August is always my favorite time of summer. Base tan is established, the gardens and fruit trees are producing, and all of the muscles necessary for this summer’s outdoor activities are functioning at optimum levels. Some of the past year’s activities have been backpacking, mountain biking, rock climbing, motorcycling and horseback riding. This summer’s activity happens to be whitewater rafting. I have been doing so much rafting that when I close my eyes for even a few seconds I see moving water. The river has also become the metaphor that I use for virtually every philosophical conversation. With that said, I will go ahead and say that I have been swirling around in an eddy for about seven months now. An eddy is the part of a river, either along the shore or behind a rock where water gets pushed up stream. It is a great place to either rest or travel up stream to access a standing wave. Seven months ago I caught an eddy and settled into a house with a girlfriend in a new community. Three weeks ago I moved out of the house and began a house sitting gig which finishes tomorrow freeing me up to dive back into the moving water open to all of the rapids, waterfalls and slow moving water that life will put in my path. I’m really excited about this next few months. I’ll be going to the Black Rock Desert of Nevada to attend Burning Man next week, and then at the end of October I’ll fly to Costa Rica with a bunch of raft guides and a documentary film maker to run warm rivers in the tropical rain forest. After that I’m completely open. Perhaps I’ll go to the Hawaiian Islands and find work on a sailboat, or maybe I’ll come back to Taos and go back to school? In our safety talks we tell our guests that ropes and moving water don’t mix. Although sometimes they are necessary to save someone, usually they only snag and entangle. In these strange and unpredictable times, feel safe and confident untethered in the moving water reacting to the rocks and other obstacles as they come.
It’s 11:01, just about launch time.
