Guiding the transformation

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

By Brooke Williams

Living in wildness is a core experience. I was reminded of this last week, when the Murie Center in Moose hosted a retreat for Colorado River and Trail Expeditions, a commercial river business that offers trips in Utah, Alaska and through the Grand Canyon.

One point of the retreat was to unwind and regroup after a long, busy river season. Another was to think about how to give passengers a better understanding of wilderness so that they, too, could become advocates for conservation. Dave and Vicky Mackay, who own the company, asked me to lead some of the discussions.

Having been on a number of commercial trips through the Grand Canyon, I understand a bit about the demographics of the customers, their tight schedules, and the nature of life in that amazing place. Since I spend most of my time thinking about and experimenting with ideas of how to get more people actively engaged in conserving wildness, I saw this as an interesting challenge. Nowadays, most people are aware of the issues surrounding wilderness – the politics of conservation, for example – especially those who are comfortable with the idea of camping for up to two weeks and the inherent risks of running a wild river.

Today, however, the question of how to encourage people to advocate for conserving wilderness goes beyond a laundry list of areas and issues. It goes past thinking about strategies for protecting wildness like what conservation organizations to join or what letters to write to which politicians.

After dinner the first night, the guides told stories about their times in the Grand Canyon - the passengers, the “river family”, and what wildness means to them. I felt like a voyeur, witnessing such an intimate group.

They talked about work — not just keeping people safe, fed and happy for up to two weeks, but the idea of “real work,” which they defined as “adding value to the lives of others.” We talked about how spending so much time living simply in such a wild place has influenced their lives off the river.

“Do this as long as you can,” one of the guides recalled being told by a very successful businessman. “Delay getting a ‘real’ job in the ‘real’ world as long as you can.”
They all had stories about passengers being transformed, too. These took me back 20 years, reminding me of my own river experiences. I remembered the feeling of being part of deep, deep time – geological time –and understanding, perhaps for the first time, the true depth of our personal history. I remembered the qualities of light hitting different rock layer, of being continually touched by natural beauty.

I remembered learning the flora and fauna and geology and trying to understand the natural system of the canyon. I recalled the intensity of rapids – Lava Falls, Hermit, Crystal – and being forced into the present, with the past and the future evaporating. I remembered how my body felt on the long hikes, during the hard work and the deep sleep: like I was built for that kind of life.

The Grand Canyon, like any wilderness, manages to drill through the thick shell that modern life has layered upon us, tapping into our real essence and the place where we can be transformed. The guides for Colorado River and Trail Expeditions know that a trip through the Grand Canyon is not entertainment or even recreation for their passengers, but a core experience.

I believe that if they can somehow make sure that the experience doesn’t end at the takeout, that the transformation sticks, each passenger will become an advocate for conservation.

The key may be learning how to access our real, inner essence even when we aren’t on the Grand Canyon or in the wilderness. Based on the stories the guides told me, and my own memories of being on the river, I can think of at least five simple ideas that might help keep our own real essence exposed where we can use it:

- Understanding the true depth of our personal history
- Creating the possibility to be touched by natural beauty
- Learning how natural systems work
- Living in the present
- Using our bodies as they are built to be used.

Difficult in our hectic, modern lives? Yes. Impossible? No. Especially here in Jackson Hole.
PERMALINK:
Guiding the transformation | Planet JH News Article: Left Wing Local

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