“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Hunter S. Thompson
I remember saying something like, “You take over looking for the French King, I’m going to pass out for a moment, and remember that ‘right is wrong’.” That is when Bitey, our imaginary Canadian grizzly, jumped down from the roof of Tinny and started chasing the roar of a flock of mating female koala bears hinting for a young bear’s attention. My sister’s voice was screaming, “Holy shit, where did these boxing bats come from?”
Jesse was pouring beer on his chest to facilitate the tanning process. “As your attorney, I strongly advise you to stop making consensus decisions and keep searching for that French King.” “Man, this is the way to travel,” he slurred as he reached onto the dash and turned up the volume. Our sober driver, South African Dave, was muttering remembrances from his early Muppets phase, “Borka borka borka, putta the chickey in da panka….” He suddenly hit the brakes and aimed the Land Cruiser into the highway shore, 32 kilometers and the first flat tire (spelled tyre in Australia).
Back on the road we picked up a hitchhiker named Niki. “Hot damn, I’ve never had a ride in a real FJ-7,” she spouted. Our attorney reminded her that, “We’re your friends. We are not like the others.”
“A constant speed is good for gas mileage -- and for some reason that seemed important at the time. Indeed. On a trip like this, one must be careful about gas consumption. Avoid those quick bursts of acceleration that drag blood to the back of the brain.” Hunter S. Thompson
I remember thinking to myself, how long can we maintain? Tinny looked like a kayaking boof had hit it hard: 12 bottles of champagne, 14 bottles of wine, 2 double fifths of jack, 2 flavored fifths of vodka, Jose Cuervo, Captain Morgan, Gran Marnier, Drambuie, Jameson, and a couple of other unnamed stowaways.
“Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.” Hunter S. Thompson
Behind us the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson fishtailed and swerved in a red shark. Among other things his trunk contained 75 pellets of mescaline and in his passenger seat sat Melissa Broken-foot. His attorney had been thrown to the bats a long time ago. Melissa started babbling something about corrupted memory cards to which Hunter replied, ‘"No more of that talk, or I'll put the leeches on you."
But somehow I remember that my only sober thought to myself: “it’s the truth, even if it didn’t happen.”
“But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” Ken Kesey once wrote in “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”
The Franklin River would be our destination at the end of the year.
We will catch up with the rest of this story later. Just as a prelude to this year’s report, I should say that 6 of us ended the year in Australia over December. One thing that immediately struck us: the strong language barrier. On Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day we could be found drinking in a small brick house built by convicts in Hobart, Tasmania (the island at the south end of Australia). A local kayaker had offered the place that she was house sitting to us for a few days free rent. On a particularly memorable version of drunk-tourism we found Penguin Reference Book’s proud printing of “A Dictionary of Historical Australian Slang.” As a kind of new addition to this year’s “summer” trip report I plan to intermittently education the reader on a few key phrases and sayings. For example the reference in the introduction about “looking for the French King,” comes directly from the book. If you ask someone, “Did you see the French king last night?”, you are really asking, “Did you get completely wasted last night?” But please be careful, on the same page, it mentions “Getting Frenchified” translates to contracting a sexually transmitted disease, particularly syphilis. We took all these liberations in language to heart and affectionately nicknamed the FJ-7 extended bed Cruiser that had been donated to us by South African Dave’s parents after an Australian can of beer, Tinny.
“If you don’t drink, don’t drive. If you drink, drive like hell!” Edward Abbey
This year’s list of vacations starts cold. Nateesh and I spent a tempered two weeks living in the back of the pickup on a trip to Phoenix for a Christmas wedding over the break. Along the way we would: grow bored of pasta salad and IPAs, see a town full of life sized replicas of Bethlehem, spend Xmas in a hot springs, contract a yet unknown skin disease, marry off one of my best friends Geoff, scare the wedding crew by emerging in the morning from the canopy of the pickup, spend New Years in a hotel, have a day with no lines at six flags, find Southern Cali’s best Mexican food, and once again find an excuse to miss out on the large Catholic half of my family’s Xmas party.
I suppose it must have been a similarly spirited decision that motivated us to spend three nights on the North Fork of the John Day River over spring break during semi-record low temperatures. Along the way we would: find that the nearest liquor store to the put-in was 80 miles, start a fire with an entire tube of fire paste, pine cones, and a newspaper that we had brought on the river by accident, enjoy a snow storm, use the tarp as a wind break (on the raft), run out of disposable hand warmers, develop a patented version of a dry suit with a strategically placed zipper so the girls could flash the random fisher and yell Spring Break 07, pass by a group of car campers with a huge warm fire (and hours later want to paddle upstream), have trouble finding the car at the take out, and enjoy a warm museum dedicated to the fossils of the John Day Valley.
This year I mourn the death of Ellen Melloy, perhaps, as usual, to late. My favorite nature writer once visited a palm reader who after reading the lines in her hand informed her of a probable death by water. She spent the rest of the book avoiding mud puddles and Las Vegas. In the same book she longs for her husband Mark’s oversized and strong hands rowing wooden oars down the Green River’s Desolation Canyon. To date he is still the park ranger of the river. Recently, in a hope to share my favorite author with a coworker, I ordered a second copy of Raven’s Exile on Amazon Books. I was surprised to find that she had two additional books and I promptly ordered them as well. While reading one of those books I found myself on a trip down Oregon’s Rogue river with my sister, dad, uncles, cousin, and Skip and Sue, the couple that had years ago introduced me to Ellen as suggested reading before a Grand Canyon trip. For emphasis, they also introduced me to Oregon’s Owyhee River, Idaho’s Salmon, the Anasazi tribe of Native Americans, how to find a gas station that is open on a late night road trip, stories of the first raft descent of Canada’s Babine River, and tales of grizzlies and eagles. They also where the first to inform me that Ellen Melloy had passed away and her husband Mark would never be the same. With a little more research I found that the introduction to her last book explained that it was published posthumously. In the book she tracks an endangered band of Big Horn Sheep on Desolation Canyon. In the end, her band of endangered animals would outlive her.
“Its beauty stirs the imagination, and I wonder if the last refuge of all that is truly wild lies not on Earth but in light.” Ellen Melloy
In the beginning there was the word, but what happens when the word dies: Hunter and his shotgun, Ian Curtis and his clothesline, Christopher McCandless (the author that never was), Edward Abbey and his liver (?), Ellen and her heart (?), Vonnegut and his age? How can your heart care so much and how can a set of hands on a wooden oar be so large? In the picture on the back of Jose Saramago’s last book he seems old. What happens when my favorite living author passes away? Do I find a new author? Here is the year when we mourn the death of Ellen Melloy and watch a movie reminding us of the death of Alexander Supertramp; perhaps, as usual, to late. And so it goes.
Enough of that: let’s list a few Australian slang phrases. “To shoot the moon”: depart with one’s valuables, particularly furniture, if possible during the night. “Piss factory”: a bar. “That girl has had more rooms then she has had hot showers”: she sleeps around a lot. I feel better; let’s get back to the story.
Next stop, a tour of Idaho’s Lochsa River during the 3-day Memorial Day weekend with a huge Portland kayaking contingency. Sandra became our designated driver (9 months later congrats on her baby boy!); trips to the hot springs and wood gathering had never been as much fun. As the beer commercial says: “Here is to the wingman.” I remember the 7-hour drive with my sister and the new Irish transplant Liam in the 2-door Tacoma. I remember our young prodigy Devin hand paddling Lochsa Falls. I remember the same Devin heckling Liam about his 2 hour round trip drive to the grocery store to get food for his picky tastes: “Did you pick up any Lucky Charms?” I remember that Brett and I were once again visiting our favorite little Idahoan Mexican Restaurant after a South Fork Clearwater decent (attempt), this time we didn’t get kicked out. “Good to see you again sirs, we hope this time you can keep from dropping your glasses.” I remember the rainbows on the drive back to camp. I remember the drunken crew that “saved” our camp by erecting tarps over, through, and in our gear because of the impending rainstorm. I remember arguing with South African Dave about the size of the holes on the upper Lochsa. And finally I remember puking at the bottom of Lochsa Falls, paddling to shore, and calling it a successful PDXkayaker vacation and expressing a certain sense of pride that the French King had been sighted.
“I hate to be the advocate for drugs and alcohol, but they have always worked for me.” Gonzo (a.k.a. Hunter S. Thompson)
Somewhere in here we squeezed a quick 2-night trip down Oregon’s amazing Illinois River. We would find excellent weather and low flows. Portaging the Illinois’s lonely and extremely low class 5 called Green Wall would fail to ruin our spirits and would only give needed experience for many portages later in the year on Tasmania’s Franklin River.
Every year’s trip report needs a theme. Something to keep these loosely knit fabrics and stories aligned. This year’s theme came to me while I was helping Nateesh proof read a paper from a History class at PSU. Every subject has a meta-level. This is the part of the subject that talks about the rules of the subject. All college students are at some point faced with the intricacies of this thought. I have never seen a subject where the meta-level is so easy to explain and yet so relevant to all of us; the meta-level of history speaks of the history of the subject of history. Let’s keep it short and elaborate later. Relatively recent, the subject of History was born via Leopold Von Ranke as an objective and scientific subject. The idea of objectivity is key to understanding the beginning foundations of history. Objectivists once believed that History relied on impartial experts who could look at history with an unbiased eye and make a “scientific” interpretation of the past. The modern world has added subjectivity and doubt to this thesis. This is one of the underlying points of most post war art, literature, and this author’s rambling “trip reports.” Remember this: “History is written by the winners.” Mixed in this report we will discuss how this subjectivity of History developed. All of these distractions brewed after helping Nateesh with her paper.
“God box”: a church. “God knows”: I don’t know. “Blind man’s holiday”: night. “Holiday”: A spot left untarred or unpainted. “Holiday cutter”: a minor punishment. “When the devil is blind”: never.
Now we travel to the week break that falls between spring and summer term. As a Community College instructor I’m only required to work 3 of the 4 college terms, but I often find myself working twice a week during the short summer term for some extra pay to afford a few externalities. So this intermittent week break often represents the start of SUMMER 07! If it seems like I’m bragging about my vacation on these reports, let’s make this clear, I am -- part of my job is to promote education. Some see education as a route to a high paying job; I promote the idea that education is the route to some good vacations. In any case that is the defense I give for spending multiple classroom hours describing trips. After spring break’s excessive cold, a trip down the Grand Ronde offered Nateesh, Niki, Amy, Carrie, and I a nice sunbath. It was a long drive, but we were rewarded with our first view of a Golden Eagle. He was old and beat up, but this leant him a sense of nobility as he followed us downstream for about an hour, offering the year’s first good luck charm. By the end of the year Carrie, Niki, and I would find it impossible to count how many eagles we have seen.
“My husband and I live in a small, remote desert town where a bit of discomfort is virtue. The distances to commercial centers are considerable, and thus far the place has avoided the fate of many overtouristed western towns that have become parodies of their own clichés. There is no numbing spectacle of consumerism. There is less than the most basic of services. But there is a river, and the river absorbs our lives and our souls. Between April and November very little time passes without a boat in the water, a float through the deep-walled wilderness of home.” Ellen Melloy
After a brief return, Brett, Chris, Andy, and I would head to meet a team of Oregon rafters for Idaho’s South fork of the Salmon at excellent forgiving flows. This would be my only extended trip with Brett over the year. Later that summer in Canada I would feel that something was missing: following Brett around looking for big breasted women and crashing bachelorette parties. But the South Fork of the Salmon trip would have some of the same debauchery. It all started with the store flower girl in McCall. Andy and I made a stroll through to check out the local gardening choices. While we were “shopping” Brett and Chris spent some time talking up the clerk in pink hats that they had taken off the hat rack. On the way back to the car they also made a detour to the flower shop. Brett stuttered some questions about Petunias and Chris sputtered out a few phrases, “Do you have any smagnum?” “Yes sir, you are standing right next to it.” Made our way to the coffee shop and decided that we should ask the barista for current info on the shuttle route. About this time Chris realized that the checkout clerk had forgotten his $100 cash back (possibly the pink hats had been a distraction). So Brett, Chris, and Andy would spend the next half hour looking in the trashcan for the receipt before I found it on the console of the Four Runner. Added to all of this, we took about a 2-hour detour on the drive to the put-in because of the coffee shop girl’s directions. This was my second time down the South Fork of the Salmon. The first time, three of us had lived out of our kayaks for 4 days at low water levels. The South Fork is an extremely narrow river canyon and small changes in flow make for substantial differences in difficulty. After meeting up with about 6 catarafters from Portland we launched and found excellent medium flows, class 4 whitewater, and classic Idaho scenery that was only interrupted by two class four plus drops. It is truly one of the U.S.’s classic multi-day trips. After running List, Lean, and Fall, the hardest and final rapids on the South Fork, the four of us hiking downstream from camp to the confluence in hopes of grabbing a cold beer at the lodge. This hike and promise of oasis would offer us poison ivy, an unnecessary river fjord, drunken croquet, broken croquet ball, drunken badminton, broken racket, birthday cake from the guests, leftover steak from the guests, and a walk back to camp in the failing light with plenty of blisters.
“Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.” Lord Byron
History changed forever after the wars. It is the same shift that happened in all parts of measurable academic and western life. Before the war most European and American historians were content to tell the tale of history as a scientific fact. “This war was caused by the struggle for land ownership in …” It’s one thing to teach about a definite history, but an actual catastrophic event such as the war created a reality check for historians. Not only were the events catastrophic the causes seemed vague and illogical. This confusion was teamed with new developments in math, philosophy, and physics that impacted how historians perceived “reality” and “objective fact.” Before the war science was a way for historians to have “unambiguous truth and knowledge that was definite.” Before Einstein, Euclidean geometry was perceived as reality and non-Euclidean geometry was perceived as a game. When Einstein found an application for non-Euclidean geometry and applied it to gravity and the deflection of light rays, this started a cascade of changed perceptions amongst almost all sciences. For centuries mathematicians had viewed geometry as an objective representation of the world and this use of non-Euclidean geometry forever changed their perception of the world. When pictures where taken that helped reinforce Einstein’s theories, absolute truths and objective facts seemed like things of the past. These thoughts of objectivity provoke the modern reader, but post-war historians find them life altering. Let’s look at an analogy from my recent readings. If you have only watched the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it might not be clear that the narrator is Big Chief. His dad was in charge of a Native-American village at Celilo Falls on the Columbia River before the dam covered it up. The history that we learn in schools only talks about the jobs that the rising waters created, the energy harnessed, the roads built, and the concrete that was laid. You just don’t read about how the Columbia tribes lost a way of life, how the salmon lost a route home, and how alcoholism and unemployment became diseases. Only people that lived in neighboring cities to the dam saw this. Ken Kesey compares these lost facts to the unknown use of shock therapy at the Salem Mental Hospital. Later when the book is translated into a movie, the whole theme of lost Native-American rights is skipped. Remember, “History is written by the winners.” Big Chief loses his voice in the book, in the movie, and in history. Big Chief uses the only analogy that his simply life offers him and he compares the subjective nature of history and the claw of The History to a machine working on his dad:
“The Combine. It worked on him for years. He was big enough to fight it for a while. It wanted us to live in inspected houses. It wanted to take the falls. It was even in the tribe, and they worked on him. In the town they beat him up in the alleys and cut his hair short once. Oh, the Combine’s big—big. He fought it a long time till my mother made him too little to fight any more and he gave up.” The narrator Big Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Then it was back to work for a couple of weeks. Don’t worry, Fourth of July found 20 of us on a three night trip down the Rogue River. We would see Bald Eagles and Osprey fighting for the Rogue River’s plentiful fish population. The Osprey is one of the Bald Eagles only enemies in the Northwest; it has enough speed to combat the Eagle’s size. On our float down the river we witnessed some awesome dogfights. Finding a campsite on the Rogue for 20 people in the summer can be as hard as catching one of these fish. On night 2, tired and frustrated we pulled into camp next to a group of drunk-rednecks. After a period of inappropriate comments and glances at Portland’s attractive boating females, they passed out. The next morning my sister innocently asked them, “Where are you camping tonight?” Somehow the intricacies of river etiquette had escaped this group of bricks. Later that afternoon when we had found a camp, Brian and I were jogging upstream to find my dad, his blind date, and his Foster’s laden raft that was extremely tardy finding our camp. We sighted my Dad’s raft just as we passed the redneck’s inappropriately large camp. “Back me up or swim,” I relayed to Brian. Suppose watching the agile Osprey take on the mighty Eagle combined with a few of my dad’s Fosters had motivated me to make all things right with the locals. “Back me up or swim.” I proceeded to lecture the meatballs on proper etiquette with Brian at my back before backing out and swimming to my dad’s raft for the float to camp. “I could have taken him,” was the reply overheard as we passed by. That night would see the forever-memorable jumping rock episode in which half of the camp jumped from an exposed overhang and swam across current to a rock in the middle of the river. Little Zach Duffens made it across to everyone’s surprise and delight. The next morning, after a night of heavy drinking, Nateesh would gain a nickname from my dad as she emerged from the tent, “Morning Princess.”
The Rogue River
Camping on the Rogue
Allison on the Rogue
Brian on the Rogue
“One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Nursery rhyme.
History isn’t the only subject with a meta-level; every subject has one. Take chess as an example. Chess has the regular set of rules that show how pawns are moved and the timeframe that players have to move the pawns. But above this is a set of unwritten rules similar to the unwritten history of History. A player can’t reach under the table, grab a cricket mallet and proceed to mall the opponent. These scenes would be outside to rules of chess and would start a controversy the size of an O.J. Simpson episode. (Speaking of writers that have passed away, let us mourn the passing of Bobby Fischer, perhaps, as usual, to late). The meta-level of math was defined by Kurt Gödel and briefly explored in last year’s trip report. Above all systems that have an appropriate amount of complexity, there is a set of unwritten rules. Even if we tried to incorporate those rules (don’t mall thy opponent with a cricket mallet, for example) there will always be another set of rules that are also implied.
The Lower Main Salmon River: almost every year we spend 4 to 5 days in the hot, sandy canyon on the lower main Salmon with 20 to 30 of our friends and a bunch of kids. This year I read the perfect report of a lower trip in Paddler magazine. The author hemmed and hawed about the decision to make the long drive, bear the warm weather, row the flat water, and spend the precious gas money. His trip report ends with a game of adults-against-kids football on a huge sandy beach. Essentially the final conclusion of the report was: when is next year’s trip? I suppose our trips are slightly different, but the thesis is the same. The entire group would spend the trip taking jabs at Margi’s recently single mom; the word “Cougar” was new to her vocabulary. Niki donated a new jug to the trip. It had once held her family’s fried chicken on weekend outings and it now could hold a fifth of alcohol, ice, and the necessary mixers. To add emphasis, Mike Ross sputtered a phrase early in the morning of the second day that will forever be a part of Lower Main folklore, “Day 2, Jug 9.” This year’s theme: Cowboy’s and Indians. Somehow the permanent marker trick from past Rogue trips got morphed into the give the kids a fake pencil thin mustache. Mike swears it wasn’t his idea. For comedic relief I’m currently searching for someone to send me a picture of our tattooed and mustached young rafters so that I can insert one here. Near the end of the trip the kids would win the last round of Bochi ball, we would have to explain to Margi’s mom the definition of a cougar, she would permanently retire her leopard skin swimsuit, young Austin would talk me into jumping off a cliff (you’re more of a man than I am), we would have to explain to the kids that the trip wouldn’t last forever and that we had to head home, all the cowboy hats would be retired until the next trip, someone else would have to row my boat the last mile because I had mutineered and refused to go home (Day 4, jug ???), and 3 passengers and I would pass out for most of the trip home. Thanks in part to the cougar theme this trip had long lasting pieces of memorabilia. Geoff Koonz ended the trip with the jug in his possession and when he mailed it to Nateesh later that summer if had a new tattoo: “Cougar Liquor.” Austin’s dad Brian would score me a new shirt at Old Navy, “Cougar Bait.” Austin knew it was funny because we had teased Margi’s mom about it on the trip, but now Brian had to finally define to young Austin what a cougar is; happy hunting young man. And finally I had found my year’s mission: find a Foster’s beer-coozie (neoprene beer holder). On a hot trip like the Lower it is easy to finish a tall boy in thirst before it gets warm, but a Foster’s on the other hand tends to warm too quickly. I would have never expected that the appropriately sized beer coozie would be found in Tasmania and be made of oiled leather filled with sheep’s wool as an insulator. How perfect?
Proud owner of a Foster's Beer Coozie
“Stupidity got us into this mess and stupidity will get us out.” Homer Simpson
Mike Ross and I decided to join our two work groups together and do a 2-night midweek trip on the Deschutes. The problem is, I brought my Community College Outdoor Activity Club students who I try to keep in the dark about some of the details of my life’s rich tapestry and Mike brought his Saturday Market crew. So at each lunch stop and/or scout the Saturday Market crew proceeded to smoke out while my students looked on with a bit of amusement. And the party at camp on the river will forever live in PCC student folklore. Can’t wait till next year! (Best club ever).
“The rural communities of the intermountain West are isolated and insular, conservative to a fault. Here a surprising number of people believe that environmentalists are the instruments of Satan. … The regional identity crisis, of course, involves deeper complexity than guns, lawns, and an anti-ATV Antichrist. The West’s rampaging pace of change, its long history of humans shaped by the lands and spaces around them, its politics, passions, and pathologies, have made a compelling stage for historians, philosophers, and barstool metaphysicians, who deftly place the current episodes of discord into context.” Ellen Melloy
Finished up the summer term, recorded grades, and: Oh, Canada; oh, Canada. It was time for another tour of our better half and northern neighbor, British Columbia. Seven of us made the long trip to Smithers and the Babine River in central B.C. In 12 years of traveling Canada, this would be the farthest North that my shoes, tires, and boat had reached, and that is only half way up B.C. Jesse and I went inside at the border to explain our lack of bear protection. Carrie and Melissa got hassled for being slow converting 1/5 gallon each of hard liquor into liters, “you girls are going to have to be faster.” Afterwards, in tired haste, we would make the mistake of stopping near the border in a pay for campground at Hope, B.C. Jesse accidentally placed his bag of gear outside our circle. When we awoke it was missing. Once we realized that it had been stolen we went on a town-crawl mission to find it. Jesse even interviewed two First Nation early risers and their morning beer near the edge of the Fraser River. They hadn’t seen the bag, but were convinced that the Jibbers had it. Every country has its own slang, eh. Never fully understanding what a Jibber was and never finding Jesse’s less than cheap bag of gear; jibber became the word of the trip.
Subjectivity is really an idea that came from Plato, science just forgot about it for some time. One of my favorite theories from a book by Hofstadter gives a perspective on how humans learn subjectivity and a theory about how humans learn period. When a child first learns the word chair, a very large group or set of objects can be a chair. Then slowly that group gets narrowed into smaller bits: wood chair, couch, travel chair, beanbag, etc. The important thing is that this narrowing process is done in a very individual way. There might remain some arguments about what is a couch and what is a sofa. These intricacies only expand when other languages and translations are involved. Then add to that a long list of experiences and smells that the word sofa might bring to an individual and you start seeing just how subjective language and knowledge is.
Quite bummed about the missing bag and desiring some breakfast we stopped in Spencer’s Bridge upstream of the normal Thompson run. The only roadside restaurant was closed so we tried to find some grub in a basement that a local had converted into a mini-mart. She gave us quite the story about her restaurant neighbor and even explained how she would kill him: with a dud swing of a bat. We then received a very detailed map with directions to the nearest café, 100 meters down the road. It was a quite enjoyable new café and I would visit it enough times on this road trip to become a recognized regular.
For the rest of the drive to Smithers we tried to stop at every kayak shop to find a life jacket for Jesse and hopefully some other gear. The problem is Canadians have a different work ethic; everywhere we stopped the shops were closed. No problems I said, Smithers has a paddle shop. When we finally arrived in town we found that the shop had been closed all week because the owner was on vacation. No stores in town carried life jackets because they didn’t want to compete with the kayak shop. Luckily while we ran the lower half of the shuttle, our now expanded crew of Jesse, Shannon, Michael Williams, and Chris Augustine made a second attempt and found the kayak shop owner had just arrived and was extremely happy to hook us up with some gear. Jesse probably single handedly paid for the owner’s week vacation. It is all relative: the surgeon wants to perform surgery, the psychiatrist thinks that you are bi-polar, the teacher wants to educate you, the kayak salesman wants to sell you lots of gear, the politician wants to involve you in a war, and the kayaker wants to take you on a vacation.
Babine put-in
The Babine River flows in a U shape and the shuttle is one of the shortest I’ve every seen for a 4 night trip. We dropped one car at the takeout and drove the other two to the put in. Next time we will find a kayaker in town to run the shuttle, but it was a fun drive on back roads. When we arrived at the launch the group was very excited. Everything in Canada was running high in the summer of 2007. The Babine was no different and was brown instead of its usual translucent color. This added excitement and adventure to an already unknown river. In town the locals had said anything from manageable, flipped and ripped a raft last week, all the way up to what would become the second motto of the trip: “one day play run.” For those readers new to Canadian whitewater, always use a certain sense of caution when reviewing local knowledge on the rivers. Speaking of subjectivity, the river rating in Canada is an extremely subjective topic. The main guide for the river was information that we found on the Internet from local guide company’s itineraries. We would spend our days on the river looking for the “flat sandy beach with excellent views of the eagles on the opposite cliff face.” The Babine is definitely rugged B.C. and doesn’t have a plethora of camping options, so it is important to watch for the best campsites. Our second biggest fear was the bears. The Babine area holds one of the largest populations of grizzly bears in Canada and the salmon run was on. The launch ramp has a small fish weir with an unknown purpose. The confused salmon would try to jump over the weir instead of under it and would bash themselves into the steel girders. We were busy naming the best head knocks after our kayaking friends who have a tendency go big and sometimes hit things. “That one looks like Chuck.” “Male-nurse Neil Fauker could hold his breath longer than that.” “That was like a Fat Kid Nate stunt.” “I’ve heard Brett make that sound.” We were so amused we even forgot the “Bears in the area, Use caution” sign. Then we looked across the river and noticed a grizzly bear and 3 black bears. High water and bears at the put in, welcome to the Babine. We opted to spend the night at the campground about a mile away from the put in hoping that the bears would ignore us. The next day we launched with Carrie in the red raft and 6 of us in kayaks. As one of our itineraries explained, the river grows in intensity each day. Most of the first day would be a float, but the one canyon of significance was pushy and put a sense of respect into the group. Somehow we found the correct camp and had an excellent night next to a cliff with wonderful eagle viewing. We would see so many eagles on the trip that sightings would become routine. The canyon is full of massive Bald and Golden eagles feeding on the plentiful Chinook salmon.
Day two would bring us some whitewater action and one swim. Probing a rapid, Chris found a hole and went on some rodeo creeking. Action I haven’t seen in quite a while. While Carrie, Melissa, and I scouted the rapid; the rest of the crew gave chase. That night at camp we had a great time, but we all felt a bit of the tension about the higher flows. What should have been mellow class 3 felt like pushy class 3. Later that night as I filtered our water supply, Michael asked me, “Does that thing protect us from syphilis?” Apparently he had found the French King and was worried if MSR reduced the possibility of becoming Frenchified. Day three was short and sweet. From the top the day’s biggest rapid, Slide, was intimidating: a walled rapid with little to no scouting options. We all watched in amazement as Shannon stepped up and lead the way. The rapid turned out to be very runnable class 4, but from above it had a very ominous look. Night 3’s camp was a perfect setting with a waterfall in the campsite. Jesse continued to impress us with his Boy Scout campfires (big, strangely mesmerizing, and (we hoped) bear deterrents [and optimistically beer attractants]).
Part of the pseudo-level of trip report writing is that you must be searching for the French King while engaged in the process, or maybe I accidentally dreamt that one time and thought that it was fact. Learning of my favorite naturalist author’s death this summer had an extra sense of fatalism because she often had a dark side and even seemed to understand her short life. Her deep understanding of nature coupled with human’s quest for it are probably why I’m so attached to her writing. It almost seems that Gonzo had similar short-ended thoughts. I remember staying up late in camp reading the following before I became too scared of grizzly beers, gave up the search for the French King, and crawled into the tent:
“That night I had the Vine Dream, one of three similar dreams—Vine, Dirt, Moss—that were at first amusing, then began to reoccur with a peculiar frequency. In the Vine Dream my hair is hair plus vines that are so thick and heavy they make my neck sore. I spend the dream breaking them off at the scalp with an audible snap. The dream is tactile and noisy and slightly painful. The Dirt Dream gags me with a claylike soil in my mouth, tongue and lips, and I spend the dream scooping dirt out of my mouth with my finger. The Moss Dream is like the Vine Dream. I scrape and shave a kelly-green moss off my skin. Instead of a smooth tuff, the moss grows like even-bristled turf—short, tough, and hairbrush straight. I spent a great deal of my sleeping life trying not to become a plant. It isn’t funny anymore.” Ellen Melloy
Day 4 brought the rapids and the grizzly beers. Michael was in his usual position leading the way down the river when he discovered an unusual moss covered rock in the middle of the rapid. When the grizzly turned around and saw him, “his eyes got big and my eyes got bigger; then I had to paddle to the other side and run the hole that looked river wide.” All that we could see was Michael paddling much faster than his usual reserved strokes and we assumed it must be a big hole. Next up was Grizzly drop. Mike and I scouted on the right and the rest of the crew scouted on the left. Mike and I were happy to be on the right because the left side had two grizzlies fishing downstream. The rest of the crew was happy to be scouting on the left because the right side had a mama beer and three cubs fishing near a grizzly. The drop went well with Melissa getting surfed in the hole. Find the bear:
For the rest of the day I opted to ride in the raft to avoid Kisgegas Canyon near the end of the Babine. I hate big water. Learning to boat in Portland leads to a fondness of rocks and waterfalls and a fear of swirling big water. The canyon was reported to be Mule Creek Canyon on the Rogue, “on acid.” Not my cup of tea. The canyon entrance was obvious. Members of Canada’s First Nation tribe were busy fishing on the banks with nets and fish wheels and cheered us down the rapid. The kayakers made the small mistake of catching eddies in the gorge and struggled. Jesse even got pushed into an undercut for a moment. We think that the high water increased the whirlpools and that lower water and a main current line would decrease the difficulty. That night we slept at the confluence of the Skeena and paddled out the next day. To picture the Skeena, imagine if the Columbia had rapids.
The takeout is an awesome setting in the village of Kispiox. Some of the largest and oldest totem poles in the world still stand. The boys stayed in the village while the rest of us ran shuttle. Earlier in the week, when Carrie, Melissa, and I had set shuttle, we were searching for a good place to park when we saw a Royal Canadian Mounted Police heading our way in his cruiser. We became a little worried about trespassing. Instead he said, “Hi”, and pointed our attention to the totem poles, many of them are only partially carved. “The First Nation says that the poles aren’t finished because the story isn’t finished yet, … I say they are just to lazy.” Looking around the weathered town of Kispiox, it isn’t hard to believe his unfinished story, yet it seemed to remind me of the consequences native cultures face when they meet Western society (such as the introduction of a timeline).
“The Haida at Kiusta saw it first as a white spot on the horizon that slowly grew larger. The people were afraid and donned their dancing costumes. They began to drive it away, but it continued to approach. The spot became a giant web, and in the distance they saw spiders crawling up and down the webbing. As the web came closer they could see it was attached to a boat, but no ordinary boat, for it appeared to have wings, which flapped up and down in unison against the water. The spiders, it turned out, resembled human beings, except they had white faces. The Kiusta people believed the Santla ga haade – the ghost land people – had returned from the dead.” William Matthews, former chief of Old Masset, via Margaret Blackman
Similar to Australia, Europeans weren’t the first to visit Western America via boat. The Chinese had boats capable of crossing the Pacific by 1200. They also have writings that wrote of a legendary place called Fousang that is believed to be the Northwest Coast. The famous dog of Australia, the Dingo, is really a castaway that the Chinese left on the Australian continent. (That makes Dingo Dave part South African, part Australian, part Tasmanian, part European Techno-Boy, and part redneck Oregonian). Even more surprising is that an accepted theory about how the Aborigines inhabited Australia incorporates a boat. An estimate 45,000 years ago a race of people had watercraft that was advanced enough to cross 60 miles of open sea. That society then forgot all knowledge of watercraft for 45,000 years. This fact is so astounding that it is rarely acknowledged in history books. The consequence of Western culture seems to be almost exactly the same in both America and Australia. The natives had almost no resistance to European diseases: smallpox, pleurisy, syphilis, chicken pox, and even mild forms of influenza. The remaining locals where often treated heartlessly even up to recent times. The first European to set foot on the Northwest Coast and survive an encounter with the locals was Captain James Cook when he stopped on the way to New Zealand for wood. When other Europeans learned of the massive trees and plentiful sea otter pelts, trade opened with the west. The sea otter trade is really what drove European boats into the Northwest coast. The pelts could be taken to China and traded for silks and spices.
“This was only one of the reasons the Northwest Coast was such a late addition to the world map; with the exception of the two poles, this was the last significant feature to be added to the earth’s portrait. There were two primary reasons. One was motivation: there wasn’t any. ... the islands of the North Pacific, and any riches they might contain, were unknown to Europeans. The other reason was access: there simple was no direct route; even Tasmania was easier to get to.” John Valliant in “The Golden Spruce”
The shuttle route goes through Smithers, so we left Carrie and Melissa to find a hotel for the night. Smithers was hosting the County Fair and all rooms in the town were booked for the weekend. Canadians really love fairs! About to give up they showered at laundry mat and found a free place to stay at the owner’s rental house. Canadians rule. When I picked up the boys back at the takeout they where busy drinking with the locals and talking stories of guided hunting trips into the bush.
The next morning Carrie, Jesse, and Melissa headed home. The long drive home must have created delirium, because they adopted an imaginary bear cub called Bitey and snuck it across the border. For the rest of the year leading up to the Australia trip we would be making jokes about Bitey and who was watching him. Unfortunately we lost him to the Koala beers in Tasmania.
Chris, Shannon, Michael, and I remained and spent the day resting at the play spot on the Buckley. Randomly a local kayaker was having a birthday party at the park and we had an excellent evening chatting up the locals and eating fresh salmon. A few of the kayakers are involved in researching the pine beetles that are destroying all of the lodge pole pines in BC. Luckily Smithers and the Babine are currently too far north and cold for the beetle to survive. But it is impossible to describe the dead forests on the drive north to Smithers. Canada’s current plan is to log as much of the pine trees as fast as possible to beat the damage. For this purpose the world’s largest saw mill was recently built in B.C. and shares the distinction of being in the town with the world’s largest fly fishing pole, Houston B.C. The beetle is an evasive species that was probably transported accidentally from China in shipping crates. The logging industry is predicting extreme danger and recommending that all forests with lodge pole pines should be harvested. Truthfully, forests with a high percentage of lodge poles should be harvested, forests with a moderate amount should be analyzed, and in forests with a low percentage, the pines should be allowed to die off and the other trees will thrive. Welcome to the politics of logging.
Clearwater
Bexxi and the bear
Stein River
Nateesh and I watching the show on the Thompson
The Nahatlatch
The couple of the century
The next day on the advice of the locals we hit an awesome canyon of the Suswapta and then headed south to the Caribou and Quesnel Rivers. Research from previous trips paid off for the group as we proceeded to hit a river a day for the entire trip. Later in the week I learned about the unLikely Fest held in Likely near both rivers. Every year BC has a party celebrating these two rivers and ending with a run on the Chilko (a river that I’m yet to muster the guts for, but watch for next year’s report). Nateesh, Becky, and Brian met us in Kamloops, some Sushi, and a great trip down the Clearwater. We made a sidetrack to visit a Canadian friend of Becky’s, an avid hunting guide, “I don’t know why you were worried about the Soviet Union when you had the socialists right next door.” Then we hit up the classics, Thompson, Nahatlatch, and Stein for Lytton days. Memorial day weekend at the rafting capital of B.C. is always a good time to meet locals from the First Nation and have a generally good time. The Stein was quite a bit higher then the year before, making a big difference in the small canyon and I decided to bail part way down the run. After saying goodbye to the Portland kayakers, Irish friends, and the Vancouver kayaking club, we spent a much needed rest day in Sloquet hot springs off the Lillouet River near Pemberton BC and then searched for the French King in Squamish. I ended the trip with a slow drive back to Portland with a stop in Seattle to party with my recently divorced college roommate, Geoff Gay, and discovered that he had been keeping the French King in captivity the entire time.
The keeper of the french king
Part of the pseudo-level of Shane is that I try to have a reason for as many of my actions as possible. I see it as a direct contrast to God’s logic. The focus on the Australian and Canadian slang in this report is purposeful; it is really an example of how the subjectivity of language is associated to our changing perspective of the world. Before WWII, anthropology wasn’t a big influence in American academia but after the war its influence grew as others saw its dominating cultural relativism. The SAPI-Whorf theory presented the idea that different linguistic systems played huge roles in shaping world-views and ultimately determining what was fact. In other words, language and slang can change a person’s view of the world and of history. Cultural anthropology and relativism decayed historian’s ideas of absolute truths and objective facts. Take an extreme example: when James Cook first “discovered” Australia he sailed past a tribe of aborigines that were washing and fishing. The aborigines didn’t seem to even notice that the large ship was there. They had never seen a ship and didn’t seem to know how to “see” it. At most they were annoyed that the ship was present. When the convicts first started to colonize Australia they would find that the aborigines would often be helpful, and then suddenly spear the settlers for no apparent reason. The two cultures had come from such vastly different societies and languages they couldn’t understand each other. Remember, the victor writes the history. Currently Nateesh is in a class about Japan before the war. She noticed that Japan didn’t have a word in their language for Fascism, yet they seemed to want to copy Italy’s idea. How can different societies be compared when often they don’t have language to understand key concepts? How can history be recorded when even the language that records it affects its interpretation. And how can our group of 6 search for the six-fingered man and a Foster’s beer coozie if we don’t fully understand the meaning of “looks good on ya, mate?”
Then it was back to school for a term while awaiting our trip to Australia. We still managed to create some debauchery with a yearly kayaking film fest and the now back from the dead (post child) Halloween party at the Sonnichsens.
The get-away-driver Jason making his famous Ice Luge
Spent an evening at the E.R. because I had accidentally swallowed the tab from a beer can. Turns out I had thrown it up, but it still felt like it was stuck in my throat: only $87.70 thanks to Blue Cross-Blue Shield.
“Nap the kid”: to become pregnant.
As mentioned earlier, our kayaking friend Sandra had done just that. My sister and I had been in charge of entertainment years ago at a now famous baby shower for the Sonnichsens. This time we outdid ourselves. Fisting for prizes, don’t drop the baby (egg toss with baby’s heads glued to the eggs), beat the baby (piñata), name the baby, and milk pong (White Russians at a ping pong table.) I’m still trying to remember what time it was when John drove me home, how Michael and Shannon talked the cops out of fining us, what Lindsey’s thrown-up White Russians made the bathroom smell like (not to mention the regurgitated ping pong ball), and we are still sending a piece a week of the life-size (if it was Paul Bunyan’s) penis made by Dingo Dave of Styrofoam to Portland’s waste management garbage pick-up. Final question, “Did sober Sandra really enjoy it?” Cause the rest of us sure-the-hell did and watching the French King play defense on piñata is to quote Mastercard(?) priceless.
Tasmania planning trip: after a high water day on the East fork of the Lewis we had our planning meeting. A new log had drifted into the gorge on the east fork, so John and I did half the run and walked out before the gorge. The rest of the crew then finished the run, had one swim, one pinned boat, and a hell of a portage. Conversation at the takeout, beers in hand, “How long did it take us to complete this run the last time at high water?” “About 45 minutes.” “How long have they been on the river?” “About 3 hours.” “Should we look for them?” That’s about the time that they showed up, a bit exhausted. So later that evening at our meeting, Dave and Jesse rolled in a bit slobbered after stopping at the Dollar Corner on the way home from the run. About the only things accomplished at the meeting was a list of rules: 1. Don’t get bit by a snake, 2. No leeches on delicate places, 3. Stay away from the male platypus, 4. What happens in Tasmania stays in Tasmania, 5. If you chafe, you’re dead, and finally 6. Keep your hands out of crevasses (apparently to save us from the snakes).
Sometimes I wonder if the world is so subjective that we really have no chance of completely communicating with others in the story. To take a quote from Stranger than Fiction, “I wish I knew if this was a tragedy or a comedy.” I had a dream somewhere in this time period that I was teaching a class outside. It looked like a classroom, but it was outside. Windows floated in the air. The students were far away and a large tree kept growing in the way. As always, I kept trying to communicate with the students, but they couldn’t really see me through the tree and its advancing branches. Just when I finally finished cutting the fingerlings down, my boss showed up to observe me teach the class. Things began to fade to blank.
That was it, take Dave to the airport a week early, grade finals, and head to Australia just as a Pineapple Express was hitting the Oregon coast. For some reason, we had 4 different planes to Sydney for 5 different people that all landed near the same time. Melissa and I arrived first to find that the raft was missing. When we checked the luggage tag we noticed that the raft had incorrectly been sent on Carrie’s flight. Not a problem. When Carrie arrived, all of her luggage was missing, which now included the raft and life jackets. It seems if you land in LA and it is raining, good chance your luggage will be missing. For the rest of the trip Quantas continued to fuck us. So we headed off in our affectionately nicknamed Land Cruiser, Tinny, with the hope that we would catch up with the raft at a small airport in Tazzy. Within 20 miles we had a flat and it was generally acknowledged that this was exactly the trip and adventure we had imagined. If only Hunter was stuffed in Tinny, we would teach him how to be Gonzo again.
Flat Tire
The first stop was a pub, we needed a restroom, and some refreshment wasn’t a bad idea. When we told the locals our plan to head to Tazzy, they made a snide joke about inbreeding and 6-fingered men. I would spend every drinking moment in Hobart counting fingers. A couple times I even saw 6 or 7 fingers, but I don’t remember.
Rested at a campground and on the way to the ferry we stopped at a wildlife preserve. We saw kangaroos, boxing bats, koala bears, and discovered that platypussery is a real word. Gotta love Australian slang; I had to look it up on the web later:
“Enclosures in which platypus are kept. Bow down to the mighty platypus.” www.tribe.net
Then we spent an evening on the Tasmanian ferry. A trip to any river in the U.S. will never again feel like a difficult drive. After the plane to Sydney, drive to the southern tip, ferry to Tasmania, detour to pick up the raft at a small airport, day spent at the launch waiting for Dave to drive the shuttle and take a bus back; it seems that all North American rivers have short travel times.
Laying out the gear at the put in
Relaxn at the put in
All trips on the Franklin start with a long 5-mile trip down its small tributary the Collingwood. We arrived to find the Collingwood very low, but we had expected that. What we didn’t expect is after a long first day dragging the red raft and ten day’s of provisions to the Franklin, we would find that the Franklin was also extremely low. We continued because we had come half way around the world and because we had been passed by another group of 3 rafters that proved the river was doable. Later we found out we had been passed by the author of the guidebook. That night we rested on a small beach next to a portage.
Jesse in his element
How we all felt at some point on the trip
My 33rd Birthday on the river
On the 12 day of xmas 13 Tasmanian rafters in a tree
Dingo Dave in one of the early canyons
“To many Chiefs and not enough Indians.” South African Dave’s synthesis of our hard headed band of river runners. To which Jesse would give a deep interpretation of consensus-based decision-making.
The Franklin is partially famous because it essentially changed the course of Australian politics. It was scheduled to be damned and construction had begun. The Australian minority party promised to oppose the dam and even used a now famous picture of the river (rock island bend) as its advertising slogan. They won and the river was turned into a UNESCO world heritage sight. One disgruntled logger that we meant on the river would sputter, “That administration didn’t get much right, but the Franklin was one of them.” Now the river is slated to always run free. On the second day of the Franklin we had expected a nice mellow float and instead encountered multiple portages and drags due to the low water and logs. Two commercial groups passed us the next day both groups didn’t seem as cautious near the logs as our group (see picture). Keeping up with these commercial rafters would prove to be our motivation for the grueling adventure we had embarked on. At the end of the second day, the river rewarded us with a beautiful canyon called the Irene Abyss; but we were exhausted. As we floated past the other group to our campsite, someone asked Dave, “What do you think of the river?” He grumbled as a joke, “They should have dammed it.”
Portage (20?)
One of the easier portages
An upstream view of the canyon
Carrie and I in color
Portage (27?)
Essentially the rest of the river was defined by day 2. We would be rewarded with amazing scenery, but would have to work very hard to gain it. The commercial groups would easily beat us to the campsites, but offer us company and extra food. Some of the portages would actually be significantly more intense and dangerous then any of the whitewater. Our group stayed strong through all of the stress, but all of us occasionally questioned why we were on the river. Then, near the end of the trip, we all became convinced that it was a great adventure. Over 9 days I had lost at least 5 pounds, seen a platypus, seen a pair of Macaws on the river, had a birthday, grown to love one pot lasagna, seen my first sea eagle, seen my first brown tailed eagle, learned to unload and portage a raft in record time, wanted the fuck off the river, wanted to stay on the river forever, dreamt of a lamb roast stew, been given lamb roast potatoes from our commercial trip friends, slept on an upside down raft, pulled 3 leeches off my toes, grown tired of all my companions, found new reasons to like all my companions, given up looking for the six fingered man, found Indigo Mantoya, dreamt of a cold beer, watched a sword fight (see photo), rolled the raft up a hill and then pushed it off the other side (see photo), hated my father for his controlling obsessive compulsive ways, wished my father was with us, continued the search for the six fingered man, and I had only found the French King once on a particularly restful afternoon at the best campsite in the world under a natural undercut ledge. Luckily we finished the river on the same day as the commercial groups and caught their ferry. A 20 km paddle across the flat water bay to the next ferry landing was the last thing we needed. At the takeout we hung in a bar and talked with the second commercial trip’s shuttle driver and decided our next adventure: Hobart. While she awaited her crew and their botched ferry (long story) she offered a free place to stay over Christmas.
PICTURES OF THE GREAT RAVINE
Dragging the raft uphill
The general feeling on day 5
Jesse deep in the Great Ravine of the Franklin
Dave in the Ravine
Using the raft as a bridge over a sieve
Where the hell is the river?
Portage (120?)
Portage (140?)
A celebration sword fight at the end of the Great Ravine
I wasn’t wrong searching Tasmania for a strange and suspicious being (the six fingered man). The Tasmanian tiger, unlike Big Foot, was real and actually looked like a dog with VERY large fangs. It was the top of the feeding chain in Tasmania before Westerners started killing it (and the aborigines) when it attacked their sheep, an easy prey. People still claim to occasionally see Tasmanian tigers (and ghosts of Tasmanian Aborigines), but it is widely believed to be extinct.
3 DAYS LEFT
The man Dingo Dave at rock island bend
Melis and "the jug"
The rapid above the ledges
Best campsite ever! (The Ledges)
Eagle
Tasmania is no stranger to the subjectivity of history. In one of its most famous pieces of literature, “Death of a River Guide”, the author explores its long history of forced convict labor and the mistreated aborigines, all set within the Franklin River as a aged and drowning river guide relives his life as he passes away just meters away from rock island bend (true story). The “convicts” were often just undesirables purposefully banished from London for cleansing and to create needed laborers to harvest Tasmania’s rich forests and build houses for its pilgrims. Some of the first explorers of the Franklin and Gordon Rivers were actually escaped convicts. The aborigines offered England no hope for laborers, they came from a world so foreign to Western thought that Australia is still trying to figure out how to incorporate them into the new world. In one of Tasmania’s darkest moments, called the Black Line, all of the white men formed a human chain and walked across the island in a hope to forever solve the problem of sheep theft. The line didn’t work (Tasmania is a very large jungle island and contains lots of places to hide) but the idea did work and like the Tasmania tiger, Tasmania’s aborigines are now extinct. Look up Truganini, the last full-blooded aborigine, on Wikipedia for a picture of someone who is very non-Western. She died in 1876. During the last ice age they were the southernmost representatives of humanity and they did it naked with only oil, dirt, and fire to stay warm, but they couldn’t survive European colonization. In Tasmania you expect to see ghosts and visions. The mainland of Australia is still having trouble finding resolutions. As recent as 1970’s; 100,000 children were forcibly taken from indigenous parent under assimilation policies. They would be placed in foster homes and houses. Just imagine the mothers watching their children pulled away in a van, never to see them again. Recently I read that Australia had taken the first step, apologize. “For the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was recently quoted in Newsweek
THE LAST FEW DAYS
View from the last camp
Last Camp
It was worth it
Passed out
The Ferry back to civilization
The house we stayed at in Hobart was probably created during the convict era and they provided the bricks and labor. That didn’t stop us from searching for the French King and accidentally finding a book of slang, creating a trip report that could contain the key element about the relativity of language. It was nice after 9 nights of extreme wilderness to have a civilized environment for drinking. Day 1640(?) of mission accomplished. Niki’s sarcastically sputtered to Bush, “History always looks kindly upon those who build fences.” Hobart just might be one of three places in the world that I would live. Portland, Nelson B.C., and Hobart, Tasmania. We even spent Christmas on a local mission, the Pictan River. It really wouldn’t be very Tasmanian if it didn’t include a portage. Sold to us as a class three play run, it was; but the high water created a menacing river wide hole that didn’t seem like a present from Santa (or Jesus) so we lined. What did we think of Tasmania? We loved it. It was reminiscent of Oregon 40 years ago. It is amazing how far we have to travel to find regions that we love so much because they remind us of home.
Typical car scene
Follow the cruiser
“I think the last beer might have been a mistake because I don’t remember much after that other than a sensation of supreme goodwill toward anyone who passed through the room, including a Filipina who came in with a vacuum cleaner and asked me to lift my legs so that she could clean under my chair.” Bill Bryson (Famous American author who often writes about Australia and to my knowledge still hasn’t visited Tasmania).
Our free pink house
Jesse and Carrie at the bar in hobart
Tasmania and Bill Bryson
Nice Ears
Boating on Xmas day
Who the hell is that girl and were did she get that bandana?
Hobart
Spent about another week on the mainland, but it didn’t compare to our true love, Tasmania. Maybe someday I’ll visit northern Australia and have a changed perspective, but for now mainland Australia reminds me of Southern California with nice people. Some of the highlights: Bonzi Beach, feeding the wallabies (miniature kangaroos) at Dingo Dave’s parent’s house, getting kicked out of a bar 5 till midnight on new years, watching the fireworks outside, finding a new bar, and getting kicked out of that bar. Then it was a long airplane ride home and back to work.
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.” Christopher McCandless (a.k.a. Alexander Supertramp)
Near the end of the trip I lounged on a couch at the Dingo Dave Australian Vineyard. Australians have a British knockoff of Wifeswap that pairs two families in a Vacationswap. In the episode that I watched a lower class family takes an upper middle class family to the racetracks. As the upper class father deals with his fears on the track, his wife decides that these experiences in the aluminum trailer unit don’t suit her kids and leaves the show. The next phase of the program takes the “poor” family on a vacation to a desert oasis (without the “rich” family). On the way home from the oasis in a Land Rover Discovery they vowed to forgive the rivals, quit yelling at the children, and the father makes a promise to begin weekly yoga sessions (somehow I feel that my Toyota Tacoma with its current dirt tattoo of “nice tits” might feel jealous).
Recently I had a dream that I was driving a combine in an endless ryegrass field. Watching the combine scene from Into the Wild had set this off. This isn’t an unusual dream for a farmer’s son or daughter. After 12 hour repetitive shifts driving a piece of machinery through the day (or night), it is easy to fall back into the rhythms as you sleep. My dad once relieved my uncle Phil from his nighttime swather duties and Phil took a nap in the front seat of a pickup truck. When Phil was suddenly startled from his sleep, he jumped into place and proceeded to drive the truck around the field treating it like a swather. We now say our prayers, thankful that this 44-year old uncle is still with us. In January he passing out on a couch and my other uncle Rob happened to walk in. Noticing that Phil was having a heart attack he began CPR. Here is Rob’s phone conversation with 911 as he gave CPR: “Man down, 5555 Victor Point Road. Lady, I don’t have time; MAN DOWN, 5555 Victor Point Road.” Somehow after a week of stressful times at the O.H.S.U. hospital my uncle is back with us. After putting in his lottery application for a trip down the Upper Main Salmon and an application for the Rogue, he recently told me of his impending plans to head to Baja California with a large group of family and friends. He won his Rogue permit. The real lottery is currently standing at 230 million, and if I had to vote someone onto the island, I think my uncle should win. Both because he deserves it and because he is lucky as hell to still have his brain intact after a complete heart shut down. I can just imagine Phil waking up from his “nap” on the couch and trying to drive his combine (or couch?) into heaven. I can also see him being sent back to earth to get the right machinery.
My Uncles Rob and Phil on the farm waiting their turn at the annual Superbowl Shotgun party in 2007
Maybe in our ramblings we have found a solution. The colonial world created all of these subjectivity problems by forcing so many cultures into a new “smaller” world. They just needed a good reality TV show. James Cook would invite the Australian Aborigines and the fierce tribes of British Columbia back to England to have a little million-dollar showdown with the lost Incan city at stake. The winner wouldn’t change history, the winner would write history. Instead I have this reoccurring dream about guiding an olden sailboat with a giant spruce mast and long white sails into the cornucopia of a desert with a giant shadow partially covering my sights from a band of antelopes with a rimming of Blue Mountains. Small spiders operate the wings, trying to cut the never-ending algae and spruce trees. Ghosts of aborigines haunt the waters, Gonzo keeps feeding me leeches and pellets, Margi’s mom is prancing around in a leopard print swim suit, and there he is: the French King has replaced Saint Peter. These things will only happen after the devil becomes blind or perhaps while the French King is napping. But I have a feeling that the Combine will keep working on us for years.
Take care, Shane
