Summer Ketchup

In my life, there are times when I write a lot, to the point of insanity, and other times when things are moving so quickly and with such intensity that I simply seize the moments passing without having the time to explore them in words. This past month+change was something like that. Moving at the speed of life itself, I haven't written much, and utterly neglected my blog. Here's a snapshot or two of catch-up...

Newlyweds Shane and Rindy Richins

April 25, 2009.

Groomsman Andy, Bridesmaid Jenn

Congratulations! Thank you for sharing your lives with me!

I moved out of SLC for the summer right after the wedding, just shy of the 12 month mark for the house I’d been in. A whole, consistent year in one place is my limit; I haven’t stayed a day longer in one house since moving away from my mom’s. This move was especially difficult, love the people, the house, my stay there was wonderful… but, hey, that's that.

Rafting season kicked off in early May with my first commercial run of the year and guide training in Moab. Here's a shot from the office, a.k.a. the Professor Valley. All of May was gypsy style, purging the routines and consistency of winter from my free-spirited soul. From that first weekend in Moab I visited a dear friend in Park City, spent a night in Idaho Falls with another friend, drove to Montana for my long-time BFF's graduation from Montana State University.

We spent the weekend partying on Main Street, hiking, enjoying the flavors of Bozeman. I reflected on the amazing phenomena of friendship, that after four years of long distance phone calls, being together just felt like home in the presence of someone I love. The following week we spent in Missoula, getting her moved out and enjoying each other's company. I scoped out the Clark Fork river and UofM as settings for possible future adventures such as kayaking and grad school. Looked promising enough.

This photo session took place in a parking garage where a friend took us to sing with the echo of concrete - he'd gone to Catholic school, and sent some amazing Gregorian chants bouncing off the walls. Good times in Montana.

The drive from Missoula to central Idaho ranked an easy top 5 for me. I love contemplative, long gorgeous drives. From Lolo over the snow covered pass to the deep, sheer canyon hosting the Lochsa, curving road, pelting rain, and clouds through cedar forest - the smell and feel and views were truly stunning. My windshield wipers were going full-boar to combat the onslaught of that heavy rain, making it easy not to envy the rafters in training, practicing rope rescue with an overturned boat through class IV+ waves.

Photo: this cherry picker coming into my lane under the overpass inspired a chuckle!

My first stop across the Idaho border was at Shorts Bar, a sandy beach upriver from Riggins where the day-long rafting trips put into the Salmon. I took some time to write, sitting on the hood of my car overlooking the moving water, reflecting the shadows of a slow Idaho sunset through the dramatic canyon. A lone trumpeter swan flew overhead, some deer passed. Everything was green and thriving from recent rain and the excitement of early spring, and I felt I could identify.

Photo: First view of the Salmon from Twin Bridges, 2009. That little green sign says Salmon River, I promise. ;)

I spent the next three days training with Brundage, the company I will spend the latter half of the summer guiding for, rowing big, delicious Idaho whitewater. I am stoked to return to the home state. Our family cabin in central Idaho is, of anywhere on earth, the physical location I feel most at home at. And the Salmon River very well may be my next great love affair. My grandma has been telling everyone she wants me to "Find a nice Idaho boy to marry, so she'll stop leaving all the time." We'll see about that. ;)

After training with Brundage, spending a week with family in Boise and a few days in Park City, I've landed for a whole month in the little desert hamlet of Moab, Utah, where I am spending the month of June. I couldn't have a summer without at least a little time here, I am so grateful that it’s worked out for me and my employers.

The La Salle mountains from the Hidden Valley. Moab, UT.

Life in Moab has been spinning at it's normal, crazed rate, and I have been loving it. I got right to work guiding trips, and have been exchanging room and board with my friends' family for work as a ranch hand and some housekeeping chores. I have to say, I love ranching. It's a mysterious, earthy art, a task for the disciplined, an expression of being in tune with life. I'm inspired by it. The ranch here has been operating for over a hundred years, and is a precious little oasis in the middle of Moab, obscured on both sides by cottonwoods trees that grow alongside Millcreek and Pack Creek. I'll write a separate blog about it, it's too amazing for just this paragraph. Here is a preliminary photo, guess how the hay gets from the field to the trailer to the barn... ?

The veterans here keep trying to convince me that buckin' bales isn't fun. I was and am still pretty excited about it. :)

This weekend some friends came down from SLC to do a day trip on Westwater, one of the west's famous and scenic whitewater sections. I slept out under the stars the night prior, listening to the sounds of the river and mosquitos squealing in my ear. When we took off in the morning, our guide, my friend Jack, was a little apprehensive. A life flight helicopter flew by right after we passed a bald eagle, seemingly contradictory omens. Needless to say, we paddled on. Jack swam a little bit of Funnel Falls, but steered a clean line for us through Skull Rapid, an infamous class IV hole known for claiming lives on it's "Rock of Shock" and accompanying "Room of Doom" - a massive, swirling whirlpool to the right of the main current.

Our crew!

Paddle Captain Jack and me!

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So, there it is, a snapshot update of my summer, so far.

I've thought lately that my wish for the world is that beauty of the earth and simplicity of life won't be overpowered or obscured by stress, cynicism, or mundane and necessary tasks. We're only here once, pretty sure. Live it up. After all, "life is too short to be against everything,"a mentor of mine once said on the waters of the Salmon River.

Love ya. Be well.

JH

Image TAG-arooski

I got tagged. Supposedly, you're supposed to go into My Pictures, pick the sixth photo in the sixth file and blog about it. Participate at will and do it as you please... here is my attempt.

Sometimes I wish I had stats on things, such as the total number of days I've skied, rides I've hitched, hitchers I've picked up, how many times I've traveled some favorite stretches of highway. Etc.

This image is a snapshot of the mouth of Spanish Fork canyon at sunset last December, as I returned from my beloved Moab.

Over the past three years, I've traveled that road dozens of times. I've laughed, conversed, and even seen death over its painted lines. The surrounding vistas have stolen the breath from me, inspired thought, been grounding in their constancy, and given confidence during change.

I look back on some of the most whole, raw moments of my life, and recall the beauty of the west - the Tetons, the red desert, Montana forests, all viewed through a dusty, bug-encrusted windshield. Windows down, with no regard for the presence of rain, snow, gale force highway wind shrieking in and through the vehicle. The kind of heat that could melt cosmetic presence from my face in salty droplets and rise in blurry currents from the dashboard and hood for months, with no relief from a failing AC unit.

Unconcerned for the conditions, I'd sing loudly, sometimes savagely, lyrics of liberation. The acoustic accompaniment to some sunsets, sunrises kneading peace and contentment into wearied, taut musculature.

Dirtbag vagabonding has been a significant part of life as I've known it the past few years.
JH

Moab Getaway

Matrimony Springs, Moab, UT. "As the legend goes, if you drink from it, you will be married to Moab, and always return." I drink deeply, every visit.

Closing the door on the Red River was a little heart wrenching, the symbolic prelude to leaving town - indefinitely.

Moab couldn't be more gorgeous, the La Salles are cloaked in brilliant white, reigning majestically over the red plateaus, the martian landscape, the floor of this valley that gently rises to rub elbows with the sheer cliffs that surround it.

I love this place. It is one of my homes, a place where my soul has been set free time and time again.

I was sleeping in my car one spring night earlier this year, in a town that shares some of the same nuances of Moab, yet hosts a distinctly different flavor, and operates at a perennially lower volume. It was a frigid desert night, and I snuggled into my 0* down bag, listening to the whistling, whispering desert wind draw its fingers over the roof of my well-beat Civic. Lost in my thoughts, I came up with the idea that the desert doesn't offer much, doesn't extend its hand to feed and nourish. Rather, the desert stands stoically, silently, the liberty of interpretation and self assertion lying in the heart of the beholder. Like a backpacker appreciates food on an empty, calorie torching venture, a soul appreciates the lack of propaganda in the desert, the mind cleansed of input and free to process its own products. It takes a few days for the gunk to clear out, and that's why I came.

Cryptically speaking, a synopsis of the experience would fit nicely in these limited words. I found a life altering book on the 50cent paperback shelf at the library yesterday, which opened the vacuum sealed fluids of my brain to look at some "things" a little more constructively. In so doing, I realized the words that go along with the actions I've been taking, and how it all fits into the collective psychology of women, in my generation, with regard to my personal history. I'll make a post about it sometime, when I've finished the book - it presents some really powerful concepts I'm excited to share.

Anyhow, this voyage into the desert yielded thousands of words of progress on some writing projects, a new haircut (pictures, later) and some time with old friends. And, the soul-soothing vistas of a familiar landscape, which kind of brought it all together in the first place.

(Oh, and a desperately needed kick in the ass, dually brought to me by the deity and human hands that wrote the little paperback into being, and placed it on the discard shelf, and the allowance I gave it to rock my monotonously fog enshrouded little boat.)

I love, love, love teaching skiing. But this live out of a car, sleep on couches and in random trailers life suits me quite well. Travel writing would be ideal for me for the next few years, I need to find the words and means to unlock that opportunity, reconfiguring my off-season rhythms.

Speaking of which, I'm going to hop back into my car now, cruise to Salt Lake, and take my belated shot at some of the new powder in the Wasatch. More to come this weekend, and my beloved cousins are coming to visit soon - backcountry jump, anyone?

Life really is grand. :)
JH

The City of Trees

Is alive and well on a passive skied, milky clouded day. I'm looking out across the valley, the Owyhees appearing misty in the background, the fiery colors of fall foliage speaking volumes about this place, adorning the resident maples, catalpas, elms...

Is it home? I don't know. I don't know where home is... Earth. Globally speaking, not regionally pinpointed.

Unless we were to speak of the habitats that constitute my collective childhood memory, in a time where home was more defined than just a feeling. The canopied streets of Boise, the sand and smell of its sage spangled foothills, the water of the arterial river that flows through it all and the days spent swinging into it from terrifying heights. The drive between here and New Meadows, that twisting, convoluted form of a house outside of McCall that seems to bow ever lower with each passing season. The footbridges and sparkling waterways and trails that carve through the Ponderosa forests, the local haunts we've danced the nights away at, whose borrowed letters helped us conquer the Alphabet Game on timeless road trips as children. The small cities, who in and of themselves have an identity to be missed and longed for - relatives of the soul, checkpoints on so many journeys - Banks, Lake Fork, Cascade, Smith's Ferry. The infamy of the Horseshoe Bend hill, the eerie reminders of the Cougar Mountain Lodge, the straight and broad, dusty road to Warm Lake. This area is what Idaho and I really have in common - our heartland. This part of the planet, even in a lifetime of travels, will forever be a beloved muse.

I'm going trick-or-treating with my sweet, wild little bro TJ this evening. At the tender, innocent age of six, he's elected to be a military Sniper for Halloween. My Dad (mistakenly, he admits) let him play Call of Duty on Playstation for a while, before banishing it for violent content. Aside from that, he comes from a proud military heritage on his maternal side - hopefully we'll play up the inspiration from the latter. :)

Happy Halloween to all!