The River Muppet
Apr. 13th, 2006 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pixkrisINTRODUCTION
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "It is impossible to step into the same river twice." Though I understood the quote in the abstract, I'd never truly appreciated its full meaning until I canoed down a 40-mile section of the Colorado River with a group of ninth-graders in April 2006.
The river I was promised when I volunteered for this trip was a tame, nurturing creature. "It's so peaceful!" my friend Jonathan had told me. Jonathan had chaperoned this trip for four years, so he was a reliable source. "Seriously, you don't even have to paddle. You could just float down the whole time," he added. "Besides, you're paired up with a naturalist, and all you really have to do is be there for the ride. It's great!"
Now I know that when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. But why would Jon lie? Why volunteer to supervise 12 ninth graders and paddle 40 miles four years in a row if it wasn't everything he said? In fact, Jon was so persuasive that the rest of our department decided to go.
Lisa, Katie, Felicia, Melody and I were really looking forward to the trip. We would be missing the last week of school before Spring Break, so it was almost like having an extra week of vacation. Granted a vacation with the entire freshmen class, but still. We made adventure store shopping dates, compared sleeping bags, and contemplated the best method of keeping our clothes dry at the bottom of a canoe. By the time we rolled into the school parking lot (6:45AM on Monday morning), we were packed and ready.
Jonathan, however, was nowhere to be found. He claimed after the trip that he’d been stricken with stomach flu the night before and so decided he’d have to back out, but we’re now convinced that, somehow, he knew that this year was going to be different.
DAY ONE: MONDAY
I didn’t start the trip at my best. I’d agreed to pick Drew up at LAX when his plane landed at 11:30 the night before, but severe weather in Chicago caused massive delays. In the end, the plane didn’t land until 3AM, his luggage was lost and caused another 30-minute delay, and I didn’t get home and to sleep until 4:30. When the alarm went off an hour later, I was less than perky. I’ll sleep on the bus, I promised myself.
I arrived at the school a little before 7AM and loaded my small duffle into one of the four coach buses. I made sure all of the students in my “pod” were present and accounted for, and I stumbled onto a bus and into a seat. I think I was asleep before we left the parking lot. The trip took about four hours, and by the time we reached Palo Verde, CA, I felt a little more human.
The first day was all about figuring out the logistics of the camping and canoeing ahead. After my group of 12 students and I met our naturalist, a rugged-looking 23-year-old named Beth, we started teaching them the basics. The students learned how to paddle, pod (grouping the canoes together so we could float as a single unit), pump water, set up and take down tents, and manage their gear. It always amazes me how much I take my knowledge about the outdoors for granted. I’ve been camping and canoeing since I was a kid, but most of the students on this trip had never put up a tent in their lives, let alone done so after canoeing 12 miles down a river. There was lots of hand-holding and reassurances that they really could pound in those tent stakes and yes, it really was okay to pee in the river when they wouldn’t see dry land for another six hours. We also walked a bit upriver to float in our PFDs from a bridge back to the cove where we were camping that first night so they could get used to the river temp and how the PFDs work. The Colorado River is cold in the spring, and boy were these LA kids surprised when they jumped in! Somehow they all survived, however, and we ended the day with some good food (we weren’t exactly roughing it—there was a food truck and cooks to prepare meals on all but one of the days), a group agreement to work together to make the trip a success, and then early to bed.
The only problem on this first day was a result of my own clumsiness. In an attempt to be clever, I had brought bug-repellent sunscreen. I soon discovered that the only thing worse than getting sunscreen in one’s eyes is getting bug-repellent sunscreen in one’s eyes. My eye started watering so much that my tear duct swelled up, making me look a little bit like a dog who’s had her head out the window too long. Alas, I soon realized that looks were the least of my worries.
DAY TWO: TUESDAY
Our pod was the first one out the next morning. We were up by 6:30 and on the river by 7:30. It was a nice day—about 70 degrees and cloudy—and the river was calm. We only had to go six miles that day, and between our early start and the swift current, we were way ahead of schedule. We spent much of the morning podded up, had a floating lunch (hummus and pita or PB&J), and leisurely paddled towards the second campsite. We got into the campsite at 1PM, way earlier than planned, and had an afternoon of water fights, canoe wars, and group bonding.
It was on this second day that I really got to know the students in my group. Only three of the twelve ninth-graders were students in my English classes, so I didn’t really know what to expect. It didn’t take long to discover that I had lucked out. Although I’d managed to get the class clown (a boy named Max who had “poor impulse control” according to his dean), the group as a whole was friendly, fun, and ready to work. Some of the other teachers didn’t fare as well—poor group chemistry, bad behavior, and general laziness plagued many of the others. I tried not to gloat. Too much.
That night we were supposed to go on a night paddle in the cove to star-gaze, but the winds had picked up and the paddle was canceled. It was an omen of things to come. My eye, alas, was equally ominous. A day in the wind and sun had aggravated the duct even more. Now it was burned as well as weepy and red. It was a good look, especially with the oh-so-stylish bandana I was sporting to try to hide the fact that my short hair was beginning to resemble Beaker’s. Katie told me to put black tea bags on my eye to make it better. I’m not sure if it helped, but I’m certain it completed the classy look I was going for.
DAY THREE: WEDNESDAY
Wednesday, ah Wednesday. Wednesday sounds a bit like “windy”, which is what it was when we woke up (wow, that’s a lot of w’s). In fact, it was so windy that the trip leader delayed our departure in the hopes that the winds would die down. By 8AM, he’d decided the winds weren’t changing, but he sent us out on the river anyway. This decision may have been related to the fact that the trip leader gets to travel the river by motorboat.
I’ve been canoeing since I was a child and was a canoe instructor at several different summer camps. I’ve mostly canoed on lakes, but I’ve dealt with some rough weather conditions even so. The year I had to get ten canoes of screaming 13-year-old girls across the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee during a thunderstorm, I’d thought it couldn’t get much worse. I was wrong. This was not the same river I had been on the day before.
The naturalist and I structured the pod so that one of us was always in front canoe and the other in the rear. We paired up with the weaker students—essentially meaning we were powering and steering the canoes alone—but that hadn’t seemed so bad drifting downriver the day before. Fighting a head wind and chasing errant canoes made the task just slightly more challenging.
When we had traversed the mile from river to campsite in the cove the day before, it had seemed like nothing—a quick little paddle. This morning it was entirely different story. What had taken 20 minutes now seemed a journey worthy of Odysseus…and there were 11 more miles to go.
Four of the five canoes between Beth’s canoe and mine managed to make their way towards the river. But the fifth canoe…well, the two girls in the fifth canoe were rookies: never canoed before, never camped before. They had both been in the bow the day before, but they’d decided to pair up for today. Neither girl had ever steered a canoe. Within minutes the rest of the pod had moved ahead, hugging the right side of the cove to avoid being blown across to the other side. Canoe #5 wove drunkenly into the middle, got caught in a gust of wind, spun in a complete circle, and ended up lodged in the reeds 500 feet away. By the time I managed to get my canoe over to them, they were in hysterics: “We’re STUCK IN THE REEDS! We’re NEVER GETTING OUT! HELLLLP US!!!!” I talked them out of the reeds and got them headed back across the cove. I then had to wrestle my own canoe out of the bank where it had gotten stuck…which I did just in time to see Canoe #5 veer wildly off course, get caught in another wind gust, twirl, and slam back into the reeds. Lather, rinse, repeat.
By the time we reached the rest of the group, they’d been waiting for us for half an hour and were feeling rested and refreshed. “Great job!” Beth said encouragingly to us as we bumped up against the pod. “Ready to get out on the river?” Luckily, my arms were too tired to hit her.
It took us ten long hours to get to the next campsite. Although it was supposedly a 12-mile stretch, we paddled at least 30 as we fought against wind and waves and rescued freshmen from carnivorous river vegetation. In one attempt to rescue a canoe, I got snagged by a half-sunken tree on the riverbank and nearly went out of the boat as the tree ripped up the side of my leg. Earlier in the trip I’d chastised the students for not being respectful enough of the environment, but when I caught one of the girls in Canoe #5 beating the reeds with her paddle and screaming, “I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!” a few hours later, I didn’t say a word. If I’d had the energy, I probably would have been doing the same.
My group arrived at the campsite just as the sun was setting. Like waterlogged zombies, we dragged the canoes from the water and went through the now-familiar routine of unloading and setting up camp. We were the last group to arrive, and I’ve never been so glad to see anyone as when Katie and Felicia came over to help me set up my tent. The stunned expression on their faces answered my unspoken question: it had been a hell of a day for all of us. “How’s your eye?” Felicia asked. She’d seen how bad it had been the day before. I pulled off my sunglasses and heard her breath hiss in as she saw the damage. A full day of wind and sunburn had not helped matters.
“I know,” I sighed. “Like a Muppet on heroin.”
I learned later that my pod fared relatively well compared to some others. One group had two canoes capsize and had to fish gear out of the river. Another had a student have a nervous breakdown mid-river. Melody, one of my colleagues who’d never canoed before this trip, ended up completely stuck deep in a thick patch of reeds and driftwood with a student in the bow who was unwilling or unable to pull them free. Melody had to stand up in the stern, leap over the driftwood, balance precariously in the middle of the canoe, and pull them—hand over hand—clear. We gave her the honorary Indiana Jones award for that feat. Her group later had to be towed by the motorboat for the last forty minutes of their trip—they wouldn’t have made camp by dark otherwise.
As we got ready for bed that night, the naturalists reluctantly reminded us that we would be getting up at 4 in the morning for a floating breakfast since we had to go 16 miles to reach our final destination the next day. We were too tired to protest.
As I crawled into my tent, Felicia tossed me some medicated lip balm—my lips were nearly as bad as my eyes. I slathered it on my lips and handed it back to her. If I’d been more awake, I might have noticed an ominous prickling as the ointment touched my lips.
DAY FOUR: THURSDAY
It was pitch black when the naturalists woke us up, and my bottom lip was twice its normal size. Oh yes, that’s right…I’d had an allergic reaction to the lip balm. Not just a Muppet on heroin—a Muppet on heroin in a bar fight. Of course I didn’t have any Benedryl. Did it matter? It was 4AM and I was about to canoe another 16 miles. I no longer cared.
But today, something was different: the air was completely still. No wind! The sky was crystal clear, and I forgot to worry about my eyes or my hair or my leg or my lip when I looked up and saw the stars. The Milky Way was clearly visible, and every constellation was sharper than I’d ever seen before. I’d heard that the night sky in the desert is incredible, but I’d never seen it like this. It was truly beautiful.
We were on the water by a little before 6AM. The river was like glass—flat and still and silent. The gentle river was back! As we podded our canoes and began floating downriver, I started to feel the joy of the trip seep back into my skin. I was glad to be in a canoe on the water that morning.
We had to travel farther than any other day, but the perfect conditions and swift current made it easy. We had time to meet the cooks and trip leader for hot chocolate at a campsite a couple miles down and later to stop to explore an abandoned silver mine site. The weather was sunny and calm and gorgeous, and we had a wonderful day.
We reached our final destination in Yuma, Arizona, around 1 that afternoon. One last time we podded the canoes and paddled into shore, and one last time we unpacked gear, washed out canoes, and stepped out onto land. This time, though, the rest of the school was waiting for us, as were the busses to take us home. We bid our naturalist goodbye, loaded our gear onto the coaches, and collapsed gratefully into the comfort of padded seats. The teachers traded war wounds and stories all the way home.
Six hours of driving and a fast food stop later, we arrived back at the school. I got home at about 10PM and instantly stripped off all of my filthy clothing and took the longest, hottest shower of my life. Crawling into my soft bed afterwards was the best feeling of my life.
CONCLUSION
For a while I didn’t know what to say about the trip. Was it good? Yes. Bad? Also yes. Exhausting? Very much so. Rewarding? Sometimes. Would I do it again? I honestly don’t know.
But I’m glad I went. Despite the physical discomfort and the exhaustion of that one windy day, I enjoyed myself. I love being on the water, and this trip reminded me how much I love (and miss) canoeing. I also had some great bonding moments with my colleagues and my students that I wouldn’t trade for anything. As many of you know, I’ve decided to leave Milken at the end of this school year to accept an offer at another school. I’m so glad that I was able to have this experience before I go.
My eyes are healed, my lip back to its normal size, and the gouges on the back of my calf are faint scars. My bandana is safely back in its drawer, its services no longer needed now that Beaker has left the building. But my dreams are still of water and movement—the gentle rhythm of paddling and the pull of the current. I am still moving forward, propelled by something stronger than me.
I am grateful to the river for the journey.
--------------
If you would like to see pictures of my four-day journey down the Colorado River, you can go here:
Roll #1 and here: Roll #2. The site is password protected. The password is "Taylor" (case sensitive).
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "It is impossible to step into the same river twice." Though I understood the quote in the abstract, I'd never truly appreciated its full meaning until I canoed down a 40-mile section of the Colorado River with a group of ninth-graders in April 2006.
The river I was promised when I volunteered for this trip was a tame, nurturing creature. "It's so peaceful!" my friend Jonathan had told me. Jonathan had chaperoned this trip for four years, so he was a reliable source. "Seriously, you don't even have to paddle. You could just float down the whole time," he added. "Besides, you're paired up with a naturalist, and all you really have to do is be there for the ride. It's great!"
Now I know that when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. But why would Jon lie? Why volunteer to supervise 12 ninth graders and paddle 40 miles four years in a row if it wasn't everything he said? In fact, Jon was so persuasive that the rest of our department decided to go.
Lisa, Katie, Felicia, Melody and I were really looking forward to the trip. We would be missing the last week of school before Spring Break, so it was almost like having an extra week of vacation. Granted a vacation with the entire freshmen class, but still. We made adventure store shopping dates, compared sleeping bags, and contemplated the best method of keeping our clothes dry at the bottom of a canoe. By the time we rolled into the school parking lot (6:45AM on Monday morning), we were packed and ready.
Jonathan, however, was nowhere to be found. He claimed after the trip that he’d been stricken with stomach flu the night before and so decided he’d have to back out, but we’re now convinced that, somehow, he knew that this year was going to be different.
DAY ONE: MONDAY
I didn’t start the trip at my best. I’d agreed to pick Drew up at LAX when his plane landed at 11:30 the night before, but severe weather in Chicago caused massive delays. In the end, the plane didn’t land until 3AM, his luggage was lost and caused another 30-minute delay, and I didn’t get home and to sleep until 4:30. When the alarm went off an hour later, I was less than perky. I’ll sleep on the bus, I promised myself.
I arrived at the school a little before 7AM and loaded my small duffle into one of the four coach buses. I made sure all of the students in my “pod” were present and accounted for, and I stumbled onto a bus and into a seat. I think I was asleep before we left the parking lot. The trip took about four hours, and by the time we reached Palo Verde, CA, I felt a little more human.
The first day was all about figuring out the logistics of the camping and canoeing ahead. After my group of 12 students and I met our naturalist, a rugged-looking 23-year-old named Beth, we started teaching them the basics. The students learned how to paddle, pod (grouping the canoes together so we could float as a single unit), pump water, set up and take down tents, and manage their gear. It always amazes me how much I take my knowledge about the outdoors for granted. I’ve been camping and canoeing since I was a kid, but most of the students on this trip had never put up a tent in their lives, let alone done so after canoeing 12 miles down a river. There was lots of hand-holding and reassurances that they really could pound in those tent stakes and yes, it really was okay to pee in the river when they wouldn’t see dry land for another six hours. We also walked a bit upriver to float in our PFDs from a bridge back to the cove where we were camping that first night so they could get used to the river temp and how the PFDs work. The Colorado River is cold in the spring, and boy were these LA kids surprised when they jumped in! Somehow they all survived, however, and we ended the day with some good food (we weren’t exactly roughing it—there was a food truck and cooks to prepare meals on all but one of the days), a group agreement to work together to make the trip a success, and then early to bed.
The only problem on this first day was a result of my own clumsiness. In an attempt to be clever, I had brought bug-repellent sunscreen. I soon discovered that the only thing worse than getting sunscreen in one’s eyes is getting bug-repellent sunscreen in one’s eyes. My eye started watering so much that my tear duct swelled up, making me look a little bit like a dog who’s had her head out the window too long. Alas, I soon realized that looks were the least of my worries.
DAY TWO: TUESDAY
Our pod was the first one out the next morning. We were up by 6:30 and on the river by 7:30. It was a nice day—about 70 degrees and cloudy—and the river was calm. We only had to go six miles that day, and between our early start and the swift current, we were way ahead of schedule. We spent much of the morning podded up, had a floating lunch (hummus and pita or PB&J), and leisurely paddled towards the second campsite. We got into the campsite at 1PM, way earlier than planned, and had an afternoon of water fights, canoe wars, and group bonding.
It was on this second day that I really got to know the students in my group. Only three of the twelve ninth-graders were students in my English classes, so I didn’t really know what to expect. It didn’t take long to discover that I had lucked out. Although I’d managed to get the class clown (a boy named Max who had “poor impulse control” according to his dean), the group as a whole was friendly, fun, and ready to work. Some of the other teachers didn’t fare as well—poor group chemistry, bad behavior, and general laziness plagued many of the others. I tried not to gloat. Too much.
That night we were supposed to go on a night paddle in the cove to star-gaze, but the winds had picked up and the paddle was canceled. It was an omen of things to come. My eye, alas, was equally ominous. A day in the wind and sun had aggravated the duct even more. Now it was burned as well as weepy and red. It was a good look, especially with the oh-so-stylish bandana I was sporting to try to hide the fact that my short hair was beginning to resemble Beaker’s. Katie told me to put black tea bags on my eye to make it better. I’m not sure if it helped, but I’m certain it completed the classy look I was going for.
DAY THREE: WEDNESDAY
Wednesday, ah Wednesday. Wednesday sounds a bit like “windy”, which is what it was when we woke up (wow, that’s a lot of w’s). In fact, it was so windy that the trip leader delayed our departure in the hopes that the winds would die down. By 8AM, he’d decided the winds weren’t changing, but he sent us out on the river anyway. This decision may have been related to the fact that the trip leader gets to travel the river by motorboat.
I’ve been canoeing since I was a child and was a canoe instructor at several different summer camps. I’ve mostly canoed on lakes, but I’ve dealt with some rough weather conditions even so. The year I had to get ten canoes of screaming 13-year-old girls across the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee during a thunderstorm, I’d thought it couldn’t get much worse. I was wrong. This was not the same river I had been on the day before.
The naturalist and I structured the pod so that one of us was always in front canoe and the other in the rear. We paired up with the weaker students—essentially meaning we were powering and steering the canoes alone—but that hadn’t seemed so bad drifting downriver the day before. Fighting a head wind and chasing errant canoes made the task just slightly more challenging.
When we had traversed the mile from river to campsite in the cove the day before, it had seemed like nothing—a quick little paddle. This morning it was entirely different story. What had taken 20 minutes now seemed a journey worthy of Odysseus…and there were 11 more miles to go.
Four of the five canoes between Beth’s canoe and mine managed to make their way towards the river. But the fifth canoe…well, the two girls in the fifth canoe were rookies: never canoed before, never camped before. They had both been in the bow the day before, but they’d decided to pair up for today. Neither girl had ever steered a canoe. Within minutes the rest of the pod had moved ahead, hugging the right side of the cove to avoid being blown across to the other side. Canoe #5 wove drunkenly into the middle, got caught in a gust of wind, spun in a complete circle, and ended up lodged in the reeds 500 feet away. By the time I managed to get my canoe over to them, they were in hysterics: “We’re STUCK IN THE REEDS! We’re NEVER GETTING OUT! HELLLLP US!!!!” I talked them out of the reeds and got them headed back across the cove. I then had to wrestle my own canoe out of the bank where it had gotten stuck…which I did just in time to see Canoe #5 veer wildly off course, get caught in another wind gust, twirl, and slam back into the reeds. Lather, rinse, repeat.
By the time we reached the rest of the group, they’d been waiting for us for half an hour and were feeling rested and refreshed. “Great job!” Beth said encouragingly to us as we bumped up against the pod. “Ready to get out on the river?” Luckily, my arms were too tired to hit her.
It took us ten long hours to get to the next campsite. Although it was supposedly a 12-mile stretch, we paddled at least 30 as we fought against wind and waves and rescued freshmen from carnivorous river vegetation. In one attempt to rescue a canoe, I got snagged by a half-sunken tree on the riverbank and nearly went out of the boat as the tree ripped up the side of my leg. Earlier in the trip I’d chastised the students for not being respectful enough of the environment, but when I caught one of the girls in Canoe #5 beating the reeds with her paddle and screaming, “I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!” a few hours later, I didn’t say a word. If I’d had the energy, I probably would have been doing the same.
My group arrived at the campsite just as the sun was setting. Like waterlogged zombies, we dragged the canoes from the water and went through the now-familiar routine of unloading and setting up camp. We were the last group to arrive, and I’ve never been so glad to see anyone as when Katie and Felicia came over to help me set up my tent. The stunned expression on their faces answered my unspoken question: it had been a hell of a day for all of us. “How’s your eye?” Felicia asked. She’d seen how bad it had been the day before. I pulled off my sunglasses and heard her breath hiss in as she saw the damage. A full day of wind and sunburn had not helped matters.
“I know,” I sighed. “Like a Muppet on heroin.”
I learned later that my pod fared relatively well compared to some others. One group had two canoes capsize and had to fish gear out of the river. Another had a student have a nervous breakdown mid-river. Melody, one of my colleagues who’d never canoed before this trip, ended up completely stuck deep in a thick patch of reeds and driftwood with a student in the bow who was unwilling or unable to pull them free. Melody had to stand up in the stern, leap over the driftwood, balance precariously in the middle of the canoe, and pull them—hand over hand—clear. We gave her the honorary Indiana Jones award for that feat. Her group later had to be towed by the motorboat for the last forty minutes of their trip—they wouldn’t have made camp by dark otherwise.
As we got ready for bed that night, the naturalists reluctantly reminded us that we would be getting up at 4 in the morning for a floating breakfast since we had to go 16 miles to reach our final destination the next day. We were too tired to protest.
As I crawled into my tent, Felicia tossed me some medicated lip balm—my lips were nearly as bad as my eyes. I slathered it on my lips and handed it back to her. If I’d been more awake, I might have noticed an ominous prickling as the ointment touched my lips.
DAY FOUR: THURSDAY
It was pitch black when the naturalists woke us up, and my bottom lip was twice its normal size. Oh yes, that’s right…I’d had an allergic reaction to the lip balm. Not just a Muppet on heroin—a Muppet on heroin in a bar fight. Of course I didn’t have any Benedryl. Did it matter? It was 4AM and I was about to canoe another 16 miles. I no longer cared.
But today, something was different: the air was completely still. No wind! The sky was crystal clear, and I forgot to worry about my eyes or my hair or my leg or my lip when I looked up and saw the stars. The Milky Way was clearly visible, and every constellation was sharper than I’d ever seen before. I’d heard that the night sky in the desert is incredible, but I’d never seen it like this. It was truly beautiful.
We were on the water by a little before 6AM. The river was like glass—flat and still and silent. The gentle river was back! As we podded our canoes and began floating downriver, I started to feel the joy of the trip seep back into my skin. I was glad to be in a canoe on the water that morning.
We had to travel farther than any other day, but the perfect conditions and swift current made it easy. We had time to meet the cooks and trip leader for hot chocolate at a campsite a couple miles down and later to stop to explore an abandoned silver mine site. The weather was sunny and calm and gorgeous, and we had a wonderful day.
We reached our final destination in Yuma, Arizona, around 1 that afternoon. One last time we podded the canoes and paddled into shore, and one last time we unpacked gear, washed out canoes, and stepped out onto land. This time, though, the rest of the school was waiting for us, as were the busses to take us home. We bid our naturalist goodbye, loaded our gear onto the coaches, and collapsed gratefully into the comfort of padded seats. The teachers traded war wounds and stories all the way home.
Six hours of driving and a fast food stop later, we arrived back at the school. I got home at about 10PM and instantly stripped off all of my filthy clothing and took the longest, hottest shower of my life. Crawling into my soft bed afterwards was the best feeling of my life.
CONCLUSION
For a while I didn’t know what to say about the trip. Was it good? Yes. Bad? Also yes. Exhausting? Very much so. Rewarding? Sometimes. Would I do it again? I honestly don’t know.
But I’m glad I went. Despite the physical discomfort and the exhaustion of that one windy day, I enjoyed myself. I love being on the water, and this trip reminded me how much I love (and miss) canoeing. I also had some great bonding moments with my colleagues and my students that I wouldn’t trade for anything. As many of you know, I’ve decided to leave Milken at the end of this school year to accept an offer at another school. I’m so glad that I was able to have this experience before I go.
My eyes are healed, my lip back to its normal size, and the gouges on the back of my calf are faint scars. My bandana is safely back in its drawer, its services no longer needed now that Beaker has left the building. But my dreams are still of water and movement—the gentle rhythm of paddling and the pull of the current. I am still moving forward, propelled by something stronger than me.
I am grateful to the river for the journey.
--------------
If you would like to see pictures of my four-day journey down the Colorado River, you can go here:
Roll #1 and here: Roll #2. The site is password protected. The password is "Taylor" (case sensitive).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 08:17 am (UTC)It sounds like a rewarding trip. Glad you made it out alive. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 02:22 pm (UTC)Muppetwoman.Glad you enjoyed yourself, mostly. Time like that with your students must be pretty cool. And very glad you're home in one piece!
no subject
Date: 2006-04-14 03:41 pm (UTC)I haven't seen the photos yet (will go peek as soon as I finish this comment) but I dimly remember canoeing on the Russian River long ago. Great memories.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-16 07:35 pm (UTC)