Whitewater Sucks!
Man, this has been a lesson lurking on this new WW newsgroup.
WW seems as bad as I could have imagined. All the CROWDS and indulgence.
It seems like the downhill skiing form of paddling. No, it seems like downhill BALLET—you call them skis? It seems like BMX
compared to cycling—circling a parking lot, showing off for pals,
flirting with the gals—you call them bikes? Like skateboarding.
Like surfing compared to getting out on the water and exploring.
I can see playing for awhile on some waves on my way down a river.
I’ve enjoyed Bill Nealy’s comix for years. I appreciate the thrill of WW,
to the extent that thrill plays a role in being on the water.
I enjoy the feel of water as much as anyone. I can stare at it
for quite awhile. Obviously friends and flirting have their place.
But really you can get this stuff most anywhere close to home.
It doesn’t compel me to buy a bunch of stuff, go on roadtrips in trafficjams,
wait in big lines at playholes, paddle a bit, wait around,
fly to exotic lands, pseudo-adopt new cultures.
You WWers have me lost on all this waiting in line at holes stuff.
You lost me on bumping and contact on a crowded wave.
You lost me on all this driving around and put-in’s.
You lost me on all this ‘adventure travel’ jive. All this love of the exotic.
You lost me on the boating-as-mating-and-dick-measuring ritual.
You lost me on why anyone would do something mainly for thrills
(as indeed has the whole modern obsession culture).
You lost me on all this injury jive.
You lost me on why anyone ever dies in a boat (except very rarely).
You lost me on all this overvaluation overindulgence of risk
—lives are held in low regard when injury and death
occurs so often. Show me how the math is otherwise.
You lost me on the hedonism, the groovy experiential
faux-Buddhism jive. (“Please just gimme a clear conscience, I’ll do
ANYTHING”…the foxhole Buddhist.) An examination of the
merits of sports-fun as being important per se doesn’t hold up.
I checked out that new mag called ‘Mountain Freak’ the other day.
It’s all about climbing, boating, nudism and groovy groove.
It’s funny how normal outdoor activities have to be
filtered thru the ‘is it groovy?’ lens of Alternative Rock or something
in order to make it in that mag. Don’t they see that to be a
Freak just means to be alive? No act, no image. —I noticed their
article on hunting, on how it was OK coz it’s poetic, cosmic
and kinda Buddhist in a groovy sort of way. That’s nice, glad
to know it’s OK. Why not just let the previous hundreds of years
of hunting impact you as it is? Anyone heard of humility? Respect
for elders? Doesn’t that take nerve and cool? (Especially when your
parents are vexing you.) Hunting owes no explanation. Start from
there, then write your article. Maybe it becomes too hard to write.
Folkways need to be explained and understood; they
can be creatively reinterpreted; they can be changed as needed.
But with what kind of respect and to what purpose? With what
FILTERS and why? Why give the props to a scene, why not test
IT instead? When I see a scene full of what looks
like copycatters, cookiecutters and COMPETITION, I think the
point might be lost. Life isn’t hidden. To see it we need to strip
AWAY filters, not pile them up. Fun doesn’t give us any more life
per se–in fact it usually covers it up, like whistling
thru the graveyard. The tests we give ourselves are so we can be
better in life, not better at a test. Sure everything we naturally do,
including our recreation, is important but we have to beware giving
it more importance than it deserves. We are people first. No one
‘is’ a boater or an athlete. Test it, don’t be it. Does it measure up?
It seems like at least half our effort in sports these days should go
to resisting them. Rescuing what we do is a nonstop activity. In
our anti-culture every encouragement is given to letting what we do
go off the rails. When we go off the rails, we are easily manipulated.
Then we play by the status quo rules, no matter how bad they stink.
And the rules are full of reversals: drive a jillion miles so you can
enjoy the pure scenery; lose that stress in that groovy sport so you
can pile it back on at some brutal inhumane job you couldn’t stand otherwise;
moving to interesting places all the time or going away on beautiful
trips lets developers get away with turning your backyard into a
hellhole, coz you’re not really there.
I’m not saying that flatwater, cruiser and seakayaker types don’t
go overboard, don’t injure themselves and stress their families.
But doesn’t anyone else see a bit of the disjunction between
the dominant and minor threads of this newsgroup? How often do we read
of flatwater boaters going thru all the shinanigans (and various forms
of indulged-in tragedy) we see here all the time about WW?
I guess I’m mainly bumming about crowds these days. Not that I’m
ever in them. I stay away. But the idea of crowding into a river,
brief time limits on ‘fun spots’, waiting in lines, just gives me the
willies. But I guess it looks like heaven to some!
