A Love Tap from Grandma Poudre

My first time kayaking Lower Mishawaka to Bridges on the Poudre River resulted in another lesson taught by a benevolent and patient river. The water was flowing at 3.5 feet, not huge, not meager. I borrowed a Dagger Nomad, a Cadillac of kayaks made especially for creeks, to charge through the unfamiliar aspects of this classic Colorado river. Unlike rivers paddled during my humble beginnings as an East Coast boater, these Colorado rivers have features I just do not know how to wiggle my way through. Gradient, squirrely eddies, and my greatest nemesis... rocks, especially rocks that one must cozy up to in order to squeeze into the best line. Every river has its own unique personality. Lucky for me, the Poudre is kind.

I'm just getting to know old lady Poudre. At the put-in, the ice melt felt to me, for the first time, not like a horrible, freezing torture, but refreshing and clean. My few other dips into Colorado water were comparable to chewing ice cubes after having a root canal. This time on the Poudre, I was so exhilarated by the water, I dared to paddle without my 5 mil. wet suit (Mistake #1. Colorado boaters will benefit from a full dry suit.)

Much of the run was engaging, with some luscious, friendly wave trains and just enough of those funny cross currents to keep me paying attention and using my brace. Lots of happy-slappy splashing made me smile, but it also made me shiver. By the time I made it into the eddie above Pine View Falls, I was tired, frozen, and ready for a rest. Afraid of being left behind, instead of taking my time to breath, I followed Mike out of the eddy and down his line... Almost. (Mistake #2.) Through the fast paced entry of the rapid, I was feeling quite proud of myself, getting through the mishmash of waves and setting up toward the big river left rock that creates a "Disney slide" of water. Theoretically, this slide could spit me out through the churning pocket of water bellow.

I hate rocks. I have a habit of staying away from them. I came close to the big rock, but not close enough to ride the slide. Instead, trying to punch through the messy water just beside the slide, I was slapped over, falling to my left and eventually riding the slide upside down as my helmet grated along that darn big rock. So much for "Disney slides." I was actually trying to roll up at exactly the moment the back of my head made contact with the slide. I landed in the squirrely water below and tried two more times to roll up. Mmmm... the roll never happened. (Mistake #3. I want my own creek boat, which I will predictably and consistently return to an upright position.)

When I popped up to the surface of the water, I found myself bobbing through waves that suddenly seemed much bigger than they did from inside my Cadillac. Friends like guardian angels in dazzling, fruit flavored boats shouted directions: "Swim to the center!" Luckily I missed whatever ugliness was waiting for me on river left. Then, "Kick, back to the left!" My legs were like lead in the cold. Patrick, whose boat was closest, offered me his bow and helped me to the left as I groaned with every kick. A sound like labor pains or a dying moose came from my mouth in between the sips of air I tried to take during the brief moments at the peak of roller coaster waves. "Swim for it, do it now!" he said. I saw another ugly blur of water just below me, was it a pour over? I didn't want to find out, so I did my best impression of an Olympic swimmer for three flailing strokes and made it to the grass.

Dizzy as a drunk, I wobbled up the steep incline and sat, limbs splayed out and useless. No experiment with drugs ever left me as numb and dizzy as this icy soak had. As my friends went down the river to search out my gear, I savored my life. That grandma Poudre sure let me off easy.

So the lesson in all of this ice water? Patience. Grandma Poudre was patient while schooling me, even when I was not patient with myself. I need more training, more gentle cozy-ing up to her pillows of water and precarious rocks. I want to read her river face, know her details, and learn her quirks... and that takes patience. I will be back in my boat tomorrow.

Fort Collins: Kayaks, Bikes and Breweries

Café s are my interim sanctuaries. Outside the Starry Night Café here in Fort Collins, I have a few hours to transform myself from a kayaking ninja into a writer. Maybe the cappuccino does it. There is even a swirly fern pattern traced into the froth by a meticulous barista. Nothing says "civilized" like a café , where I take respite from my savagery, glorious though savagery is. Without a "real" shower for days, I have been cleaned in a more pure way... I've been christened in the cold waters of the Poudre River. At least my friends who kayak can appreciate this funky detail.

I've joined up with Mike Konschnik, filmmaker/photographer/ director of Dirty Dozen Productions. In between sessions of paddling the Poudre, he shared with me updates on some of his film projects. Stay tuned for my interview with Mike and more on the Dirty Dozen crew. First, we'll get in more river miles.

Ahh, the café , where I realize I am just as much a writer as an whitewater fiend. Water and gravity make bliss. Caffeine and sore muscles are relaxing.

Check out http://www.dirtydozencrew.blogspot.com/

Leaving Ned

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Today is the grand opening weekend of the Happy Trails Café in their new location, just across the street from the train cars where they used to be. I have been saving my punch card with two free coffees earned up from a winter of hibernating in their train cars, the perfect place to write until sunset.

During the short walk to the cafe from my house, humming birds zip overhead. The breeze reminds me that up here in Ned, spring is chilly. Inside the new café, the yellow walls carry in the sunshine. On the counter is a bouquet of lilacs, brought up from “down bellow,” Boulder, where May is summer-hot. On this perfect, sunshine day, it is easy to appreciate living high.

I will miss living here. Something about getting ready to leave a place like Ned makes me look back, as if by writing it all down, I can take it with me.

I want the nights at the First Street Pub, dancing in a trance, slipping out the back door to smoke in a circle under a grey-blue sky so cold that the stars branch out like quartz crystals, heavy and ready to fall with the coming snow. Back in the dark warmth of the pub, long, gypsy skirts swirl over the worn dance floor, moving together like a quilt of spinning disks. Mischievously late in the night, we girls skip home through the snow and howl at the neighbors’ dogs.

I want to keep the lessons of driving through deep snow… and one brief moment of grasping my steering wheel. As my truck and I slide towards the creek beside Hesse Trail, all my body weight pushes through my wrists onto the steering wheel. My truck, the rusty, red beast, slides on its underbelly, nose first over a muddy ledge.

And I want that holler coming from my throat at the end of that same long day, when an old Ford F350, driven by a man with an eye for geometry, yanks out my little truck from the creek bed like a fish on hook. Meg and I, prepared for success, have a box of beer waiting for whoever will be our hero. We salute him with a roadside toast. PBR never tastes so good.

I want to keep skiing in May with Kaelin up Caribou. I want to keep the surprising details, like sophisticated connoisseurship of microbreweries among the patrons of Backcountry Pizza, no cell phones, and the normalcy of hitchhiking up and down the canyon. And how on the weekends, Ned fills with people looking a little different and acting a little different... neater, I guess. They definitely shave more often than most of the locals up here. They come for something they cannot find “down in Boulder.”

Catching Up: Living in the Vortex House

Autumn is long gone and changes are afoot. (I've replaced my laptop, so now I can make this post.) For the last few months, I've been living in a beautiful house in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains over Boulder. At night the view from the hot tub is a glittering city below. This hippy house is full with 8 residents. One young lady and myself are considered "couch surfers." That means we don't really have a room. It makes for super cheap rent and an impermanence that suits my migratory lifestyle.








I've included some pictures of the house. It is the most beautiful place I've ever lived. It was built by an architect for his own personal use and all the details add up to quality. Up the windy mountain road, it looks like a valley of mansions that could easily be the Swiss Alps. But more than the beauty of the place, I have enjoyed the company of this community of musicians and rebels.



I'll be moving out Dec, 20th and heading back to Jersey to visit for the holidays. 2009 will bring many exciting changes. Most notably, I will be moving to Old Town Nederland, a quirky mountain town close to Eldora Mountain Resort. I'm learning how to tele ski (telemark) and recovering well from my ACL surgery. More later on the great snow...





Happy Holidays!

Manifesting Loss?

It's weirdly funny. After my last post, I wrote about how, despite the freedom I feel with less stuff, I would NOT think it's great to come back from the public library rest room to find my laptop missing from my workspace. (That post will never be shared. It's GONE.) I was challenging my notions about anti-materialism and imagining the loss I'd feel. Just a day latter, I lost my laptop. I think I might have spaced out when rushing to a friend's house and left it on the roof of my truck as I drove away.

The universe is helping me shed some of the excess from my life, I only wish some other thing had been shed instead of my very pretty Mac G4.

I did not cry. I am learning non-attachment. Stuff is all in flux and structures are unreliable (read Eckhart Tolle). The laptop cost more than my old Toyota 4Runner, but that truck will fall away too someday. Hopefully not too soon.

Circulate CHI By Having Less Stuff

I'm still living in my truck. I'd like to just make a joke about it... "Extended urban car camping" is what I like to call it. I've learned some interesting practical skills on how to be stealthy while sleeping in a vehicle. More on my secrets when I'm done with the experiment.

The most interesting thing I've learned is how to gauge what is necessary. There are so many things we are encouraged to buy. We are told by marketeers that our lives will be improved if we posses their product, any product, but so much of the stuff we can buy affects us in exactly the opposite way. It hinders our lives in two ways.

Firstly, in an immediate, practical way, we are drained of energy: not having room for stuff, paying to store it, and then feeling guilty for not using it, or drained of energy in our attempt to use it, always trying to fulfill the promise we've made to ourselves that we actually DO need it. Secondly, having unusable stuff, extra stuff, unessential stuff also drains life force from us by polluting the Earth. There is so much overproduction of goods for the American market that the environmental impact of this production (especially of plastic thingies that will sit around for generations) is piling up: in landfills, in storage units, in huge houses that take loads of energy to heat. These two ways of stagnation can be viewed as the microcosm and the macrocosm of the movement and blockage of CHI.

This is my lesson. It's not just a lesson that I can rant about because I understand it on an intellectual level. I've been able to do that for years. ; ) Now that I've actually narrowed my living quarters to the space of my Toyota 4-Runner, I feel the immediate, practical benefits of not having so much crap-o-la.

For those of you who need to taste this special kind of freedom, I recommend the liquidation of your material goods as a potent remedy for malaise. There's energy that goes into owning things; ownership is a kind of responsibility. You need a place to keep the stuff, you need to keep a place. Or, you need people to guard and protect these things for you. Think about the money-energy it takes. The rent you pay or the taxes you pay. Now think about the psychic-energy you spend keeping track of this stuff. Do you a have a stash or a pile in your garage or attic.? How often does the thought of the pile creep into your consciousness? Or is it just hovering in your subconscious mind, preventing new, potent thoughts from arising?

Take stock: that baseball glove you got when you were thirteen. It doesn't fit anymore. Give it to a kid who will use it and let the energy be set free. You'll stop dreaming about the past and you'll feel the vitality that is surging around that space where you kept it because the stuff, the physicality of it, will have a new purpose. It will be recycled in a "spiritual" or "psychological" way as well as a physical way. You might even go out and throw a ball for the kid and feel the energy move through your body.

Or that dressmaker's form that you bought. It's in you closet taking up space. You thought you wanted to learn how to sew, but what you really wanted was a beautiful, handmade dress. Stop beating yourself up for making a mistake. You were trying to make your dreams fit into something more practical, more doable. Now let someone else's dreams come to life... the energy will swirl when that friend of yours who really does love to sew gets that dressmaker's form from you. You'll feel the energy move and make space for your most authentic desires to be manifest.

If you're not using the stuff and it's just sitting there, you have some stagnate energy that needs to be swept out. It will free up other energy points in your life that may feel stuck and you can't understand why. Whether you're wanting a shift in career, relationship, or financial power, all these regions of your life are interconnected. The glut of stagnant stuff-energy, the energy of possessions, may be the reason you are stuck in another area of your life.

Think of a circulatory system like the one in your body. If a clogged artery blocks the flow of your blood-energy, the stagnation can affect the brain via stroke, even if the blood clot starts behind your knee. When the movement stops in one place, it stops in other places. A train track is similar. If the train one stop ahead doesn't keep moving down the line, other stations get blocked up. If there is something in your life about which you are unsatisfied and you've been working on moving your energy toward you goals to no avail, look at what other areas in you life might be easier to move the energy and get some change flowing.

According to Taoist Chi Kung tradition, he unhealthy energy that gathers in the body due to stagnancy is called blocked CHI. Your body, your life's journey, and your ability to move energy are all an interweaving of material and ethereal. If something's gotta give, you can start by moving some stuff. You can be sure that some of the unseen, mysterious energies coursing through the spiritual plane of your life will move along with the physical plane.

There are many books out there describing the "how-to's" of organization, etc. I won't go into that here because I'm sure you can figure out how to get rid of stuff if you want to. Instead, I'm here to let you know how great is my experience of freedom. I'm here to remind you of the times you've already experienced this kind of power-freedom in your life. It's exhilarating to get rid of some stuff, so before you treat yourself to some impulsive buying or retail therapy, remember the health of simplicity.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

I realize I'm about to get up on the pulpit. It's a danger inherent in blogging. What I really want is to give you a gift, an experience of freedom to remind you of that amazing life-path you are following. I want to inspire you to keep going, to keep feeling that juiciness in you life that makes everything a miraculous wonder.

So what's a blogger to do? Is it possible to turn my experiences into a gift that you might actually enjoy reading? At the same time, can I avoid the danger inherent in every blog... the egomaniacal Web Log, part diary, part personal pulpit, without any accountability to a readership because of the random nature of web clicking.

Indulge me... I'm new at this social-interaction-via-the-web-thing and haven't yet figured out how this Blog is something useful for you AND me. I do indeed want to entertain you, dazzle you, maybe even inspire you. So, if it's not doing it for you, let me know. Ask me questions. Post a comment and I'll be happy to give you what you want.

And Now, the Pulpit: