Throw Down Your Oars

Here is the link to the new, great, rolling stone article on climate change. Go read that. Then come back here.

Okay, welcome back.

So this blog has been about guiding. But I've been guiding a lot more than I have been writing this blog. And it is time for me to step back from guiding. Furthermore, it is time for a lot of us to step back from guiding.

2012 was The Year Of Low Water. It was a season that was going to be a slog and that is something we all knew from the beginning. It was hot. There were F-U upstream winds. The rapids disappeared, and with it, a lot of the fun. Everything seemed to turn into heat stroke, short tempers, long rowing days and depressed, micro- managing burn out trip leaders. Working 5 am to 11 pm 5 days a week. Driving across the state on your day off. Then rigging the next trip on your other day off. Maybe one real day off every or every other week. And then you're back. Back at this coal mine of a company town. Back with no autonomy, living in the parking lot of your bosses' house. No personal space. No library. No coffee shop. No where to write. And absolutely no dating. No hugs. No kisses. No "I love you's". No potential. Months of the heat, and the toil, and a fuse that's cooked through, burning out completely towards its own, inevitable, disintegration.

My Book of Poems is Out

Long awaited, and finally out...

For you the reader here is my book of poems. Poems of rivers and life, the world, justice, difficulty, love, betrayal, death, hope and struggle. Prose of the desert and the ghost towns and the wild places. Voices of myself, snap shots of moments in time, travel, and observation.

As you may understand, a lot of poetry is narcissistic fluff most people have little patience for. Honey sweet words with no substance of life to them. My poems are not like that. My poems are true works of life. They are for people and the world. The are not soothing lullabies to put you to sleep, or to tell you that everything is beautiful and perfect. They are here to wake you up and prod you and reach out a hand to you. Take from them what you will. And pass them on if they are found to be useful.

Walking Away From Dixie has been self published and printed at the Canyonlands Copy Center in Moab, Utah. Awaiting national distribution, it can currently be purchased by using pay pal to send payment + $3.50 S&H to cawright2007@yahoo.com . Current asking price is $10, which can be raised or lowered depending on the purchasers' needs and generosity. All proceeds benefit my food and gas budget as I spend the fall writing a book on Utah's Ghost Towns, a book on the solo duckie run of the Grand Canyon, and a book about living, working and traveling around the Colorado Plateau during the recession. It is 45 pages long of concentrated experience and observation, and is my first book.

Index:

The Ripping of the Rivers' Tears
There was a river
Activate the Emergency Response System
Red Velvet Cafe
Head for the Hills
The One Who Travels Alone
The Winter
Me Too, Love
Outer Suburbia

11.11
That's About Enough of That
Ghetto Blues, DC
Late Night Re-Runs
Of What Standards Fall Short?
Walking Away From Dixie
Sleepwalking Through the Days of Cotton
The Deception Years
State Highway
Could it be?
I run

America Dawns Malicious
Gunslinger Punk
The Revolutionary that waits
Foreign Fighters
Unbeatable Wall Street
Smacked in the Face
National Forecast
Life Pushes Down
Plenty of Ways

Take Life
Tour
When You're Homeless
Servants
Banks Pay the Tab
Insight
River Character
The Ghost Towns
Occupy SLC
The Interviews