The Quiet

The Benefits of Being Lost

2016-04-04T09:03:00.002-07:00

While on my way to Table Rock Wilderness Sunday, I took a wrong turn. Instead of continuing straight on the somewhat paved mountain road, I went right, onto a gravel road which quickly deteriorated to a mud road. Immediately, I felt I was in unknown territory, but I doubted my memory — one tree lined road looks so much like another, after all. Soon I came to an old narrow bridge, my car rattling its loose planks, then the road started climbing, up and up and up. I skirted around fallen rocks and oven sized bounders. I inched around an area of road which has been bitten off by a healthy sized landslide. By this point. I was 85% certain I was nowhere near where I had planned to be.

But what the hell? It was a beautiful day, the last of several. A storm was coming. I could tell by the high thin clouds, and prism like halo circling the sun. Rain was on its way across the Pacific Ocean from somewhere near Alaska, but it was still hours off, so I went on, around bends, over huge pot holes, telling Waldo the dog to hold on. Unfair, I know, given the whole lack of thumbs deal. I scanned the trees for any hint of where I might be, but all I saw were more trees, and the occasional glimpse of far off mountains. Then, eleven miles into this decidedly wrong way, I saw another vehicle.

I always have a bit of trepidation when encountering vehicles in the middle of nowhere. It’s the Deliverance effect, and I wonder how many people have kept their boots clean and dry, unwilling to test just how wild the wilds are. And this vehicle, an old trailer, nearly green on its sides from Oregon mold and moss and lichen, looked particularly sketchy, like it has been in that spot, or one much like it for near forever. There was a porcelain bulldog sitting on its hood, two empty dog food bags lying by the back door, a chair with a radio on it, and a fire pit thick with soggy coals. But instead of driving by, I was forced to stop.

Eight feet behind the trailer a creek ran straight across the road. At that point I was dead certain I was not in the right place, and the only thing to do was either squeeze in behind the moldy rig, and then make an 11-point turn, or go through the creek. To do that, I had to get out from my car and check out the crossing (I’ve had experience with creek crossings, not all of them good — another story.) So I stop my car and get out, and just as I did, a dog starts barking from within the trailer. A moment later, the trailer door squeaked open and out emerged a pot bellied yellow lab and a wizened old man whose skin looked about the texture of some of the old growth firs I’d been driving by.

The dog runs up, sniffs, wags his tail. Well how are you doing? the old man asks. I tell him I'm doing fine, but that I think I took a wrong turn. I mention where I was headed, and he shakes his head sadly. Ah, Honey, your a ways off from there. The old guy then spends the next fifteen minutes telling me how to get to the trailhead, and he didn't stop there. Next came descriptions of many of the traces that run through these hills, deer and elk trails, turned native trading routes, turned logging roads. I asked him where he was from, and he mentioned a town in the valley, but really what he likes, he tells me, is just coming out here to the woods. I don't ask how old he is. I do note his teeth were worn down to nubs. He says people call him Camper Dave. After we talk, he retreats back to his trailer and I make the 11-point turn, and head back down that long road.

I did make it to Table Rock. Waldo and I hiked in earnest, determined to reach the peak to see the magnificent view. You can see the the entire valley from up there, the Cascades, too. And on a day like that one, the sky still mostly clear, I might have been able to see from Mt. Rainer to Diamond Peak. A distance of some 350 miles or more. But there was snow at the Trailhead and it only got deeper as we climbed. Two and a half miles in, the route got treacherous over the mountain's boulder field, so Waldo and I stopped in a sunny spot, split a sandwich then turned and hiked back to the car

Now I am home, dry, warm. The rain has started. And the wind. I hope Camper Dave and his dog are doing alright up there in the hills. I wish I had asked to take his picture.

-Naseem Rakha 4/4/16

Almost back to the car after prodding through thigh deep snow.

LET'S ARREST YOUR SISTER

2016-03-31T17:41:00.000-07:00

You know what really pisses me off about the whole “Women should be punished” for having an abortion comment made by Donald Trump to MSNBC’s Chris Mathews? It’s all these pro-lifers who have come out screaming about how terrible of a thing that was to say. These women are “victims” they tell the media. They are “broken people who should be saved, not punished.” They are “animals who are locked in a cage and have no choice.”

Bullshit.

I had an abortion. I went to a Planned Parenthood, they had me pee in a cup and then they confirmed what I already knew: I was pregnant. The problems was, I did not want to be pregnant. I talked with their counselor about options. I talked with her about risks. I talked with her about my physical well being and my emotional health. I talked with her about my worries and fears and trepidations. And then, I went home and I read the literature she gave me, and I spoke with my husband, and then we, together, made a difficult but well informed decision.

Never, not one day since my abortion, have I ever considered myself a victim. Or broken. Or an animal in a cage. And I am not alone. In a 2015 longitudinal study out of the University of California, San Francisco, ninety-nine percent of the women surveyed said they had no regrets over having an abortion. Also, interestingly, in a survey conducted last year by Lifeway Research, seventy percent of women who had abortions identified themselves as Christian.

So how dare these holier-than-thou-types like Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz claim that people should be held responsible for their actions, yet eagerly jump to the conclusion that reproductive aged women should be treated like children who must be protected from themselves.

But, of course it is all just crap. These pro-life junkies don’t care about women. If they did, where are the masses of pro-lifers calling for parental leave, or working wages, or affordable childcare, or Head Start, or better schools, or any of the programs that would make a difference in the lives of woman and their children? Their silence on these quality of life issues is profound.

What all their “don’t punish the women” rhetoric is really about is distraction. The reason they abhor Trump’s comment is that it is true. When abortion was illegal in this country women were punished. Up until 1960, many were arrested and threatened with prosecution if they did not reveal who did the procedure. They were demonized, their names printed in the paper with their crime. Abortion was a metaphorical scarlet letter. M for Murderer.

This is the reality the Forced Birth movement does not want you to know. They are very well aware that the American public would not stomach a march to make abortion illegal. People do not want their moms, or sisters, or daughters or cousins or co workers not just persecuted but possibly prosecuted for terminating a pregnancy.

So they come on stage all puffed up in fake outrage, telling anyone who will listen that they would never want to punish the women. They are just victims, after all. We just want to save them, and their babies.

Like bloody hell.

-Naseem Rakha 3/31/16

Open Letter to Senator Mitch McConnell

2016-03-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

March 20, 2016

Dear Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,

I don't care what mental gymnastics you have done to decide it is somehow better for the Nation to postpone a hearing and vote on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, but I must respectfully disagree. Your action, or rather, inaction, is in fact driving a deep wedge into our country, and subverting our democratic process as well as the intent of the U.S Construction.

Your claims that you, "want the people to decide," are specious, at best. If they were sincere, you would honor the voice of the majority of American voters who made Barack Obama President, or the majority of people who today say the Senate Judicary Committee needs to do their job and hold hearings and a vote.

In your hope to preserve the status quo on the Court, you are dishonoring the institution, and the people you say you represent. Lastly, if you think this is somehow good for your party, you are miserably wrong. It is this type of negative, self-serving grandstanding that is currently destroying the GOP.

Sincerely,

Naseem A. Rakha

A Haunting Glimpse of Anonymous Humanity

2016-03-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

Painting on negatives by Nick Gentry

What I love about the internet is that it is truly becoming the Earth's nervous system, a high speed causeway for information. Every photograph, film, voice, song, email, text, pdf, recipe, and memory, potentially causing a reaction in parts unknown, to people unknown. Every electron moving us closer to a sensate planet that has the ability to watch and consider itself as a whole.

That's what this piece, Directed by Lei Lei, and Thomas Sauvin is. It collates more than 3000 found images into a collage that speaks, to me, of both the beauty and futility of humanity. It gives me unique glimpse into who and what we are, the remarkable similarities that we so exhaustively try to deny.

Artist Lei Lei's describes the work as, "a dizzying, eerie animation. The effect is both a flip-book glimpse at three decades of Beijing's history, and an uneasy, voyeuristic peak into the private lives of thousands of people - or, as the artist describes it, 'an almost epic portrait almost epic portrait of anonymous humanity.'"

I find the film haunting —so many faces, so many stories reaching out from a recycling plant in Beijing.

Recycled from RAY on Vimeo.

Why I Won't Denounce Trump -- Yet

2016-03-03T20:16:00.001-08:00

In one of the oddest election seasons in recent history, progressives and many conservatives have come to agree on one thing: that the caustic and divisive rhetoric that spews from Donald Trump's mouth is creating a dark age of overt intolerance. Republicans and Democrats are coming together to renounce his aggressive words and tactics. Some Democrats, ever in pursuit of a cause, have even urged their cohorts to switch party alliance for the primary, voting instead for one of Trump’s opponents.

I don’t support this, and this is why: Though Trump is a bombastic narcissist and a habitual liar, and though his proposed policies would play hell on minorities and the downtrodden, we do not see the other Republican candidates as better. If anything, they are more partisan, more anti-choice, more tied at the hip with big-monied donors, and just as likely to leave a lasting legacy of intolerance by appointing right wing ideologues to the Supreme Court. Trump’s opponents are just as eager to destroy unions, stop gay marriage, and kill even the most meager attempts at gun control and immigration reform. They are just as adamant about reducing government regulations, subverting affirmative action, and ignoring climate change.

Texas Senator, Ted Cruz at rally

Even more than Trump, his conservative counterparts never fail to mix a good shot of religion in with their government, and they never miss an opportunity to spout their misguided and dangerous belief that the United States was created by and for Christians. Like Trump, they ignore history. Yes, his competitors talk about having empathy for women, the poor, immigrants and minorities, yet their first policy objectives once they reach office is to kill the Affordable Health Care Act and Planned Parenthood.

Republicans are freaking out because Trump is not one of their own. They want one of their own: someone they can keep on message. Yes, we think it is disgusting what Trump has brought to the surface of the American face. But the pus was there to be pushed out. The question is how do Republicans convince Republicans to start being more rational. The "Party of Lincoln" crossed the Rubicon when, in the 1960's, they decided to become the party of the status quo — protecting the rights of the white establishment while bowing to the social norms of the Christian right first by attacking abortion, then later, gay rights.

The Republican Party has done some important things in the past. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration were both a product of the Nixon Administration. But those days of rational pro-environment and pro-worker policies are long gone. Today’s brand of Republicans won’t even follow the Constitution they profess to love. If they did, they would hold hearings and vote to replace Justice Atonin Scalia. They would work to find reasonable ways to protect innocents from gun violence. They would not try to subvert women’s reproductive choice. And they would not support the increasing presence of religion in schools and government institutions.

Do we renounce Trump? Yes. He is a cancer, but he is a cancer galvanized by a party which traded its soul to the most radically conservative elements of our society. The voice of the moderate middle has been drowned out by the howling haters. Do I support those who suggest Democrats should shed their party affiliation and help the Republicans maintain this middle ground? No, I don't.

Republicans need to own this mess, and then clean it up. How do they do that? Moderate Republicans need to define a moderate path and then push for it every single moment of every single day. They need to dump the demagogues and stop pandering to social conservatives. They need to renounce calls by their leadership to implode government for the sake of partisan politics and stop obstructing everything Democrats are working on, and instead work with Democrats to craft middle ground policies which benefits more people than not. They need to stop the fear-based, hate-based, war-based rhetoric, and start treating voters like adults.

For the sake of our republic, Republican’s need to re-create their party into something more reasonable and humane.

-Naseem Rakha, 3/13/2016

Beyond Dancing

2016-02-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

In the act of preserving land for the future, we have often neglected the future of people who considered those lands not just home, but hunting and burial ground,

garden and god

Hopi dancer outside Hopi House, Grand Canyon South Rim, 9/2015

In the Grand Canyon I hike down to a place called Indian Gardens. It's on the canyon's south side, halfway between the rim and the river, and it's a pit stop for mules and hikers alike. Water is piped there from the North Rim. There are composting toilets, picnic tables, camp sites, a creek with duck weed floating on its surface—all shaded by redbud and giant old cottonwoods. Also at Indian Gardens, off the trail and unknown to most who hike by, are the remnants of two granaries and several other structures used by indigenous people that made the Grand Canyon home for at least 13,000 years until anglos came and called it their own.

When Southern Pacific railroad built their tracks to the Grand Canyon's South Rim in 1901, Havasupai Indians still lived and grew crops at Indian Gardens. They accepted the white men's intrusion into their isolated lives, and even allowed them to grow crops beside their own. Then, in 1928, when the canyon became a national park, the Havasupai were forced to leave.

It's much the same throughout the Colorado Plateau. You hike and you come across the curve of kivas, the hollow of granaries, the geometry of rock weirs. There are agave roasting pits, flint chips, arrowheads, petroglyphs, grinding stones—all set within a landscape so big and bold and breathtaking it's impossible not to think of the Devine.

The people who once inhabited these places were eventually driven away. Some by other tribes, some by desertification, and some by white man and their diseases. The ones who survived were eventually routed to reservations.

Havasupai Girls playing game, Indian Gardens, 1898
By James, George Wharton [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Ahwahnee did not survive. Their home was what we now call Yosemite. During the 1851 Mariposa War, anglo miners "discovered" what the Ahwahnee called "the gaping mouth place" while pursuing the tribe into the mountains. The only thing that remains of Ahwahnee now is a lodge that bares their name. A lodge that will soon lose that name because of a trademark dispute between the concessioner and the National Park Service.

Mount Desert Island, off Maine's coast was once home to the Wabanaki—People of the Dawnland. It was there that they fished, collected clams and sweetgrass. Now that area is known as Acadia National Park.

Yellowstone was used by the Crow, Cheyanne, Nez Perce, Flathead, Bannock, Shoshone. All of these tribes were displaced as a result of the christening of the parks.

This idea, that conservation projects must be cleansed of their ancestral inhabitants, is not unique to the United States. It is happening in the jungles of India, Brazil, and Central America. It's occurring in China's lowlands and in the savannas of Africa. Around the world, indigenous people have been and continue to be jerked from their homeland and tossed onto less valuable, less productive lands, marginal places for a people often treated as marginal, at best.

To bring awareness to this issue, the human rights group Survival International has started a "Stop the Con" campaign which calls for governments and conservation groups throughout the world to work with native people to preserve land and wildlife. Instead of evicting people from their land, and then turning away as they struggle to survive, enlightened conservation plans include tribal people in efforts to build biological diversity and sustainability while protecting the area from poachers, vandals, and developers.

The Grand Canyon is a good example of a place where this kind of cooperation is sorely needed. The national park only occupies a portion of the canyon. To the southeast is the expansive Navajo Nation, to the Southwest, the Havasupai and Hualapai reservations. Over the years, development plans on these reservations have come in conflict with the national park's conservation goals.

On the Hualapai reservation, a Las Vegas developer David Jin built the notorious Skywalk. The Skywalk is a curved glass balcony which juts over the canyon like a giant toilet seat. Visitors pay seventy nine bucks to be bussed in and greeted by a tired looking group of native dancers, who will let you take their pictures, for an additional price. From the Skywalk, many visitors are then bussed down to one of several heliports, where for an additional two to three hundred dollars they will be flown over and into the canyon.

when tribes are not part of a conservation plan,

their plans for economic development can be become part of a conservation problem

The experience, from the air, is considered unsurpassed. But the experience from below—for wildlife, for hikers, for rafters—is more than jarring, it is an affront to everything the canyon is about: peace, quiet, isolation, spiritual renewal. From sunrise to sunset the western end of the canyon is more like a scene from Apocalypse Now than the natural wonder it is. What makes the intrusion even more jarring is that the helicopter tours are in direct conflict with the National Overflights Act of 1987, which aimed to preserve the quiet in Grand Canyon National Park. In 2000, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted the Hualapai a hardship exemption. Baring bad weather, the Hualapai heliports are today among the busiest in the country, flying hundreds of visitors into and over the west end of Grand Canyon National Park every single day. The FAA exemption allows the Hualapai to fly up to 300,000 flights a year.

In 2011, the Navajo's applied for a similar exemption. A portion of their land also borders the Grand Canyon, and tribal members who support the idea imagine drawing from the millions of tourists who visit the national park every year. Navajo leaders are also considering teaming up with a Scottsdale, Arizona-based development firm to build a gondola that will carry people from the rim of the canyon to the confluence of the Colorado River with the Little Colorado River. The project is very controversial. The gondola would offload its passengers just feet from the national park boundary, and put them within walking distance of one of the Hopi's most sacred sites—the place where they emerged into this world. The gondola proposal has split tribes between those wanting the Grand Canyon Escalade and those trying to Save The Confluence from the spoils of unfettered tourism.

The bottom line: when tribes are not part of a conservation plan, their plans for economic development can be become part of a conservation problem.

The experience, from the air, is unconsidered unsurpassed. But the experience from below is an affront to the canyon

Stop the Con is right. Governments and conservationists need to do more to include ancestral people in the planning, management and development of protected lands, and they need to aggressively support sustainable and economic development projects which help native people thrive.

It's difficult to pass judgement on the Navajo for trying to find ways to cash in on the millions of tourists who come to see the Grand Canyon when you learn that more than 40 percent of their tribal members are unemployed. It's difficult to criticize the tribe for not developing other opportunities in other regions of their nation when you learn that there are more than 600 abandoned and unreclaimed uranium mines scattered over that land, that their water often is contaminated, and that many of their streets, sidewalks, houses, and schools were built with radioactive tailings (A Killing Wind, 2013). It is difficult to square white man's history of paternalism, abuse and neglect and not realize we owe a debt to native people who considered the lands we hike and raft and climb not just home, but hunting and burial ground, garden and god.

If there is a way to actually "conserve" land and wildlife then the steps to do this must not just align with native values and goals, but native people should be part of their very design.

-Naseem Rakha, February 22, 2015

A Few Facts About Flint Michigan

2016-02-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

To save money, officials in Flint, Michigan stopped using water from Lake Huron to draw it instead from the Flint River.

The problem: Flint River water was polluted and corrosive causing lead to leach from the city's old pipes.

Eden Wells, Michigan's chief medical executive, has said that all children who drank the city's water since April 2014 have been exposed to lead. That's 8,657 children, based on Census data.

There is NO safe level of lead in the body, but the impacts of lead are considered most severe on the developing brains and nervous systems of children and fetuses.

Astoundingly, Flint, Michigan based General Motors stopped using Flint River water when they recognized it was too corrosive. City officials were aware of this, and hoped it didn't "set a precedent for people to jump off the Flint system." (Michigan Live, GM's decision to stop using Flint River water will cost Flint $400,000 - 10/14/2014)

Flint River water has also been linked to an uptick of Legionnaies' Disease. State officials have been warned about this, but did nothing.

It's not just Flint, Michigan that is experiencing this crisis. As the NPR report Beyond Flint Michigan indicates, communities around the county, particularly in the rural south, have contaminated drinking water.

On the Molalla

2016-02-04T13:31:00.000-08:00

Fluted basalt columns wound into a nautilus
turquoise water
moss covered trees
rain-licked ferns
slick-capped mushrooms feeding on rich black soil
the scent of origin and rot

-Naseem Rakha, 2/4/16

Everything is Temporary

2016-02-01T16:36:00.000-08:00

Walking along the Colorado River, RM 179.5 in the Grand Canyon, I see a twisted outcrop of columnar basalt. Pillars of hardened lava protrude right then left, up then down, a stark contrast to the basalt on its sides, tall and vertical columns—sentries guarding a renegade piece of the past.

Typically, columnar basalt is very linear, either standing upright or lying horizontally to the ground. Vertical basalt is formed by lateral lava flows, horizontal basalt, vertical flows. All of it very orderly. This twisted belt of rock, however, it speaks of pandemonium. Clashing forces. Disarray.

But even more compelling then this specific flow on this specific part of the Colorado River, is the question of how these blocks of stone settled into their distinct shapes. Most geologists believe columnar basalt is created by constriction; the cooling lava shrinks, causing cracks or joints similar to those seen on dried lake beds. Then you have others who think the shrinkage theory is, "too simple," favoring, instead an action they call, "viscous fingering," or what I think of as geologic foreplay. In essence, "vertical loading and progressive cooling and crystallization" work together to ease the basalt into its forceful forms.

Whatever the real mechanism for basalt's symmetrical semblance, geologists tend to agree it takes hundreds of years for the rocks to cool into these features, perhaps even longer. It's often that way with earth science. The Grand Canyon may or may not have been carved in 6 million years, the basalt columns may or may not be the result of viscous fingering. We can do field studies on the subject, write papers, have conferences, but we don't really know the answer for sure—not yet. I think that's what draws me to the science—its tangential relationship with certainty.

∞

RM 179. I leave the river path and scramble up a scree slope toward the chaotic columns, grabbing anything solid to boost my way. I brush a nettle plant, feel its sting, scrape against a fishhook barrel cactus, feel a spine embed in my leg. At the base of the outcrop I stop, catch my breath, then begin to climb the twisted and uneven stone.

Halfway up I find the perfect place to pause and eat a few crackers. There is a seat for me, a ledge for my feet, another for my canteen, and yet another for my backpack. Beside me, lying prone to the ground, is a dead and desiccated barrel cactus. The living one, the one whose spine is now lodged in my thigh, was striking with its yellow and magenta plumage. But this one, this dead one, also has a certain beauty. Its body is ashen and has collapsed in on itself. Its spines look like rusted nails. In this brittle environment, where decay is so slow, the cactus may have died a decade ago or more. I know from its size it may have lived eighty years, maybe one hundred.

I watch the river go by, thinking about it and the curve of time. A barrel cactus which lived longer than my parents, a series of lava flows which temporarily dammed this river well over a million years ago. Either one, eighty years or a million, they are infinitesimal compared to the age of the bedrock that surrounds this place: 1.8 billion year old granite and schist.

It's one of the reasons I come to this canyon. All those years piled on top of one another, a lexicon of what's been. What is my existence in all of that? All of human civilization would amount to barely a hairline in the these walls. The idea calms me, puts my own losses in perspective. All things are temporary. Heartburn, heartache, heart attacks. Politics, politicians, preachy puritans. Guns, laws, dams, disease. All of it making the rounds, from germination to termination.

The canyon is an open book, giving me a glimpse of what was, what is, and what has yet to be.

-Naseem Rakha, February 1, 2016

After the Oregon standoff: can lost goodwill be recaptured?

2016-01-28T09:22:00.004-08:00

As the standoff in the Oregon desert draws close to a very American end—a barricade, a shoot out, one dead cowboy, several arrests—the conflict over western lands is far from over.

During the first week of the three-and-a-half week standoff, things were fairly amicable between the militants and local authorities. But before long, the out-of-state gun bearing cowboys were destroying property, and threatening local officials. All along, the police and FBI remained mostly out of site, not approaching the militants or commenting to the press about the situation, which left many across the country wondering what they were waiting for.

That changed on Tuesday night. As leaders were driving about 100 miles to a meeting with supporters, authorities stopped the militants on the remote snow-lined highway, and captured the group. In the confrontation, one leader, Robert LaVoy Fenicum, was shot and killed. With their leaders gone, many of the militants left the refuge, and presumably, Harney County. Still, five or six people remain, promising to stay no matter what.

Their continued resistance indicates that the sentiments which brought people to this cold and windy part of the country are not going to just blow away. While everyone may agree that public land has many meaningful purposes, it is the people who earn their living from that land that often feel left in the dust by state and federal regulations.

To them, wolf introductions, wilderness proposals, bans on timber harvest and reduction in grazing units clearly prioritize environment over livelihood. Shuttered mills and feed stores, abandoned libraries, anemic public services are perceived to be a product of an overreaching, unsympathetic and aggressively arrogant government infrastructure lubricated by urban and urbane values, rather than what it really is: a symptom of an economic system gone amuck.

For them, multiple use is often portrayed as a multiple menace, with the needs of wolves and fish and hikers competing with the needs of local people trying to feed their families.

The answer to this problem, however, is not the demonization of government nor in the privatization of land. Ironically, the answer according to Harney County rancher, Fred Otley, lies in just the kind of cooperative plans that he and other ranchers and conservationists helped create with the Malheur Wildlife Refuge and Bureau of Land Management in 2013.

The landmark effort brought together all interest groups to develop a shared vision for the land which included economic, environmental and social needs. It took more than five years of hard work, long conversations and detailed biologic assessments to complete the project.

In the end, ranchers signed a 30 year agreement with the government to protect sage grouse habitat on their private lands, in exchange for the continued use of public lands for well monitored grazing.

The cooperative effort included 53 ranches and 320,000 acres of pubic and private land. In March, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited Harney County, dubbing the Malheur plan, “the Oregon Way.” It and similar work in other parts of the west have been credited for the recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife decision to not list the sage grouse as endangered.

sage grouse

“We started saying what’s good for the bird is good for the herd,” said Tom Sharp, a Harney County rancher who helped launch the cooperative effort.

Sharp, Otley and Harney Country community members are concerned that the militants illegal occupation of the refuge and their incendiary claims that the federal government has no right to own land in the state, will derail the goodwill that has been created in the county. After generations in the area, they know how quickly misunderstandings can lead to decade long feuds.

These concerns were voiced to Bundy and his crew at a Town Hall meeting last week in Burns, Oregon. The meeting drew over 400 locals, most of whom called on Bundy to go home. At the end of the meeting Bundy and his friends got up and walked out, not saying a word to the group.

And while it appears Bundy and his gang are on the way out, their God-loving, gun-toting, live-free-or-die message is not likely to go away. The reason Bundy and other leaders were caught last night is they were heading out to meet with more than 100 supporters in the next county over. Before he was arrested, Bundy said he been invited to attend another community meeting later this week. “We have a lot of support,” he told reporters.

Unfortunately, he may be right.

-Naseem Rakha, 1/28/16 for The Guardian

A Year Goes By

2016-01-02T13:12:00.001-08:00

This was Elijah and I on January 1, 2014 hiking Abiqua Falls. So much has changed since then—Dad is gone, Elijah is soon turning 16, Chuck is moving his office to Portland, and I am a disillusioned writer with little interest in the publishing world and all the calisthenics writers are asked to do to earn attention. My world instead is about trying to raise an independent son, support my husband, and still find my place and voice in the wilderness. It is where I feel most at ease with the temporary nature of everything I see, smell, love and touch. It is where conflict—internal/external—is sweetly silenced by the hum of indifference.

First Anniversary

2015-12-31T15:59:00.000-08:00

Dad, last Christmas

Last year on New Year's Eve, Dad took Shameem, Chuck and I to his doctor so that we could hear a sobering truth: Dad was running out of time. Shameem, Chuck and I listened as Dad pressed the man to talk numbers. Dad wanted us to understand that he knew his life was coming to a close and that he did not want us to do anything to prolong it.

At the time, we three—Chuck, Shameem and I—thought the doctor was talking months, possibly a year. Maybe even more. Dad was an escape artist when it came to the Grim Reaper. In his life, he had slipped from the clutches of Malaria, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, The Black Plague. He had been in two nearly fatal car accidents, had broken his neck, survived a brain infection, and had been living with end stage kidney disease for more than a decade without dialysis. If Dad's end was near, it would take its time. But my dad knew better. Off handedly he suggested he might be gone in two weeks. The doctor disagreed. Dad had much more time then that.

The meeting ended and we all shook hands and thanked the doctor. Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. Afterwards, we went for lunch and watched Dad beam with the pleasure he always got from talking with his doctors. Dad's relationships with these men and women were anything but simply professional. He would attend each appointment armed with folders filled with graphs of his weight, his blood pressure, his heart rate. Dad was a scientist and his failing health was his own study. He would read every article he could find on kidney disease, bone marrow, drugs, experiments. He studied graphs which would give him some idea, based on the trajectory of the numbers, when he might die. Sometimes those graphs would depress him. Sometimes they would energize him, giving him a sense of understanding and control. Occasionally, he was scarred. But visits with his doctors would bring him back to a solid place. After talking about his graphs and his latest blood work and all it meant the conversations would become a free for all, with Dad and Doc talking about all things in the universe, including the universe, its stars and planets, the earth and its atrocities and beauty: war, god, poverty, politics, food, opera, gangs, guns, you name it, Dad could speak to it. And did.

After lunch Dad asked if I had plans for New Year's Eve, and I said no, we were spending it at home nice and quiet. We would listen to Portland's All Classical's annual countdown of people's favorite music. It was a tradition, typically ending at midnight with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, a piece of music I was taught to love at an early age when my parents would take me to the symphony, or as I would fall asleep to the sound of the radio playing in the living room.

When I told Dad we would stay home for New Years, I saw, felt, heard a sound of relief. Dad rarely imposed his desires, but clearly he was happy to know we would be together. And it was a beautiful night, ending with sparkling cider and Beethoven's Chorale and Elijah and I conducting and everything—every little thing... being just right.

Then, two weeks later on January 14, 2014, Dad fell on the Portland streetcar. Ten hours later, he died.

And I think of all that today for obvious reasons. Anniversaries are sometimes a burden.

But I think Dad would be proud of his children: Naseem, Amir and Shameem. We have survived our first year of being orphans, and we have all come together for this holiday. We are carrying on the traditions that Mom and Dad started—the Catholic and Muslim agnostics who put up a Christmas tree not because they believed in a Christian god, but because they loved us, and what better reason could there possibly be?

Me and my Dad -- Mohammed Allah Rakha

Naseem Rakha December 31, 2015

The Benefits of Discomfort

2015-12-26T15:40:00.000-08:00

“Direct experience is out best teacher, but it is exactly what we are most bent on obliterating, because it is often so painful. We grow more comfortable at the price of knowing the world and therefore ourselves." Joe Kane, Running the Amazon.

We are not meant to live our lives indoors, not meant to breathe caged and recirculated air or always be warm and comfortable. Discomfort builds callus and muscle and bone. It breeds ingenuity and community: a melding of talent and time. The Greek word for comfort is paregoria—the root for the word Paregoric—an opioid once given to children to put them to sleep. Comfort being a kind of drug that dulls the senses and leads us into a stupor. Living outside for 31 days reminded me of this. Being home, in front of the fire and feeling like I need a nap reminds me of it too.

Naseem Rakha - December 26, 2015

Sun Worship

2015-12-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

Kwagunt RM 56.5 - naseem rakha

In winter, in the canyon, you worship the sun—seek it out like a moth to its flame. There it is—around the next bend, in that eddy, up that cliff. Once in its rays, you shed layers, and your face lifts and your hands are removed from gloves and stretch bare and free out toward the light.

It has snowed as low as the river, and in pre-dam times before the daily tidal shifts caused by the power needs of Phoenix and its outliers, parts of the river have even frozen. But we 15 on our river trip were lucky. The snow we saw was well behaved; sticking to the upper ledges of the canyon, spackling the Kaibab and Toroweep, icing on a 1.8 billion year old cake. After the sun set it was the fire we all huddled by, driftwood and laughter our fuel. Songs too, and chocolate bars. A little bourbon. We did wake to ice a few times, and frost on our tents and sleeping bags. But tea and coffee were quick to brew, and if it was a layover day the fire was re-lit and there we'd sit waiting for our sun: Helios, a nuclear fireball, massive and brilliant and blinding, and yet somehow, strangely, a life-giver, a sustainer, a distant yet giving god.

Naseem Rakha, December 21, 2015

snow falling in the canyon - naseem rakha

Grand Canyon Moon

2015-12-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

For a month we lived under the sky—no ceilings, no walls, just skin and sun and water. Just stone and ice. And as we moved down river the moon followed, growing each night, lighting paths for night time walks, staring down, stark and white, big then bigger, rising later and later, night light becoming morning beam. We watched it rise and set, grow then recede back into full shadow, until all there was were long dark nights punctuated by the ion trails of falling meteors—the Geminids, yellow and orange against Orion, Cassiopeia, the Dippers - big and small - the froth of the Milky Way. It reminded me of breath. It reminded me of life, of cycles. Of all the things we do that eventually lead us back to where we began.

Naseem Rakha - December 20, 2015

Living Beyond Walls

2015-10-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

A storm has just moved in. The wind is gusting, leaves are cartwheeling across the grass. Trees arch, bend, dance. There goes my watering can. A cushion. A puppy...

Okay, not a puppy.

Maybe it was a squirrel.

Maybe, just a brown bag.

The thing is, I’m watching all this from inside my house, sitting at the kitchen table, safe, warm and comfortable. A well-protected front seat to Oregon's first good autumn storm.

Which is one of the reasons I decided leave for the Grand Canyon in 22 days. I and thirteen others will be rafting the Colorado River for a month. Mid November to mid December. It promises to be cold. Possibly stormy. The water will be unforgiving. There will be no shelter but my tent, and an evening fire. No escape but onward. And though this scares me, it feels necessary.

I lose something when I am too comfortable. It depresses or represses me—something like that. I think I become sloth-like. A creature moving from warm bed to warm coffee to warm car to warm fire burning by my warm leather chair with a nice warm cat purring on my lap. The both of us, sloth-like. Sleep curling its finger toward itself, a sexy lady licking her lips, encouraging me to slip on in—and out.

Branches are shaking themselves loose now. They shoot through the air — arrow like. And the sound of the rain on the skylight is like a million tiny tap dancers, amped on speed. The last of the Dahlias are being ripped of their petals. Purple, yellow and scarlet exclamation points punctuate the ground. And there goes another cushion. A potted plant. A bird feeder.

I love it when the weather turns rough. I love to walk in it, hike in it. Bike, even. I remember once my son, Elijah and I were riding our bikes through a bad spring storm. Wind, rain, cold, and then somewhere around mile 30—hail. We pulled over and high-tailed it to a tree, clinging as close to its trunk as possible to avoid the pebble-sized pellets of ice. When the hail stopped, we got back on our bikes and made our way down the road through a good three inches of slush. And you know what Elijah said?

"I'm glad we are doing this today."

That's right, he was glad.

"Of course, it would be nicer if it were seventy degrees and sunny, but isn't it good to know we can do this?"

He was fourteen then. A year earlier he had said the same thing when he and I were caught in a wild and windy, winter-like storm high up on Ross Lake in the Northern Cascades. This time we were in a row boat, him guiding the outboard motor. We were ten miles from our cabin on a long finger of a lake jutting into Canada, snow covered mountains towered beside the lake, the land entirely wilderness. The storm had come up fast, black clouds suddenly gathering up their breath then blowing hard, chopping the water into knife edged waves which crested over our boat, slamming us with icy water. I was worried. More than worried, really. Isn't this just the type of thing you read about? A woman and her kid lost on a lake? I looked back at Elijah, ready to make my to him to take over. But one look told me, I did not have to. He gripped the throttle and gunned the boat forward taking the waves head on, his eyes focused on the channel. He was entirely wet—wet face, wet hair, wet clothes, and it was entirely cold—the wind so loud we had to shout to be heard. I waited for his complaints, his fear, something. But nothing came. He had a job to do and he was determined to do it. He was thirteen, and he was saving our lives. Afterward, safe in our cabin, he did have something to say. He was glad to have had that experience. Glad to know it can be done, and that we did it. Glad.

I found all kinds of new respect for my son on those days. He understands there is something gobsmacking special about stepping out into the weather—having the wind blow us sideways, and the rain pound against not roof and window, but flesh. Feeling it, smelling it, understanding in some essential way that it makes our days richer, bigger, better. He knows there is something altogether good and strong when we opt to feel the fullness of where and what we are.

No longer a sloth, but a high flying bird, catching the wind and soaring on.

-Naseem Rakha

Grand Canyon River Trip - A Winter Adventure

2015-10-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

"Adventure is putting yourself out on the edge...finding that border line between your comfort zone and where you are a little bit uncomfortable. and then, hopefully, finding your way through." Curt Joyce, Kayaker -- 1983-2014

On November 18, I will join a group of fourteen people for a one month 279 mile journey down the Colorado river from Lee's Ferry, Arizona/Utah to Pierce Ferry, Arizona through the heart of the Grand Canyon.

I was invited on the trip by Hazel Clark and her husband Tom Martin. Both Tom and Hazel have been a part of the canyon for decades: hiking, boating, learning about, writing about, talking about the canyon and its surrounds, organizing to help save it and its watershed. Good people, who have offered me an amazing opportunity to see and live in the canyon during its most cold and quiet season. Yet, the decision to go did not come easy.

Though I have rafted the canyon before, it was always either in the summer or fall with my family, and the trips never lasted a month. When I agreed back in spring to go on this coming trip, November seemed far away. I figured I had plenty of time to get my head around the idea of being gone for so long and during such a challenging season. But it has taken me until this week to finally make my reservations to fly to Flagstaff where I will join the group I will live, eat, paddle, cook, camp and hike with for 30 days.

Entering the canyon takes commitment. There is no easy way out once those walls start rising, no way to call and check-in, no texting to see if Elijah's homework is done. There's no way to wish Chuck and Elijah a happy Thanksgiving, or Chanukah. No way to tell them what it is like to spend my 56th birthday at the bottom of the Great Gully.

As the days get closer to my departure, I find that my reasons for agreeing to go feel flimsy compared to my very substantial fears. How will I deal with being so disconnected from my family? How will I feel about the isolation in the dead of winter? How irresponsible of a mother am I being? How selfish? How will I ever stay warm enough? The temperature could drop below freezing, and the river water? I don't even want to think about it. Plus there is the dark. Winter nights are already long, and the canyon will cut our few hours of daylight short.

Still, I feel compelled to go. I met Tom and Hazel as a result of my writing about Kaitlin Kenney - the young woman who died while rafting the Grand Canyon during the winter of 2013. Search parties were looking for her while I lived on the South Rim as the National Park Service's Artist in Residence. Those essays about Kaitlin led to many personal revelations about what it means to be alive. Really alive. The risk it takes, the perseverance and bravery. They led to my hiking into the canyon on solo retreats, and then other challenges—always out and in the wild. Challenging myself. My mind, my body, my soul.

I will use this blog to describe how I am getting ready for this next trip—a month winter rafting the canyon. I will post about what geer I will use, what films I am watching, books and blogs I am reading, music I am listening to. What I am packing, and what I am saying to myself and my family as I get ready to walk out that door.

This morning, I found this beautiful Vimeo Film about a Grand Canyon river trip taken last year. During it, kayaker, Curt Joyce, lost their life. The film is called Why We Go. It explains some of my reasons for why I am leaving for the river in a few weeks.

Why We Go from Brett Mayer on Vimeo.

Alder Springs Hike to the Deschutes

2015-10-17T10:59:00.002-07:00

Yesterday, Waldo and I took what I think is the best autumn hike I have ever had. Maybe it was the weather, warm, yet overcast. Maybe it was my mood—happy to be out hiking after a 13 day hiatus. I returned from my Grand Canyon Rim to Rim hike less than two weeks ago, but in between there was a trip to Chicago for my Dad's memorial, and as usual, it takes me time to get the energy to leave home after I have been gone. Particularly after the Chicago trip. There was so much to process, so many emotions to hold, and goodbyes to say. So, it was probably all that that helped make my hike special—it was a quiet respite, a grounding walk among the bluffs and buttes of Oregon's High Desert.

Alder Springs trail begins on a high plateau overlooking a cleft in the ground where Whychus Creek (the Sahaptin word for "a place to cross the water") flows clear and untamed. Ponderosa Pine sprout from its base, a green stash on a bunch grass face. Soon Waldo and I started our descent into the canyon. Part way down we could hear the rush of water coming from Alder Springs. The springs is like the Metolius, which sprouts from the bottom of a hill a full fledged river. Like the Metolius, the water was clear and cold and Waldo and I drank from it. I was drawn to this hike because Bonnie Olin, author of Owyhee River Journals, posted that just last week she had seen Bull Trout in this creek. Waldo and I were not as lucky, but it was good to know the endangered trout had found shelter.

After another half mile, we forded the creek and then hiked along and above it through Basin Wild Rye, Rabbit Brush, wild rose, fern, Equisetum Hyemale (Horsetail Reed), Juniper, Ponderosa Pine and Sage Brush. And of course all along the lower path were the name sake of the trail—Alders—their now golden tear drop shaped leaves danced in the breeze and carpeted our path.

After just three miles, we reached the confluence of Whychus Creek and the Deschutes. The geology was largely exposed cliffs of volcanic ash and Columbia Plateau lava flows sculpted by wind and water. Interspersed were layers of river conglomerates. After I returned I learned that somewhere along those cliffs are petroglyphs. I did not see them, but will return to search.

At the confluence of the Whychus and the Deschutes there was a wonderful basalt outcrop, a perfect place to share a sandwich with Waldo, explore the cliff sides and dip in the water. The area was clearly a destination for the Eagle we had spotted earlier—it was littered with bird wings and feathers.

After our snack we headed the three miles back to the car, cresting the ridge just as the sun set behind the spine of the Cascades.

The public's access to Alder Springs is relatively recent. Up until a couple decades ago, it had been a private ranch. Then in the 1990's authorities took possession of the land after they discovered the old ranch house had become a meth factory. The structure was destroyed and the land given to the Forest Service. The eight hundred acre parcel is now part of the Crooked River National Grasslands. Alder Springs is closed to the public from December 1 to March 31 to protect its wildlife habitat. Elk, deer and antelope can often be seen roaming the area. The lack of cattle has given the plants some time to recuperate. There are healthy stands of native Blue Bunch Wheat Grass and Basin Wild Rye.

It took two and a half hours to get to Alder Springs from the Willamette Valley, so I drove back over the pass in the dark, feeling full and satisfied and utterly lucky to call Oregon home.

I like how this juniper looks like it has seeds blowing off it like a milkweek pod

Equisetum Hyemale (Horsetail Reed)

Common Teasel (thank you for the id. Scott Bowler)

- Naseem Rakha

October 16, 2015

Male, Female or Other

2015-10-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

If you've filled out a form on Google lately you probably have seen a brand new option when it comes to Gender. Instead of the standard Male and Female, people can now choose Other.

I just found a video about one of my town's "others." In it, then-Mayor, Stu Rasmussen is showing Statesman Journal reporter, Cara Pallone, the inside of his closets (as well as his handcuff collection.) Stu achieved international fame for being one of the country's, if not world's, first openly transgendered Mayors. He grew up in Silverton, runs the town's only movie house, and walks Silverton's streets dressed in a way which emphasizes not just his legs (which are enviable,) but also what he likes to call "the twins"—augmented breasts which stand out—literally as well as figuratively.

In most aspects, Silverton appears to be your average rural American town. It has the Elks, Kiwanis and the Lions clubs, is filled with churches, has a feed store, and a one lane train track that hauls grain and seed. It has cute parades featuring the high school band and local pets. It houses teachers and doctors and librarians and artists and folks who work for the state in one capacity or another. Your typical rural community, red white and blue bunting in July, Christmas tree lighting after Thanksgiving. Yet, in 2008 and again in 2010, Silverton residents voted in the most non-conformist of Mayors. They also came out in force when the Westboro Baptist Church came to Silverton to tell us we were all going to hell for having a transgendered Mayor. Many of the town's businessmen dressed as women to confound the Topica, Kansas "Christians."

I like that about Silverton. I like that once, while sitting with Stu at a garage sale, I watched him haggle with a farmer over a tractor. Stu had driven the tractor over and then put a pair of shiny red stilettos on the hood as bait. At first the farmer, dressed in overalls and seed cap, seemed taken back by Stu's attire: a mini skirt, six inch heals, and a shirt cut so low it exposed a good canyon of cleavage. But within minutes the farmer and Stu were talking away about gaskets and plows and whatever else one talks about when talkin-tractor. A few minutes later, the farmer was in, he wanted the tractor, but only if Stu would throw in the shoes.

"For the wife," he said with a wink.

My favorite line in the interview by Cara Pallone is when Stu tells her that typically two to three percent of the population of males are cross-dressers. "Which means on Halloween when you see a man dressed in a dress, if he knows how to walk in the shoes, he does it more than just once a year."

-Naseem Rakha

October 13, 2015

Grand Canyon Artist in Residence

2015-09-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

Last year while back at the Grand Canyon, I and a few other Artists in Residents were interviewed for this beautiful 5 minute film about the importance of AIR's. The students from Columbia University did a very nice job.

Homeless Dogs

2015-06-24T11:35:00.001-07:00

Of note this morning: overweight woman in a scooter buys four large bags of candy. As she reaches into her bag for her wallet, she pulls out a plastic bag that contains a single large milk bone. "I haven't seen any dogs this morning," she says to the Rite Ad cashier. "I don't give money to 'dem bums outside. But if they have a dog, I'll give 'em a biscuit."

Outside Rite Ad I hear several dogs barking. They are a block away, standing among a small group of people. Beside me, a man hosting a full length leg cast and tattered, street-stained clothes points a yellowed finger in the dogs' direction and yells, "SHUT UP!"

And I think, "fat chance."

Certainly the sound of the street--the cars, the busses, light rail zipping by, voices haling cabs, shouting about the "all mighty Lord Jesus," speaking to lovers, to business partners, to friends, to enemies, into phones, into the wind to no one in particular--would drown out this one man's voice.

Yet not minutes later, not even seconds, but immediately, the dogs quit their barking. I turn back and look at the man and he pulls his hand back into his pocket and smiles.

I am upon them now, three dogs two street people, all outside a Starbucks. The people hold signs, "Anything helps." The dogs sit beside their humans, one climbs on a back pack. Lies down.

I give its owner a few bucks, and walk away, my eye out for the overweight scooter-woman with the bags of candy and the dog bone.

6/24/2015

Jon Stewart on the Emanuel AME Shooting

2015-06-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

Last night comedian Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, set aside his jokes to speak directly to his audience about the deaths of nine African American worshipers at the historical Emanuel AME Church, in Charleston, South Carolina.

A solum and unscripted Stewart, stares straight into the camera - saying we the people of the United States are more of a threat to ourselves than foreign terrorists, and that our failure to see and remedy our racist presumptions is a blood toxin that is destroying this nation. His words are powerful, and he absolutely right.

Please watch.

The Face of War

2015-05-25T10:24:00.002-07:00

The Unknown Soldier, David Jay, Photographer

This is what we do.

We spend the bulk of our nation's resources on war, and then we bring our dead and wounded home and pretend there is no war.

The Unknown Soldier, Photographer David Jay

There is war.

As you get up this morning and drink your coffee—
there is war.
As you walk your dog—
there is war.
As you scan the aisles at the grocery store
and flip off the guy who cut in line
as you sit in your chair at home
and open another bottle of beer
and turn on Game of Thrones—
there is war.

We send young men and women into foreign lands and ask them to do things that bend their minds with what their eyes have seen, and their hands have done, with what they have heard and tasted and smelled.

Pictures like these demand we acknowledge our actions. That we be accountable. They demand we find a better way to co-exist on this planet. Be more humble, more grateful, more creative, more trustworthy, more open to the reality that killing will never—not ever—resolve anything.

Pictures like these ask us to not just look, but see.

Iraqi girl wounded in car bomb. Photographer Michael Yon, 2005

Facts:

Since 2001, approximately 2.5 million service members have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost half have been deployed more than once.

Since the beginning of operations in March, 2003, 6851 U.S. soldiers have been killed

9% of evacuated soldiers lost a major limb.

In total, since the beginning of operations, 675,000 U.S. Veterans have been granted disability.

Studies indicate 22 veterans commit suicide every week.

In Iraq, over 70 percent of those who died of direct war violence have been civilians. Iraq Bidy Count conservatively estimates that at least 133,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence due to war between the invasion and early May 2014

Updated Death and Injury Rates of U.S Military Personnel During Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congressional Budget Office, December, 2014

To see more pictures go to: The UnKnown Soldier, David Jay, Photographer

For a story on David Jay and his photos go to the NPR story: It's Not Rude, These Photos are Meant to be Stared At

Happy Mother's Day, Mother Earth

2015-05-10T11:01:00.003-07:00

Years ago, I worked for an organization created by Allan Savory called The Center for Holistic Resource Management. The Center's mission was to reverse the advance of desertification through a decision making model that incorporated community and social needs, values, economic priorities, and ecosystem requirements. Savory's theories were developed by his observations of what happened on the African veldt after he advocated for the extermination of more than 40,000 elephants in a mis-guided effort to stop overgrazing. It was tragic mistake, and led Allan to seek true answers to global warming.

My job at CHRM took me all over the country, working with farmers, ranchers, tribes, and government agency staff.

It was rewarding work. Important work. Necessary work. Through Savory's methods, many age-old conflicts between environmentalists and ranchers, ranchers and the BLM, tribes and the BIA, or city dwellers and farmers, were quelled. Ecosystems thrived. Wildlife responded. Farms and ranches were saved.

One of the tools I used when I taught was Peter Russell's amazing video, The Global Brain. I just watched it this morning, again, and I must say its message is even more pertinent today than it was 32 years ago, when the film was made.

So for today, on Mother's Day, give the earth a little squeeze, and watch the film I have posted at the top of this page. Its message is clear, we each play a critical role in serving and saving this planet. Nothing lives in isolation, and it may very well be that we are living in just the right time and age to begin a true process of healing the damage we have caused to Mother Earth.

And below, is Allan's amazing Ted Talk. Here you will learn about Allan's experience in Africa, and see for yourself how much difference his programs have made to stop the process of desertification. I promise, if you watch this, you will see global warming and climate change in a very different light.

Climbing Mt. Hood

2015-05-01T18:23:00.000-07:00

In March, I decided to do something I have never done before—climb a mountain. At first I thought I would try Mt. Kilimanjaro. I know a fellow in town that organizes trips up the snow-capped African peak. But having never climbed anything higher than 8,000 feet, I did not know if I could handle going up to 19,000.

Instead, I decided to join on with Climb for Clean Air. It is a fundraising effort put on by the American Lung Association. For the past ten years or so, they have been training people to summit some of the Pacific Northwest's most famous peaks: Mt. Hood in Oregon, Mt Adams and Mt Rainier in Washington. I chose the 11, 250 foot strato-volcano we call Hood, and the Multnomah Tribe called Wy'east. I began training for my summer assent two months ago.

Last week, I got the training schedule wrong and so headed off for the 10+ mile Boulder Ridge Trail alone. The day was a spectacular success: hours of meditation as I made my way up to Huckleberry Mountain, through trickling creeks, past sweet smelling waterfalls, then up into the snow, my footsteps loud on the ice, the clouds coming in, the wind, the cold, the quiet feeling of being somewhere alone, and getting there on my own, my own two feet taking me higher and higher, one step at a time.

One breath at a time.

I think of Dad when I hike. He just died in January, and I think of all the places he did not get to see in his years in Oregon, and I tell myself I am seeing them for him now. Experiencing them in a profound way, for him. Pushing myself and probing my limits. Expanding them.

Dad did that, in every possible way he expanded his limits. From moving to the United States in 1951, a twenty-two year old Indian engineering student who did not know a soul in America. A skinny, dark-skinned man who was confronted by an angry crowd when he ate in a restaurant in the South - "Where you from, Boy?" A man who was "suppose" to return home, marry the woman his father had picked, not a Catholic German/American with a brazen laugh, and Ingrid Bergman eyes. He was "suppose" to settle within eye-site of the rest of his family. A man who took up the study of Astro Physics at PSU in his eighties and always had his mind spread out towards the stars and the mysteries they held. A man who worshiped intelligence and freedom of thought and the beauty of music, and bird song and light.

And so I think of him and the boundaries he broke as my breath becomes labored and my legs begin to ache. Maybe I won't make it to the top of Hood. Maybe it will be too cold for me, or too steep. Or, maybe the volcano's fumaroles will overwhelm me with their sulfurous gas, my lungs simply unable to drink in enough oxygen. But at least I will have tried, and for that I thank my parents. My Dad and my Mom, too. Both of them boundary breakers. Both of them missed and loved and part of who I will always be.

If all goes well, I and my team will summit Wy'east the dawn of June 26th. If you would like to contribute to my climb, I would be honored. I have already exceeded my goal - BUT - please help me go even further. Every dollar will help the American Lung Association with their important work, and it will be so nice to know I am climbing with your support. Here is a link to my personal funding page, Naseem, Climb for Clean Air.

-Naseem Rakha, May 1, 2015