River

I want to feel the mud
slipping through my fingertips
as my slimmy leaves
sail down the river
towards the abyss

I want to chase after them
But I don't, I watch
I wonder if someone
will find it
and maybe follow it awhile

The look on our faces after free climbing an 80 ft. cliff.


Once again my obsession of Into the Wild has gotten the better of me. Every time I watch it I hate it even more, but it is an unexplainable hatred. I feel compelled to watch it, it exposes something inside my soul that i cannot let go of.


This weekend, I was supposed to go diving with a friend, but she wasn't feeling well enough to venture deep beneath the 50 degree cold water of the Pacific, so we decide at 12 pm that we would go hiking. By 2 we were at the trail head of the East fork of the San Gabriel river. We were on a quest to find the bridge to nowhere, a fabled 150 ft span bridge whose road was washed away about fifty years ago when the canyon flooded, rising the river to 100 ft past it's normal level. We never made it to the bridge. It is a 10 mile hike without a trail. We forded our way up a rushing river of rapids and boulders. We climbed 80ft cliffs to avoid swimming the river (without ropes), walked across fallen logs as rapids surged beneath, and smalled talked with miners, hikers, and hobos. It was ultimate freedom. We were twenty miles from any city with a population of over 100 persons. The Sheep Mountain Wilderness area is truly wilderness and wild. The water is crystal clear snow melt and the wildlife is untamed. We felt so alive, free to explore, accepting of our own mistakes and fate. As I looked down the 80 cliff I had just climbed, with only one good hand because I had sprained my left one, I saw the rushing river below and the certain death that awaited a slip. Every movement was calculated, every pebble taken into account, every route meticulously planned. It made me think of the Into the Wild quote that I so desperately love:

"I read somewhere how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once... to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing blind, deaf stone alone, with nothing to help you but your own hands and your own head. . . ."




Boy do I feel strong. To me the deaf stone was a literal rock face. We each must find our own. I wish to take into account that to "measure yourself at least once" means that life should be open to several personal trials. I do not need to stop my adventure at this one junction.