Trapped: Focus on the Basics

March 2008

The winds hit gale force levels by the time we finished sledding to the bottom of the canyon.  The snowstorm had become a blizzard.  Dropping a fresh layer of white on top of the four and a half feet snowpack.

Quake Lake was on our left.  It was frozen solid.  Fifty yards from us the ice opened.  Water flowed out of the ice and into the canyon to form the Madison River.  The Madison's first ripples turned into rapids right in front of us.  By fifty yards down river, the water had already developed serious hydraulics.  At that point, the river turned into the canyon and out of sight; but we could hear the rapids beyond that.

Josh Galt, one of the icons of American riverboarding, sat next to me on the icy riverbank fiddling with his camera and putting on his fins.  Josh had ridden whitewater from Norway to New Zealand.  On the way up, he'd told me that he had his eye a potential world record waterfall drop that summer.  Despite all that, it was clear that Josh thought that running a Class IV in freezing temps and blowing snow was probably a bad idea. 

Five minutes later, we were off.  Josh was the better rider and quickly took the lead as we headed into harder rapids.  I followed him over a powerful swell and then blasted through the wave below.  I cringed as my face went through the wall of icy water.  I squeezed the handles tighter and adjusted my hips to track the top of the plastic inflatable board.  Losing the board on this stretch of water in these temps could be fatal.

I pushed fear from my head and focused on finding the smoothest line possible through the crashing hydraulics.  The Madison was much fuller than it had been last fall.  The water rushed through the canyon.  Rising and falling, cascading over icy rocks.  We rose, fell, and cascaded with it.  I was beginning to get into the groove.  Time seemed to slow.  It was perfect timing.  Right as we headed into the S-Curve, the hardest stretch of water on the run.

The roar of the rushing water increased as the canyon opened up to the S-Curve.  I let my eyes linger for a moment too long on the horizon.  The water careened me up against a rock and my board stopped.  My still-moving body pendulumed through the water, wrenching against my shoulders.  I pulled myself part of the way up onto the icy rock.  I tried to peel the edge of the board free.  It didn't move, then the current took me.

I fell backwards off of the rock.  The current pushed that backwards fall into flips.  The world became dark, wet, and icy.  The base of my neck slammed against a rock.  Then my hip.  My arms flailed, trying to pull towards the surface but not sure what direction the surface was.  My face bounced against a rock.

I reached towards the bottom, found a hold, then was ripped away from it by the churning rapid.  I felt death pulling me from below.  I thought of my soon-to-be born daughter as the river sent me cartwheeling into the next set of rapids.  I couldn't die without meeting her.

I focused on the basics.  Let my body slacken to prevent injuries and lower the heartrate.  Every extra beat wasted oxygen.  Short, measured breaths only when I knew my face was well clear of the water.  The desperate urge to breath  and the water-filled lungs that resulted from it had to be fought at all costs.

Time slowed again.  My body bounced against the rocks, but the pain wasn't as sharp.  I snuck a breath every two or three rapids.  I didn't feel peace, but the terror subsided.  Eventually the final turn of the Madison's S-Curve completed and the current released me towards the shore.

June 2011

Rita came in the NAMI Montana office again today.  I could see that she'd had a breakthrough.  Rita didn't look well during her last couple of visits.  She struggles with a combined illnesses of diabetes and bipolar disorder.  She'd really been in a bad place over the last couple of weeks and I was worried that she was going to end up back in St. Peter's hospital's behavioral health unit.

But, something had changed.  Rita's smile was content.  A smile of happiness, not a symptom of mania.

I commented on how happy Rita looked and she beamed back at me.  "I didn't let it destroy me."

I nodded and waited for her to continue.

"We took in a vet last week.  He really got to me.  Well, we got to each other."

"Took in a vet?"

"An Iraq war vet.  He was in our trailer park and needed a place to live.  We knew that it was only right to take him in."

I nodded again.  A small trailer, Rita, her husband, Rita's deathly ill mother, and a homeless veteran.  Why is it that the poorest among us are always the quickest to give?

Rita continued, "It was alright for the first couple of days.  He was like the son I never had.  We had long talks and got along great.  Then we started getting on each other's nerves and it got ugly after that."

I winced, "Did it get violent."  You see a lot in our office and get comfortable asking questions that politer company would dance around.

"No, nothing like that.  Just real ugly on both sides.  I caught myself feeling and saying things that just aren't like me.  It just kept getting worse.  I didn't know where it was going to stop."

She was trapped in the current, I thought.  Two bruised egoes whirlpooling around another.  Each dropping further and further in order to lower the other.  I'd been there too many times.  Eventually, you get to the point that you can hardly recognize your actions as your own.  They've been so twisted by power of battling egos.

Rita put her hands on my desk.  "I went to church and asked God if I should kick him out.  He told me not to.  So instead, I prayed for strength.  I didn't want to end up back on the behavioral unit again."

"That's great Rita."

"So I went home and worked on the little things.  I took walks.  I made sure I got enough sleep and ate right.  I took my medicine.  I prayed and I went to church."

She focused on the basics.

"I couldn't really separate myelf from him because the trailer's so small, but I tried.  Eventually after a few days, we pulled out of it.  I took him to the VA and they set him up with a plan to move to Missoula.  It's better for him there anyway.  Lots of young kids and way more to do."

I agreed with Rita and told her to let the vet know we were here to help him if he got stuck and needed some guidance on where to go.  But I was more interested in Rita and how she'd pulled herself out of the negative relationship.  She went back to the basics.  The simple building blocks of life that we all take for granted.

Rita knew that the best way she could straighten out a complex negative interaction with someone else was to focus on the basics within her control.  It was the same philosophy that had set me free from the Madison's current in the winter of 2008.  I hadn't thought about applying it to interpersonal relationships, thankfully Rita had.

NOTE 1:  Here's a video clip of our riverboarding trip on the Madison. 

NOTE 2: Try out the Looking 4 Answers cell phone app.  It's free on iTunes and the Android Market.  Looking 4 Answers is a personal and spiritual growth tracker that uses a short daily quiz.  Let me know what you think.