. “Don’t judge me! I’m carbo-loading.” Camelbaks and carbs. Pills and bars. Electrolytes, gels, and goos. Trail running, our nation’s fastest-growing outdoor sport, according to Outside magazine, is a subculture with its own language, customs, and cuisine. With 36 years of combined running experience, my brother and I finally succumbed to sport’s latest trend. We bought a couple of water packs and registered for a trail race. A guaranteed memory, The Bighorn Wild & Scenic Trail Run promised 52 miles, point to point, in a part of the country where we’d never been. “Gives me shivers,” Tony wrote to me, early on. It wasn’t the hardest event of its kind, but it would be the greatest challenge we’d ever taken on, requiring months of planning and training.

52 miles. In the mountains. At elevation. Slowly, the magnitude of tomorrow’s race sinks in... has attempted to consume a seven-pound “Sasquatch Burger” in Memphis, fifteen dozen oysters in New Orleans, and a meter-long German bratwurst in Minneapolis. In theory, the Tremendous Twelve has an upper limit of human proportions. At 2,210 calories, the meal may not be “all you can eat,” but it’s probably all that any self-respecting person should. For a 26-yearold male such as myself, weighing 155 pounds and standing six feet, I’d need to order only hot chocolate and a few desserts as go-alongs to meet doctors’ recommendation for the entire day (3,566 calories). When the plates arrive, I set to work, making my way from side to side. Little by little, the food dis-

In the United States alone each year, over 500 such events take place—from the Hawaiian Islands to the Florida Keys, from California to New York City, at the Rockies’ top and Death Valley’s bottom. They’re called “ultras.” To qualify, each race must simply be longer than the marathon’s 26.2 miles, a distance which may have seemed impossible once but for many is no longer the ultimate challenge. In 2010, according to Running USA, a non-profit affiliate of USA Track & Field, an estimated 507,000 Americans completed the once incredible feat. In the same year, 36,000 people ran an ultra. To participate generally costs between $35-$75, enough to cover permits, food, and medical aid out

Rick Mick on trail. And with the exception of a few races, ultras don’t require qualification. All you have to do is show up. Tony and I stepped up to the start line, below the summit of Bald Mountain in northern Wyoming, approximately 200 miles east of Yellowstone National Park. At which point, a couple of things crossed my mind. First, my nipples. Despite the caloric heat amassed by this morning’s ultra-early breakfast at 3:15am—I had a cup of black coffee (1), a 20oz. Gatorade (125), a chocolate-caramel Power Bar (240), one banana (107), and a whole-wheat bagel (325) with strawberry jelly (50)—and in spite of the added protection of band-aids on said nipples to prevent chafing, my mammary papillas confirmed without ambiguity that it was colder outside than a well digger’s butt. At 8,800 feet, in the alpine tundras above treeline, some mountains refuse to acknowledge the arrival of summer, though it may be the end of June. The overnight temperature had dipped down below 40 degrees. Patches of snow covered the mountain’s scree like scattered ice floes in a polar sea. Everywhere else was pretty much just mud. After a winding, ninety-minute shuttle bus ride from our hotel to the top of the mountain, Tony and I walked over to the race’s start line. 5:55am. Next to a ranger’s log cabin there was a dirt road. The start line was on this service road, marked by two wooden stakes, set twenty feet apart. In a few minutes, 131 people would run through them. The second thing I noted was regret, frankly, that I hadn’t trained with more consistency. The most commonly used and most widely respected training guides, as offered by Hal Higdon or any other Runner’s World type, have runners begin preparing for their ultra about sixteen weeks in advance. On Monday you run this amount of miles. On Tuesday you do that. It’s something to hold your feet to the fire. The most critical part of the training is simulating the fatigue of being on your feet for so many hours, without breaking or tearing anything important along the way. So, instead of running for ten hours in one sitting—the amount of time it often takes to cover 52 miles—most trainers advise that you steadily increase

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your weekend long runs, from one hour to two hours, three hours to four hours, then place them back to back on consecutive days. Nutrition also becomes increasingly important with longer races. This is because the average human’s glycogen stores run out at around 20 miles. Without the easier-to-process sugars and carbs, the body switches over to the only other available reserves, fat, the body’s last line of defense against emaciation, triggering the notorious “wall” or “bonk” that many runners experience in the last miles of a race. Even with eyes rolling back and arms and legs feeling like jelly, many runners refuse to refuel because eating or drinking while running gives them cramps. Mostly, these are your newbies, who haven’t yet trained their abs to handle the jostling, but also your purists who would rather die from exploded sausage fingers than touch a single granola bar or cup of water while on trail. I suppose all people have a right to their own suffering. But, in this instance, I happen to agree with Dan Brannen, director of the American Ultrarunning Association. In an effort to dispel a major myth about the alleged masochistic nature of ultrarunning, he told me, “The secret to racing ultras well is not to see how much pain you can withstand. It’s to see how how much pain you can avoid.” Which is more or less what my dad had been drilling into us kids all along; at the beginning of each track and cross-country season, he’d tell us, “Preparation is the key to confidence.” This is the route I should have taken, in deference to the combined wisdom of the running establishment, my dad, and brother. Tony followed Hal Higdon’s training guide magnificently, and so Hal will be his Moses along the trail, parting any thorny branches and kicking aside loose rocks. He wrote to me, during our training, “I was just thinking to myself today that it’s time to reclaim my destiny. In short: to stop dicking around and hiding my light under a bushel basket. Less biblically: to carpe diem. Less Robin Williamsishly: to seize the day by the balls.” I was not so hyper. My training came in spurts. Of the two of us, I have more experience, but I also tend to be more impulsive. During the school year, I’d

run sixty miles one week but only ten the next. I told myself I was just listening to my body, that I wasn’t interested in finishing in a certain time. But then I’d get a note from Tony, teasing, “Dear Rick, I can’t wait to bonk you when you visit me. Signed, Mile 34 of Big Horn.” The crowd began to count down from twenty. At 6:05am, in a storm of yellows and blues and greens—shoes and socks, sunglasses, water packs, and bandanas—we were off. There were no Ethiopians present, and no celebrities. The pack of 131 runners was made up of mostly men and women in their thirties and forties, with a few old codgers bringing up the rear. Tony and I let out some nervous laughter, and began to jog. Perched at 8,800 feet, Porcupine Ranger Station officially marked the race’s start. From there, it was eight miles to Spring Marsh, the first aid station. The race website mentioned “panoramic views” and “splendid seas of wildflowers,” but mostly we noticed the ankledeep pools of water. It was mud season. Fortunately, this part of the race was also downhill. First hesitantly, then angrily, then as if it were all that we had ever run on, we ran through the mud, passing through open meadows and stands of ponderosa pine and aspen. Wet feet were less than ideal, but eventually we stomped out a great deal of the moisture, arriving at Spring Marsh somehow without blisters. At the aid station, several jugs of water sat atop card tables beneath a blue canvas tent, along with bowls of goodies—peanuts, trail mix, mini candy bars. Behind the tent, a few tired-looking teenagers sat in camping chairs next to a fire. Other volunteers milled about. There was also a 100-mile race, which had begun the day before at noon, and they had attended to these even crazier, hungrier trekkers throughout the night. “Do you need your water pack filled?” “Are you feeling all right?” Sorry, they said, most of the food was gone. No matter. Not yet. Eight miles in, we weren’t tired. We were just relieved to have it all under way. For the past three days, Tony and I had talked running nonstop—in the car, hotel, and restaurants—about

All You Can Eat the various aid stations, the drops and gains in elevation, the notorious “Wall” at Mile 18. Were we going to stick together? How often would we walk? My dad, ever the good sport, just sat back and listened, offering wit. Though also an avid runner, he had gladly passed on this exploit. He wasn’t so tempted by extreme adventures as we were, and he wasn’t much for trail running, either. “Say something wry, Dad.” “Pumpernickle.” “Say, Dad, where are we at again?” “Darn near Montana.” The morning before, I had asked him, “So, what are you gonna do tomorrow while we’re running the race?” Reaching for the TV remote, he got back into the hotel’s bed and under the sheets. He sassed, “Get a bucket of chicken from KFC.” As it turns out, as we ran, my dad set out to enjoy another kind of vacation, a break from 30 years of routine work and healthy eating and four-o’clock runs in the morning in the dark. From his bedside, he had a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, mixed nuts, who knows how many chocolate chip cookies, plus a few cans of Diet Coke. On TV that day were several World Cup soccer games which he wouldn’t miss, plus an action-thriller starring Al Pacino. At Spring Marsh, I grabbed a handful of trail mix, an apple-cinnamon Hammer Gel (basically a carbohydrate toothpaste in a single-serving pouch), some M&M’s, and a mini-Twix. Then, plodding along, I’d stop every so often to relieve myself under the cover of a nearby tree. Failing that, I’d piss directly on top of any rock whose minerals I thought might interact in interesting ways with the chemistry of my urine. None changed from grey to green, or brown to pink, or anything like that. But I did get some of the dust off, which made for a more brilliant and satisfying sheen. As for poop, there was no poop. Every bit of food that went into my body disappeared. Out the pores as expended heat and into the ground with every step. Energy was consumed, then used, without waste. It was getting hotter, as the sun rose higher, as we ran further, and as we entered lower elevations. So I took

Rick Mick off my long-sleeve shirt and tied it around my waist. For the rest of the run, I wore blue shorts, a green tshirt, plus the black-and-yellow pack on my back—a Camelbak with a capacity for 70 ounces of liquid, or 200 cubic inches of space for cargo. This was enough room to fit six vegan oatmeal cookies (made by Tony and stored in zipper pouches on both hips), a little plastic pill popper (two salt tablets every half hour to stave off sausage fingers), a mini first-aid kit, two Power Bars, two pairs of dry socks, sunglasses, and a couple of white bandanas to block the sun. On my own, I would have drank quite a bit. But with Tony’s prodding, I figure I took in nearly 280 fluid ounces during the course of the race, or more than two full gallons of mostly water but also Gatorade, Mountain Dew, and a lemon-lime sport drink called Heed, which replenishes electrolytes and prevents the buildup of lactic acid. “Keep drinking!” he kept reminding, in a sing-song voice; he didn’t want to nag, but he also didn’t want to have to drag me through the latter half of a very long hike. Perhaps

running against a backdrop of boulders, granite walls, wildflowers, and knee-high grasses. I couldn’t believe it. We were doing it. Without stopping, I closed my eyes to take mental note: Sunrise-Mountains-GrassesBrother. Then, reaching back into my hip-side pocket, I pulled out yet another thing we’d brought along— the camera—and snapped a shot. When my lips went numb, two hours in, the full impact of what we had signed up for hit me. We still had nine hours to go. Documenting nature took a back seat, and birding was out of the question. We would just run. I became a bit light-headed from the altitude, but, more gravely, continued nerves began to take a toll on Tony, even a couple of hours into the race. “How you doin?” I asked, when we finally caught up at an aid station. No response. Walking over to one of the tables, Tony grabbed a few grapes and some canteloupe, but by now most of the gels were gone. The thought of eating yet another of any of the same things, he told

...any steeper and we’d have to scramble, using our hands. If we made it to the top, we’d have thirty-two miles to go. because he was critical of the quality of the food or reluctant to break from his dietary principles as a vegan, but throughout the race Tony stuck mostly to eating fruits, peanuts, liquids, and gels. Little else appealed to him in solid form besides his oatmeal cookies. At first, this wasn’t an issue, and it need not have been. Many runners are vegan, including Scott Jurek, arguably one of the world’s best ultra runners. Through miles ten, fifteen, and twenty, Tony looked great, fifty yards ahead of me, often more. A number of other runners filled the gap between us, but most of the time I could see him ahead in the distance, a familiar white dot moving comfortably along. I kept thinking: That’s my brother,

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me, made him want to spill all right at the volunteers’ feet. Aside from putting one foot in front of the other, the only thing I could think of to better our chances was to eat. The more I ate, the better I felt. With food, all things seemed possible. At “The Narrows,” Mile 15, heading slightly downhill between a set of sheer rock walls, I had two cookies, two pills, trace amounts of sunscreen mixed with sweat, plus a gel. And forty minutes later, at Mile 18, I took in two more pills, a Milky Way, three Dixie cups of Mountain Dew, plus a slice of cold pepperoni pizza, to go. Appetizers were no longer on the menu. The main courses

would be served. Three hours in, we had reached The Wall, a three-mile stretch of trail well worth its name. In short order, all participants would climb 2,200 feet in elevation along a section steep enough to qualify as a Class-3 hike; any steeper and we’d have to scramble, using our hands. If we made it to the top, we’d have thirty-two miles to go. Jogging across a foot bridge, having no choice now but to accept the fate we had ourselves elected, Tony and I looked out over the railing at an angry set of rapids below, replenished by the spring’s recent snowmelt. “You ready for this?” he said. Ready or not. At 4,590 feet, we were at the race’s lowest elevation. Up the first embankment, over tree roots and fallen trunks, we hopped and bounded. We were like overanxious mule deer, just ready for it all to be over. Within thirty seconds, though, the tips of my nose and lips again went numb. Running uphill wasn’t happening. Of course, it was also hard to breathe with chunks of pizza in my mouth. So we became like mules instead. We stopped running and started walking, for the next hour and a half. It was a painfully slow march, but something that almost all ultra runners do and don’t think twice about—so I’d gathered from reading. Even the winners of such races as ours walk up the steepest hills. I wish I could say that it was during this part of the race that we really bonded and talked about our relationships and frustrations and life goals, amid such gorgeous scenery that we’d later be inspired to render it all on canvas in acrylic, but really it just sucked. We didn’t talk at all. At the top of The Wall—Mile 21—there was another tent with volunteers. I grabbed some M&M’s and a mini-Butterfinger. But when I turned around, Tony wasn’t there. I guess it was back to running? After an initial scare, I found him two minutes later, further down the trail. He looked like a horse that needed to be shot. But, then, I couldn’t have looked much better. Salt had begun to crystallize on my cheeks, and sweat ran into my eyes. From here on out, the miles began to blur together. To a runner with little else to think about

All You Can Eat for an hour in between aid stations, the sight of a tent ahead was like catching a glimpse of the turquoise towers of Oz. At Kern’s Cow Camp, Mile 28, in addition to Espresso-flavored Hammer Gels and palmsized portions of beef jerky (I took three), a couple of guys were frying up bacon. In the middle of a race. Most 5ks barely spring for a bagel and banana. I had six slabs, each about six inches long and thickly cut, glistening with grease bubbles. With the amount they had cooked, you could have stuffed full an entire duffelbag. This was lust, and I wanted some of it. Tony just turned and moved along, though, without criticism or complaint. Much of the food wasn’t vegan. Burgers and fries. M&M’s and chips and duffelbags full of bacon. No wonder so many Americans are crazy about running: if they didn’t run, they’d be fat as fuck. In part, this is why I keep running—so I can eat whatever I want. It’s not the only reason. I enjoy the time with others, or alone, and I enjoy being outdoors. It also feels good to meet and beat a challenge. There’s no way in hell I’d run for 10 hours just for food. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it was convenient. All my life I’ve been a string bean, except once in high school, after logging some serious miles and meals. When I put my shoes down for a couple of months, my metabolism basically stopped, and within eight weeks I gained 25 pounds. “Do you think any of that’s muscle? Or all fat?” I asked my dad, who is as close to a model of consistency and steadfastness as I have ever met. “Well,” he replied, “have you been working out at all?” “No.” “Well, then what do you think?” Thinking back, it makes me laugh. It’s funny to see old photos taken of a supersized version of myself. But it’s also embarrassing. Not because I particularly care about my body image any more than anyone else. But, rather, because the nonconformist in me resists becoming a two-dimensional product of any environment—whether of our notoriously obese, fastfood nation or that of the health fanatics. For people

Rick Mick like me and my brother, perhaps, we are caught in the middle. Avoiding one extreme, we are ourselves led into other worlds also out along the edges. Avoiding fast food and factory farming, my brother became vegan. Trying to buy only health foods from the supermarket, I become a garbage disposal apparently on the weekends. But also, avoiding the sanitized world of the running mainstream, Tony and I were both led to this subculture of ultra runners. Perhaps we enjoy being caught in between these various extremes, and having to find the delicate balance. There is sport in the middle. And, as far as nutrition goes, there is science. Infused into all is also the sugar-induced high of M&M’s and Mountain Dew and the occasional Twix. Which taste pretty good, I must admit. Trail running isn’t for everyone. To enjoy the sport might also require an appreciation of the absurd, but it is there in vast quantity if you can find it. Ten more pills. A handful of grapes. A slice of watermelon, and a wedge of canteloupe. Half a banana. Another handful of grapes. One jumbo seasoned shrimp, and two vegan cookies. Another slice of watermelon. Plus, a McDonald’s double cheeseburger wrapped and reheated in a microwave (God bless the soul who hauled out a generator). All told, I guess I did eat a lot in the last miles of the race. But I had to. To run 52 miles at 12 minutes per mile, for the amount of time that we ran, at elevation, a runner of my size and weight could expect to burn 7,482 calories. Consuming any less would invite serious medical danger. This is a tall order, even for a bear. The equivalent of 18 McDonald’s double cheeseburgers or 29 pounds of blueberries, in terms a bear might understand. And that’s just to break even. At Mile 40, Tony and I hit yet another wall. An uphill, quarter-mile slog that would have been great for sledding had there been snow and had we not just run for nine hours. But at the top, we found ourselves looking out upon the most beautiful view in the race. A broad valley floor lay below, covered in evergreens. The view extended for miles to the horizon. To the bottom of the bowl was where we were headed. This is where we would finish in the town of Dayton,

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Wyoming. The last twelve miles of the race would be downhill, a significant drop in elevation, through a number of meadows and along a creek. After snapping a few photos, we let loose, bicycling our arms to keep from falling. And very quickly, Tony put fifty yards, a hundred yards, a quarter-mile between us. My shins hurt like a bitch, but I was glad to see he felt better. Only, not so much that I was going to let him cross the finish line before me. We didn’t stay together this long for nothing. At Mile 49, with only thirty minutes left, a small but familiar figure appeared in the distance. Our dad. After finishing Goodfellas, he drove over from the hotel and walked out on the course to a point where he could jog the last three miles with us. This kind of running was more his style. He was wearing jeans and a windbreaker jacket. Side by side by side, the three of us thus entered Dayton’s city park. And together—despite our varied approaches to training, and despite our different diets—Tony and I crossed the finish line, 10 hours and 49 minutes after we had begun, at the same time. Afterwards, while Tony sat down in the grass in shock and allowed the sense of accomplishment to seep gradually into his system, I headed over to a nearby stream and soaked my feet in the chilled water. To reduce swelling in my legs. To cool my body. Just because. Before long, though—I’m embarrassed to say it—hunger hit again. My dad laughed and my brother rolled his eyes as I found my way over to the park’s covered shelters where there was music, grilling, and a whole lot of muddy, food-crazed runners. My pace was a hobbling crawl. This would be my second to last meal of the day, served with a plastic fork on a styrofoam plate: one Johnsonville Brat with ketchup and mustard, two servings of potato salad, and a handful of chips. After showering back at the hotel, my dad, Tony, and I shared our last meal before passing out at 7:30pm. To celebrate, we ordered two large pizzas from Pizza Hut, a little over 24 hours after our dinner at Perkins. Tomorrow morning, we’d all fly home. Sausage, pepperoni, onions, and bell peppers adorned the pizza that my dad and I shared. As for the other,

All You Can Eat

there was just cheese. But, significantly, it was a cheese that would break my brother’s vegan promise (had the pancakes also been a cheat?). Looking on, I wondered: Is he really going to eat five slices after an entire day of holding out on the trail? After neglecting so many goodies, all that bacon, as well as the McDonald’s

double cheeseburgers? After denying his body the fat it could have used but ultimately did without? Sure. After a day of luxuriating in extremes, on all accounts, there was plenty of room for moderation. As my dad looked on, I put my plate down and Tony took a bite.

Rick Mick holds his M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University in New York City. Currently, he lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he teaches writing and works for the county parks.

mangroves grip land’s end, marching imperceptibly to embrace the sea

tree snails stud the limbs of wild tamarinds, sleeping through the dry season

Periphyton thrives in clear freshwater shallows— manna most humble

A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had nearly 300 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has seven books to her credit, the newest of which are The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press) and Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%, which she co-edited. Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. Her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills) received the 2009 Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.

RIVERDANCE

Honorable Mention, Ridge to River Contest

Laurie Weed

dling our boat in the deep, silty waters of the Mekong, we contemplated the mouth of the Nam Ou. It curved along a sheer limestone wall in a tight smile of translucent green, its shallow, hairpin entrance forbidding all but the smallest and lightest boats. Our riverboat, a traditional teak-hulled model with a fourcylinder Toyota engine strapped to its rear, was as long as a city bus but only four feet wide, drawing less than 18 inches. Slightly fish-shaped and floppy with age, her tapered ends often moved independently of each other, creating a clumsy, snaking motion against the current. Flint and I had dubbed her the Spawning Salmon and, for better or worse, we owned her now. Planning a voyage of several days, we had just motored her gently up the Mekong, departing Luang Prabang at sunrise to avoid playing chicken with the midday barge traffic. An hour into our journey, the Salmon was already acting flighty. Her cooling mechanism kept seizing up, and the engine had the vapors. Two weeks earlier, we’d hitched a ride on an empty passenger boat to explore the Nam Ou for the first time. After a few idyllic days of paddling in clear water and trekking to isolated Khmu villages in the upper valley, Flint wanted to follow the pretty river

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to its highest navigable point, a Chinese trading post called Hat Sa. I wanted a backstage pass to the real Laos, the land beyond the “tourist triangle.” When separated from an entire culture by language, economics and geography, local transportation often provides the quickest route through the gap—if not from A to B. An open-air river journey, surrounded by dramatic limestone karst and a fringe of jungle, sounded far more enticing than a crowded bus or dull tour van ride up Highway 13. But when we’d asked around in Luang Prabang, we found it was “not possible” to hire a boat to Hat Sa—something to do with fuel costs and territory disputes among the drivers. Naturally, Flint solved this problem by purchasing his own boat. The idea wasn’t as insane as it may sound: Flint was practically born on a boat. He had built two of his own from junkyard scrap, and he could sail anything from a harbor dory to an English clipper in high seas. In fact, he had wooed me with a boat adventure when we first met in Burma, the previous year, and in spite of our many differences since then, I still told myself that any man who would buy an illegal fishing pirogue and paddle me down the Irrawaddy on a whim deserved a fighting chance. It was not the first time I’d

fallen in love with a grand gesture, only to find that the moment would always outshine its creator, who after all was only a man. Nonetheless, after a rocky stint of living with him in England, I had brought Flint back to Asia and now to Laos, a place I found magical, hoping he would love it as I did. I was willing to explore at least part of the country on his terms, and I knew the seadog in him was itching to be afloat again; he needed to be “unlocked in this landlocked nation,” he said. As for me, I’m no mariner, but an old-school Mekong riverboat is a simple machine: two long ropes run up each side and wind around the steering column, controlling the rudder. Another rope, operated by the driver’s big toe, is the accelerator. There is no gearbox, so once you turn the key you’re going forward: no neutral, no reverse, and no brakes. It’s like driving a stretch go-cart on water. The Salmon was a pile of splinters and flaking mustard paint, but initially, I didn’t see much cause for worry. Every riverboat in Asia was at least as wobbly as this one, if not more so. The old girl looked tired, but game for one more run. Following an engine overhaul and several trips to the market for supplies, we launched our expedition, deciding to take the established route in slow stages before sailing off the map. On our first trip upriver, Flint had crouched behind the boat pilot the whole way to Muong Noi, furiously scribbling notes. Navigating the Nam Ou on his own, he claimed, would be “not too difficult, but definitely interesting.” Whether this little adventure was driven by his die-hard romanticism or his outsized ego, I couldn’t tell, but either way, he seemed happy for the first time in months. My meandering style of travel did not suit Flint; he was a man who needed a mission, and at last he had one. Now that we were circling the point of no return, the plan seemed questionable and the boat even more so. The river looked faster and fiercer than I remembered. Sandbars and boulders had somehow doubled in size since our last trip. I knew what Flint was thinking—he’d repeated it often enough: “Rivers are like women; they change with the weather.” I was thinking neither of us was in top form for this—Flint had a snotty head cold, and I’d woken up with a slight fever and an ominously bloated stomach. Yet, no one

Riverdance suggested turning back. Skirting the boat gingerly around the cliffs and into the Nam Ou, Flint stopped again and admitted to feeling “nervy,” which turned out to be British for “woefully unprepared.” During our final dash to the market, he confessed, he had lost the hand-drawn map and navigational notes from the scouting trip. Now I wanted to turn around, but it was too late; the Nam Ou was too narrow and we were officially up a creek. Immediately, we faced an “interesting” section of current. As we hesitated in the shallows, a fisherman waved us over to the bank, where he hopped effortlessly onto our boat’s prow and guided us through the first stretch of gurgling water with the precision of an air-traffic controller. We ferried him back to the side and offered to pay for his time. Smiling, the man shook his head, but his young son, who was peeking into our hold, looked up at me starry-eyed. “Lacta-Soy?” he whispered shyly. I handed the boy two boxes of the popular soymilk drink, and they went happily on their way. Once they were out of sight, I stopped smiling and addressed the Skipper. “What’s your plan?” I demanded. “Believe it or not, it isn’t my intention to get us killed,” Flint said, looking sheepish. “I’m a complete pillock for losing those notes, I know. It’s a very technical river, and I have no business driving it on the basis of watching someone else do it exactly once.” “So, now what?” I grumbled. “Well, I think we should find a nice, calm spot to camp. In the morning, we’ll wait for a passenger boat to come by. Any of those drivers could take this river blindfolded, so if we tag along behind one of those blokes, we’ll be all right.” With the new plan in place, we eased our way upstream and dropped our makeshift anchor—a sandbag—on a narrow spit. Flint toyed busily with the engine, bailed out the boat, and set up our gas cooker to make dinner. Feeling increasingly unwell, I lounged in the cabin Flint had hammered as an afterthought and surveyed the scene. A teenage boy wearing a castoff tie-dye shirt paddled close and stole glances at us while pretending

Laurie Weed to check his fish traps. A gaggle of children splashed in the mud against a sloping patchwork of vegetable gardens, and a few wary fishermen circled us in dugout canoes. Once they saw we weren’t fishing, they relaxed, and some of the younger ones hung around to sample Flint’s camp-stove spaghetti. They liked it so much he had to make a second batch for us. We turned in early and aimed to hook our little Mekong caboose to the first available passenger boat in the morning. It was nearly midnight when I crawled out of the cabin and hinged over the side of the boat, deeply regretting the spaghetti as my stomach violently emptied itself. I spent the next hour heaped on the cold, wet sandbar, digging holes with my hands when I could and retching directly into the river when my strength was gone. On our last visit to this valley, we’d spent a night in a Khmu village, far from any purified water except the 1-liter bottles we each carried. Waking up on a bare floor under a thatched roof full of holes, I’d accepted a cup of tea from our host, the village headman, choosing to play intestinal roulette rather than offend him by refusing his hospitality. Back in Luang Prabang, I’d picked up a course of Tinidazole at the pharmacy, just in case, but hadn’t counted on being in the middle of nowhere, boat-camping, if I lost the bet. When the worst of the intestinal spasms had passed, I scrounged through my bag, gulped an orange pill and fell shivering into the cabin. The next morning, moving very slowly, I helped Flint pack up. Then we sat back and waited for a boat. Hours went by, and aside from the occasional fisherman or farmer’s wife passing through, the valley was still. Out of sheer boredom, we attempted a short distance on our own. The engine sputtered and Flint kept stopping to fiddle with it. After an hour of slow progress, we pulled over again on a stretch of fine sand. “I don’t know…” Flint yawned, rubbing his eyes. “Perhaps we ought to call it a day. What d’ya think?” I must have been too delirious to think, or I might have recognized what could have been a graceful exit point. Instead, I said, “I think I hear a boat coming.” The unmistakable clatter of a diesel engine

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echoed up the valley, followed by a half-empty passenger boat. The driver was flogging it upriver at an intimidating pace. Flint pushed us off and the Salmon hurtled after the other boat, swanning across the channel and then laboring to keep up. “Can you see if we have water?” Flint shouted back at me. I was perched on the stern because the Salmon’s cooling pipe, an old bicycle part attached with a cheap plastic hose, demanded constant attention. Hanging on to the towrope, I leaned out over the back of the rocking boat like some kind of displaced figurehead. “No, we don’t!” I yelled back. “Can you try priming it? Grab a bottle and pour some water back into the pipe!” I made an effort, but it was like riding a mechanical bull and trying to milk it at the same time. As the engine began to whine, the Skipper’s pitch rose to match it. “Can you reach that spit pipe without falling in? Suck on it and blow some air back in?” “No.” I said flatly. “I can’t.” Convincing me to inhale and possibly ingest ungraded diesel fuel mixed with cholera-water would be a stretch on my best day, and I had just spent the whole night losing my guts on a sandbar. Flint noted my expression and wisely changed his tack. “All right—can you come up here and drive for a minute?” Diving through the cabin, I scrambled into the cockpit and placed a tentative hand on the wheel. “Uh, O.K…what should I do?” I asked. “Follow that boat!” Feeling like the getaway driver in a caper movie, I looped the accelerator-rope around my big toe and floored it. For a few thrilling minutes the boat careened upstream, until the engine overheated and abruptly cut out. Aiming for a sandbar, I let the Salmon run aground with a thud. Meanwhile, our lead boat stormed off, disappearing around a sharp bend. “Well done.” Flint nodded, his tone chagrined. “I can’t get the bloody pipe to clear, either. She was going to quit on us no matter who was driving.” From our awkward emergency parking spot,

we could hear the other boat charging away. “Why does he have to go so fast, anyway?” I groused. “Not to worry,” said the Skipper, “I’ll have a quick tinker and we’ll be off!” Within minutes, the errant engine snarled to life; Flint gleefully kicked the boat back into the current and leapt behind the wheel. It was too late to catch our lead boat, but at least we knew which way it had gone. Lurching blindly around the bend, we found ourselves in a box canyon: a chute of whitewater enclosed by sheer cliffs on one side and stacked boulders on the other. At the bottom, wrapped around the rocks, lay a hulk of rusting metal and splintered teak—the skeletal remains of a riverboat. Even with my limited nautical experience, I knew we’d just made a very bad mistake. Under the looming shadow of the cliff wall, the Nam Ou was stripped of its emerald hue, leaving us in a maze of seething whitecaps and black, sucking eddies. Boulders seemed to leap out of the current like gunslingers in an old Western, menacing. Flint hunched over the wheel, steering on his knees, trying to coax enough speed out of the wheezing engine to haul us up the ladder of water. Clamping his jaw in concentration, he held the Salmon steady, her gangly body flopping up, up, up. “Can you see if we have water?” he shouted over the roaring engine and crashing rapids. Crouching behind him, I ducked spray and craned my neck toward the spit pipe. “No water!” I shouted back. “What about now?” he yelled, seconds later. “No!” “Keep watching!” With the engine straining hard, the cooling pipe should have been gushing, but it produced nothing. Flint, on the other hand, spewed a constant and impressive stream of epithets, collected over a lifetime in boatyards. The boat swayed and wobbled, shuddering with effort. As I clung to the cabin’s plywood frame, training one eye on the impotent spit pipe and the other on the rapids ahead, I wondered how much time we had before the engine quit or caught fire. I

Riverdance wondered why life jackets couldn’t be found anywhere in this country, and why I’d waited so long to learn how to swim. Between my panicked mental checklist and my pipe-watching task, I barely noticed the sudden reappearance of light and color—shimmering greens and blues—along with a jump in air temperature that meant we were clearing the canyon. Even if the rapids were unrelenting, we now had a good chance of colliding with a mud bank rather than a rock wall. But when I glanced at the pipe again, the scrap of relief slipped away. “Still no water!” I reported, with rising alarm. “And now there’s smoke coming out!” “Whore!” the captain screeched at the engine. The engine screeched back, and then cut out. It took a full second to register the absence of mechanical racket, and one more to comprehend our situation. In an almost-comic moment, Flint and I both rubbernecked wildly toward the engine, then at each other. Next, Flint did something I’d never actually seen before: he turned stark white. Without four cylinders to propel her against the current, the Salmon had stopped moving forward and seemed to be considering a suicide run, back into the boneyard. Flint gunned the starter a few times in vain, then skittered out onto the prow where he pushed our sandbag into the water and jumped in after it. The rope went taut and the Salmon began to drag the 60-pound bag like it was a fly-fishing weight, with Flint as the fly. Waist-deep in current and struggling with the lifeless riverboat, he began speaking in his “sail-training voice,” the one he generally saved for coaxing an inexperienced crew across the Atlantic. “Laurie, I can’t hold this boat by myself. If you can, very carefully, I need you in the water. Watch your step, now—get a good foothold.” Water cascaded around him. I moved in slow motion; the combination of adrenaline, giardia and Tinidazole created a heavy and not unpleasant tranquilizing effect. Wearing black knit yoga pants and a tank top, I was underdressed for a shipwreck. I had no life jacket and my feet were bare. I noted all of this as I lowered myself over the side of the boat, half-listening

Laurie Weed to Flint’s nervous patter: “Mind your feet on those rocks—careful! That’s it, now just hold on to the boat and try to keep your ground!” The Salmon lunged eagerly downstream. The water was only belly-high, but we were in the full force of it, stumbling and slipping on the rocks. Upstream, a football field’s length away, we could see where it broadened into a glassy pond like a mirage. We were losing ground quickly when a fisherman waded over from the shallows to throw his weight—and unbelievably buff legs—into the lineup. The boat stopped sliding. Flint and I stopped sliding, too, and we stood there panting in the current, trying to think of what to do next. The fisherman pointed to a lee behind a cluster of rocks, and with nods of agreement, the three of us towed, shoved and heave-ho’d the boat toward the goal, banging our shins and cutting our feet as the wicked river fought back. My clothes were soaked and my knit pants, now 12 inches longer, threatened to wind around my feet and drag me under. When we reached the boulders, Flint tied our towrope around the biggest one and I climbed up. Without a word, the fisherman returned to his traps, throwing us a look that clearly said, “Good luck, idiots; you’ll need it.” While the Captain made a reconnaissance trip to the nearest bank, I gripped the granite islet with my feet, held the bucking boat with both hands and considered our position. I couldn’t see a way out, not without a new engine or another able body to help us. I would have gladly released the damned boat right then, but I didn’t know what—or who—might be downstream. Resigned to the fate of pushing our untrustworthy vessel even farther, I stripped off my treacherous knit pants with one hand and snatched my Tevas from the steering box. The gruff fisherman passed by again and, succumbing to our frantic hand waving and panicked expressions, waded back in to help us drag the boat to the nearest bank. About halfway across the channel, Flint and I both realized that our efforts, which felt substantial, were merely guiding the boat’s direction. The fisherman was forcing our 50-foot lemon through

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five knots of current almost single-handedly. “Blimey,” Flint said, awestruck. “He’s not even that big a chap.” As soon as we reached calm water, our fisherman-hero abruptly let go, slung his net over his shoulder and strode off. Reaching into the hold, Flint grabbed the first thing he could lay his hands on and splashed after the man, offering meager thanks in the form of a lukewarm Heineken. We towed the Salmon through the mud, waved a few ragged cows away and, with daylight fading, made camp. By now, the boat was leaking like an old wooden bucket. The Skipper had a long night of bailing ahead of him. As darkness eclipsed the river, I looked up at the dusky sky and spotted a single line of cable swooping over the opposite bank. Electric wire meant there was a road nearby, and only one major road ran through this part of Laos: Highway 13. Every southbound vehicle on it stopped in Luang Prabang. Fate was once again lighting up an exit sign with flashing lights, and this time I was going to follow it. When I announced my plans, Flint encouraged me to go and even apologized for getting me into trouble, but he refused to come with me. He was determined to push on to Nong Khiaw, a transit hub at the widest part of the river where most of the boats turned around. “I want to finish what I started,” he said. Like the Nam Ou, he confounded me with his duality: was he bold and imaginative, or merely grandiose and puerile? Too exhausted to fight, I simply recounted our most recent judgment errors aloud and advised him not to confuse stubbornness with integrity. I think he heard me, but in the end, we held dramatically different visions for the journey, and for life. I had been pushing our broken boat upstream for nearly a year, against an impossible current, and as much as I treasured the grainy picture of us as we were, dreamily afloat on the Irrawaddy, it was time to admit this river was too much for me. For a while, the only sounds came from whirring cicadas, grumbling cows, and the scrape-andslosh of Flint’s bailing bucket. I tucked in the mosquito net and was drifting off to sleep when I heard him say quietly, “You were magnificent out there today, in

your knickers. I wouldn’t have made it this far without you…I’d have lost the boat, or worse.” In the morning, Flint started the temperamental engine and we buzzed to the opposite shore. Struggling up a sugary-soft dune, I found myself in Ban Had Kok—a small weaving village barely an hour by road from Luang Prabang. I returned to the boat with a fresh baguette for my queasy stomach and fresh intel for Flint: the bread vendor had a cell phone he could borrow. While he went to call for backup, I stayed with the boat, befriending a trio of little girls who had been spying on us from down the beach. Swiftly reaching the limits of my Lao vocabulary (about six phrases) and their English (A through G of the Alphabet Song), we moved on to charades and sand-pictures. By the time Flint came back, the girls were vaulting in and out of the boat, frolicking in the mucky water and gleefully raiding our remaining stash of Lacta-Soy. It was exactly the kind of afternoon I’d come for in the first place. Flint had managed to reach the fellow who’d sold him the boat and extracted his promise to send a “top mechanic.” When the children wandered away, I strapped on my pack and scaled the sand dune once more to reach the road—the dull, hot, blessedly dry road. Sticking out my arm, I flagged down the first vehicle in sight. Never have I been so happy to see a tour company’s mini-van. Chastened, I returned to Luang Prabang 10 pounds lighter, nursing a sprained wrist and torn rib cartilage that would never fully heal. But a hot shower, a decent meal and another round of Tinidazole solved much of my woe. I had no regrets about walking away. For me, there would be other rivers, more reliable

Riverdance boats. Flint continued up the Nam Ou alone. The trip to Nong Khiaw, less than six hours by “express boat” from Luang Prabang, took him nearly six days, even with the help of several mechanics and a local driver. He spent his final night on his boat, its keel halfsubmerged in mud, next to an impoverished Khmu village. Like indigenous tribes everywhere, the Khmu have genuine problems not of their own creation. I like to think that’s where it may have finally dawned on him that he was only playing castaway, an actor who had bought himself a small vanity part in a vast and complex theater of lost tribes. Like me, he suffered by choice—he had the power and the means to leave at any time. It occurred to me that he too had fallen in love with an idea, a dream that could never be fully realized in the flesh. Traveling can have that effect on people. He later reported, Kurtz-like, that he found the Khmu village a paradise: “A howling, snorting, crying, hacking, coughing, terrible-hard paradise.” At such close quarters, he could not continue to ignore their destitution, and so he gave away the Salmon’s inventory piece by piece. The Khmu carried away his pots and pans, buckets, utensils, food, bottled water, two new mattresses, a few tools, perhaps even some of his arrogant assumptions. The next day, a tourist boat towed him and the Salmon the last few miles to Nong Khiaw, where he sold her to a fisherman’s son for 20,000 kip (about $2 dollars U.S.). With that, the old boat became another boy’s mechanically challenged dream, and returned to her rightful place in the world. Eventually, so did the Skipper, and so did I.

Laurie Weed is a freelance writer, passionate traveler and hapless romantic who did not actually learn her lesson from this episode and continues to wander off the map. You can always find her at www.laurieweed.com.

42Adventum

IN THE PAW PRINTS OF LIONS Cheryl Merrill

he last thing I expected for Game Ranger Training was driver’s education, but right now I’m learning how to parallel park next to a bull elephant. “A little right,” says Syd, and we flatten yet another bush with a loud crunch. Our noise doesn’t seem to bother the elephant. He’s placidly stripping the bark from a small acacia while I wrestle the wheel. “Okay,” Syd says, “shut off the motor, but leave it in first gear.” As soon as I do, cameras click and whir as five other trainees happily snap pictures. My fingers tremble on the keys and my left foot goes numb on the clutch while I watch the elephant’s mood. He’s no more than ten feet away, browsing out of a patch of sunlight and into shady thornbush. The cameras cease clicking. “Move over there,” Syd points to the other side of the elephant. “Light’s better.” Good positioning for photo ops is probably an important skill to acquire to guide tourists through the wilds of Africa. But getting to where Syd points will not be easy. There’s a log to crawl over and a hole to avoid that’s big enough to swallow a rhino. But the real trick to driving a 12-passenger Land Rover is not to bounce anyone out of the last tier of seats. It’s a

good five feet off the ground. Already I’ve navigated a 45-degree slope out of a sandy riverbed without losing anyone over the side, even though the backend of the vehicle fishtailed as if on ice. I figure if I get close to the elephant again, I’ll pass my driver’s test for sure. Down, up, squeezed between two large tree trunks, the Rover crunches dry branches under its tires and makes more noise than the bull, who’s busy dismantling a large rainbush. Without any directions from Syd I park at an angle that gives everyone a clear shot. I turn off the motor. Engine vibrations cause blurry photographs. “Oooo, good light,” someone says and the cameras resume their consumption of film. Syd smiles at me. I’ve passed. He hands over my camera. “A very calm elephant. You can take pictures, too.” As I focus the bull begins to look a lot like the elephant who hangs around our camp, the one with the chipped left tusk. Like all good teachers, Syd’s built in a little insurance to make the hard stuff easier. We’re here on a crash course with only three days to earn our training certificates. Safari guides study for months and years, both in and out of the field, so we

Cheryl Merrill won’t qualify for a change of careers. We only want to learn skills that might come in handy for the next leg of our trip - overland camping through Botswana. Syd’s initial surprise at our wrinkled faces and gray hair was evident when he met us at the Skukuza airport. The surprise quickly turned to puzzlement as we dropped our duffels in the dust. “Where is your luggage?” “This is it,” I replied. “We’ve all been to Africa before.” I point to two women in our group. “They’ve been here thirteen times.” “Is it?” Syd whistled through his teeth, the South African equivalent of “really?” Our camp is located in a private conservation area on the southwest edge of Kruger National Park. It’s between the fork of two rivers, the Sabi Sabi (meaning “Danger! Danger!”) and the Sand River, now a dry and treacherous streambed filled with boulders—the site of my diver’s test. The bush we drive through was once the home of the Shangaan, whose land was sold to a private concession. Syd takes us to the place where his father had a rondavel and kept cattle. Flattened grass marks the spot an entire village once occupied. “My father received no payment from the former government,” Syd tells us. However, the new South Africa is talking reparations and Syd is proud of this. “Our government is trying. It is all we can ask.” Although two luxury bush lodges are close by, we are definitely roughing it. We pump our own water, take bucket showers and eat meals around a campfire. We live in tents set up on platforms above a concrete pad. In the warm season the elevation keeps snakes and smaller creatures from crawling into sleeping bags, but now, at the height of winter, nothing but cold air creeps under our cots. Last night I wore my gloves, stocking hat, long underwear, sweatshirt, socks, and sweater to bed and still woke up shivering. I burst out of my sleeping bag’s cocoon, jam my feet into boots, then simultaneously dance into my pants and pull on my coat. I scamper to the fire and shove my boot tips into the coals. A blackened coffeepot simmers inches away.

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“It snows where I live,” I say to Syd, “and it’s not this cold.” “I don’t believe you,” he laughs. “I’ll show you.” I jog back to my tent and fetch a small album I brought, photos of my house, of family and friends. Syd stares at the picture of my car, a white lump, identifiable only by its black side mirrors sticking out like ears. He stares at the picture of our road - blanketed fir trees bracket a single set of tire tracks. He points to a fir. “Christmas,” he says, “your Christmas.” He is Muslim, and has never seen these dark conical trees with needles. “They are still green.” I tell him that I was warmer then than I am now. “No, no,” he laughs and points to the picture of our house; his finger traces the furrow my legs made through the snow. “No, this is colder.” We munch on rusks dipped in smoke-flavored coffee. I switch to a steaming cup of rooibus, red bush tea, and stamp my feet to waken my toes. Syd takes us out on foot to read spoor and learn the local ecology. In the soft early morning light the trill of a coucal follows us, sounding like water dripped into an empty metal bucket. Doo-doo-doodoo. . . doo . . .doo. . . do. The coucal’s rust-and-black feathers provide perfect camouflage in the dry winter bush. We peer into the scrub, but do not see him. Most of the rattles and flutters we hear as we walk are birds, but each one makes us scan the bush nervously. We’re on foot, absolutely dependent on the knowledge of just one man - with lions, leopards, snakes, and elephants for neighbors. Syd shows us how to sort out the difference between the tootsie-roll droppings of wildebeest and giraffe - a wildebeest stands in one spot, thus a pile, while a giraffe walks, spreading droppings along its path. In contrast, hyenas eat enough bone that their scat looks like chalk. Syd picks up a piece and it crumbles in his hand. We step over the dung of an elephant, easily identified by quantity - a five-gallon bucket of compost dumped into a pile.

In the Paw Prints of Lions

Cheryl Merrill

Just in case we might need it, Syd also shows us Weeping Wattle, which can be used for toilet paper or bed stuffing - its leaf clusters soft as any paper product on the market. As we walk we sample the sweet, fibrous inner lining of acacia bark, a favorite of elephants. We taste a creeping vine called elephant pudding; its succulent leaves have the flavor of salty green beans. Syd gives us a single leaf from a Magic Guarri to chew, but I quickly find out there’s nothing magic about it. Guarri has so much tannin that it tastes like a never-cleaned copper teapot. Even elephants won’t eat it, and elephants eat almost anything. Syd doesn’t tell us that until after we spit out the bitter leaves. Our hike takes us past a Marula tree, which bleeds a sap red as blood. Dye is made from its bark and sweet liquor from the fruit. The fruit has four times the Vitamin C of an orange. Just next to the Marula is a potato bush, which exudes the scent of fried potatoes, but only at dusk as its sap rises. We

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walk past one on our way back to camp and it makes my stomach growl. Syd is as good a cook as he is a teacher. Tomatoes fry in one cast iron pan, while a chicken stew simmers in the other. He deftly drops dumplings into the stew, covers it, and pulls it to one side of the fire. He passes out tin bowls and spoons. We scoop and set speed records for consumption, wash our bowls with sand and rinse in a tiny amount of water. Night falls fast in Africa. In the gloom that deepens into blackness we climb aboard the Rover and wrap ourselves in felt-lined blankets. The temperature is quickly dropping, just like in high deserts: shirtsleeves at noon, long underwear right after sundown. Syd drives us to one of the luxury lodges where we pick up Bernardo, a tracker. He is young, with a wide, brilliant grin and an obvious deference to Syd. We have the feeling he is in training also, and Syd confirms this. “I was once a tracker like Bernardo.”

Bernardo wants to know the results of our driving test. “Who is the best?” He asks Syd. Syd points to me. “Is it?” Bernardo glances doubtfully at the only male in our group. I smirk and reply, “He drives too fast.” How either of them will find anything in the gray twilight is a mystery to me, but Bernardo settles onto a canvas seat perched on the front of the left fender. Although it’s a little like riding a mechanical bull, from there he’s able to see any tracks in the sandy ruts before we drive over them. In ten minutes we are on the trail of a rhino. Syd and Bernardo are excited. They leave us in the vehicle and walk ahead, trying to read the rhino’s intention. Bernardo waggles a finger at us when they return. “You are very lucky,” he says, his smile a sunbeam through the gloom, “not many rhinos here.” Ten minutes more and we find him, right beside the road. It’s doubly lucky that he’s a male; females with calves will charge anything that moves. The rhino ignores us. He’s found some fresh green grass, an unusual treat in the dry winter season, and he’s busy cutting a large swath through it, snorting as he eats. Fhufff. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. Fhufff. Chomp. Chomp. He sounds like the world’s largest steam-driven lawnmower. We sit in silence, watching a prehistoric creature. I half-expect a dinosaur to emerge from the surrounding bush and join in the grazing. Mist rises from the wet grass and obscures the black outline of trees against a sky that is now dark violet. The rhino moves off, disappearing into a smudge of brush. But we can still hear his progress: Fhufff. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. On our way back to camp I catch a glimpse of movement in the tall grass. “Leopard!” I whisper and tap Syd on the shoulder. Bernardo turns in his fender chair and quickly spots him too, motioning with an arm. Syd drives in a wide circle, cutting across a clump of brush. Even though we’re making more noise than

In the Paw Prints of Lions the rhino did, the leopard is intent on something far more interesting: the nearby snorts of jittery impala. He crosses the road behind us, then changes his mind and walks down the middle of it, in our wake. We stop and Syd shuts off the engine. The leopard lopes by on the right, too fast for my camera’s shutter speed. He passes under Bernardo’s feet. Bernardo is frozen. He doesn’t even look down. By remaining motionless, he becomes part of the vehicle and the leopard ignores him. When the leopard is twenty feet away Bernardo exhales, relaxes. He turns to us with his sunburst grin. “Oooooh you are lucky! A rhino and a leopard!” He shakes his head from side to side. “You are very lucky!” On our second day the morning air is as smooth and cold as marble. The last birds of the night are the first birds of the morning. They gab and jabber as if they had just newly discovered daylight. After a quick breakfast of rooibus and rusks we walk out to the dirt road that leads away from camp, reading the dust, honing our tracking skills. Immediately, we find elephant prints where one sauntered down the road last night. It’s not surprising we didn’t hear him the night before. The huge pads on an elephant’s feet allow them to be remarkably quiet for animals so large. Elephant tracks are easy to recognize since no other animal has a print like the impression of a large pizza-pan. Their front feet are oval and back feet round, so it’s easy to tell in which direction this one went. But when we find him, the bull is immediately agitated, even though we’re upwind. “He hears us,” Syd says, “but he doesn’t know what we are.” The bull’s trunk periscopes as he samples the air, trying to smell us. Then he sends a bluff our way, charging several feet, ears extended, a short blat indicating his displeasure. He’s a good hundred yards from us, but we take the hint and back away. An elephant could cover that distance in no time at all. After all, we’re here to study tracks, not get flattened. Once we’re safely away from the elephant,

Cheryl Merrill Syd stops and sits on his heels near the side of the sandy road. “What are these?” He points at some small prints. “Genet,” someone guesses, since the tracks are small and clawed, and the genet, a spotted cat with an elongated body, is nocturnal. “Porcupine,” I announce, pointing at the long marks alongside the tracks where quills scored the sand. Syd stands up and grins at me. “Very good,” he says, and I feel like I’ve momentarily gone to the head of the class. “Then what are these?” He points to a set of padded prints left smack in the middle of the road, deeply imprinted into the floury sand. “Too big for hyena,” one of my fellow trainees says, and we all look at each other, thinking as one: lion. We reluctantly follow Syd as he walks and points out the direction the lion is headed. Same way we are. It’s a quiet class - we’ve all heard the recent stories about the lions of Kruger, the ones right next door, neighbors with no fence between us. Illegal immigrants from Mozambique are trying to enter South Africa through Kruger. Lions have learned to hunt them. Several days earlier I had talked to a park ranger at Kruger and he cautioned that twenty “or so” evidence sites had been found. “But that’s just when there’s something left,” he said. “I’ve been stalked. Now I always carry a gun.” I swallow hard as we follow the tracks on the road. “How long ago?” I ask, meaning how long ago did the lion pass. Syd smiles. “Oh, two, three hours.” He shows us where the tracks have degenerated, but it’s pretty hard to tell. Maybe after a couple of years of following lion paw prints I’d be able to spot that. Maybe not. Back at camp, Bernardo has heard that I have pictures of snow. He pores over them, trying to understand how the world could turn so white. I attempt to explain, using my hands as the sun and earth, tilting the earth first one way, then the other, moving it closer and further away from the sun. Bernardo is doubtful; his head has a permanent sideways

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tilt during my explanations. Just before dark Syd gives a short class in how to hold and shoot the 45-caliber rifle that is our safety net in case we do something really stupid. We pay very close attention. “How often have you had to use it?” I ask. “In the last five years, maybe twice.” Ever the instructor, he uses the opportunity to ask, “Which way do you shoot?” We point to the ground, exactly where a warning shot should go. I am surprised we all have so much familiarity with guns. “Good,” Syd says, “a bullet that goes up . . .” He leaves the sentence dangling, then adds, “It is too much paperwork to kill something.” In a game reserve such as this one, careful monitoring is done of every resident, since each animal is a huge investment. The reserves are privately run, sometimes by huge corporations. The ability to advertise “Come see the Big Five! Lion! Elephant! Leopard! Buffalo! Rhino!” is an incomparable tourist draw. But wild animals do not behave quite like pets. When you swap lions with another reserve so that they do not inbreed, there’s no guarantee that those lions might not wander off into Kruger, since there is no fence between the park and surrounding reserves. As the light fades we sit near the fire and trade our full names: Bernardo Mkansi, Sydonea Hlatshwayo, Cheryl Merrill. Syd writes his name down on a piece of paper and shows it to me. “Can you say it?” “Sure: Huh-lasch-WHY-o.” Syd and Bernardo gape. “Yes! How can you know?” “I guessed, sort of like Bulawayo, that town in Botswana.” They both pronounce my name and make it sound like butterflies, each letter bouncy and full. “That’s it! Now teach me how to say it that way,” and they laugh, covering their mouths like schoolchildren. I practice saying my name several times, but I never quite get the hang of it. “Today we track lion on foot,” Syd says. It’s our final test, the one that lets us know whether we’ll graduate or not.

Our small band of would-be rangers climbs from the Rover and starts surveying the ground. There are lion tracks here, all right. “Which way?” Syd asks. We point variously in the same general direction. “Okay, ready?” We scuff our feet. We’re sort of ready. Syd hefts the rifle from its rack on the dash and our eyes follow his motions as he loads it. Each one of us nods to ourselves; that clenched spot in my chest relaxes a little. Syd and Bernardo usher our silent group away from the road and into the bush as we follow the tracks. Bernardo takes up the rear. “I am here to stop you from running,” he says with a small smile. Eight people marching in a line and stepping on each other’s heels are not easily identifiable as prey to a lion. But any single one of us dashing way from the group would trigger a hunting response: “Look! Breakfast! And it’s fat and slow!” We step literally in the lions’ tracks. They are about three-fourths the length of my boots. They are

In the Paw Prints of Lions

so fresh we can see where the claws have sunk into the sand and made deep slash marks at the front of their pads. Slowly we make our way through mixed scrub and across pockets of dry, withered grass, stopping frequently to listen for the calls of francolins and baboons, the early-warning radar for lions. Syd picks up a handful of sand and lets it fall through his fingers, testing. A fluttering wind blows from the right direction, into our faces. If warned by our smell, the lions might decide to swing around behind and follow us. Bernardo keeps glancing backwards, as do I, the last one but for him in our column. Even though it is fall and many of the scrub thorns have lost their leaves, we cannot see very far ahead. Syd and Bernardo occasionally confer back and forth in low voices, speaking in Shangaan. We probably don’t really need to know what they are saying. Just past several gullies gouged into the sand by rain, the tracks disappear into a thicket. Syd stops and listens intently, then sweeps his arm to the right.

Cheryl Merrill

We bypass the thicket, perfect for ambush, and see if lions have emerged on the other side. In the open, grassy area beyond, our line bumps to a halt. “See them?” Syd asks. As if on cue, two heads pop up. Luckily, even though my heart leaps, my legs do not. The lionesses are under trees on the far side of the field. They are lying down, but our invasion has made them curious. They stare at us, open-mouthed, little question marks nearly visible above their heads. The whir of a camera reminds me that mine is dangling around my neck. Through its telephoto the lions look less dangerous, more relaxed, squinting at us. Then, off to the right, another lion roars and Syd’s eyes widen in surprise. A low “Tsssssss,” escapes between his teeth. There are more lions here than we have seen tracks for. Everyone’s head, including those of the lionesses, swivel in the direction of the roar. Almost simultaneously a white bakkie, a mini-pickup, bounces into view near the lionesses and stops there.

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The woman driver surveys the two lions with binoculars and writes something in a notebook. Bored with it all, they lie back down. Momentarily distracted from the fact that there are lions to the left and lions to the right, we ask Syd, “Who’s that?” Against all training, we have condensed into a tight ball behind him. Even Bernardo has moved up. Syd’s still stares in the direction of the roar. “The ecologist,” he says, “she works in the reserve.” The bakkie leaves the lions and rattles over the rough ground to where we are. “Morning,” the ecologist nods to each one of us in slow motion. I wonder to myself if the lion that roared is moving in our direction. She looks at Syd. “There’s a male about a quarter mile up the road. Be careful where you walk.” “Is it?” he says, “thanks.” Their exchange is so matter-of-fact that it sounds as if they’re discussing potholes. “Right then,” she says and the bakkie joggles

off. Not even an offer of a lift. Bernardo and Syd have a short conversation in Shangaan. Then Syd says, “We go back the same as we came. Bernardo goes to get the Rover.” Bernardo leads and Syd provides the rearguard. As soon as we move, the lionesses’ heads pop up again and follow our exit. We move as one, marching in step, our spines expectant of fang and claw. Once we’re out of view behind clusters of brush, Bernardo trots off, and I am now in the lead, careful to backtrack our own footprints. Soon we’re in the Rover headed again to the clearing. The male has not roared again. One of the lionesses opens her eye as we drive up, then shuts it again and flattens her ears. We are an annoyance to her afternoon nap but nothing to get excited about; not like whatever that strange beast was that just left. Syd tells us that these sisters are the only survivors of a pride that once ruled this territory. Another pride recently moved in and killed their relatives. That was the reason they did not answer the male lion. We were lucky one more time: if they had answered, he would have come running. One of the sisters has recently been in a fight. She has a wound on her shoulder and has not eaten while healing. Her ribs are showing. “They do not bring food to each other,” Syd says. “She has to be well enough to hunt.” We watch the sisters nap. We have evolved from being possible prey to compassionate observers, all because we’re sitting in our trusty Rover. “Will they make it?” one of us asks. “Do you feel sorry for them?” someone adds.

In the Paw Prints of Lions “Yes,” Syd says, “yes. But that is just my feeling. If they move to another territory, they will be okay.” The lionesses nap side-by-side. Without opening her eyes the healthy one raises a front leg and drapes it over her sister’s neck. Just at dusk, driving back to camp, we find a male lion awakening from an afternoon nap. According to Syd this lion is very young, trying to move into a new territory, and challenge the two males who recently took over. He has a black punkish stripe in his still-growing mane and no scratches on his nose. He’s not far from where we found the sisters and might be the lion who roared. He blinks at us sleepily, then looks off into the distance, his yellow eyes still not completely open. As it gets darker we find bushbabies in nearby trees. Their eyes reflect our spotlight like bright Christmas ornaments. They are distant cousins of ours, using their quick hands and enormous eyes to forage for fruit, insects and bird eggs at night. Long shaggy tails provide balance as they leap from branch to branch, dodging the quick flicks of light we direct at them. We catch glimpses without blinding them. Syd stops the Rover by a bush. “See him?” Illuminated by headlamps, Syd climbs out and walks over to a round-leafed teak. He reaches up and suddenly a Flap-necked chameleon comes into focus right by his hand. It is a perfect mimic of the leaves on the teak. As one, we shake our heads and smile at each other. Syd smiles back at us. None of us will ever be that good.

Cheryl Merrill lives and works in Port Townsend, Washington. Her publications include poems in Paintbrush, Northwest Review, Willow Springs and others; poems anthologized in A Gift of Tongues: 25 Years of Poetry from Copper Canyon Press; a chapbook of poems, Cheat Grass from Copper Canyon Press in 1975; and publications of a photo-essay series about elephants in Iron Horse Literary Review and in The Drexel Online Journal. Excerpts from her book in progress were published in Fourth Genre, Pilgrimage, Brevity Seems, South Loop Review, Ghoti, Alaska Quarterly Review and Isotope. Her essay, “Singing Like Yma Sumac,” was selected for the Best of Brevity 2005 included in Creative Nonfiction #27 and was also included in the anthology Short Takes: Model Essays for Composition, 10th Edition. Her essay, “Trunk,” was chosen for Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXII Best of the Small Presses 2008 Anthology. She is currently working on a book about elephants: Larger than Life: Living in the Shadows of Elephants.

FORMED BY WATER Christopher Martin Going to Walden is not so easy a thing as a green visit. It is the slow and difficult trick of living, and finding it where you are. — Mary Oliver, “Going to Walden” The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. — Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

rom its headwater spring on the wooded slopes of Rocky Mountain in north Georgia, the Hiawassee River wanders down to a valley watched by the Appalachians. The mountains brood over the river like herons and are as blue. Silver light flickers in the mist; the mist dances through the air, drifting like shed feathers of these ancient water birds. The slate wings of the mountains cast shadows on the river. Deana and I stand ankle-deep in the water, seeking rocks. We are here looking for a place to have our wedding and have found a diversion in the cold river. We’re after rocks that resemble animals, though we will pick up any rock that whispers to us, any rock whose smallest grain of peculiar beauty catches our eyes. We call this “rocking”—an idea borrowed from my grandfather. We’d gone down to visit him and, as is customary in pleasant weather, we three sat in rusty lawn chairs under his carport talking about matters broad as religion and politics, particular as horseshoes and the birds at his feeder. During a lull in the conversation, Papa pointed to a rock resting by the driveway. “Look at that rock out yonder,” he said, “and tell me what you think it looks like.”

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So we looked and pondered and finally Deana said: “Looks like a turtle to me.” The old man shifted in his chair, his lanky body folding into it just so. He grinned a half-grin. “Yep,” he said, “it’s a turtle.” He was proud—proud that he had a rock that looked like a turtle, and proud that Deana had answered correctly. He loved that rock and he loved Deana; he always called her his “country girl.” When Deana went inside to get some water, Papa told me that if I didn’t ask her to marry me soon, he’d ask her for me. Deana rejoined us and we three talked more about that rock, the rock with the cathedral-dome shell, the curious eyes and slanted mouth, the clawed foot that perchance would become flesh in the cover of night and drag the stony creature to water. We asked Papa where he found it and he told us he’d hauled it from the creek down the road. So now Deana and I seek rocks wherever a creek or river runs to shape the stones. Some rocks we just admire and set back in the water; some we keep for ourselves. We give Papa the ones that resemble animals to see if he can figure out what they are.

Rocking is a sacred thing to Deana and me, an enactment of the great pageant of creation in which nothing is happenstance. When Christ tells the Pharisees that even the rocks will cry out in praise if men fall silent, we believe it—we have heard it. And so here we stand, the cold water of the Hiawassee flowing over our feet and ancient rocks. The rocks flow into the faces of animals. The faces of animals flow into our hands as we try to stump a joyful old man. Our hands overturn rocks beneath the water and will flow into union. Our union will flow into a child. Our child will flow into water, water into rocks, rocks back to faces. Her face is soft, nearly heartshaped and framed by her dark hair. In the cold water of the Hiawassee, a small rock rests among the others. I pick it up with the aim to skip it to the opposite bank to prove to Deana that I can, but end up holding on. It is a pretty rock, a blunt triangular shape, pale orange as an autumn oak leaf, streaked in ivory and silver. I put it in my pocket, and

Formed by Water is now a place of pilgrimage, and it is customary, I’ve heard, for those who cherish Walden to leave a rock of their own while at the pond. Walt Whitman and E.B. White have left their rocks on the pile, as have untold others moved by Thoreau’s words. Ever since hearing of this tradition, I’ve wanted to do the same, and have brought a rock for that purpose: a blunt, triangular one, pale orange as an autumn oak leaf, streaked in ivory and silver. By the time we reach the outskirts of Concord, we’re tired. Deana is particularly tired. And hungry. She is three months pregnant, after all. I am new at this and have yet to learn that after ten hours on the road with a pregnant woman, one’s chief obligations include finding a restroom, a place to eat, and a place to stay for the night—not turning onto the dark, woodsy road that leads out of town toward Walden Pond. “Can’t we just go get something to eat?” Deana says as I head toward the pond. She’s a little

The slate wings of the mountains cast shadows on the river. Deana and I stand ankle-deep in the water, seeking rocks. from my pocket place it in the car, there to forget it for a while. It is the early summer of 2009, a little more than a year since Deana and I were married, not quite two years since we last stood in the Hiawassee River. We’ve spent the last couple days exploring the Maine coast and now are on the road to Concord, Massachusetts—to Thoreau country. Ever since reading Walden years ago, I’ve wanted to come here, and this New England road trip with Deana affords the perfect opportunity to visit. In 1872—ten years after Thoreau died, his ten by fifteen-foot cabin long since vanished—Bronson Alcott visited Walden and left a rock near the cabin site, thus starting a cairn in Thoreau’s honor. That cairn

grumpy but means no harm. “Yeah, sure,” I say. “Just a minute.” “Well it’s late,” she says, “and you don’t even know where you’re going.” “Yeah I do.” “No you don’t. That map we got at the rest stop isn’t going to tell you where that rock pile is or whatever it is you’re looking for.” “I just want to see the pond for a second.” “I’d rather just turn around. You don’t know where you’re going and we don’t know where we’re staying tonight. We need to find a hotel and eat. We can go sightseeing tomorrow.” “Sightseeing?” I say. “You think I want to go sightseeing?” “Yes,” she says. “What am I supposed to call

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Christopher Martin

it? We’ll go sightseeing all day tomorrow. Will you please turn around?” “You know I’ve been dreaming of coming up here for years,” I tell her, “and you’re ruining it.” She crosses her arms and looks out the window. “Look,” I say, “if we were visiting the Holy Land and went to see Jesus’s empty tomb, would you call that sightseeing? Wouldn’t you want to go before you did anything else? That’s the only way I know to explain it to you.” I turn the car around, acting like I’m the one that’s been put upon. “A little band of dedicated Thoreauvians,” writes E.B. White in an essay on his admiration for Thoreau, “would be a sorry sight indeed.” White goes on to describe this Thoreauvian band as one made up of “fellows who hate compromise and have compromised,” of “fellows who love wildness and have lived tamely.” Add me to that sorry band, under the heading of “fellows who have compared Thoreau to Christ to make their pregnant wives feel badly for caring more about eating and sleeping than blindly driving out toward Walden Pond at nightfall.” But I will not admit it now. A Best Western looms over the highway and is the first place of lodging I see, so I pull in. I’m still putting on airs and Deana’s still mad and I imagine we are a sight indeed walking into the lobby. Deana asks the receptionist for a room with two double beds. She takes the keys and heads to the room while I go move the car and haul up our luggage. Thus ensconced, and still in silence, we wander out to find a bite to eat. Ichabod’s Tavern is the only place that seems open, so we park and head in. Despite its superficial nods to the ‘76er American spirit, the bar is a little tacky and upscale. Thoreau wouldn’t have approved— but I don’t tell Deana. They have food and that’s all she cares about and if it will put her in a better mood then that’s all I care about, too. And if it will not put her in a better mood, at least they have Sam Adams on tap. I order a pint and make some reference to Dave Chappelle’s Sam Jackson beer spoof to lighten the mood. Deana doesn’t care much for the joke, so we just brood over our bad, expensive bar food in silence,

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feigning interest in the Red Sox game on the three televisions. Seeing John Smoltz in a Boston uniform instead of an Atlanta one doesn’t help things. Then we hear a familiar sound come straight from Georgia: a jangled Peter Buck guitar riff followed by the crowing of Michael Stipe as R.E.M’s “Pop Song 89” plays out over the speakers. That is our song—it has been ever since I put the Green album in the car stereo on one of our first dates and Deana made fun of the lyrics, “Should we talk about the weather? Should we talk about the government?” It’s not my favorite R.E.M. song by any means, but I couldn’t have asked for a better one at the moment. I look across the table at Deana and she looks at me and breaks a hesitant smile, which starts in her brown eyes and slowly moves across her face. We sit and discuss neither the weather nor the government, but make our plans for the morning, and talk, as we always do, about what we will name our baby. Morning breaks pleasantly through the window of our room at the Concord Best Western. I walk out to the car to get Deana’s shower stuff and other bags I forgot to bring in, happy that we’ve waited to visit Walden today instead of trying to rush it in last night. A cool breeze streams through the hotel parking lot beneath a cloudless sky. I have to admit: It is a perfect day for sightseeing. After a short drive out Route 126, we arrive at a fee station, about the size of the replica of Thoreau’s hut across the street. I give my five-dollar parking fee to the young man working the station and ask him how he’s doing. He nods. For some reason I am very aware of my Southern accent. I try my best to be proper, for this kid— though he doesn’t know it and probably even hates his job—is about as close to St. Peter as I ever hope to see, here guarding the gates of Walden. He gives me a blue day-use pass that I am to display in my windshield. “Whereabouts is the rock pile?” I ask. “Rock pile? I’m not sure exactly what you mean,” the kid says with a confused look. I start to stammer and fidget in my seat.

Deana rolls her eyes from the passenger side. “Chris, let’s go,” she says. “I’ve got to find a bathroom.” I reason that surely an employee of Walden Pond State Reservation would know about the rock pile. I wonder if I’ve given away some precious secret known only to Walden pilgrims; I worry that rockleaving could be against the rules. “Oh, sorry,” I say to the young man. “Could you please point me in the direction of the original cabin site—Thoreau’s, I mean? And whereabouts is the bathroom?” “Who else could you have meant, Chris?” Deana says. “Just get a map and let’s go. I’m about to pee in my pants.” The kid hands me a map—basically a thick line going around what appears to be the pond. He points to the thick line. “Just follow this trail,” he says, “and turn right into the woods away from the beach to get to the cabin site. Restrooms are in the bathhouse by the beach.” I nod and thank him and hand the map to Deana. “You’re something else,” she says. The pond comes into view through a stand of pines, and then we see the bathhouse rising above a crowded beach. “There it is,” Deana says. “Hurry up!” I turn on the road toward the bathhouse and park as close as I can. Noting the many ironies at Walden Pond today is, I imagine, an established cliché among Thoreauvians. There is, for instance, the shop selling t-shirts for $20 each that, quoting Thoreau, say “Simplify, simplify.” There is a hot dog stand and an ice cream truck on the shores of a pond made famous by a man who ate mostly cornmeal and rice while living there. There is the busy beach with the lifeguard and all the noise and litter. And there are the signs that say “Stay on the trail.” (“Every path but your own,” wrote Thoreau, “is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.” ) Walden Pond is full of swimmers today. I hear them before I see them, and when I see the first one, I think I’ve seen some sort of wildlife—an otter, per-

Formed by Water haps, or an enormous muskrat. But, on a closer look, the skullcap and goggles betray this bather as part of my tribe. A travel brochure that Deana and I picked up at the Massachusetts Welcome Center says that “Walden Pond, which so inspired Henry David Thoreau, is as idyllic today as it was 150 years ago.” That’s a tad hyperbolic, I’m afraid. When I first read Thoreau’s words in Walden that “You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns,” I hardly envisioned a hairy old man in a Speedo emerging from the pond to sun himself on a rock. Even in Thoreau’s time, this pond was hardly “idyllic.” Thoreau complained often of the noise of the train on the pond’s far shore, of the clamor of carts and buggies en route to Concord, of the businessmen who gathered Walden’s winter ice to ship to Southern markets. As the poet Mary Oliver writes, going to Walden—whether you’re Thoreau or anybody else—is no simple thing. After the bathroom break, we roam into the woods, following the line on our map. I am walking ahead; Deana yells for me to wait and so I do. Turning around the next bend, we see a blue jay chick, soft and blue-white, hopping through pine needles, hollering for its mother. A chipmunk rushes from beneath a mossy log and pummels the chick—and pummels it again, and again. The chick rolls with each tackle, accumulating mud and pine needles like a dirty snowball, and continues its screeching. In his journal for June 25, 1858, after watching a group of young chipmunks at play, Thoreau asked, “Who striped the squirrel’s side?” I’d always thought it a rhetorical question; but now Deana and I watch the mother blue jay swoop down from on high and thrash the chipmunk, which gives an answer to Thoreau’s riddle: the blue jay, in this case, striped the squirrel’s side. The chipmunk starts for the chick once more, but the mother’s aerial assault proves too much, and so the chipmunk retreats to its log. Witnessing the battle of the chipmunk and the blue jay places me in the story of this forested shore. I recall a passage from Walden in which Thore-

Christopher Martin au describes a battle between two tribes of ants—one red, the other black—comparing the ants’ struggle to the Trojan War: “The legions of these Myrmidons,” he writes, “covered all the hills and vales of my woodyard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black.” Such a thing happened in these very woods. And in these very woods, such things happen still—the blue-jacketed jay and the dusty gray Johnny Reb ground squirrel still waging their unfinished campaign here among these shadowy trees where the world will never see it. The map says we’re getting closer: It appears the hut site is just on the other side of this cove that extends a good ways into the woods. The trail winds through a thicket beside a swampy section of the pond and we squish our way along. I step upon a raised plank stretching across an expanse of mud, where water trickles from the pond proper into this isolated cove to the right—Thoreau’s cove. I wait for Deana and take her hand as we cross the narrow board to the other side. “How many a man,” wrote Thoreau, “has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!” Reading Walden five years ago—just about the time that I met Deana—began my new era. I could be a purist about it and say that Walden was and is like my Bible, that five years ago it became the primary text of my spirituality. But I know where that leads—to crazy talk about Thoreau and Jesus, to tears and a spoiled supper. Purism tends to preclude the needs of others, as it did when I lost my head for a minute and went driving this way last night, without a care in the world for my pregnant wife, as though this pond were a magnetic shrine. In Walden, Thoreau wondered how people “can live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking.” Run that one by Deana, Henry, and let me know how it works out. But the biblical comparison is fair within limits. Thoreau wrote that “the morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.” It is that understanding of creation as poetry—an understanding that absolutely permeates Walden—that spoke to me so when I first

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read the book. This created world, this very ground I tread, is a poem, and one in which I get to partake. I think E.B. White gave the best one-line description of Walden when he said it is “like an invitation to life’s dance.” I was troubled back when I first cracked the book’s pages—worried over my family and my place in the world, and these worries informed my early relationship with Deana. Thoreau’s words, of course, did not magically cure my troubles, but they did, and still do, inform me of the true substance of these things. “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths,” writes Thoreau, “while reality is fabulous.” That passage spoke to me when I was twenty-two, and it speaks to me still at twenty-six, here on this board straddling Walden Pond’s edge, my wife a step behind me, her hand in mine, the cold sapphire water of a New England glacial pool to our left, boggy cove water to our right, the restful water within her, our child’s hands within that water, our hands seeking rocks beneath it all. We three together wander amid this fabled reality. The author of Genesis tells a story of Jacob fleeing from his brother, Esau, who plotted to kill him, for Jacob had tricked Esau out of their father’s inheritance. On his journey through the desert to the Euphrates River, Jacob stops for the night, lays his head on a stone, and falls asleep. He dreams he sees a ladder “set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” From atop the ladder, the God of Abraham and Isaac calls down and blesses Jacob. Jacob wakes, whispering, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not”; he proclaims that the patch of dirt upon which he had slept is “none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” At first light, Jacob takes the stone he had used for a pillow and pours oil on it, and names the place Bethel—“house of God.” There is nothing striking about the wooded cove when Deana and I reach the other side of the footbridge—just a stand of white pines and young

maples and oaks with some rhododendron and other leafy undergrowth. Deana notices the rock pile first, and shows it to me. Beside the rock pile is a small rectangular cluster of granite pillars linked by a chain— Thoreau’s hut site. There is nothing within the chain’s border, hardly any evidence that a foundation was ever there. From the site, a wide, dusty, well-worn path meanders down to the pond’s edge. I take the river rock from my pocket and set it with the others. I arise and whisper my thanks in a breeze that floats off the water and rustles the leaves. Deana notices my eyes, which I’d tried to wipe with my sleeve, and puts her arm around me. We stand there at the edge of the rock pile and look out to the pond. To imagine angels ascending and descending on a ladder in our midst would not be a hard thing to do; but no imagination is needed. There in front of us are the ordinary white pines, rooted in the earth, their tops reaching to heaven, ascended and descended by woodpeckers and a red squirrel. I had always imagined being alone on my first trip to Walden, of sitting on the shore all day and reading Thoreau’s words. But Deana’s presence is my blessing, a confirmation that here is the gate of heaven through which we ever walk. With a last look around, we turn and head back down the trail, talking of where we might get a bite to eat back in Concord. Before returning to the car, we walk across the street to the Walden Pond store—the one I’d scoffed at earlier—for a look around. Deana loves Christmas ornaments, and we collect them from special places we visit; and, sure enough, this shop has them. We buy a Walden ornament and a children’s book for our baby about a mouse who lived with Thoreau.

Formed by Water

Hundreds of miles south of here lie mountains blue as the wings of herons. Where the birds sleep in their misty rookeries, a river forms rocks to faces. As Thoreau writes, “I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with new life now.” I hope the water will fashion our child’s face after Deana’s, for her face is beautiful.

Notes New and Selected Poems: Volume One. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992. p. 239. A Yearning toward Wildness: Environmental Quotations from the Writings of Henry David Thoreau. Tim Homan, Ed. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree, 1991. p. 57. “A Slight Sound at Evening.” Essays of E.B. White. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. p. 241. Walden. New York: Signet Classics, 1999. p. 94. Walden. p. 182. From Thoreau’s Journal, dated June 25, 1858. Quoted in In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World. Eliot Porter, Ed. New York: Ballantine Books, 1967. p. 90. Walden. p. 182, 86, 174, 68 “A Slight Sound at Evening.” Essays of E.B. White. p. 234. Walden. p. 76. Genesis 28:12, KJV / 28:16-17, KJV From Thoreau’s Journal, dated February 27, 1860. Quoted in A Yearning toward Wildness. p. 58.

Christopher Martin lives with his wife and their two children in the northwest Georgia piedmont, in an old house between Red Top Mountain and Kennesaw Mountain. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shambhala Sun, Ruminate Magazine, Drafthorse, Still: The Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Loose Change Magazine, Revolution House, New Southerner, and American Public Media’s On Being blog. His first chapbook of poetry, A Conference of Birds, was published in February 2012 by New Native Press. Some of his poetry was recently selected to appear in the Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, due out this fall with Texas Review Press. Chris edits the online literary magazine Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination.

George Schaller (right) with snow leopard, Mongolia.

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ON THE IMPORTANCE OF GEORGE B. SCHALLER Jon Miceler

walk quickly almost at a run, following a barefoot Mishmi tribesman through the silent, humid Himalayan jungle. How could he have been so careless as to get so far ahead of us? He is surely lost, I think to myself, imagining the phone calls I will have to make to his wonderful wife, Kay, and his employer, the venerable Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo, informing them of the disappearance and presumed demise of Dr. George B Schaller, the world’s greatest wildlife biologist. And surely they’ll blame me. The porters and I have been moving at this pace for more than two hours, after realizing George had risen before dawn and left us in our sleep as he inevitably did each morning in order to see and hear rare wildlife in this remote corner of the eastern Himalaya before our team of porters stormed through. Yet we had always caught up to him within an hour at most. I knew he wanted to see as much as possible of this last wild corner of India—one of the few wilderness areas to which he had never been. Our destination is purposely unplanned; to simply wander east, parallel to the great Himalayan range which formed the border between the remote state of Arunachal Pradesh, India and Tibet. Our aim: get as deep into this last Asian

wilderness as possible, and see what wildlife remains. As the tribesman and I round a tangled stand of bamboo, we both nearly collide with George Schaller. I stumble back and stare at him, framed in a nimbus of rare sunlight penetrating the forest canopy. He turns slowly and looks at me, silently, sweating, calm. And then, without taking his eyes off me, he snaps a thin shoot of bamboo, his trail marker… of course. He sees my anxiousness and asks quietly, with faint Germanic accent, “Are you ok Jon?” “Yes,” I answer, and we carry on. That trip, made more than ten years ago when George was already in his late sixties, was my first expedition with him, and its impact was life-altering. George and I went on to undertake several other expeditions in the same Himalayan region, and later we tracked the elusive Tibetan antelope together to its summer calving group deep in China’s Kun Lun mountains. I learned more on those expeditions about myself and wildlife than at any other period in my life. I am where I am today, managing the last wild places of Asia for the World Wildlife Fund, because of George, and those expeditions.

Jon Miceler Until that first trip, I knew George only through letters, the first of which came while I was living in China’s city of Chengdu, Sichuan in the early 1990s in response to one I had sent him with questions as to how I might help conserve parts of Tibet. I had little hope of actually getting a reply. But his response, when it came, in precise penmanship, contained kind and encouraging words as to how I might make a difference. I was won over for life. That someone of his stature would take the time to handwrite a letter to me, a young unknown, is indicative of who George is as person, and his importance as a role model in our increasingly complex world. I then embarked on a global journey through his many books, most of which were ground-breaking for shedding light on the then still hidden ecology of our planet’s greatest species in their natural environments: gorillas in the Congo, lions in the Serengeti, tigers in India, pandas in China, antelope in Tibet. Each book meticulously presents his research to the reader. Yet what keeps the books in print today is the astonishingly thoughtful, indeed beautiful, prose that forms the main narrative. Such writing at times brings tears to the reader, and can only come from the heart of a man deeply in love with the wonder that is our natural world. This depth of feeling is most apparent in The Serengeti Lion (1976), which won the National Book Award. Subsequent books including Stones of Silence (1979), The Last Panda (1993), and Tibet’s Hidden Wilderness (1997) document our planet’s greatest wildernesses and their creatures, many on the brink of tragic human-induced extinction. The descriptive insight in his pages assures George a place amongst an exclusive brethren of literary American naturalist-writers including John Muir, Loren Eisley, and Aldo Leopold. Yet the global reach of his oeuvre somehow places him in a category of his own. Writing about George by others over the years has often involved descriptions of unexpected encounters with him in remote places, such as the 1975 American K2 expedition’s meeting with him in the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan. This group of well-equipped American climbers supported by 600 porters did not know quite what to make of the handsome, khaki-clad biologist accompanied by a single porter, about to embark alone on months of mountain ungulates research. The wonderful description of George, full of awe and admiration, by expe-

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dition member Galen Rowell in his In The Throne Room of the Mountain Gods (1977), describes a quiet man, wary of anything extra, inured to the discomforts of mountains, yet genuinely interested and deeply informed about the more mundane world of Himalayan mountaineering. At that time George was already a towering figure of global conservation biology; and Galen, a highly accomplished wildlife photographer and mountaineer, knew this. The genuine interest expressed by George in Galen’s K2 expedition no doubt had the same effect on Galen as George’s hand-written letter, full of interest, advice and encouragement had on me when I received it in China as a budding conservationist. Taciturn, stoic and easily irritated are the largely inaccurate characteristics ascribed to George by Peter Matthiessen in his classic Himalayan travelogue The Snow Leopard (1978). Peter accompanied George on an expedition to a remote part of Nepal in search of the mythic snow leopard – mythic because at that time so little was known about this supremely beautiful and elusive high-altitude leopard. In 1973, when that expedition took place, George was indeed a driven, young biologist thirsting for knowledge on the ecology of snow leopards, so that he might better protect them. Peter, having just lost his wife to cancer, may have been looking for a more garrulous companion in the wilds of the Himalaya and was no doubt disappointed by George’s quiet focus. It is unfortunate that this image of George as the silent, impatient, somewhat misanthropic biologist is what many may forever assume of him from reading Matthiessen’s nonetheless beautiful book, because it is so untrue. My impression from the moment I met George is of a man acutely aware of the impermanence of things – in particular what remains of earth’s pristine wilderness. This did, and still does, inform his no-nonsense approach to most things in life, and his inability to waste words. Indeed, traveling alone with George in the Himalaya we would go days barely uttering a word to one another. At other times he would be as talkative as a schoolboy on topics as diverse as Japanese haiku, Le Corbusier’s architectural influence in India or the morning toilet preferences of Tibetan marmots. Unlike many of us who recognize time’s swift passage, and seek to accumulate more for ourselves as quickly as possible, George’s sense of urgency has been

On the Importance of George B. Schaller

George Schaller surveying wildlife with the author, Kun Lun mountains China, 2000.

a selfless one on behalf of the planet’s last wilderness areas, and his personal sense of duty to protect them. This urgency no doubt has its origins in his childhood. Born in 1930s Germany, his early experiences in war-torn Europe could not have been pleasant. Indeed, the horror of that period probably has something to do with his introverted nature and choice of wildlife studies once he and his mother moved to the US in the 1940s. His subsequent six decades of fieldwork in every wild corner of the world have given him the perspectives which many who meet him today find so inspiring. George knows how lucky he has been to lead a life doing exactly as he chose in the wilderness. In his own words: “I was fortunate to have been part of the golden age of wildlife studies, from the 1950s to the end of the 20th century, when many large mammals for the first time became the focus of intensive research. [Today] I live in geography of dreams, in a sense, always searching in my imagination for places where I might help to conserve the diversity of life for all sentient being.” These comments, taken from his latest book A Naturalist and Other Beasts (2007), document his most

gratifying moments in the wild, including a description of his single greatest wildlife experience, which occurred in the early 1990s with a film crew documenting mountain gorillas in the Congo: “One day the film crew stood on a narrow trail where the vegetation was flattened by a nearby gorilla group of eleven. I was nearby. My field notes describe what happened next: Something touches my lower leg, a gentle tap as if with the back of the hand. A female gorilla named Gukunda, with an infant on her back, is beside me, trying to get by. ‘Oops, sorry,’ I say and step aside. She squeezes by. This is the single most wonderful wildlife experience I have ever had. We read George’s books and pine for a time now all but gone. Such experiences are in many instances impossible today because of the environmental degradation of so many once pristine areas. And yet his disproportional number of edenic wildlife encounters has come at a cost. It is as if, in exchange for such experiences, he has been chosen by the natural world to bear witness to his own failure, for reasons far beyond his control, to protect the last wild places, suffer the anguish of watching their desecration the

Jon Miceler

George Schaller crossing river deep in Arunachal Pradesh, India, 1999.

world over in the Arctic, the Congo, Tibet, the Amazon and elsewhere. Yet he carries on with a quiet optimism reserved for the many (mostly young) people who so often ask if he has hope, given all the grim environmental challenges. His optimism in the face of such challenges, and his ability to convey it with keen enthusiasm to heads of state or school children, is one of the traits I admire most. It is not a feel-good optimism, but one tempered by the realpolitik of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s messy world. This pragmatic optimism of his convinced me to leave my earlier entrepreneurial career path, and dedicate my life to conservation. No doubt I am just one of many similarly influenced. This, then, is perhaps his greatest legacy. Though conservationists are generally an inspired lot, at times even we succumb to the ennui born of the struggles inherent in environmental work. We operate in a state of perpetual crisis, necessitating constant triage, on shoe string budgets. As I have watched the global environmental stakes rise, the pools of conservation funding shrink and the competition between conservation organizations intensify, it has felt easy to lose perspective. At

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such times I remember how incredibly important George B Schaller is as a role model for all of us in this field. His legendary experiences have instilled in him a sort of organizational ecumenism, enabling him, at a personal level, to fund his work through a focus on collaboration rather than competition. George works on behalf of nature, not a particular organization. In this free-agent role, I have seen him again and again act as a bridge between organizations, never failing to share information, give credit where it is due, or mentor one of us in the field, no matter what the logo on our business cards. His life offers much-needed perspective and inspiration, not just for other conservationists (nearly all of whom view him as the greatest conservation biologist ever) but to us all. At a time when the news is almost daily filled with stories of rapacious Wall Street greed, war and environmental destruction, George stands out as one who did the right thing. By choice, and the good fortune of a career that unfolded at a simpler time, he decided against seeking personal enrichment and job security in favor of a life focused on the protection of the natural world. The global

admiration and fame that followed was an unplanned side effect of dedication to this path. Such an example of life well lived defies crass measurement of success in terms of dollars earned, and is all too rare. Today George continues to dedicate his life to the task of studying and protecting the natural world. Indeed, as I write this I get word that he is in Tibet, radio-collaring brown bears. He is now 78 years old, which begs the question will the world’s greatest wildlife biologist ever retire? If

On the Importance of George B. Schaller George has any control over it, the answer is “no.” When questions of retirement are put to him, he likes to answer by invoking the example of the great early 20th-century inner Asian archeologist, Sir Aurel Stein, who, after a lifetime of exploration, dropped dead one fine morning at 82 in Kabul, Afghanistan at the start of a new expedition. As George once said in my presence of Stein’s death, “a perfect coda to a life spent doing what he loved in the wilds of Asia, one I hope I am lucky enough to emulate.”

Jon Miceler is the WWF’s Managing Director of the Eastern Himalayas Program and Director of the Mainland Asia Program. Jon has studied and worked throughout the Himalaya since first landing in Nepal as a university student in 1988. Beginning in the early 1990s, he founded the first foreign ecotourism company ever based in Tibet. Today Jon splits his time between all Himalayan countries and can occasionally be found at his desk in Washington DC.

For Allan Burns

mist lifts above the marsh— the tops of phragmites covered with frost buttercupped by sun— the green bales of barley paling in the hayed field Wally Swist’s new book, Huang Poand the Dimensions of Love, was chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa as a co-winner in the Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Competition, and will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in August 2012. His previous book, Luminous Dream, was chosen as a finalist in the 2010 Future Cycle Poetry Book Award, and his scholarly monograph, The Friendship of Two New England Poets, Robert Frost and Robert Francis, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. An audio book of his nature poetry, Open Meadow: Odes to Nature, is available from Berkshire Media Arts (BMA).

FISHERWOMAN Charlotte Helston

ur longboat rests low in the water, quiet and unobtrusive as a leaf carried downstream. We sit on small, wooden blocks and rest our paddles across our thighs. Moving with the current, we use them only to steer around rocks or to push off from shallow spots. Below, I imagine our passing as a mere shadow. River fish and ribbons of rockweed move in the deep currents, unseen to us in our vessel filled with hooks and lines. The tools of a hunter amass around me, unfamiliar and intriguing. I look out at the organic symmetry surrounding the longboat; ripples, reeds, shoreline, forest. Beyond everything is wilderness, expansive as reserves back home in Canada, yet here it feels truly limitless. I arrived in the village of Muong Ngoi, Laos, a few days ago. Reachable only by long tail boat, the rural town has seen a delay in the arrival of TVs, cars and hot waterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for the time being anyway. Cell phones have already made it up the river, and a few motor bikes too. But for the most part, people get around by pedal bike, maneuvering their wheels around dusty orange potholes. The couple hundred residents warm their homes with fires, concoct homemade whiskey when work is done in the rice paddies, and get their

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dinners from the Nam Ou river. I look around at my two companions. At the bow is Vita, busily preparing tackle, concentrating like a falcon with a mouse. It was his wife Nan whom I met first, a delicate woman in her mid twenties. She ran the family restaurant and concocted the best yellow curry I have ever tasted. Flavoured with hints of lemongrass and roasted cumin seeds, the spoonfuls of eggplant and potatoes sprawled warmly on my tongue. While I ate, Nan sat with me and we spoke of our families, our interests, our men. She ran the restaurant while her husband spent his days fishing for her main courses. With the stream of tourists coming in, he was trying to start a business running fishing trips. The young couple had grown up together, and when Vita left to pursue higher education in Luang Prabang, Nan had waited for him. When I asked Nan what activities I might do the following day, she immediately hollered across the street. A young boy picked up the message and sprinted down the street yelling it at the top of his lungs. Moments later, Vita appeared. We shook hands and he smiled, his round face softening in greeting. He spread a map on the table and showed me where

Fisherwoman

The couple hundred residents warm their homes with fires, concoct homemade whiskey when work is done in the rice paddies, and get their dinners from the Nam Ou river. he usually fished. “Anything you catch, Nan or I will cook up for you,” he said in a sweep of effortless English. “Oh, I don’t eat fish actually. I’m a vegetarian. But I’d love to come along for the scenery,” I said eagerly. Vita seemed to work out this statement for a long time, perhaps unsure he’d gotten the translation right. “You want to come to... watch?” he asked. I nodded. The next morning, I met him at the pier. Behind me is the owner of the boat, naked but for a piece of cloth tied around his waist. I am bundled in layers of breathable fleece and a bright blue rain jacket. Not a single goose bump blemishes the boatman’s

smooth, brown skin. His bare toes grip to familiar grooves as he walks around the moving boat collecting and sorting lures. I soon learn his lack of dialogue is not the result of the language barrier, but is simply his way. He hardly even speaks to Vita, though I can tell they get along just fine. There isn’t a city for miles, the nearest far upriver near the border with China. The sky has just cracked open like an egg, slowly pouring gold along the treetops. No motor spoils the silence, and none of us utter a word. The animals are asleep or hiding; we hear no chirps or yips from the dense forest. I am but a shivering speck in this vast outdoors. Already, an element of survival suspends in the atmosphere. There’s cold and isolation, no Super Store right around the corner, no strip mall, no easy way home. This is na-

Charlotte Helston

ture. This is real. We stop in a sheltered bay, and the two men stand up effortlessly and begin casting their lines out around the boat. I sit patiently, take a few pictures, and listen to the culminating birdsong. “So why do you not fish,” Vita asks suddenly, arching an eyebrow. I hesitate, trying to gather the words in my head—slaughterhouse, cruelty, killing—and attempt to put them in the right order. I stopped eating meat when I was 10 years old, after seeing photographs of chickens stuffed by the dozen in wire cages and cows with rotting hooves. “In my country, people are very cruel to animals and keep them in cages.” Vita sits silently rubbing his palms together for a few moments. “Caging animals is not hunting,” he says, pronouncing each word with precision. “We hunt here to survive.” Vita’s response echos a whisper I have been discoursing with for the past month. Backpacking around towns where livestock roam the streets and pastures, and families hunt as a daily practice, has shown me there are other ways people co-exist with animals. Ways that somehow root these communities in their surroundings and intimately connect them to the land. I have experienced the pleasure of growing homegrown greens for shared dinners amongst friends and family. I remember my tomatoes, grilled and sprinkled with fresh basil, the spice of nasturtiums, grown from seed then tossed into a salad. That process of working the soil, planting the seeds and harvesting them months later softened the divide between my life as a writer and my existence as a human. But that was in my own backyard. This is true wilderness, and hunting here, as Vita does, is like digging into the earth with my whole being. Detached from the world that has shaped me, I feel like I can shed the labels that name me Vegetarian and Animal Rights Activist. Here, I am only human, only animal. The silence of this outdoors permeates my skull, and my debating thoughts are hushed. It seems so simple now. “Pass me a rod,” I say. I rise from my squat in the middle of the boat. I’ve never cast a line before, and observe the mechanics of the rod with curiosity. It is old and worn

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with use, but has the same design and technology as those I’ve seen hanging in Canadian Tire. Vita shows me how to release the line and hold it with my thumb before whipping it out at just the right moment, and then how to snap the reel tight again when it’s time to pull in. Stooping like a kingfisher, I send my line out and dimple the water only five meters from the boat. “You let your thumb off too soon,” Vita explains. I keep practicing and develop a feel for the timing. Still, my companions double my farthest casts. I wobble periodically, and earn amused looks from the boatman. There’s something about the rhythm I like right away. Forward. Back. Again. I have never before played this role of hunter, yet almost immediately I feel a rush of instincts. I am alert. River sounds chime all around me, trickle, birdsong, the steady workings of the water moving. Then the plop of my hook, the click as I reel in. I am no longer separate from this landscape, having transformed from observer to participant. For the first time in my life, I feel like a hunter. My thoughts turn to the river bottom, to my prey. I picture the algae covered undersides of rocks, the lower half that is only seen when a curious hand plucks them from their spot in the muck. My mind swims, sees reeds tugged by the current the same way a willow’s branches are swept up in the wind. Against the rushing water, a fish with silver scales beats his tail like a wing. The fish glows with opal scales; its colours pulse with life. A double arch of silver glints in the fish’s eye and he darts to it, beating his tail left and right. The hook catches; the fish jerks. Still the reeds sway this way and that. The water turns dark with unsettled dirt and blood. I shake my head of the image and bring my mind to the surface. My line draws in easily, limply. I imagine what I would do if I hooked a fish and won the battle, drew my catch out of his element and into my own. And I decide that I would unthread the hook from his lip or eye or cheek and toss him back. All I wanted was to interact with the landscape. Catch and release. I ask Vita if fish are ever thrown back and he looks at me with disgust. “Why would you bother to fish then?” he asks. On the shore a pack of wild dogs sniff the

ground then prick their ears towards us. There are seven of them, all sunken bellies and matted fur, probably tracing the path of another wild creature. They watch us watch them, stare without blinking. Then all at once, they turn and take off back into the forest, trotting with their noses down, following scents. I feel the weight of the rod in my hand and follow the line down to where it punctures the water like a threaded needle. Today, a fish and I take turns outsmarting each other. After casting for an hour with no success, we paddle to a sandbar and pull the boat to shore. Vita and the boatman haul a giant net out of the boat and wade knee deep into the icy water to toss it out. They catch a few minnows in the first throws, but nothing bigger than my index finger. They stay almost perfectly quiet so as not to startle the fish. Every move is calculated, every throw of the net planned through nods and winks. Vita seems to notice something, a ripple of movement or a dark form beneath the surface, and points his chin towards it. The men move deeper, their bare feet feeling their way over slippery rocks. Up to their waists in water, they stalk like expert predators, patient and poised.

Fisherwoman With a sudden jerk their net comes in with a flash of pink writhing in the tangled cord. Vita acts fast, heaving the drenched net onto the shore and driving his hand towards the thrashing fish. With a single strike, Vita has killed his prey with a round, grey stone. The two men discuss the catch. They point at the fish and the bucket of minnows, tap their fingers in count, slap each other on the back, and finish with a firm handshake. “This is for my wife,” Vita announces. “She will make a great fish curry tonight!” He holds his fish up to the light, lets the wet scales shine. Squatting at the river’s edge, he hums as he rinses the fish of blood and sand, cold water lapping up his arms. He takes his time, works in an opposite manner from the rushed coordination of the catch. Vita cradles the fish in one hand and rubs it clean with the other, carefully turning it over to get around each slippery fin. Before getting back into the boat, he finds a large leaf to wrap the fish in. It is waxy to the touch and patterned with dark green veins. Vita steers us to a nearby bay shaded with overhanging Ngiu pa trees, trunks tall and pale grey. We take up our positions, Vita at the bow, me in the middle, and the boatman at the stern, and begin casting. Deep below a fish fools my senses, hidden from sight and sound and smell. Every few casts, I feel a tug, sometimes slight and sometimes firm. The first few times this happens, my right hand frantically reels in. Then Vita tells me to slow down, to feel the fish. Rather than speedily reeling in, I attempt to coax the fish with smooth and relaxed movements. I reel in slow turns, pause to feel the resistance, and reel again. But each time, my patience and composure wanes, and the fish gets the better of me. The longer we go without catching something, the more obsessed I become. Each hook that comes back skipping along the surface, light as a water bug, wears on my spirits. “Some days we catch nothing,” Vita says. “That is when our wives become very angry with us.” He repeats the phrase in Laoatian and the boatman chuckles briefly, then returns to his state of calm, legs folded beneath a muscular torso, eyes scanning the water. I am watching my shifting reflection in the water when I realize Vita is pulling us up to a row of

Charlotte Helston

beached longtail boats. As we step out, Vita explains, “This is an Akha weaving village.” A steep climb leads us to a one road village, crowded on either side by modest stilt houses. The ground is the same dusty orange as Muong Ngoi, compacted to a hardness from the weight of many feet. A flurry of action shoots through the village as we approach. From within the houses, brightly coloured textiles emerge, flapping wildly as fish. Before each home, the woven fabrics hang over horizontal bamboo poles in vibrant contrast to the grey wood buildings. Vita shows me the giant wooden looms set up beneath almost every stilt house. “The cotton is harvested in these fields.” He gestures to hills far off in the distance, at the base of the mountain. “Once the cotton is picked, the women spin it into thread and dye it with a mixture made from berries and roots. Then it is made into scarves and wall hangings.” Women tug at my rain jacket, smile so earnestly. Old women, mothers, young girls—who most deserves to make a sale? All across Asia posters urge tourists not to buy from children, as parents with earning offspring are far less likely to send their kids to school. A nearly toothless woman grins and holds out her wares for me to touch. Her feet are cracked and bare beneath her long skirt. She strokes the cloth with hands stained purple from working with dye. From her I buy two pieces, one for myself and one for my mother. Back home, months later, wearing that scarf and knowing where it came from, of its journey and the hands that gave it shape, will bring me more pleasure than any other piece of clothing I own. Vita nods in the direction of the boat, and I understand that it is time to press on. I say, “la kawn, khop jai” and they reply, “sok di.” Simple words of farewell and thanks. All of them wave, even the ones I didn’t buy from. Vita tells me how important the river is to these people and to his own community. “It is where we bathe, wash our clothes, get food,” he says. “It joins the villages together and lets us trade.” Sometimes, he will exchange fish for textiles. For the villages along the Nam Ou, the bounties of the river and the land are invaluable.

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I trail my finger along in the water, two widening lines extending out from it. The boat sits low in the water. The sun has burned through the mist and it is warm enough now to take my rain jacket off. I focus my every thought on fishing, envision energy shooting down the rod and into the water. Being human has fused together with being hunter. My one desire is to catch a fish. All else channels into this one, powerful need. No one speaks. Each of us is in tune with our own battle. Then, a tug on my line. Gentle at first, and soon aggressive. Adrenaline sparks beneath my skin. Vita and the boatman say nothing though they are watching with interest. A silver form erupts from the blackness of the river, alive and fighting. The rod sits heavily in my hand as I draw in the line, slowly, methodically. I pray not to lose my balance, not now. The fish nears the boat and I know I have a choice to make. Vita scoops it up with a net, smiling his big smile, teeth flashing bone white. The fish squirms. I could throw it back, let it continue its life, or I could end it now. I have only experienced half of the process. My lungs hold; the fish strains for air. Does a tiger ever hesitate? Vita waits, stone in hand. The same ethical dilemma will swirl in my head with each fish I catch in the future. It is in the surrender to silence that I am able to act as a human, as a hunter. Vita lifts his arm, and I don’t stop him. A hard thud, then stillness. “You are Fisherwoman now,” Vita says offering me my fish. I hold my hands palm up, like a tray, and Vita lays the fish on them. Its weight is different now than it was at the end of my line. It is no longer a mystery. We haven’t eaten all day and pull up to a sandbar to cook food. I insist that Vita show me how to descale and gut my fish. The scales come off easily with his machete. I pick one up and examine it, bend the flexible oval and hold it to the sky. It resembles my fingernails. With the tip of the knife, I make an incision along the underside of the fish, stopping at the throat. Deep purple and crimson burst from within. I rinse the fish slowly, run my thumb along the spine and scrape the insides clean. The strangeness of holding something that lived only a short time ago subsides,

becoming as normal as paddling, gathering wood, filling a pot with water. Blood and shining scales flow off downstream. We collect lemongrass and spear it in through the mouth and down the length of the fish. Vita finds a narrow branch and splits it down the centre. Once rubbed with coarse salt, we lay the fish in the spliced branch and bind it tight with a vine, then cook it over a fire. A late lunch is served up on a pile of green leaves along with sticky rice packed up and sent with us by Nan. It has turned cold and I wear my scarf looped around my neck. The fibers are soft as a breath. A group of teenagers from the village are also picnicking on the sandbar and come to join us, exchanging rice whisky for fish. We eat the feast with our hands, separating meat from bone with our fingertips, communicating friendship without words. I feel I have contributed something meaningful, a common need, to these new friends who welcomed me so warmly.

Fisherwoman The once pink flesh has turned white. It separates at the slightest touch into bite-size morsels, tender and nourishing. The fish tastes earthy, a salty combination of the river, its minerals, and the wind off the mountains. I haven’t eaten an animal since the fifth grade, yet it feels right. It feels honest. This feast is the celebration of an entire day’s effort, the successful catch among a multitude of failures. I respect this fish; I know this fish. That spot on the Nam Ou where it struggled against my pull is imprinted into my memory, a lasting image to recall when I am back home. The light softens and the sky blushes. The fish is all bones now. Rice whisky is passed around in an old water bottle. Somewhere, a city churns with rushing people going to and from work. Vita has already begun packing the rods back into the boat. He has a fish to get to Nan before dinnertime.

Charlotte Helston is a recent University of Victoria graduate with a double major in Creative Writing and Environmental Studies. Hooking salmon off of Vancouver Island’s rocky shorelines between exams kept her sane through the final years of her undergrad. Charlotte’s writing has appeared in Island Writer and This Side of West. Her next adventure will be cycling down the Pacific coast to the Mexican border.

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ife was kicking my butt, at least in my head. I was jonesing bad. So I went to the boat shed, a rundown summer kitchen, shouldered my pig of a Dagger Cascade decked canoe, and slid it in the truck. It was Saturday, early April, as good a time as any for a dose of truancy in the form of whitewater paddling. We’d had a leisurely morning of farm chores and then eaten grits with gobs of butter, duck eggs (over easy), and sausage from the winter’s last hog, the one that put up a real fuss at the end, requiring two bullets. The forsythia was starting to drop its petals. The grass needed mowed. There were fences to repair, papers to read, seeds to start, bills to pay, a President to elect, a climate to save, and so on – with all that deliciousness in the air, I kissed my wife and hugged my daughter and then rolled on down the gravel drive a little too fast. It was just after ten. The rain had stopped Friday morning, but I knew the Maury was holding at a fair level. We’d had a wet March, and the trees were not yet drinking the rain the way they would when they leafed out in a few weeks. My regular paddling partner had obligations which entailed a hospital room and people who might

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become his in-laws. He was doing the right thing. I was doing what I was doing–going to get lost and found to the feel of the river in my body again–and I hoped to run into someone else doing the same thing. The boat was in the truck’s bed along with a trio of garbage cans- the two plastic ones, in fact, had been salvaged from the banks of the James on random canoe trips. I dumped the contents of the motley cans in the motlier bins at the wayside near Natural Bridge and then hopped on I-81. The road wasn’t crowded, the old Dodge running smooth. It was fine to be out of the office and away from the homestead. I thought of the nine puppies on our Great Pyrenees’ teats in the mudroom, a mass of warmth and squirm on old blankets and towels against a crate where two Nubian goat kids, born the prior morning, slept off their morning milk. I thought of them and many other things because they were beautiful and a handful and going to the river is as good a time as any to revel in beauty and handfuls. It was hard to watch the road with the clouds veiling the Blue Ridge, but I persevered and then snaked through the pastoralia outside Lexington on

DARK APRIL LIGHT Thorpe Moeckel

Route 39. The sky was a mussel shell, clouds glossy and purled. The meat of this front wouldn’t hit us until that evening, bringing the rivers up once again. The thick light accentuated the color starting on the trees. Redbuds were at their shrillest voltage. Clumps of anemone blossomed along the road’s shoulder. I didn’t even consider listening to music. There were songs everywhere and everywhere else there was music. At some point in the drive, while reviewing the list of supplies I needed to fetch at the hardware store in Lexington before heading home, I made a couple of phone calls to prospective tenants of our rental property and probably scared the people on the line with the buzz of expectation and excitement in my voice. I do not apologize for being fired up. There were no cars at the take out above Rockbridge Baths. There was nobody at the picnic area or at the overlooks stonewalled on cliffs above the gorge. The Webster Springs Whitewater Festival in West Virginia must have drawn a lot of the regulars, I thought. It seemed I’d be paddling alone or else waiting for a group to appear. I didn’t want to paddle alone, but I didn’t want to wait. At four-thirty, I was needed to

Photo courtesy of Shea Mack

help a neighbor hump a front loader washer down a winding stairway. It was already going on eleven. So I zoomed past the monument to Matthew Fontaine Maury, for whom the river was renamed in 1968. Maury, known as “pathfinder of the seas” for his tradeenhancing work charting winds and tides in the early 19th century as director of the U.S. Naval Observatory, is one of those figures from history whose accomplishments and honors feel dizzyingly consequential, if not abstract. In addition to shaving weeks off the sailing lines and inventing torpedoes to harass the Union navy when he quit his post in D.C. to serve the Confederate cause, the guy published a dozen books on geography, helped to create the U.S. Naval Academy, The Virginia Technological and Agricultural Institute, and was asked to be president of William & Mary and VMI. I don’t know how many roads and buildings in Virginia bear his name. In a recent blip of fortune, Pat Robertson honored him as a scientist of faith. I prefer to think of Maury in the image of him as a young man traveling from Virginia to Tennessee, when he first visited Lexington via canal boat on the then named North River after coming up the James

Thorpe Moeckel from Richmond along the Kanawha and James River Canal. I like to think of him admiring the river, perhaps aware that later in life when he taught at VMI and came to better know the river and land it shapes, he’d request his remains be carried through Goshen Pass when the laurel was in bloom. They were. At a certain elevation the skunk cabbage was visible, freckling the ground through the woods along the road like small green mammals. Mountain cherries in blossom, serviceberry, too—the river splashed and gurgled, and even at forty miles per hour I could hear it with the window cracked. I was turning off 39 on the gravel road to the put in when glimpses of unnatural color—plastic— appeared through the trees. There were boats, lots of boats and cars and people gearing up for a river trip. The word playdate came to mind. There was a woman, I kid you not, with her drysuit unzipped to the waist, going from vehicle to vehicle, person to person, offering home baked chocolate cookies from a Tupperware so large a monkey could have paddled it down the river. Her name was, I forget her name. Like me, she paddled an old Dagger. Most in that party paddled boats from another era. The eras had been accelerating in recent years, but everyone knows this. I tend to be the old guy on the water. Today, it appeared that at thirty six I was younger than each of these folks by at least ten years. To ponder why this felt so exciting went, thankfully, against my latest religion. “Are you in charge,” I asked a guy with a beard like a muskie fly. “Am I in charge,” he laughed. “I can’t even find my lifejacket.” He seemed a little blown away, but I tried not to project. “I’m wondering if I could join this group,” I said to the lady with the cookies. “Is it one group?” “Indeed,” she said. Her hair was gray and her eyes reminded me of fruit juice. I’ve always been unusually attracted to people who use the word indeed. “Check with that guy over there,” she said. I bit into her cookie, looked at the guy. He was walking towards us. He, too, wore a drysuit unzipped to the waist.

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I wondered if they thought I was underdressed. I wore pile pants and a couple of those recycled soda pop shirts that retain your worst odors even after you wash them in the latest earth-friendly detergent. “You’re welcome to join us,” the guy said. We introduced ourselves. Chris, Scott—I forgot his name. I thanked the lady for the cookies. She looked a little too pleased. I tried to guess which of the crew might be her husband. The other fellow confirmed that, indeed, he had left his lifejacket at home. “Is he from Vermont, too,” I asked Scott or Chris. “No,” Scott or Chris said. “He’s not with us. He was going to join us, like you.” “I wish I had an extra vest to lend him,” I said, hoping I’d remembered mine. There were eighteen boats in the party. It was a group from Connecticut and Vermont I’d joined. We looked ridiculous on the river—all paddlers do— like waste from an overturned toy truck, but there was something thrilling and beautiful about it, too. Not long after we put on the river, I stared upstream from my place on the river near the front of the pack and what I saw and what I felt were so distinctly different, I knew there was a moral in the moment that I’d never understand. I think it involved civilization and twilight. I carved into a microeddy then. Yes, I did, and then I peeled out with a flourish, feeling the entire watershed of that river join the watershed of every river I hadn’t paddled and every river I had. Waves, I’m talking about waves. The Maury is a sandstone river. Due to mysteries of origin and form, the rock is chunkier than the bed on other sandstone rivers in the region. They say the flood of 1985 turned a lot of the Maury’s boulders, and I think this also may account for the harsher, sharper aspect to the bed. In Goshen Pass, the rocks are gray and pink and yellow and purple and every other color, too. Lichen mottles it and so do the splash marks in some chemical fashion in addition to the smears of wet. Looking at the river, I always wish there was a geologist present to read me the story of the long and sloping, stacked cliffs along the banks. Sometimes

these cliffs run parallel to the river, but mostly they run at all angles. I like it when they curve and fold down the slope and into the water like some massive hieroglyph that represents gravity and fate. More than just alder and laurel and rhododendron grows along the banks in Goshen Pass. There’s flood debris, wild contortions of driftwood and leaves hung in the saplings. The slopes along the gorge vary from mixed hardwood to laurel hells to pine. Some of the south facing slopes on the river-left bank, being drier and rockier, are especially scrubby. As with mountain rivers in general, the whole is a sum of contrasts – dry and wet, concrete and fluid, inert and alive. The rapids at all but a flood level do not surpass Class IV in difficulty. Goshen Pass is a good stretch of river for experienced paddlers to hone their edges. There tend to be many alternative lines in addition to the main one. There are creeky slots and choked chutes all over. To map the menagerie of routes through the rapids at any level would produce a doodle not unlike those that sometimes emerge from long meetings where for all the overeducated, expert talk nothing gets accomplished. You could run any rapid fifteen different ways and catch upwards of thirty eddies a shot. When time and my bad shoulder allows, I prefer to catch as many eddies as possible in a rapid. Blasting through the maw of a wave train is great, but carving in and out from the pockets of swirly behind rocks gives a rapid another few dimensions. For one thing, you get to look back upstream and at the banks, and you feel the rapid in all its dazzling, disinterested intricacy. The torso twists as the paddle blade plants and the boat pivots. You feel too dizzy to feel dizzy. When paddling in a group, catching eddies allows you to see who might be entering the rapid next. You can watch her run. Maybe she’ll join you in the eddy. Sometimes the eddy is too small for two boats and she joins you all the same. I love it when that happens, as long as I’m on the receiving end. A tricky rapid gets trickier. If shit happens, too, being in an eddy mid-rapid lets you assist in a rescue more quickly. The craziest big group paddling experience I remember was on Overflow Creek, a steep tributary of the

Dark April Light Chattooga’s West Fork. There were nine boats. The creek was high. Six of the crew was on our first trip down the creek. We broke into groups of three. I followed a good buddy who in the eddy above a horizon line would mumble instructions and then peel out and disappear over the drop in a manner opposite what he’d mumbled. Another friend mentioned later that my friend was dyslexic. These days, I think and talk about paddling more than I do it. In three years of living forty minutes from it, this was my tenth trip on the Maury. Recently, I discovered that my gear apparently reflects my vague orientation as a paddler. A group of twentysomethings I paddled with on a high water Balcony Falls trip in February tagged me the Junkyard Paddler. To them, my gear was beyond vintage; to me, it is my gear and it is old and tattered and leaky with stories, not the least of which is the one that explores how keeping old gear alive says a darling fuck you to the global economy. Someday I will give it all up and swim the rapids, preferably naked. It is the river’s essence I’m after when I paddle. Nothing tells you a river’s essence like swimming it naked. We swam often on the Chattooga where I lived and guided in the Nineties, spending so much time on the water I had a constant case of foot rot and fungus growing on various extremities. We’d practice ferrying across strong flumes of current by catching underwater eddies, bumping noses with trout and redeye bass. We explored caves and tunnels, potholes and sieves. One full moon at low water, we swam from Woodall Shoals to Seven Foot Falls buck naked. It was a mild August night. I didn’t feel present at the invention of the word womb, and I wasn’t cold either. But I paddle in order not to swim. I paddle because I like rivers and boats and paddles and the interplay of hull and body and blade with each other as the water demands whatever it demands. The craft and setting of it interests me. I’ve been in a lot of boats over the years and I’ve used several kinds of paddles. Each one lives in muscle memory like an old friend, and the rivers we navigated together are inseparable from that intimate history. The clouds broke not long after we put on the

Thorpe Moeckel Maury. The air was in the high fifties. I was comfortable—not too warm, not cold—and the boat and the river felt familiar under me. I enjoyed being with the group. Somehow the impersonal, individual nature of the sport mixed with the intimacy of the shared experience in ways that brought the river closer. It was fun to see who among the seventeen other folks stayed together and who were the lone rangers. I noticed there were two couples, one of which stayed near one another on the river and the other of which roamed. A gray-haired man in one of the new kayaks always ran sweep and a man in a big canoe who must have been seventy often ran first. We were a little society of nomads wearing goofy helmets and neoprene skirts. We were going downstream for no reason other than pleasure. Paddling is not a spectator sport unless you are in the mix and take the time to watch the others. I’ve always liked that aspect of running rivers. The extreme paddling competitions that I hear are broadcast on television I’ve never seen, but I’ve blown a little time watching paddling videos on You Tube, feeling dirty afterwards for reasons that are simple—I mean you can air paddle all you want as you stare at a computer screen, but you’re not going to feel the river in your bones or smell its clean, wet reek or hear its heavy rock and froth and swirl. A mile into the run, we encountered the approach to Devil’s Kitchen. The rocks were larger, here and there bus sized. You could no longer see the river downstream, only a congestion of boulders. The volume grew. Water broke in more places and with more force as the gradient increased. I wasn’t the only one ready to stretch my legs when we eddied out above it. There was a guy with a Grateful Dead sticker on his boat. He had introduced himself to me, but I did not catch his name. He lived in Southern Vermont and had the look, a pencil mustache, smiley, twinkly eyes. I thought of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby. “Here we go,” I said, not knowing what to say. What do you say above a rapid called Devil’s Kitchen – “let’s put on our aprons, big guy!” No. I mean here was this total stranger in a helmet, lifejacket, neoprene skirt. I think he was wearing gloves, too.

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The sky was starting to clear. The clouds that layered the morning were more diffuse. Now and then there were patches of sun. I pulled my boat high on the bank, though there was little chance the river was rising. The highwater line was a couple of inches on the rocks; staring at it, I decided the rate of evaporation must be slower than the rate of the river level dropping. We peopled the rocks along the rapid, scouting our routes. The walking wasn’t simple on the roots and stone and mud. My legs were stiff from kneeling in the decked canoe, and I was happy to feel them under me, stretched, the blood moving. Why I chose to kneel in a canoe, decked or open, twenty years ago when I started to paddle had something to do with it being easier to roll from that position and with one blade instead of two, but it also had to do with visibility and power. Being on your knees allows a higher vantage and more torque per stroke. Despite sincere intentions otherwise, I’ve always been more inclined to power more than to subtlety and grace. Devil’s Kitchen resembled a maze. I remembered running it the first time at very high water with a bloody nose. I was living in Charlottesville, romping into a life of an outdoorsy poet, carpenter, husband, father, a life that my wife labeled with comic accuracy as: mountain man, the video game. In recent years, we’d taken the label to new strides, settling on a small acreage, growing our food, and homeschooling the kid. To pay the bills, I help tend a flock of aspiring writers at a small college. It’s good coming home from the intellectual yeast infection of that manicured campus to cut wood for heat, work plants and chickens and goats for roughage, eggs, milk, and to kill deer and hogs and meat birds for the main course. Now, standing on the bank, it seemed I was staring as much at the rapid as at a blueprint of any typical day on the farm or at the school—tangly, expansive, dreadful, wondrous—something exciting no matter which route you choose. The cleanest line required entering the rapid with a left to right angle, dropping over a small ledge, jamming right over another ledge and continuing right over several larger ledges with progressively larger

Photo by Naomi M. Judd

holes below each drop. I had a good feeling about the rapid today. From my place ten feet up a boulder, I could visualize a clean line each time I looked at the rapid, and I stayed there a while, letting the feelings of confidence open my eyes to more subtle aspects of Devil’s Kitchen – a branch hung between two rocks, a hatch of insects drifting in the misty shine over the river’s surface, the topographic bark pattern of a big sycamore tree. As I stood there, a boat entered the rapid. The fellow paddling it had a red chubby face. It seemed the neck gasket on his drytop was too tight for him. A lot of blood appeared stuck in his head. I wondered if his head might pop. He looked silly, which reminded me that I looked just as, if not more silly in my yellow egg of a fiberglass helmet, tattered old paddling jacket, and neoprene booties. Like his run, mine was clean but not graceful. Devil’s Kitchen is not conducive to clean runs. I muscled through the moves a little too amped. When I eddied out below the last drop, I realized I had no memory of the rapid as a whole, save a few select glances as I powerstroked off the various ledges. My bad shoulder felt strong, which pleased me since it had been nothing but trouble since I dislocated it on the Upper Yough six years prior, at a rapid named Cheeseburger Falls. The eddy pulsed with its orbits. I drew occasional strokes to keep from spinning. Matthew Maury came to mind. I wondered what he would think if he saw us plowing our way through slots between sandstone in rotomolded plastic we wore fastened to our waists by neoprene skirts. The guy with the Grateful Dead sticker ran the Kitchen not long after I did. He was more casual than I thought he could get away with, drifting over the ledges with hardly a stroke. I think he was chewing gum. The river pushed his boat and him around a good bit, but he made it. I thought about carrying my boat up the bank and running Devil’s Kitchen again, this time with more presence. I wondered if anyone had attained the rapid. Attainment paddling means paddling upstream, gaining ground against the gradient by ferrying from

the two of us stumbling over the rocks the river and I

Sylvia Forges-Ryan has published her poetry in Americas Review, Caduceus, Colere, Dogwood Review, Freshwater, Inquiring Mind, Insight, Journal of Italian Americana, Sensations Magazine, Shambala Sun, Tricycle, The Merton Seasonal, and the Yale Anglers’ Journal as well as in numerous anthologies. She is internationally known for poems written in Japanese forms, and many have been translated into other languages. Editor of Frogpond from 19911993, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a fellowship to study poetry in St. Petersburg, Russia. She is co-author of Take a Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace.

Thorpe Moeckel eddy to eddy with bursts of power and finesse. It is a delicate, forceful act. Sometimes I practice attainment on the James down the road from our home. From the put in at the Arcadia Road bridge, it is easy to attain a mile of river through two rapids to a long Class II that I call Screaming Right Hand Turn. Jennings Creek enters the James at that place. I like to get out of my boat at the cobbled mouth and poke around, looking for driftwood and other surprises. Not one of the eighteen boats flipped at Devil’s Kitchen. I didn’t run it again. Five or six people portaged. Somebody who ran early stood on a boulder and shot video with a hand held. I sat in the eddy on river-right, below the cliffs and Route 39. I was already thinking about the slot move at Corner Rapid. The slot at Corner reminds me of Left Crack on the Chattooga below Corkscrew, though without the consequences. There is no finer sort of move in whitewater paddling. You have a line and you can’t be off it by more than an inch; finesse and precision are all you have, and you have the approach to have them in, that’s all. The man in the big canoe who always ran first was asleep on a rock next to the river when the last boat came through the Kitchen. The Grateful Dead guy floated in the eddy with me, and I said, “I doubt the Devil cooks. You think?” I figured this guy is from Vermont and he likes the Grateful Dead so he might be theologically inclined. He didn’t smile. He looked at his paddle blade and then at me and said, “There’s a Devil’s Kitchen in the UK, in the Canyonlands, and in Australia. Either there’s a lot of Devils or dude’s got a lot of kitchens.” We continued bobbing up and down and side to side between a boulder and the faster current off the eddyline. Another sycamore tree dominated the bank over the guy’s helmet. It was starting to bud out and show a vibrant green, though overall the tree still resembled winter more than spring. “Have you ever heard of Devil’s Courthouse in Pisgah, down North Carolina?” I asked the guy, apparently a world traveler or Google-head. He shook his head, negative. Something about his eyes and the lazy way he’d run the rapid, I wondered if he was stoned. He peeled out of the eddy

76 Adventum

then and caught another one a little ways downstream. On the back of his helmet, one of those little green stickers that suggest our country is a conglomerate of many smaller countries advertised Vermont – VT. The group continued downstream through the ledges above Laurel Run. We all beached our boats at the picnic area and took a lunch break. It wasn’t my idea of a lunch place, with port a johns and picnic tables and Route 39 right there. I wanted to eat in a nondescript tangle along the river where a spring trickled from an outcrop, a few bloodroot in petalled splendor, a chance to see salamanders. When we got rolling on the river again, my mind was on food. Lunch—a banana—had been unsatisfactory and the run through Devil’s Kitchen had conjured thoughts of our own kitchen. The prior night I’d chopped red onion, garlic, shitake, chard, and carrot, sautéed them in coconut oil, and then added strips of venison heart. There was sea salt and black pepper, balsamic and soy sauce and asofoetida to bolster the flavor. To add a pinch of asofoetida is always thrilling, since the stuff reeks of dirty socks before it mellows to an earthy, truffley taste as it cooks into the other ingredients. Kirsten had strained and chilled a fresh batch of kombucha, a beverage I always find hard not to chug. A mache salad, still dirty from the garden, finished the meal, each bite a splash of early spring’s green wave in mouth, throat, stomach. I was in the eddy above the slot at Corner Rapid when I came back to that present where because you’re aware of being present, you aren’t really present. I am no foreigner to such space and trusted the rapid and the task of running it wouldn’t let me stay there for long. I stared at the place I hoped to drive the boat, a tongue of water licking a big boulder’s right flank. There was another boulder three feet away, which formed the slot. The water folded in a powerful, endive-translucent crease in the middle of the slot. I’d run the crease once and didn’t want to go there again, no matter how beautiful it was to see. Meltdown moves—where the boat disappears and you with it—are for younger folks than me. Hardly a drop of water landed on my boat’s deck when I landed the launch. My last stroke, at the lip, was well timed and had enough juice. I skirted

Photo by Naomi M. Judd

the crease and launched the slot move. The rapid had mercy on me, or the approach to it. Really, there’s little you can do to correct your angle after the approach except mutter something exclamatory. I eddied on the right and watched the rest of the group run the left side. The Grateful Dead guy carved into the eddy with me. He’d been worked a bit by Hemotoma Hole, a juicy hydraulic left of the boulder, and he was smiling from getting through it. “How was your run,” he asked. “Clean,” I said. “I ran the slot.” “You know,” he said. “I asked my buddy if running the slot took big balls.” He paused, adjusted the strap on his helmet and then his drytop wrist gasket. “What’d he say?” I said. “He said it takes having been here a few times.” “It’s smooth if you hit it right, a sneak line,” I said, but he was already peeling out. A canoe en-

Dark April Light tered Hematoma Hole right then. The guy’s mouth was wide open, primal. It was getting late and I had to leave the group. They were surfing the waves and holes in the small rapids that began after Corner and pulsed nearly continuous all the way to the take out. I said thanks and goodbye and paddled the last couple of miles straight, no eddies, no surfing, just the rhythm of the water and the body with the strokes to keep the boat in the right place, forward. There would be time to pick up supplies at the hardware store and help Cleatus and Morgan move the washing machine and be home in time for evening chores and to cook dinner, maybe get a few licks on my daughter’s dulcimer. I closed my eyes and saw the river and trees and rocks. I was in a calm place between rapids. Somewhere close, a waterthrush was doing gymnastics with its throat, and for a moment I knew what Wallace Stevens meant when he wrote, “My titillations have no foot-notes.”

Thorpe Moeckel teaches at Hollins University and lives on a small farm in Western Virginia, where he helps his wife and children make good eats from their Nubian dairy herd, sheep, poultry, and big garden. Awarded a 2011 NEA Fellowship in poetry, he is the author of three books, most recently Venison: a poem, published in 2010 by Etruscan Press.

ADVENTUM A Literary Magazine

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