My Happy Place

                    I have it figured out.  Finally.  The river, any river is my happy place.

Desolation/Grey's Canyon of the Green River

I can' t decide if it is the actual river itself, the people the river attracts or even the lack of people attracted.   I encounter a few like minded people.  People who might understand my attraction for muddy water, steep cliffs, and flowing rapids.  Maybe I don't see anybody at all.  It is just me and the Blue Heron sharing the river bank.  I know for sure that the drunk driver passing me on the highway will not be on my river.   The "Colorado" attitude of push and shove, get there fast, pull a fast on over on someone to get ahead, or entitlement, it is not allowed on the river.  The river washes all this away.  It makes us all equal.  The people I meet are different, even off the river they are different.  I can spot a river person by the way they dress, the way they hold themselves, by they way their world is just so much slower paced than that of everyone living in boxed houses.  These people they have river water for blood.  It pulses through their hearts and gives them life.

Yellowstone River

These rivers I have come to love- The East Rosebud, Stillwater, Yellowstone, San Juan, the Green, Middle Fork of the Salmon.  Their waters pulse through me. Every new river encountered mixes with the old.  They are my life blood, flowing through my arteries and veins.  They are but a map model of the earth and its life giving river systems.  

It is the quiet connection of the water to all life. The one link to all.  Nothing survives without water.  It is the commonality to all living things.  The moss on the rocks takes nutrients from the water, the fish eat the moss,  they get eaten by the Eagles and Herons.  The otter and the beaver build houses on rivers edge. The deer and goats eat the green grass watered by the river.  The bear eats the deer.  I float by on the river knowing that I would not survive the scorching dessert heat if not for the cool waters of the river.

In the mountains all rivers are born.  Born of melted snow and ice.  Waking up in the geological young mountain tops. Running quick and cold.  White bubbling down the flowered covered hillsides. Red, Yellow, Purple, flavoring  the water with the sweet scents of mountain flowers.  Always growing becoming bigger, more powerful. Sculpting great canyons and deep valleys through the land.  The  Contentental Divide deciding which ocean to travel toward.  

Sticks flow by, bubbles swirl on, the river is moving. Always changing.  I cannot step into the same river twice. There is new water every second.    I can find the river on a map. The rapids will be there. I park my car at familiar accesses.  It is an always changing constant in my life.


Fall on the Yellowstone River

Away from the river, I am offended by the sights and sounds of the asphalt world I live in.  Alarm clocks and time schedules replace the natural flow of morning bird calls and the brightness of the sun.  Grocery stores and artificial lighting lead me to an artificial time zone.  I open the window in my home only to hear cars and traffic noise.  Where is the gurgling of the river?  Where is my life pulse? I look back on pictures of river trips hoping to regenerate the feeling I get while on the river.    It is only a memory.  Something to hold on to until I get back o the river.

Not just a Rhythm

DUN DUN DE DUN DUN DE DUN DUN DUN

     This is  the Dunduns.  The drums that keep the constant heart pounding beat. It seldom changes. It is the rhythm I walk to, play to, eat to and go to sleep with it vibrating through my soul. It is like my own heart has changed it's normal  rhythmic beating to this new one, sending my life blood through my body in step with this vital new life rhythm. It is the rhythm.
     With eyes closed, I dance, I twirl,  I sing, I drum. Every hand on the drum fills me up. Every pulse fills me up. My hands know where to hit the drum, my body dances of it's own will, my voice joins other voices. My heart is beating with the rhythms.  I am becoming them, they me.
     These rhythms that have taken over me.  They mean nothing, they are everything. They don't pay bills, find lost children, bring back the dead, protect us from harm, or fix our problems .  They are but a hand beating a drum. They are a memory to hold on to, a place of peace, of perfection. They are a time of so many souls working together in unison, heart beating the same rhythm.
     I sink into the rhythm. I forget the heart ache of last year: The constant fear for my youngest daughter. The hopelessness of watching the man I love, live dejected, heart broken for his life right now. The anguish of seeing my oldest daughter so hurt, so torn up on the inside, soul broken, deciding she is worth only what the world throws at her. I  have carried all this in my heart for so long. Just for the moment I can be the rhythm, I can escape. I can heal.  I celebrate. I have the rhythm in me to go on.
   
     I feel the Holy Spirit in this place.  It beats a rhythm of GOD. I feel HIM here everywhere. The  buildings vibrate with love. The chapel pulses with' "I am here. I am here. I am here....," The old growth trees with moss hanging from their branches watch over me with wise and knowing eyes. The "Little Hudson", the Boulder River, the rain (so much rain): These waters they wash my sin of despair away. They tug and grab and wash this heavy yoke on my shoulders, that has been holding me down, the one I cannot seem to let go of, away. As long as I am in camp I am healed. I am free.
     I am free to dance, to twist, to sweat. I am free to feel young, tall, skinny, sexy. I am free to think that I am a good drummer. I am free to feel the drum, to move. I am free to be a little out of control. I am free to celebrate life.  I am free to close my eyes and let the voices and pulses of the morning choir fill me.
     I am free to let my heartache out. I am free the let the tears I have held on to for so long out. These tears I cannot stop them. The exotic pulse of the didgeridoo, the dgembe, the drone, the voices, they consume me. My tears they flow, they make their own river on my face, they drop to my lap. I let them.  I am free to cry.
   

Detox.. San Juan River 2014 Spring Break

 I am in the tired restless phase of being home from yet another grand adventure. There is a never ending mountain of filthy, sandy stuff to be washed dried and put away. Everything from clothes, sleeping bags to toilets (the Gruver) and coolers.  My unwilling body and wistful mind does not want to get working on this. Thus stuff is in piles around the house.  I have time, one bag, one box a day until the next trip.
 

A week on the sunny San Juan River in Southern Utah, away from the man made schedule of time, away from the winter cold of Laramie, a week away from worry over adult children and elderly mother-in-laws, a week away from the daily grind of work. I am reluctant to come home.  I am struggling with putting away gear as it means this adventure is over.
 

 It is a week directed by the flow of the river.  How fast and high is the flow rate? When will we make camp?  Do we have time to stop and explore native ruins?
       
It is a week driven by the wind, filling tents and sleeping bags with fine river sand.  The sand covers our bodies with a fine layer of dust.  It invades every crack and crevice, filling bras and panties creating unpleasant rubs for the next few days. It makes a sticky hair net in my hair, stiffening it to the form of my hat.  No need for a comb the rest of the trip, I just wear a buff or hat.  Will my hair remember what it feels like clean?

   

                                                     Time is told by the sun. When will it hit the tent
and warm us frozen occupants up, making me brave to  get out of my sleeping bag and greet the morning? We loose the sun too fast at night. We try to soak just as much up as possible spreading our needy bodies over rocks and beaches, then it is gone and it is cold.  The race is on                                                         to make dinner before the night goes black.


 
I wonder about the Native people who once lived by this river. The ones who left the drawings on the wall, who built the cities in the caves.  Who were they? Did they live with a covering of sand on their bodies like I am this week? Did they live just to survive or did they have time for celebrations, for laughing, for lounging in the sun? Were their lives directed by the ebbs and flows of the river, by the sun, by the wind, just as my week has been? Did they stay in this canyon all their lives? Never traveling but a few miles up and down river. Where did they go?  Why                                                         did they leave?
   

 Thru my eyes I saw their drawings as a news line left for the outside world.  Clan symbols, maps to drinkable water, stories of beheading, animals to eat etc.  My trip mate Alison saw them from an artist eye,

she saw them as beautiful art..  Someone took the time to chip, paint and scratch these figures thousands of years ago.  They are still there for us to see.  Their story is still being read.  Two people looking at the same thing thru very different eyes.
 

 

 I am jealous of the native canyon sheep.  He gets to stay in this canyon. He spends his time jumping from rock to rock or posing for rafters floating by.  His worry is food and shelter.  He either lives or dies, no other worldly matters to try to figure out. Mr. Sheep how hard is  your winter?What is your joy in finding the green newness of spring?
   








 I finally am beginning to see Lime Creek. This is a second visit.  Walking back just a few yards from the river and I find cool clear pools of water, they seep out from somewhere.  They are filled with green vibrant algae, the rocks and sand have a layer of white dried limestone.  It is so different from the muddy water of the San Juan.
   




 As I was peeing where the water of the river meets the bank, I watched the stream from my body cut a line through the fine river sand and silt to the river.  It was pretty in its own perverted way. I had made my own side channel.  When the river rises with its natural cycle, it will all be washed away. My mark on this land will be gone.  Nobody will know I was there.  Just as it should be.

   
   

Teenager in the House , Broken Skis and Mom as Coach

 This Monday, Toni turned 13, did no work at school, got in trouble and had detention.

  Yep, I have a teen in the house once again.  Luckily I have had 2 other children survive being a teen.  When writing Toni's IEP for school one of the boxes I petitioned to check off was Emotionally Disadvantaged.  All the experts looked at me like I was in fact crazy.  My reasoning is this:  1. Toni is a teen.  2. She has hit puberty  3.People with Down Syndrome tend to stay in life cycles longer than others.  (Terrible twos lasted  six years.). 4. She has me for a mom.  I think she qualifies.  Those supposed experts say otherwise. I say come live with us for a day and see!

 Miss F (Para) and Toni getting ready to race.

After the great experience on the Cross Country (running) team this fall, Toni joined the Nordic (Cross Country) Ski Team. I jumped right in and am now Head Coach of said team.  Yet, another reason Toni should be considered ED.

Anyway Toni is again proving to the world what she can do.  With help from a Para and her  teammates she skis practices and participated in meets.  She is again turning heads of people around the state.  Not because we adapt courses so that she can finish in a timely manner, not because she can manage her skis and herself, not because she looks really cute in her ski gear.  But because when she is out there she is an athlete on the team.  She works hard, plays hard and gives wonderful hugs at the finish line.  High fives are hard with ski poles attached.

Tree? What Tree?

As a coach I am always encouraging her to be better than she thinks she can.  As a Mom my heart is so full of pride for this gal.  For her teammates skiing is easy, fun and good work.  For Toni she works harder than the rest just to get her muscles to make her body stand on skis, yet every day she is out there.  It is harder for her brain to tell her body to turn her skis to avoid trees.  (see broken ski picture) But she goes back.

I got to ski with Toni last practice instead of Coaching. Everything about her comes alive when she is out on the trails.  It was one of my best practices.  Hopefully after the season is over Toni will want to ski with me just because.

Toni and Cousin Anna .  Anna got 1st Toni was 8th.