I Need to Get Back to the Grand Canyon

Phantom Ranch

Away from noise and rush and rules and cynicism and depression and leaf blowers and car alarms and parking tickets and people who worry about their hair
turning
gray.

I need to get in my car.
Drive 17 hours southeast.
Sleep under stars.
Wake and take pictures and write.

I need to meet people who defy my imagination
Listen to stories while stretched beneath a cottonwood
There beside the cool waters of
a desert stream.

I need to get back to the Grand Canyon
where everything I want to be is everything I am.

I Wish I Could Remember My Dad

My dad told me he would be willing to consider assisted living, but if he had to be bed-bound, forget it. No operation. It would be time to give up. 

And I thought. 

Okay, but it won't get to that. It's a minor procedure. You will be fine. 

And besides, you will live with me, if you need to. 

We will be okay.

My dad told me he is the luckiest father in the world.  "I have the best children," he said.

And I thought, no we're not.

"The kindest."

No, we're not.

"The most generous."

No, we're not.

"The most compassionate. They understand what I want. That I don't want to struggle. I want to die independent."

And this is true. We do understand. Still....

I am the one living nearby. The one who will drive home from Whidbey Island tomorrow, and then take him to the hospital on Wednesday and sit in a waiting room waiting for a surgeon I do not know. Who knows what this surgeon will be like? It could be some Gray's Anatomy kind of surgeon who is busy dreaming about getting into the scrubs of another surgeon. Or it could be a hung over surgeon. Or a surgeon in the throws of a divorce. 

I hope my dad's doctor is not some horny, hungover divorcee. 

Afterwards, I will call my siblings. One in Colorado. The other in Illinois. I will let them know what is what. 

For 

I am the oldest.

The one who has known dad the longest.

We met when he was just thirty.

My thirty year old dad.

And I wish I would have known to remember. 

That's all. 

I just wish I would known to remember. 

-naseem rakha

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.