Mark Twight, a well known outspoken and brash American alpinist calls it the darkness. A state of despair, resulting in negatively connotated outcomes and obsessive emotional states of not be allowed to pursue what one loves. He writes, "But the threat still lingers like a steel trap. Though obsession rests, I know it will attack without warning. Possession will come back to disrupt the quiet. I know that sharp and dripping teeth wait calmly behind seductive lips; wait to crush, wait to tear with viscous, hungry breath. I know that sensitve eyes rest quietly behind fiercely made-up lashes, behind a calculated mask. Capable of opening without consent, they are neither placid nor meanacing. I bow my head once more, and while ambition sleeps inside of me. I content myself with memories of glitter and despair."
My illusions of a year to remember abruptly ended on the second day of paddling back in the Midwest. The first rapid on the classic Cascade river, Hidden Falls, is a very long and serious slide. The flow was high, but in the past I'd run the falls higher and with mixed results. After a calculated scout, I entered and was exactly where I'd intended, performing the strokes at the specific features, just as I had done many years before. Entering the final pitch of the rapid, my boat was thrust upward, my angle thrown off, and I entered the large hydrualic at the bottom sideways, subluxing my right shoulder upon impact.
After a battle to be released, I entered the eddy below unable to power my right arm. While my friends finished the run, I drug my boat back to the vehicles, angry, upset, and telling myself the pain was only temporary.
POV footage of Hidden Falls, Cascade River, Minnesota.
Finishing out the rest of my ten day Midwest season was painful, yet necessary as the fear of not being able to kayak for a very long time loomed over my consciousness like a dark cloud.
It's almost comical how fast life can change. For the past two years I have trained immensely for a upcoming fall expedition in Alaska and Northern British Columbia. I altered my life, putting kayaking first, moving to places where I could paddle difficult rivers year round, taking specific terms off of school to coincide with ideal river flows, facing every challenge head on, to mentally prepare myself for anything. It was my goal to stay healthy and train as hard as I could, jettisoning anything that would remotely deter me of such future goals. It was a river trip that would undoubtedly defy not only my kayaking career, but my life. An obsession on the home stretch, with only four months to go, and in the matter of a few mere seconds, it was gone.
The MRI scan spoke of torn tendons and bone fractures. With it came anger, frustration, and depression. The hardest part wasn't the physical pain, but telling my best friend that I wouldn't be able to physically join him on our adventure. A man, who'd also altered his life and put all his energy into the trip. The message left on his voicemail was laced with tears.
This is my sixth surgery and after such frustrating events one often ponders the grand question whether or not it's worth it. Where do we find sense in it all? With the immense joy also comes pain, and perhaps this is the grand balance. People die, accidents happen, and as a result, will such balancing acts supersede our desire to run rivers?
Ultimately, if one maintains the desire to kayak difficult rivers, inexplicable things happen. There exists no logic as to why. Unfortunately it's part of the unofficial rule book, concepts we as paddlers accept as we stare into the horizon line.
Doug Ammons in Whitewater Philosophy writes, "Add up a river of such things and you have the treasures of the planet spread before you. The river is the essence of creativity and change, creating rapids and features of boundless variety. But among those changes and slight unpredictabilities - the very things that create our pleasure - lie features that can injure and kill us. Challenge and fun, as well as danger and death, all come from the same place."
My pain is trivial compared to most, a repairable problem, that will take time, patience, and healing. While this pain is temporary, some is not. Just last week, a good friend of mine attempted to save a life on a river that's very dear to us both. I can't begin to fathom what that pain is like. How can a sport that gives us so much one instant, tear us down to nothing the next? These unfortunate things will never be explained and ultimately, it's up to us to interpret what lay in the darkness.
2 comments:
Beautifully said.
Post a Comment