A Seattle Night

Seattle was clear and warm. The sunset on Elliot Bay a romantic etude - Olympic mountains a dark saw blade against a lavender sky, ferries slow moving castles, yellow lights glowing as they orbited the Sound.

I had dinner with Kaitlin's Aunt Kate last night. We had a drink, went for a walk, watched the sunset. We talked about children and family and love and loss and we laughed and visited that worn out room where sadness lives. Then we left.

We ended our visit at a Target. I, to buy soap, she a toaster. We hugged. Said goodbye.

It was a beautiful evening that should never have happened. I should never have met Kaitlin's aunt. The occasion of doing so marked by a reason terribly sad and wrong. The death of a child, a young woman who reminded so many people to fall in love with life.

Kaitlin's Aunt Kate has a new job. Just two weeks ago she began working for an organization trying to stop teen suicide. This is good work, I think. Important. Healing, even though Kaitlin's life ended not by suicide, but by its opposite. Exuberance. Joy. Helen Keller's, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing," philosophy of existence.

Kate and I found out we grew up no more than 10 miles from one another. I worked minutes away from her town and community. She graduated from high school in 1976. Me, 1977. Our lives orbiting the way lives do until one day those orbits meet.

-Naseem Rakha 4/26/13

Outside Magazine - Kaitlin Kenney

Even while napping, Kaitlin was smiling.
Picture from Wild Rockies Field Institute

Outside Magazine, the "Live Bravely" publication, has just uploaded an article about Kaitlin Kenney entitled Lost in the Grand Canyon.

Which proves one thing to me: Kaitlin is still alive in the hearts of thousands of people who have read and shared her story, contacted her parents, attended her memorials, or simply sat in quiet contemplation of what it means to live a life well. In the moment, with a big, genuine, and generous heart.

Many of these people are like me - individuals who never had the honor to meet Kaitlin, but are still touched and inspired by the young woman who set off to spend a winter month in the bottom of the Grand Canyon. A musician, a conservationist, a backpacker and dancer. An inspiration to friends and family. Her life and untimely death speaks to that part of us that knows life is short, and should be grabbed with both hands and embraced. The raw and pure human urge to seek splender and wonder and beauty and knows we spend too much time clutching a steering wheel, or locked in a line, or embedded in some TV show not seeing, not feeling, not loving or even being.

Kaitlin, the memory of her, the song of her, the light of her—is alive. I read it in letters from people thanking me for writing about her. She has helped these people, so many of them strangers to her, re-think, re-evaluate, re-invent.

Kaitlin lived bravely—and inspires us all to do the same.

Links to essays about Kaitlin:
The Way We Die - Kaitlin Kenney - January 16, 2013
For the People Who Love Kaitlin Kenney - March 4, 2013
Remember To Live - April 4, 2013
This Porous World - April 8, 2013
If There are Angels - for the Oregonian - April 14, 2013
Lost in the Grand Canyon - Outside Magazine - April 19, 2013

Crisis-tainment

I am not watching the news. Not following #manhunt tweets. Or #bostonbombs. I did have on NPR for a while, but turned it off when some reporter questioned why Obama had not yet spoke today, three days after two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon.

"People need to hear from their leader," the White House Correspondant said.

Really?

What do we need to hear that he has not already said? That one suspect is dead and they are searching for the other and that we really don't know anything more than that. That will help?

Jeez.

You know what I want to hear? I want some reporter to say, go play with your child. Go hold that young person and tell them you love them, and point to something beautiful. A beautiful painting, a beautiful tree a cloud a rainbow a puddle. Play some music. Sing. Dance. Make something delicious for dinner, and then set the table with candles, and tell stories and talk about the one thing you could not live without. And if you don't have a child then tell your friend, your lover, your neighbor. Even the one with the loud dog and that clothes line you absolutely hate....

People were standing at the finish line at the Boston Marathon, one second cheering the next screaming. Blood was everywhere. Limbs. Smoke. Shrapnel. Glass. It was falling still, and still people ran toward the danger. Toward it.

Tell your mother about one thing she gave you will always remember. A nice thing....
Do the same for your dad.
Do the same for the woman you live with. And the man.

Turn off the TV and do this, because this is what we have.

Sure, there is ugly, insane, devastating shit going on in this world. And it can rip out our heart or we can remember: people ran toward the danger. They ran toward it, and picked up bodies and carried them.

I want the news stations to say 'while police continue to search for a bomber in Boston,' people of all shapes and sizes are putting on running shoes and getting ready for a race. Or, 'while a school shooter's home is being searched', kids are singing in their school halls. Or 'while ricin has been found in an envelop' prisoners are writing letters of apology to their victims. I want the news to tell me about all the big beautiful magic things that happen every day when people say, I am not going to be scared, and you can't make me.

Stick your camera on that, CNN, 'cause that's where the real news is.

Who Killed the Gun Bill?

Yesterday, April 17th, 2013, a minority of Senators killed a bill which would have required more extensive background checks before the purchase of a gun. The bill needed 60 votes to pass. It only received 54. The bill was crafted by a republican and democrat, both of them gun owners. It was favored by 90 percent of Americans.

After the shameful vote, one Sandy Hook parent pledged to continue to fight for common sense gun laws.

"Our hearts may be broken, but our spirits are not." 

Since the Sandy Hook tragedy, 3514 more people have been killed by guns in the United States. 

Three thousand-five hundred-fourteen. 

Here is another number: (202) 224-3121. It is the capital switchboard. And here is a link to the names of the forty six senators who voted against keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people. Let them know what you think of their vote. 

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.

This Porous World

 My experiences related to the canyon have been on the order of a spiritual awakening which has left me as porous as the canyon's sedimentary strata, where rain water cleaves and carves and emerges later as beautiful clear springs.

I take power naps. Total shutdowns that last twenty minutes—max. I lay down, close my eyes, and off I go. During yesterday's nap I dreamt I was walking within a pink fog. There was no telling where I was, it was just pink, pink, pink hovering over and around me. A myopic's sunrise? I didn't know. Then I heard water, and soon saw a small clear stream covered in parts with the tiny pads of bright green duck weed. And then there were frogs, dozens of them hoping from one round stone to another.

I love frogs.

And so the dream was good in its dreamy, pink-ceilinged-froggy kind of way. Then a piece of pink fog broke off the roof of my dream and fluttered to the ground. A flamingo feather? Cotton Candy? I leaned down and picked it up. It was a leguminous shaped flower, like a sweet pea, but as small as a baby's eye tooth.

I looked back up, and now I could see beyond the pink to the hulking outline of the canyon. I must have learned about the redbud trees at Indian Gardens in the Grand Canyon somewhere. Maybe I read about them in Canyon Crossing (a book I recommend anyone with an interest in the canyon read.) Maybe I noticed them when I was hiking the Bright Angel Trail in February. Though I doubt that. They would have been fairly nondescript without their blooms or heart-shaped leaves. At any rate, it doesn't matter how I knew about the trees, what mattered was that my dream took me to this desert oasis. A patch of green half way to the river, half way to the rim. Native people sheltered here for more than 10,000 years before the white guys came. The native's planted crops, even orchards.

In the pink-tinged dream I could smell the creek water, taste it in the dry air, hear my feet crush the brittle remnants of last autumn's leaves.

After twenty minutes I woke, put on my glasses and looked out the window of my Oregon home. The hail that had fallen earlier still covered the ground, the sky was still gray. I heaved a great heavy sigh, feeling sad and stupid, longing for the canyon like a regular person might long for a human being.

Redbud trees at Indian Garden on the Bright Angel Trail taken by Willie Holdman

I walked into the kitchen and saw the mail had come while I was hiking at Indian Gardens. Among the bills were two packages for me.

The first package was from from Brian Kenney. It included the program from his daughter, Kaitlin's, memorial, a short note, and a cd the family had put together of music that reminded them of Kaitlin. I read the memorial, thinking of the route that had brought me into this family's life. I have had several people write to tell me they thought the purpose for my residency at the Grand Canyon was so that I could write the essays I did. To be a vehicle, so to speak. Someone who knew the canyon and could speak to loss. Put it in a frame that could be held and reckoned with. I don't know. I don't know much about anything, really. Not much at all.

My son put the cd in our stereo. That cd is playing now, and I am captured by a song I had never heard before. If I was a Raven is sung acapella by Bonnie Paine.

If I was a raven
I'd fly off to the heaven
I'd fly to all my love ones
If was a raven.

If memories are worth saving
I'd savor the feeling
Of knowing love and loving
I'd remember the feeling

Some say up on that mountain
There is many a raven
They call out to the living
From somewhere far beyond them

From the sweet love that has flown on.

The song, of course, made me think of Kaitlin Kenney, and the canyon and its ubiquitous ravens, and my own desire that when I die my ashes be scattered in the Grand Canyon so that I can be part raven and part river. Part pinion, part cacti, part ponderosa pine perched on a shelf of the rim. Part canyon dust that may one day be part canyon wall.

I turned my attention to the second package, a blue plastic bubble-wrap envelop. Grand Canyon return address. Inside, I found a beautiful letter from my friend Kristi Rugg, the ranger who I hiked part of Hermit Trail with and who dropped me off at South Kaibab for my decent to the river. She had written an ode to the canyon. Beautiful heartfelt words about humans' connection to place.

"Generations of people have made Grand Canyon home. The Hopi emerged from its depths, and to it they return when their time here is over. Tiyo, the first person to travel through the canyon's depths by way of the river, found wonder and mystery so far removed from the outside world, sheltered in the unforgiving walls. When he emerged he was changed. He found love, discovered new information, and met his connection to the wildness, Spider Grandmother. Similarly the Diné, Havasupai, Hualapai, Paiute, Apache, and Zuni all have ventured down to be connected and be uplifed.

You are counted among those...the people who find their hearts somewhere in the granite and sandstone....."

In addition to the letter there was a small box. Inside, was a little bear carved from pipestone. Kristi said the bear it is meant to symbolize the devine. Which may explain my ache. My experiences related to the canyon have been on the order of a spiritual awakening which has left me as porous as the canyon's sedimentary strata, where rain water cleaves and carves and emerges later as beautiful clear springs.

I am not talking holy-roller, church-going, give-me-god kind of awakening. I am talking about a sense of connection, to land, to people, to story, and history, to the sky, to water. To life. A sense that there is more to this world then I will ever know or understand and that there are no answers. Nothing definitive. And that nothing, not one thing exists in isolation from another.

Vasey's Paradise Grand Canyon river mile 30

And now, just now, as I write those words, I get an email from my rafting buddy, Bert. He tells me a friend of his knew Kaitlin's family. And the day before that my brother calls to tell me he knew their parents. Years ago, when he lived in Chicago, he would occasionally go to Denver where they worked for the same company. My brother lost touch when he left that job, and he did not put my writing and his connection with the Kenny's together until he saw the mother's name on my Facebook site. He remembers her talking about Kaitlin playing the violin and taking up dance. About them going to music festivals. Kaitlin would have been six or seven then. Just a child.

I close my email, and hold my bear, and listen to Kaitlin's music. I have no idea about much of anything. No answers. No certainties, but this—love is a good thing. It pries open our hearts and makes us available to the world. Porous people with the ability to see and connect in ways we can not when we approach our days with pain, fear and anger.

There is a good path. It has redbud trees in bloom right now, a small stream with duck weed and frogs, and all you have to do to walk it is be open to what comes.

I hope to go back to the canyon in October—to hike to the river under the full moon. I hope to be there in April next year to hike to Indian Garden and lay beneath the redbuds. I hope to raft it in every season of the year. Silty red of monsoon to clear green of winter.

Maybe this is what Georgia O'Keefe felt about New Mexico. She had to be there. It was her muse, the place her heart soared. That's what I feel when I'm at the canyon—a wild soaring heart.

-Naseem Rakha 4/7/13

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