If There are Angels - A Story for the Oregonian

N. Rakha, Colorado River Mile 134.5. Tapeats Creek.

On Sunday, April 14th, the Oregonian will publish an article I wrote about Kaitlin Kenny, the young woman who drowned in the Colorado River while on a 29-day river trip though the Grand Canyon.

I first wrote about Kaitlin on January 16th, four days after her friends woke at Tapeats Creek to find her missing. I wrote about her again in February after hiking to the river, and then again just recently after her body was finally found and returned home.

Jeff Baker from the Oregonian asked that I write about how words can sometimes reach out and touch people in ways a writer can not expect. That is true about my essays on Kaitlin. I certainly never expected to be drawn into her life as I have, and I feel very grateful to have been able to play a small role in helping people come to terms with loss.

You can link to the on-line version of the Oregonian article here: Words Open Path Toward Healing in the Grand Canyon.

Remember to Live - Kaitlin Kenney

"It's a steep learning curve out here in the Grand Canyon. The elements are fast teachers that can be very unforgiving." Kaitlin Kenney, Day 8-River Journal

Newspapers reported this week that the body retrieved recently from the Colorado River was Kaitlin Kenney. She was found by rafters 30 miles downstream from where she had last been seen on January 11th, at Tapeats Creek in the Grand Canyon.

Poor Kaitlin.
Poor rafters.
Poor family and friends.
Poor park service employees who took that emergency call in January, and flew into the canyon, and searched the campsite and the drainages and then the water,
finding nothing. Not one single thing. And who then had to make calls to the family and sit with them, and look them in the eyes and tell them what to expect.

This is what happens to a drowned body. It sinks until it eventually floats, face down, arms stretched out like wings.

Kaitlin's body was helicoptered to the Medical Examiner's office in Flagstaff. A week later they confirmed, 'Yes.' This was the girl they'd been looking for. Twenty-one year old Kaitlin Anne Kenney. The missing University of Montana student who had been in the midst of a 29-day, 277-mile-long rafting trip when she disappeared from camp. The gifted fiddler, the dancer, the girl who would wear fairy wings, and tell jokes and gathered friends like light gathers life, and who wrote in her river journal after her first day in the canyon:

"I am going into this experience with the intention of opening my heart to whatever is presented to me in whatever form. This trip is a continuation of breaking down walls to let my heart shine. Cheers Universe, and thank you for this amazing opportunity. May love be, give and see. Shine night, Shine bright." KK, Day 1, River Journal

I only met Kaitlin after she disappeared. She came to me through Google. I was getting ready to drive down for my own one month stay at the canyon, and needed to know the weather, so I typed Grand Canyon and hit news. The first item in the list was an article about a missing Colorado woman. I clicked the link and found myself staring at this picture. I searched for more articles on the missing woman, and it was clear she had probably slipped into the river sometime in the middle of the night, and was gone.

Kaitlin Kenney

And because I love the canyon, and have rafted it, and almost died doing it, and because I know how the canyon shapes not just stone but every human bone that dips itself into its waters, or climbs its paths, I started to write about the girl I did not know, and the ways we live and die. I wanted to say that though tragic, perhaps there is some comfort knowing Kaitlin was living a full and big life right until the moment she was gone.

Most people can't say that.

Risk, vulnerability, hardship, ignorance, fear, they guide so many of our actions, keeping us from diving fully into our lives. Not Kaitlin Kenney, who decided to spend a winter month at the bottom of a cold canyon, to turn twenty-one away from old friends or bars or even civilization, to challenge herself to be open to whatever came. Kaitlin Kenney inhabited her life. And that is rare, and precious, and important.

"I feel like part of the lesson in this is to push my will power and strength to get what I seek (and more) out of this trip plus really further explore parts about myself. I'm open to whatever feelings, thoughts, emotions, or experiences arise on this trip and I full heartedly intend to face them and rise to the challenge." KK, Day 2-River Journal

Kaitlin Kenney prior to running Hermit on her birthday, January 6, 2013.
© Sophie Danison 2013

Kaitlin's parents shared their daughter's river journal with me after we spoke on the phone. This was the day before Easter, and just a day after they learned the body recovered at mile 165 was indeed their "Special K." There really hadn't been any doubt in their minds, and they were as prepared as parents could be for such news. At least now their Kaitlin was home, and they reached out to me in hopes I would tell others. They had read that first short essay I had written, and appreciated that it did not speculate about Kaitlin's death, but focused instead on what she might have gotten from her last days of life. "Kaitlin would have liked that," her mom said.

I imagined Kaitlin's parents talking to me through their kitchen's speaker phone. A mother and father sitting together at a table telling stories about their daughter. She was the youngest of four children, a "surprise angel," with wise, "old soul" eyes. She took up the fiddle when she was just five, hiding in her room to play so others would not feel cheated by how gifted she was. She studied Irish dance, would dress up in her big sisters' clothes, and loved to tell jokes. "You can lead a horse to water," she wrote as a seven-year-old. "But not to a volcano."

Maybe not a horse, I thought as her parents and I laughed at her proverb, but I bet Kaitlin would have been eager to climb to the very top of a volcano and look into its depths. She probably has already done this. Kaitlin grew up in Colorado, and spent last summer backpacking and studying with the Wild Rockies Field Institute. Her blogs from those weeks tell of a woman coming into herself—an ardent conservationist with a love for this world and the magic its wild places hold.

"We've been practicing 'Leave No Trace; which entails leaving the environment we travel through in the same if not better condition... I must say though, the natural mountain environments of the Northern Rockies have left quite the trace on me. I feel humbled by the innate beauty of these places that are so intuitive and efficient without any human touch to make it this way. I feel connected to, even tapped into the web of life." KK, 8/26/12, What Today Leaves and Tomorrow Brings.




The thing is, even though I never knew Kaitlin, I feel I did. She is that person you see dancing on the beach, or balanced on a train-track. She is there, dressed as the mad-hatter while peaking around the fence, or jumping into the frigid water of a glacial-fed creek. She is the woman who volunteers at shelters, and cares about the poor, and wants to help. She is the one people gather around and listen to and laugh with and love. The one at the party playing music and getting others to sing. She is just the kind of person parents think of when they make dreams for their children—happy, healthy, loving, loved, awake, alive, inspirational. Inspired.

Be Here Now, she wrote in her river journal. Love people. Stop judging. Stay true. Explore. Rise to the challenge. Be full hearted. Trust yourself. 

She was, "A magic maker, an unconditional lover to all and a bright shining light in a weary world," wrote a young man who described he and Kaitlin as first loves.

"She was my 'remember to live' buddy," wrote her hiking partner, Tash, in a letter to Kaitlin's parents.

If people are born to learn how to live a good life, if that's the purpose of all this, then clearly, Kaitlin Anne Kenney figured it out early.

"On new years we did a little fire circle go-around and what I said I want to work on in 2013 is to let go of fear because it doesn't serve me. And since then I 've been facing my fears head on and not letting them get the best of me." KK, final entry-River Journal.

Some might say fear, a good healthy dose of it, might have saved Kaitlin. She might have laughed off the offer of a river trip through the nation's most dangerous national park. She might have stayed home. Safe. Sound. And maybe that's true. But then Kaitlin Kenney would not have been the person so many people loved. Her mom and dad understood this.

"Parents are always reluctant to let their children go on such journeys, but we let you go....This was a spiritual trip for you and you were truly connected with the beauty of the earth and this universe. Thank you for blessing our lives so deeply and profoundly. We miss your physical presence but you will always be with us in our hearts. We love you so much, my little ladybug fiddle fairy. Mom" 

Last summer, while camped somewhere in the Rockies, Kaitlin told her friend Tash that she believed that after death, life somehow goes on, just in a different way. "Maybe a real fairy world," she said.

I don't know about a fairy world, but life, ours, opened, dusted, stretched out and given wings can be one way Kaitlin lives on. Remember to live, she would say.

Remember to live.

-Naseem Rakha 4/3/13

The wise, "old soul" eyes

The Way We Die - Kaitlin Kenney

Mile 33 Colorado River - approaching Redwall Cavern

Deep in the Grand Canyon, search and rescue teams have scaled back efforts to find 21-year-old Colorado woman, Kaitlin Kenney. She was half way through a month long river trip when she went missing last Saturday. The group she was with had camped at Tapeats Creek, mile 134.5 on the north side of the Colorado River. When they woke, Kaitlin was gone, and search teams have found no sign of her. It is believed Kaitlin probably fell into the river sometime in the middle of the night.

The Colorado is deep and swift and filled with boulders. But more dangerous than any of that is its temperature. The river is deadly cold. Even in the summer it is cold. The water, most of it, is flushed from the bottom of Lake Powell, and stays about 46 degrees year round, warming only a little during the monsoon when un-dammed tributaries pour in their silty cargo. But it's not summer in the Canyon. It is winter, and even at its base—more than a mile below the snow-spackled rim, it's cold. The last time people saw Kaitlin she was wearing a long coat, thick pants, a hat and scarf.

From pictures it's clear Kaitlin was a beautiful girl with long brown hair, big brown eyes, and a genuine smile. From newspaper descriptions we know she played the fiddle, and was studying Anthropology and Native American Cultures at the University of Montana. I would imagine that this trip must have been a kind of nexus for her. A coming together of dreams and passion. The canyon is America's oldest museum. The walls date back almost 2 billion years, and the arid climate encumbers decay. Native American foot paths, tools, baskets, even stocks of grain can still be found. There is not a single section in the 277-mile-long river trip that does not call out with story and fill a curious mind with wonder. And then there is the granddaddy of all amphitheaters. Redwall Cavern sits at mile 33. Kaitlin would have likely reached the gigantic lens-shaped cave during the first week of her journey, and because she was a musician, and because so many others have done it, I would imagine that Kaitlin Kenney would have played her music inside that stone dome. John Wesley Powell estimated 50,000 people could fit in there. I'm not sure he had that right, but I do imagine that playing an instrument inside that space must feel akin to playing in one of the world's oldest and grandest cathedrals. And Kaitlin would have had that.

Mile 33 Redwall Cavern

People die in the Grand Canyon. In 2010, twelve people died: dehydration, falls, drownings. In 2011, twenty-one more died.

I almost died there. A careless decision to "swim" Hermit Rapids. There are 10 big waves on Hermit—a few of them almost 20 feet tall. Jumping into that icy-water without a wetsuit was a fool's move, and I remember being convinced I was about to die as my lungs seized and my body was thrust beneath the heavy water. But what I also remember, strange though it seemed even then, was feeling that if it was my time, then I was okay with that. If I am about to die, I thought, then the Canyon was the best place for it to happen.

I had found my soul-spot deep in those walls. My life had found its sense. The rim-world and all its problems and indifference and caustic battles over money and time and resources, felt obsolete. I never wanted to return. And so death—if that was what I faced, was best done there—where life felt its fullest.

This, of course, is no help to the friends and family of Kaitlin Kenney. And it's not meant to be. There is no quick-release from the grip of sorrow. Loss, when it happens, becomes part of what we wear. But eventually grief's shroud softens, and the weave becomes thin, and light filters through, and we are occasionally able to set that sadness down. And maybe, in those moments, the young girl who decided to spend a winter month in a canyon, can be remembered, as she said in a postcard to her mother, of having the time of her life—right up to the moment her life was over. 

-Naseem Rakha 1/16/13