How Alone Do You Want To Be?

It may be true, you will always be lonely, if you don’t like the one you are with, because from the get-go,  that other person is always yourself  So you can’t escape your own skin. However, you can escape your situation, if the need arises, at least temporarily at the minimum.  For those whom are completely at home with themselves, yet get a stomach full of crowds and putting up with other people’s baggage, there is hope. There are places one can go to actually experience what good, healthy, “aloneness” actually feels like.

Why healthy?  When the body is sick, even with whatever medicine is taken, it still requires rest to help make for a good recovery. So when the ills of everyday, rampant living, gets overwhelming, what to do?  Vacation. Vacate. Get out. Far out.   And I know just the place for that. It is where I go that gives me that since of what aborigines must feel when they do their walkabout in the vast out-reaches, where one can almost outrun their shadow.

In the Southeast corner of Oregon is a river called the Owyhee.  It flows through a high desert plateau, that is so remote, even an Aborigine might get lost.  At least the Aborigines, in this case, ancestors to the Paiute people, found refuge here before getting lost in time.  The only thing left that gives  hint to their presence is their etchings in the rocks at various places in the canyon.  It is fun trying to figure out what their messages to the future meant, but real answers have  drifted away with their passing into history.

One of the biggest beauties for me, is the feeling of being absorbed by the canyon, and taken into a world filled with isolation.  Even when making side hikes to the rim of the canyon itself, on top, the mesa plateaus stretch far out into a distance where everything from you to the horizon line is filled with nothing but  raw nature. Not a sign of man, anywhere. Just sage brush, mountain mahogany, and rolling hills where even the far  off wind is lonely.

The mixing smell  of sage, flowering primrose, and arrowleaf balsamroot  on the upper desert floor, is an interesting contrast to the clean crisp aroma of air that is so far away from everything, it might have escaped the pollutions of society. Fresh air filtering through the nostrils is a simple pleasure many people have been away from for so long, they forgot exists.  It just takes the right place, to get the right smell.

 

The Owyhee River, for me, is the right place. It is one of my favorite rivers and escapes.  It’s unreal character is almost like stepping into the Twilight Zone, where another parallel world exists. One where each bend in the river, or step around every corner when hiking the side canyons leads into something exciting. Astonishment is perhaps the better word here. It helps give me that fulfillment of my expectations of what paradise must feel like.

Sometimes I even feel like whistling that famous tune from Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs, as the words “Hi ho, hi-ho,  its off to work we go,” roll through my mind as the song leaves my puckered lips.  Mixing my voice with that of the canyon help me feel like being one with the universe. It is like being in the smack  middle of the magic kingdom of my own making, yet is a stark reality, at the same time.

The closest thing I can compare it to for other people who have traveled the world, is the Grand Canyon. It is like floating through a miniature copy of that world heritage site. Yet, it has far less traffic than does one of the worlds most popular  destinations. That is the Owyhee’s saving grace. That, and the fact that this place can only be reached by river during the spring time. The rest of the year, water levels are too low to comfortably float. Unless walk and wade, line/carry your boat, and hardship expedition adventuring is your cup of tea, that is.

Having made over a hundred trips down this river drueing my personal history  of river running, my favorite time here is April and May.  On average, the river is runnable  from early March through the end of May. Though, in extreme snowpack years, the floating can extend into June.

While it is true, other floaters can sometimes be seen, it is not a river that sees congested use like most of the other well-known and popular rivers in North America. Another reason I like it so.  But words can only do so much justice to any thing or any place, so with that, and for now, I will let the pictures work their magic.

Oh. One last thing. If there is anyone out there in the blogosphere reading this post, and is inspired enough to want to make a trip with us this season, now is the time to make reservations.  We expect good run-off (some years there is not enough snowpack for good floating) and will be launching on Saturdays in April and May.  We are not sure about June, as yet??

Give us a call: 800-488-9872

6 days of bliss

Discounts to readers of this post, available

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.

For more river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.com

or
(more pics)  Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

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Time is a River

Einstein said: “time is a river.”  It’s a giant river, and we are all swept up by it, he claimed.  It can speed up and slow down. Did you know that time has different rates on our Moon, and on different planets?  It makes me wonder: if I dialed my own cell phone number, then jumped on a rocket to the moon, could I get there fast enough to answer my own call?  Ok, a little out there, granted. But that is the beauty of being able to fantasize.

Many of the questions about time is how Einstein came up with his theory of relativity.  I always like that concept, as it is great metaphor for what happens to people when they go on a river trip.

Time seems to slow down in relationship to the fast paced world they leave behind. LIke entering some magical time machine, stepping out into the wonderful world of rivers, we can travel to larger destinations ro our own fantasy worlds. We have more time to relax and dream. Getting fooled into believing you are living in paradise, is a feeling I often get while floating various rivers. Sure, it may eventually end, bursting my fantasy. But, at least I get to have it for a while, and based on all the smiles on people I have shared such experiences with over the years, I’m not the only one.

An escape can be very medicinal, specially when one can get temporarily lost in the process.  Similar to being marooned on an island perhaps.  With no pressures, you can do anything you want, any time you want to. How freeing is that? It is a wonderful launching pad to lift off your spirit. It is also quite addictive.  Blasting off on another river adventure makes me want only more. It’s like a disease I am glad I have because it works the opposite of most such maladies. It improves my life for the better.  Catch it if you can.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

Wood Ducks and High Water

This time of year is always exciting, because the changing state of nature is moving faster and always comes with an element of surprise. You never know when the weather will change drastically enough to cause epic events and create new opportunities for adventure. Snow for skiing, or water for boating, it all depends on snow or snow melt.

My favorite, is when snow turns to water as  sudden storms with warm rains hit the high country.  It is a natural recipe for stewing up some high water discharge rolling down the canyon country, with the right ingredients to invite those with an adventurous spirit to taste.

Conversions of snow to flow fills reservoirs and spills over dams creating electricity for commerce. Yet, that same electricity is part of the rivers spirit that  can be felt when floating a raft down its wild course. It is what I tapped into on my recent rowdy ride down the swollen banks of the Little Salmon River in my back yard.

This little stream, when high enough to raft, is what us river folks refer to as a busy river.  Translation: unlike pool and drop rivers, where one can catch their breath between rapids, fast paced rivers have a constant gradient which spells mostly rapids, and very few eddies to rest in.  The pace is such, and dangers enough , that it takes serious attention to negotiation, and little time to be a casual observer of all the other things that fly by your vision as you get briskly whisked along.

However, sometimes things catch your attention, and it is possible to glimpse things other than a wave in your face, or churning hole off to your side. My recent treat was to flush a wood duck from out of the  stream side  brush as we floated downriver. It was just a duck and suspicion of what kind, at first.  But, I saw where it landed, another 200 yds downstream, so tried to pull a sneak closer, as I approached, to get a better look at it.

Luck was on my side, and as it jumped up and flew downriver again,  it confirmed my first impression. It was indeed a wood duck, and for me, that was cool. Why? Because it was the first time I have seen one here, in over 30 years of running this river. But what does that mean?

Have I been that oblivious of an observer over the years to have missed other wood ducks that may have been around? I doubt it, as I normally pay pretty good attention to my surroundings and always look for identifying features on any of the wildlife I encounter when out roaming through nature.

This duck was a male wood duck, as I was able to see his brightly colored head and indicative hood. Very beautiful, but no time for picture taking, when oars required my hands, not my camera. But neat to see, all the same.

But what did this  wood ducks indicate? An improved landscape that invites the duck to our area,  or a degraded one elsewhere that drove the duck out and in an exploratory mode to find new accommodations?  The answer would only be a guess, that I dare not attempt, with such emptiness of facts. More importantly, for me anyway, was just being able to see it. It is a duck that looks like it stood under the shower of a rainbow to receive its colorful feathers.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

 

Why is History and Education Important?

No simple answer.  In my case, the fact that I had parents whom encouraged  my sister and I to experience the outdoor world in the raw, at an early age, is where appreciation for nature first erupted.  The total wonder that captures the imagination of kids at an early age is the same one that ignites our innately human capacity of asking questions about everything around us. Why this, why that?

Engaged with nature outside, up close, personal, and at an early age, is an atmosphere much different from that experienced indoors and in front of a  computer screen.  Like fishing in the ocean and having no idea what might bite, surprises in nature can jump out at you from almost anywhere. And that quest for the unknown, lurking everywhere, is always exciting,

Sure, you can learn about nature watching movies on you tube or other technological media, but only because it comes from someone out on the ground who spent the necessary time required to capture it. But learning intellectually, is not the same thing as experiential learning. One affects the mind, (logic and reason) the other affects the heart.(emotion). Passion is created from emotion, and without it, one cannot become “compassionate” about much of anything.

A world without compassion is one that could suffer harshly in the department of natural stewardship. Passion is like gas, it is the fuel that keeps the engine running. So education, intellectually and emotionally is important. It is the driving mechanism guiding our decisions which affect the planet.

Our decisions create our reality, and build our history. Being human, our decisions can be both good and bad. These choices are revealed in the consequences they lead to, often spelled out in the landscape that by succession soon becomes our new world. If we forget history, and forge onward without it, we are likely to repeat the same mistakes over an over again. If we are to learn from it, we first have to remember it, and if we don’t know about it to begin with, that means research.

I had a poor high school history  teacher, lazy mostly, who was more interested in students memorizing dates, rather than learning about cause and effect, which lead to why things became as they did. Nothing could be more boring. But, when I began floating rivers, and wondering how people lived in the canyons before I arrived, that fueled my fire to learn more.  Now, I love history and have gained a lot of interesting insights as to why things in nature are as they are.

So history and education are important because it is how the world is shaped. Our future is determined by the choices we make today, so we need all the help from history and education that we can get.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

 

In Nature, Why Is A Question More Exciting Than The Answer?

Simple Answer: curiosity is the juice of life. Uncertainty and wonderment of the unknown is a carrot for people.  Ever watch a magic show? Who is not bedazzled or befuddled by the more outlandish tricks?  The harder it is to guess how the stunt was performed, the more marvel it creates in the mind.  That “wanting to know” is out there at the end of the cerebral  stick, beckoning to our innate curiosities.

Venturing out into nature is like attending the biggest magic show on earth.  There are so many amazing tricks to explore.  Like wanting to know how the stage magician’s trick is performed, so too is the way nature plays to our senses, igniting deep  desires to learn her mysteries.  The questions inspired by the natural world come from an endless stream that constantly provokes our attention.  How did that bighorn sheep scamper across boulders covered by slippery moss without breaking a leg? Why do fish have eyes, but no eye lids? Do they sleep with their eyes open? Why do cougars  have claws that retract, but wolves do not? Why do bears hibernate  or squirrels estivate?  Why do lady bugs ball-up in pine cones for the winter?

All magic is explainable because there is no real magic at all.  Science has an answer for every trick the magician performs, rather you know the answer or not. But what we think of magic, does not exist in the real world, only our minds. It is what gives rise to our superstitions and myth making.  It seems us humans need to have answers to everything, even if they are wrong. If we can’t find the answer immediately, we make them up. Does this mean it is some innate trait for humans to be so impatient? Even  the fact I am trying to answer that question might be more evidence for the curious side of the human personality.

But, that’s ok, it just adds more spice to life and keeps the inner juices flowing.  If we had no such spark, we might turn into a zombie, forever stumbling around in some form of unconscious walking stupor.  Each day the sun comes up and arches across the sky, turning dark to light like magic. But in reality it is the movement of the earth that enables that illusion of truth to happen, It occurs everyday, and is the same sun each time. Yet, the rays of shine  are always different and so too their effect, be they direct or indirect. Therefore, something new will result, despite the appearance of just another day ahead. Clouds can change the suns dance on the sky. As nature unfolds spontaneously in her  cause and effect ways, a diversity of events will soon be put into a wild drama for those who tune into the show.

Is this a picture of a tree with pet rocks, or rocks with a pet tree trunk?  Nature’s tricks are endless and inspire ever more questions to keep our minds on the wandering, ever wondering. Rather we use telescopes, microscopes, or no scopes at all to view the grandest show on earth, the world is a big stage.

A rabbit may not come out of a hat, but a snowshoe hare will change colors with the season. Brown in summer, white in winter, transformed by natural magic that allows for its survival in a landscape full of predators with tricks of their own.  Not knowing, ever questioning, is part of the real magic of nature. But once we get an answer it is a bit of a let down, so is why the question is much more exciting. It is the kind of uncertainty and luring show that will keep me going back for more. It is free, lasts all day, and happens everyday of the week, all life long.

The real beauty of magic is that it consists of the reality of things we already know, and those things that exist, but that we do not yet know. Man is exploratory by nature, always in pursuit of truth and discovery. Discovery of what?  Anything and everything. Does it really matter? The question is the answer.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

 

What Do Black Holes and Whitewater Rapids Have in Common?

 

Simple answer: event horizon at the brink of uncertainty.  As physicists and philosophers  tell us,  a black hole is where there exists a spacetime curvature, such that not not even light can escape from its  ”horizon line” border.  Once any kind of matter or light is sucked beyond the lip into this funnel to nowhere, or everywhere, there is no return.

 

 This feeling of passing that line of no return, is the same feeling I get when approaching a difficult whitewater rapid.  The  horizon line can actually be seen from a boat approaching the uncertainty that  lies ahead. Often the view from river level, in a boat, is of exploding splashes of water erupting above a definite line of demarcation directly above the rapid.  It is a demarcation between certainty, ( boat right side up) and uncertainty (boats unknown outcome soon to follow).

Drifting closer and closer, towards the “event horizon” is a passage into a never-never  zone of “inevitability”.   It is akin to  a stare-down with a precurser to a real event – about to be turned into a “in-your-face” reality.   Perhaps like looking at a microcosm of earths curvature, but so compressed and abrupt that it appears one could fall off the edge and into oblivion.  Sometimes, I can even hear the music from the old Twilight Zone movies, running through my head, the closer I get to that nebulous dimension.

There are normally eddies and water where one could pull in or reach shore to abandon the run. But, once past the line of diminishing returns, nothing can stop you from running the rapid. This is where the  river has you in its grip, and it is up to whatever you can do with the oars to guide your boat through the maelstrom and fuzzy realm of uncertainty.  It is also where it seems you can actually feel the electricity in the water. It shocks your senses into a keen awareness and extreme focus of intent. Survival mode kicks in and your entire being is truly “being” –  all in one place, and all at one moment of time. Me is me, reaffirmed.

It is where the magic of water’s power resides, and tunes one into seeing  life for more than just a trick of fantasy. It is where real is real, and life is life. The bare bones of feeling pulse and breath of life reveals our simple significance to our aloneness in the universe. Yet connected to everything around us.

Note: sorry, I don’t have any pictures of the horizon line from a boats perspective. That’s because my hands are on the oars and not a camera at that semi-petrified place on the river.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

 

Great River In The Sky

On a moonless night, gazing out into the stellar trail of the Milky Way which stretches from horizon to horizon, I get a huge sense of smallness similar to what I feel when peering out over earthly landscapes that extend as far as the eye can see.  Often during private and commercial river trips, we make stops to explore side canyons and hike to vantage points with panoramic  view-scapes where one can see into the far beyond.

But, as small as an earthbound geology can make me feel, it pales in comparison to what i experience at night when camped along the river’s edge, staring out into a Milky Way that looks like an astral river of its own nebulous parameters.  It is only an oblong arm of our own spiral galaxy, on but one sun amidst that of 400 billion others.  Then by holding my arm out against the sky and looking through a hole made by my fingers the size of a dime, with the right telescope I could see over 100 other galaxies.  In Stanely Kubrick’s famous line in the movie 2001, it makes me feel “ like a tiny dust mote whirling about the immensity of space.”  The bigger the bigness of such numbers makes me appreciate the smaller my smallness in the world.

The language of the universe is the calculus of mathematics. According to Carl Sagan, if I were to count one number at a time, every second, for 24 hours per day, it would take me over a week to reach one million, and half a life time to reach a billion.  How unfathomable is that? Just how minutely infintestimal are we in the big picture, all-inclusive  scheme of things?    But it does take duality of the cosmos to help us appreciate the differentiation of our significance amongst the stars. You cannot have a true understanding of anything without knowing its opposite.  You can’t go somewhere if you came from no where. From elephant to ant, or glacier to silt, it takes the polarity of radical ends to make the comparisons possible.

If we did not have science and the ability to learn from its measurable evidence, when I gaze up at a star in the night sky, it would look like the size of a pin head, and I would think my own body size was much bigger.   Perhaps I would see the sun come up, stream across the sky, then go down, to return  habitually again every day, yet never know it was our own earth spinning that makes it appear to make such a  heavenly arc. Or maybe I would see the reflections of deer in the water and think that may those images were real animals living in the river?

A mind left unattended might go blank, but one working over time can conjure up all kinds of superstitions to make sense of the world. Perhaps the stars are turned on by some invisible creature in the sky, after the sun goes down, then turns them off when the sun comes up the next morning?  Our minds have a natural acclivity to find answers to any unknown mystery that confronts our physical senses.

Unlike world religions, which already claim to know where everything comes from and to where it is going, the un-absolutism of science is forever filled with a never-ending search for truth in an infinite universe.  It is hard to wrap a mind around the concept of infinity, as it is a mighty ponderance  trying  ever to understand a Great Mystery that has no final answers.  But, like floating earthy rivers, and the stellar ones in our imaginations, it is the movement  from point  A to B that provides the essence of the journey.  Similar to science, floating rivers is a joy of discovery and  enlightenment around each bend, and a  feeling of triumph at  the end of  each successful run through lively whitewater rapids that enriches  man’s mortal spirit. The Great Mystery lives around every corner and make me appreciate my home on the small Blue Dot.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

 

Skating For Goldfish

Are you kidding?  Goldfish in Idaho’s Salmon River? Well, not quite, but close.  A couple of miles, upriver of Riggins, is a place called Shorts Bar. It is a place where the river is mellow and has deposited a huge sand bar over the years,  that looks like something you would see in Hawaii.  This is part of the beauty of the free-flowing Salmon River – natural recruitment of sand each year all along the entire course of the 425 miles of river.

Many years ago, a large area parallel to the river and just upriver of the huge sand bar at Shorts Bar, was dredged out and made into a pond.  Water was pumped out of the main river into the new hole in the ground. It was used for storing logs, to be used later at the local saw mill.  The pond was also part of a gold mining operation, in those years of old.

Somewhere down the line, a person or persons, introduced some gold-fish into the pond. For generations these goldfish have been living in the pond for 60 years or so.  But, most amazing to me, is that I have been in the area for nearly half those 60 years, and have been going past this pond without ever knowing about the goldfish. (I didn’t go to school here, so not savvy to all the local insider’s  scuddle).

I have even used this pond for doing flip practice in dory boats and rafts.  Just in case we have an overturned boat during our whitewater season, it is always nice to be prepared for getting boats back to their right side up position, in a quick and safe fashion. Not that this happens very often (it doesn’t), but it is still best to be ready for even one tip-over.  Practice is the name of the game.

However, this winter, a friend began ice skating here and invited me to go, also telling me about his discovery of the gold-fish thing. (he didn’t go to school here either). But, when he found some skates for me, I took him up on his offer. Then he surprised me more with his scheme to actually catch one of these gold-fish to take pictures of. I guess he needed proof to other disbeliever’s??

A spaghetti strainer affixed to a ski pole with duct tape, like some sort of metalized butterfly net, turned him into an ice skating fish-hunter version of a lepidopterist. The gold-fish had grouped up in a shallow portion of the pond, where ice was thin, and easy for us to get close too. by team effort, we managed to catch one, for a quick picture on the ice and fast return back to  it’s home.

The group size was maybe 150 – 200 fish, ranging in body length of from 3 inches to a foot long. Most were around 4-5 inches in size. Luckily, none, that I know of, ever made it to the Salmon River, as there is no inlet or outlet to the pond.  Also, spring floods never get high enough to inundate the pond for potential escapism.

As far as I know, no other fish reside in the pond.  This is fortunate for  goldfish, because small mouth bass, which live in the Salmon RIver are highly carnivorous. While releasing exotics into native waters is against the law, the small mouth bass were introduced into the Salmon River.  Apparently, we humans stretch our value systems to accommodate things we like, and work at preventing those we don’t from entering our waterways and landscapes.

It would appear we are a bit of a schizophrenic culture.

Sorry, we don’t do gold fishing trips.
(because it’s hard to get a boat down a frozen river)

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

For my Natures Apprentice blog: http://wapitisriversedge.wordpress.com/

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

What do Honeycombs, Snow Flakes, and Lava Flows Have in Common?

Short Answer: 6 sides.  All snow flakes have different shapes, but each one has six sides.  Bees form honeycombs that are six-sided, as it is the most efficient and economical shape to save work and space.  So too, when lava flows it cools in columnar basalt forms that have six sides. We see these often along the Salmon River in Idaho, and the Grande Ronde River in Oregon.  Lava columns make great jumping platforms to jump off of into the river.

Both rivers share a geologic region that was partially  shaped by the Colombia River Basalt flows during the Miocene Age, over the last 30 million years. Cracks opened up in the earth’s surface and spewed out huge lava flows that oozed over the landscape.  Nearby rivers were temporarily dammed, until an outlet formed to drain the water, thereby forming canyons below these natural reservoirs.  Sedimentary materials were laid down on the lake bottoms, then when another lava flow erupted, the process repeated itself.

Consequently, a layer cake effect resulted that can be seen as anywhere from 70 -80 different lava flows can be seen in the canyon lands, separated by alternate sedimentary layers.  Of course, all the various layers of lava and sediments have different thicknesses. due to time between flows and how extensive each one was.

Some places in each canyon of the Salmon River and Grande Ronde River, the river cuts directly through a lava layer, and thus the six sides of columnar basalt can be seen as we float along. Rice Creek, where Chinese Miners historically camped  and worked for gold has such a place on the Salmon River.  On the Grande Ronde River, a place called “The Narrows,” where Chief Joseph had his winter camp, is also where basalt columns line both sides of the river.

A side view does not allow a full view of all six sides. Only when an end view is located, where lava flows have been bent or broken, can all six sides be seen. Often these ends form what geologists call pillow basalt, which we often see at river’s edge where they poke barely above the water level.

Nature talks in terms of math and allows humans to see uniformity in laws of the universe.  Great beauty is a result. Though math may seem a challenge in school and a nebulous thing, in nature it is given amazing form.  It makes room for  curious contemplation along the river’s edge.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.
For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.comor
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

For my Natures Apprentice blog: http://wapitisriversedge.wordpress.com/

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com

Natural Capitalism and Taxation with Representation

Should our politicians cut taxes? Yes, for people. However, consideration of just what a tax really is, merits further review.  Taxation with representation of the actual costs we incur for our bent towards  un-doing the many threads that hold all of  nature together, calls for such radical departure from the norm.

A tax is an instrument used to help pay for the actual price of doing business. This  includes any business, but especially human business. Being  human is a full-time personal business of scurrying around trying to make ends meet. Altruistically, it means  working towards the idea of being a contributing member of a community, biologically and socially,  to thus help propel our cultures prosperity into perpetuity.

Remember,  everything has a cost. Every action begets a reaction. No free lunch. Perpetual motion machines are still a wild fantasy. To see the total picture of anything requires nothing hidden from the camera. True capitalism must include natural capitalism, if we ever seek the best solution doing humans ongoing business. Factoring  natural capital into the original industrial capitalism equation,  as a community member,  and not continue with a dominionist attitude. is a better way not to perpetuate  that  superiority complex of man over nature.

Instead of taxing people, lets tax the resources we use. Tax ecosystem services, not people. Rather than paying personal income tax, lets pay as we go, on things that we use.  Like, on gas at the pump, pesticides we put into the ground, gases we put into the air, waste that goes to a landfill, rivers we dam, water we irrigate with, and so forth. We are already being taxed by everything we use, we just may not realize it. And politicians influencing policy rarely do recognize the true cost of doing business.  It is time to redirect our money.

For too long, many of the big businesses of corporate America has been subsidized at the expense of our public lands. No wonder they have gotten so big, not paying the true cost to the planet for doing their business.  Getting something for relatively nothing, is like trying to wash clothes without any soap.  The trick is to balance the load with the right kind and amount of soap.  Soap is needed that  not only cleans, but is also compatible with the system as it gets recycled back in.

There is nothing wrong with creating wealth, that is, if it does so without shooting off our foot in the long-range analysis.  Balance is a challenge, indeed, but a necessary one if we wish to live more gracefully on our home and with honor to our high ideals.

Our own science reveals measurable  evidence  that there are some resources that no amount of money can buy and few, if any, man-made substitutes can  provide, which nature does.  Nature will tax us, if we do not tax ourselves. We are only fooling ourselves, if we think we are exempt from paying tax on the natural resources that ultimately fuel our prosperity.  It is time to revamp our entire tax structure to align it more to the stark realities of Mother Nature.  Natural Capital Rules.  Ignoring it is ultimately a perilous path.

Rivers make good medicine with us, we make good medicine with rivers.

(Not to worry – we carry duct tape on all trips)

For river trip information, please go to our website: www.doryfun.com

or Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Riverdoryfun

Or for my Chukar Hunting Blog: Chukar Vortex
go to:

chukarama.wordpress.com