Rafting the
San Juan River Canyon
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| Captain Mike Rozycki at the helm |
TSP …
Math-heads & complexity geeks know it as the Traveling Salesman Problem –
how to fashion a formula that will predict the shortest routes between, say, 100,000
cities. I guess there is a certain kind of geeky gratification to solving such a
computational Gordian Knot. But I could care less. Shorter and faster are no
longer modes of choice. The older this hippie gets the more he likes going
slow. Wasn’t always this way. But times change. And taking my first river
overnight on the Southwest’s classic Sand
Island to Mexican Hat stretch
was a spring highlight … Of course, I was blessed with great river-mates.
People I’d sort of known around Telluride but got to know a lot better, one of
whom had done some 50 runs on the San Juan over the last 30 years – a wealth of
knowledge and great stories …
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| Negotiating the rapids |
We had a few little rapids. Just enough to keep
you alert from getting caught on the rocks or a sandbar. But mostly a nice long
lovely coast – at least for me, as my raft captain did all the oaring. Which
was tough the first day out – breaking in misplaced oarlocks and bucking stiff
gusty winds. But which settled into a pleasant lollygagger’s delight for the
rest of the trip … The food was gorgeous. No paltry hikers’ portions or
industrial mix-with-water packets. This was the real thing. Cooked over
charcoal. One night salmon fillets smoked on little planks of cedar soaked in
bourbon. Beer. Tequila. Coffee with sugar or stevia, half-and-half and touch of
Valrhona chocolate. I mean, I don’t eat this good at home … And while the party
ethic is encouraged, the leave-no-trace ethic is the prime directive. We had
our own groover (portable latrine box with attachable seat) and were instructed
to wash hands, crush cans, spills crumbs into the river and not along the river
campsites. In fact, the hardest thing of all for me was learning to pee into
the river. There’s the shyness thing (although a few males were shameless in
whipping out their peter and pissing into the stream in full public view --
once as we promenaded by in our raft). It’s impolite to expose one’s genitals
to public view in our culture (sometimes illegal). A bizarre, almost quaintly
baroque notion – or so it seems to this Rainbow hippie. But it is the custom,
and one usually tries to observe the local customs, so as to not offend the locals
… No, the real reason I was shocked by the BLM river ranger’s etiquette talk
was that, in mountain streams, I’d always been instructed not to piss in the
water. To get back a ways from the water before urinating. So, learning the new
ropes was unsettling … But it was impressive. The campsites were free of fire
rings or old toilet paper flags flying from the bushes. And they smelled of
willow leaf and yucca, not uric acid … If you want to see some photos, check my
Facebook page.
PARTISAN MADNESS … It seems sad that we seem to be being pushed into an orgy of impolite
and often untrue attack-ad games when we talk about national politics (even
some state politics, though not as completely). I think many of the Republican
principles are wise – fiscal responsibility, work rather than welfare, local
control (meaning local participation in federal decision-making when it affects
local communities). Just like I subscribe to a lot of the Libertarian
principles – personal responsibility, ending foreign wars, get government out
of the bedroom and our personal lives … But I don’t cotton to the current crop
of Tea Party refuseniks unable to set aside differing principles and work
across the aisle towards good governance on behalf of the people. There are
dozens of reasons why this is a bad idea. But the most recent Scientific American editorial (June 2012
issue) in support of Planned Parenthood gives one pause ... When we champion
extreme positions, we all bend the facts a bit to make a point. But when
Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona
pronounced on the floor of the Congress last year that PP spent “well over 90
percent” of its money – much of it in the form of federal funding – on
abortions, he wasn’t just using hyperbole. He was lying ... PP spends 3 percent
of its budget on assisting women with ending unwanted pregnancies (none of
those services using federal monies). By proposing to cut its funding – half of
it from federal and state funding – Republicans have stepped from good
governance into partisan intractableness and even lying on behalf of their
cause. That’s just one of many risks in letting extreme campaign partisanship
rule the day. Citizens don’t know if their leaders are telling the truth or not
anymore. It seeds distrust, and a nation only governs wisely with the trust of
its electorate … In 2011 PP served over 4 million people with tests and
treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, it performed 750,000 breast cancer
exams and 770,000 Pap tests for cervical cancer. Thanks to PP’s assistance in providing
birth control options to women – in particular the pill -- maternal deaths have
declined 60 percent since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Connecticut’s law
against public access to contraceptives in 1965. And more than half of all
doctoral degrees in this country went to women in 2009, compared to 20 percent
in the early 1960s. The Chicago Tribune
has even called PP “America’s
largest abortion preventer” …
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| Sen. Kyl (AP Photo/Matt York) |
Who knows what partisan source provided Sen. Kyl
with the false info? The fact is we are moving beyond the reasonable into the
realm of the deceptive with our partisanship. And it’s not a pretty picture. Or
a true one.
THE TALKING GOURD
Panta Rei
-for Ken Wright
On sandbars & river’s edge
geese & their goslings
ignore us, boating by
while a solitary heron
perched on legs like cattails
keeps a close eye
Bighorn sheep
leap from ledge to edge
browsing under blue skies
Circling high above us
on a rim of acrylic sandstone
& poured igneous
a hawk. Maybe an eagle.
And first sketch
rafting the San Juan
I feel the cold rush of blood
rippling through the narrows
of my body’s veins
The mind’s hot sun
warming lungs of Russian Olive
Tamarisk. Native willow
Just another critter
on the canyon block
Hitching a ride with the flow
