July 1st Tribute

Last night I participated in an Annual Event for Mark Klein, my friend and boss Bob Klein's brother, who passed away shortly after flipping his boat while running Pine View, the largest rapid on the Poudre River. There were a large number of fellow and current Wanderlust guides (around 20 of us) who hopped into some rafts, duckies, and kayaks and ran the rapid in his memory. At the bottom we pulled into a spot that is not commonly visited by boaters and held a moment of silence below a stone plaque with Mark's name, the word "Adventurer", and his timeline engraved into it.

Bob thanked us all for coming and after that we, well, played around in the water. People took turns jumping off of the top of Flip Rock, some doing aerials, front and back flips, or whatever suited them (I just did a whirly bird and then a jackknife). A couple of guides took a boat back up the river a bit and intentionally flipped it on Flip Rock (Bob jumped on top of it in order to steer it through Pine Box..which was quite a show with a couple guides riding it upside down), while the remainder of us took the other raft down upright. A couple of the guides in the second boat tried to stand up through the rapid the whole time (Robin, Joe, and Brian I beleive, fairly successfully I might at). Afterwards we all went to Bob and Paula's house and had some beer, braghts and burgers and commenced to talk about the river, our upcoming baby, and various other life-moments. It rained a bit around 10 and people started to scatter, but the good vibes continue to ressonate.

Mark, we hope you enjoyed the show.

King of Leaves

Walking to class today I noticed that there are a couple trees with just a few leaves still hanging on to its stark branches and wondered, are these the "King" leaves of the tree?  Are these leaves looked at as the strongest and most powerful leaves on the tree?  Do other leaves talk about strong leaves in the past that have been able to hold onto their branch for a month or two following the second to last leaf that has fallen?  I can picture the leaves laying on the ground looking up at those that are still sucking up nutrients from the soil and wishing they could be there.  

Inevitably there are a couple leaves that last a good while longer than the rest, but is this a blassing or a curse?  Are they suffering from watching their neighbors decend to the ground below them, watching them deteriorate and waste away while they are connected to the larger lifeform that created them?  These lonely leaves could very well want to join their siblings and friends in the ground but the greater power of the tree does not want to let them go.

It is hard to tell which scenario is most accurate, and if applying this to the human lifecourse this becomes even more ambiguous...which is why I brought it up.