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Introduction
This book was not planned, but
appeared in an unpredictable way out of my long time interest in
flowing water and kayaking. For as long as I can remember, and
certainly for my entire career as a whitewater kayaker, I’ve
been drawn to those aspects of life that offered the greatest scope
for change. I like adaptation and I like to be confronted with my
limits, because only then is it possible to realize what holds me
back and what I might be capable of. Kayaking is a sport ready-made
to show those limits and demand change.
I began writing essays for
myself over 20 years ago as a way to think through the experiences I
had while kayaking. Flowing water is complex, and the closer I
looked, the more lessons I learned. They ranged from the most
immediate life and death disasters, to subtleties that defied
description and challenged my understanding. Some ideas I’ve
mulled over for many years, and I have thousands of pages of notes
and hundreds of essays, articles, and ponderings at different stages
of development. That number has only increased with time. The essays
in this volume are just a few that I’ve put into final form –
if there ever is such a thing as final.
I chose the word “philosophy”
because every essay here is about our values and beliefs and
expresses the ways in which the river becomes an intimate and
important part of our lives. It is a rough-hewn but hopefully
coherent set of themes about adventure sports, because all of them in
their own ways confront us with the critical problem of how a weak,
awkward human is able to fit into the natural world, and live with
the sharp edges and awe-inspiring powers that pulse there. It doesn’t
matter whether one is dealing with water or air, snow or rock, in
caves or high above the ground; our adventure sports form the modern
Dao – they are ways of existing and expanding our awareness
into the midst of the powers that shaped this astonishing planet.
The belief that prompts much of
what I do is simple. It might be stated this way: all outward
journeys should also be inward journeys. Without this, there is
little personal change, still less meaning, and there certainly can
be no philosophy. The outward journey is nothing without an
equivalent journey within oneself; otherwise, we travel to the ends
of the earth and yet stay exactly the same. I want something more
than that.
In kayaking, as in other
adventure sports, endless travel is trumpeted, striving for the
highest, hardest, most stunning new descents, ascents, or feats.
While I’ve done my share of this, I always had a nagging
feeling as I watched the endless treadmill some of my friends and
acquaintances walked, whether they were kayakers, climbers, extreme
skiers, paragliders, or BASE jumpers. Trip after trip, gig after gig,
video after video their travels across the globe played out, and yet
some of them never seemed to change as people. They had an amazing
wealth of experience and astonishing skills, and yet seemingly a
poverty of making use of these things. The action of their sports
seemed to function as an end in itself, almost as an escape rather
than as a vehicle for something greater.
I don’t mean to criticize
these people, because I share many attitudes with them.
Unquestionably, all are bright, engaging, skilled, and interesting.
Many are my good friends. I only wish to say that personally I’m
not interested in a path solely of action, without deeper reflection.
Balanced, graceful action in the middle of chaos is a beautiful
thing, enticing and compelling. You can marvel at it, like a miracle
where the laws of entropy and chance have been repealed and
astonishing feats somehow become possible. It is so compelling that
it can uproot people and motivate them to a lifetime of paddling
rivers or climbing mountains. This is a great experience, but not as
an end in itself. Action is in many ways only the surface, and the
most compelling truths do not lie on the surface of things.
Kayaking has left me with an
undeniable thought: that adventure sports allow us to take part in
the very powers that sculpted and shaped the world around us. That is
a profound realization. It allows us a glimpse of the timelessness,
change, and the infinite power of nature. When we move down a river,
we are literally a part of the flow that scours the mountains and
creates the vast landscape of continents. We can learn skills that
allow us to join in the wordless wisdom of nature, but it is up to us
to understand it, first to survive and then to respect and
appreciate. The forces stir the beginner’s joy in a simple
surf, and sweep to a deep humility in the face of a massive, powerful
rapid.
Because of where we go, all the
adventure sports readily evolve into much more than sports. They
aren’t like baseball, soccer, or football. They don’t
have man-made rules. The rules are those of God and Nature, and of
how the world is created. They aren’t arbitrary or tweaked to
make things fit humans, like the dimensions of the batter’s box
or the height of a basketball rim. They are life and death. They are
how long you can hold your breath, how well you can hold your angle
when the current slams on top of you, and how surely you can direct
your path up or down a mountain, or through a raging rapid. These are
elemental things, and no human law will ever have their power. They
create a purity that draws certain kinds of people and not others.
You have to be willing to stretch, to be thrown out of your comfort
zone and adapt. It is not competition that is the draw, because there
is no other team. The river or mountain is not your opponent. You do
not fight it, even if the old stereotypes are of “conquering”
Everest. So far as I can tell, Everest will still be there long after
everybody who ever climbed it is dead. Tectonic movements will make
it higher over the next ten million years, glaciers will tear away at
its massive flanks and hurricane force winds will sweep its slopes
every year, but humans will be no more. And the same simple thing is
true of the rivers we run today and for the foreseeable future. There
will be no sign of our passing, and no memory of our feats.
I don’t believe in
defining such places in terms of humans’ games and limits. The
more important view is that we attempt to learn to live within the
greater powers and beauties of nature, and find wisdom there, truths
about ourselves and our place in a larger world. I prefer looking at
mountains and rivers and feeling their grandeur, rather than thinking
in terms of racing to the top of a peak or down a rapid. The latter
defines nature in human terms, the former confronts us with our human
limitations in the face of much larger powers. Both can tell us
something of what we are, but I find the greater depths lie in
confronting ourselves with our weaknesses than in focusing on our
supposed strengths. It is a simple truth that what we consider our
greatest strengths are precisely our greatest weaknesses.
Rivers are just water, rocks and
gravity, yet they produce the most astonishing beauty with a special
kind of magic and infinite challenge. These create our sport and open
the path to much more, including the path to changing ourselves.
Stepping onto this path transforms the adventure sports into a very
different venture. In particular, they become martial arts, where we
live guided by a philosophy of both adventure and inner change
instead of mere action. As the single greatest key: when ego is fed,
vision is lost. When ego is cut through, insight is gained.
I’ve spent the last 25
years journeying through a world far more powerful than me, and this
book is a small offering that describes a few things I’ve found
along that path. Kayaking whitewater has deeply changed the way I
look at the world, the skills I have, my judgment and perspective.
The following essays deal with confronting limits and knowing
ourselves, with risk, where fear comes from and how it can be
overcome, with craziness, death and challenge, the real measure of
skill, being alone, the bonds between partners, and much more. I
have done my best to set down a few ideas, and I hope others will do
more. For all the efforts we collectively have put into our
adventures, so far we have very little philosophy to show for it.
Most of what is there is piecemeal franticness, wry humor, tales of
prowess, trashings, and dramatic stories of survival. Again, the
focus is on action and not reflection, as if there are no other paths
to follow. This is thin gruel and I reject it as an ultimate goal.
It’s fun, it’s exciting, but it’s not a goal. I
would like to invite everybody to take a hand in developing a
philosophy of adventure, starting with the sport and rivers we know
so intimately. Living with one of the world’s great powers puts
us in a privileged position. We all feel that gift every time we put
on a river, but it would be gratifying if we could be like the fabled
alchemists of old, and transmute those feelings into a small number
of clear truths.
There is much more to be done; I
hope readers find a least a few ideas of interest and take them
farther in ways I have not envisioned. When we start building instead
of treating our sports like the beautiful anarchies they are, then
perhaps we will see deeper into the world around us and especially,
deeper into the worlds within us.
Acknowledgements: Everybody I’ve ever been with on the river has contributed to this book and these ideas in some way. The full list would be very long, but I’d like to thank a few people in particular for prodding me over the years and for many valuable experiences: Rob Lesser, Bob McDougall, John Wasson, Charlie Munsey, Gerry Moffatt, Scott Lindgren, Monty Moravec, Risa Shimoda, Tommy Hilleke, Erik Boomer, John Salisbury, Ed Ward, Will Gadd, Brennan Guth, Corran Addison, Dave Manby, and Peter Knowles. Markus Schmid, Lukas Bluecher, Oli Grau, and Olaf Obsommer also have been inspirations. Mike Kord has been a wonderful editor, sharp, insight-ful, and easy to work with. Ambrose Tuscano and Melissa Newell helped greatly with suggestions and discussions on many of the essays. Special thanks go to my close friend Jim Snyder, who for the past 15 years has served as a reliable and perceptive sounding board for many a crazy thought. Lastly, my wife Robin and our children have given me perspectives that run through every single idea here. I am sincerely indebted to all these people. Doug Ammons Missoula, Montana. February 2009
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