“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ― Mary Oliver

Fresh Air with Dave Davies

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/03/811708372/a-father-searches-for-his-son-and-answers-in-the-costa-rican-jungle

Another Podcast: Kirkus Book Reviews

The wild ride through the publishing world has been fascinating.

This podcast with Kirkus Book Reviews was memorable. The host Megan Labrise was easy to talk to, well-informed, asked good questions. She even had me recite the epigraph at the beginning of The Adventurer's Son, then asked who wrote it. Best of all she was totally non-plussed when my computer crashed in the middle of the interview while we were talking on the Skype-like "Zencastr" that recorded the interview.

Later that day my six-week old computer died completely and I had to take it in for a replacement.

The middle of the next week I had to rise at 4:30 AM for an East Coast live radio show at AK Time 5:30 AM, then prepare for teaching; teach until 2:00 PM; go to several hours of APU-presidential search committee events until 5:45; then rush to an Alaska Writer's Guild meeting to present on memoir writing from 6-7 PM. A long, exhausting day.

Fortunately my friends, too, have blogged reviews:  Luc Mehl, Andrew Skurka, and Mike Curiak whose review also showed up on the Adventure Journal. I dearly wanted them to read the book and see what they thought in their perceptive prose.

All of this publicity is ok by me. I'm not trying to spray my accomplishments all over the internet, but rather tell the story of how my son went missing, and to tell it from the beginning, warts, tears, and all. It means a lot to me to get it right and maybe pass on whatever small lessons other unsuspecting adventurers out there—sons, daughters, fathers, mothers—might gain from reading my memoir, The Adventurer's Son.

Oh yes, Christian Science Monitor, Anchorage Daily News (pay walled-in), New York Times, and Men's Journal. There're a bunch of interesting and provocative reader-reviews on Good Reads, too.

This week, maybe, if the world doesn't end by virus, market crash, or some other as yet unsuspected event, listen to Dave Davies on Fresh Air.

More on The Adventurer's Son

Steve Rinella hosted me as a guest on a recent "Meateater Podcast." He's a pretty intense guy, and having read his book American Buffalo I really looked forward to meeting him. Here's the link

https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-204-it-should-be-difficult-to-get-lost-forever

My publisher has released two chapters from Part I of The Adventurer's Son as they gear up to release the book in a few weeks. Not much need be said about these chapters; if I wrote them well, then they should speak for themselves, right?

https://aerbook.com/books/The_Adventurers_Son-242817.html

Book Release Event: February 19, 2020 at Bear Tooth Theatrepub, Anchorage

On Wednesday, February 19 at Anchorage's Bear Tooth Theatrepub, Title Wave Books will host the release of The Adventurer's Son. 

Luc Mehl will MC.

Admission is free.

From 5:30-6:30 I'll have a presentation and maybe make a few short reads, followed by a question and answer session, and then a book signing until 7:30.

Please come.

The Adventurer's Son

My book about raising our son, then losing and finding him, is done. William Morrow, an "imprint" of Harper Collins, is releasing it Feb 18, 2020 a few days before Cody Roman would have turned 33.

It is an important (to me) book that I needed to write and took great care in writing.

If you look at this blog, you might consider reading this book. It's a memoir along one thin line leading to my son.

If you can't wait until then, you can take your chances with a free early version, a so-called "Advanced Reader's Edition" given away by lottery at Good Reads.

They already gave 100 away, and they will be giving 100 more. If you win one and read it, then let me know what you think here, in the comments.

Golden Age Nostalgia

After reading Luc Mehl's guest blog at the Alpacka web site I indulged in some nostalgia from 2009-2010.

If you're reading this, then you really should go read Luc's post. I found it flattering and a bit of a vignette of what I, self-centeredly, consider the Golden Age of packrafting.

Golden in that it was a big leap forward. Golden in that Brad Meiklejohn urged us into Embick's  Class IV and V creeks. Golden in that real boaters Tim Johnson, Paul Schauer, and Thai Verzone led us down and plucked us out. Golden in that I started hitting whitewater centers beyond Alaska with the boat born in Alaska and now ready for the world: NZ, Grand Canyon, Australia's Franklin, Appalachians.

But the world was not ready. Haters were everywhere and even Alpacka wanted nothing to do with thigh straps.

"Why would a packrafter being going down a class 3/4 river like this, ever? Not only that, these guys are wearing drysuits because the water is cold - and I can't imagine a lightweight hiker wanting to bring one along on his trip. 

Seriously, I think you've missed the point of this video completely. It's about paddling in big groups that have sufficient resources to perform a rescue and using the skills that are taught in whitewater rescue classes properly. It's not about boat design.

I've kayaked big water for years and backpack/hike and the combination of packrafts and big water is a bozo no-no in my opinion. It seems like the packraft community is rediscovering everything the ww kayak community has known for years about the dangers of ww kayaking. Please stick to class 1 rivers and ponds for your own safety, and don't paddle in cold water without the proper thermal protection."

And a kayaker's response to thigh straps and packrafts in 2009. 

 ‘In a packraft, at least IMO, they seem like more than is necessary even at the upper end of whitewater. IMHO if you feel you need thigh straps you should probably think about improving your technique or further developing your skills. Weather it be reading the water better and seeing the clean lines and hitting them or simply spending more time in the raft, one needs to have skills. Given their design, there are just certain things that will be difficult no matter what you do. eg big holes on big water. These things are already about as idiot proof as it gets. Don't get me wrong, there are probably a hand full of people that could really push what is possible in a packraft with thigh straps, but for most it will simply be a substitute for skill and ultimately not help them in the long run. In fact I'd be willing to bet that most packrafters would not be able to roll a raft even if they were glued into the thing. It is certainly more difficult than a kayak by a long shot. Not to mention much harder on one's shoulders as well.’

But maybe like bad brush and cold water, some of us just felt that these nasty-grams were challenges to overcome and now that they are overcome, I find myself sitting back, older, and trying to just get out of the way.

1. My Packrafting! book is out of print.
2. Falcon Guidebooks sells a new book about packrafting.
3. Thor and Sarah Tingey have transformed Alpacka with a boat for every kind of water and even a mountain bike boat.
4. There are maybe even a dozen other packraft manufacturers.
5. My testosterone has drained away leaving me somewhat flacid when it comes to whitewater.
6. But it doesn't matter because there are plenty of bad-asses out there, 
• including former kayakers and
• hard-core packrafters-first who now use kayaks to improve their packrafting.

It's been great to watch and even greater to be part of it.

My own history with whitewater in packrafts can be covered in six videos. The first couple of videos are sort of accidental. But starting at the end of  2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 I posted on You Tube the greatest hits I'd been involved with each year. 

2008 was the year of whitewater discovery. 
2009 was the year of whitewater exploration.
2010 was the year of thigh straps that made us feel like real boaters.
2011 was the year of extended sterns that felt like cheating.

(January 2000) Taking a Sherpa Packraft down a stream in Pumalin Park, Chile before I'd actually got my butt in an Alpacka.

(January 2008)  Hermit to Havasu with Gordy and Cody Roman in the Grand Canyon. Up to say 2008, Cody Roman and I going down Ship Creek's canyon repeatedly and sniffing out some other runs elsewhere, was about it for whitewater. Then I started paddling with Brad.

(2008)  was the year I finally found someone other than Cody Roman who wanted to do Ship Creek more than once. The music was Radiohead's National Anthem, a song and band Roman introduced to me and the song captured the hectic feel of the early days of whitewater in packrafts. But YouTube stripped the song....so now it's the canned version of what they offer.

(2009) By the Fall of  2009 the packrafting revolution was getting started with Brad, Thai, Luc, Gordy, Tony, Becky, JT and others hitting it hard in Southcentral AK. It was when Tim Johnson and Paul Schauer and Thai Verzone, Class V kayakers all, joined us.

These guys, as Mike Curiak recently wrote, made me feel as though they were "participating in an entirely different sport -- one filled with grace and control and poise, where by comparison I feel like I just bludgeon and hack my way through while trying to survive."

This one doesn't play on phones, I guess because nobody's made enough money yet off the half-century old Beatles classic, Revolution (although it plays on computers in the US). It's worth watching on a 'puter, by the way, with the sound track.

(2010) Ah yes, the struggle with Alpacka over thigh straps. We were the Devil:  dangerous, reckless, a real pain in the butt-boats of Alpacka, but in the end we were right. Maybe, just maybe, our devilish ways got the "Witchcraft" started, a black boat you might catch a glimpse of in this next video somewhere, and that is the ancestral boat of Alpacka's Lips and Gnarwall boats. Or maybe it was really the handful of "Media Feliz" paddlers down in CO that motivated the development. Still, I like to think it was us, the 20 or 30 people in Alaska packraft-paddling Six Mile and Little Su and Ship Creek and Bird that pushed whitewater boat development at Alpacka. But again, probably just my narcissism playing tricks on my ego!

(2011) With the new long stern boats of 2011 it was almost a new sport. It was like in the 1980s when sticky rubber (particularly the Fires) hit rock or when foot fangs and plastic boots hit ice, or when leashless tools hit both rock and ice, whenever that happened. We had the new longer stern boats that erased bandersnatching as a concept and instead launched us out of sticky holes, leaning forward into the modern boats we've known for years. It also ended my year-end video making recaps, as then Luc Mehl and Mike Curiak were there to pick up my stringy end of the tapestry and weave it with finer artistry.

And there we have it. Six footnotes to "Show up and Blow up: Alaska"!

Trial and error,
Failure and terror,
The truth of the matter at hand.
Death in a whisper
Is so much to weather
For the life of a
Wife and her man.

Costa Rica
December 2014

30 years ago today

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Cody Roman Dial was born during a warm spell in Fairbanks, February 22, 1987, thirty years ago today. He died when a tropical hardwood toppled on his camp in Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica during a solo, off-trail trek in July 2014.

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Those of us who knew him knew him as physical, intellectual, family and friend-centered. He enjoyed packrafting whitewater, reading as research and recreation, Dungeons and Dragons as immersive games at once fantastic and analytic. He liked scuba-diving and skate-skiing, spicy food, and modern music. He introduced many to Radiohead, the Kills, the Black Keys, kim-chee and exotic tropical fruits.

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He wore no tattoos, no piercings, no pretense, no nonsense. He was affectionate, strong, authentic. Girls around the world swooned over his Harry Potter look: cheekbones, hair, wire-rimmed glasses.

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He read voraciously, perceptively, too. Once, in a budget hotel room in Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo he read two books over four days: The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russell Wallace and Stranger in the Forest by Eric Hansen, regional classics separated by a century. He noted that “Hansen describes Chinese men sitting at their doorstep in exactly the same way as Wallace. In fact, there’s a couple places he uses the same imagery.”

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Cody Roman was a respectful son, a teasing brother, a loyal friend. A chef who excelled at sauces without measure, he took pleasure in cooking for others. He baked pies for potlucks and preferred Cherry Garcia to all other ice cream and bacon to all other meat.

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On a hike across Umnak Island at six, he took to calling himself “Roman”. Over the next two decades that’s what most of us called him.

Even as a young boy, Cody Roman displayed an intelligent courage. He was careful and cautious but adventurous, experienced and skilled. He was wise in risk, but not averse to it.

At 11 in Costa Rica he caught a nectar-eating bat near the Pacific and a strawberry poison dart frog near the Atlantic. At 12 he swam beneath a waterfall in northern Australia and grabbed a side-necked turtle, surfacing with an outstretched arm clutching the reptile, excited and grinning.

--> At 27 he wrote his family and friends as he traveled south through Latin America. He emailed us about hiking up to see monarch butterflies in Mexico’s Sierra Madre, diving down to swim with whale sharks in the Caribbean, finding Mayan ruins in Guatemala’s Peten, descending canyons in Honduras, dodging narcos in Nicaragua.

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He told some his trek in Costa Rica was training to cross Panama’s notorious Darien Gap.

--> As a teen in Anchorage he commuted by mountain bike year-round. He pioneered whitewater packrafting in Ship Creek, the Brooks Range, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. He raced across the Talkeetna Mountains in the Wilderness Classic carrying his packraft on his bike, and then his bike on his packraft. He crossed France by bus with a gaggle of high school seniors. He bike toured across the mid-Atlantic.
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He was a gifted story teller, both orally and in writing, telling stories less about him than about those around him – what he saw, not what he felt. He liked to hug and be hugged, to lift weights and climb rock un-roped, to swim and explore.

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He once articulated that something amusing made him smile, but something funny made him laugh. Somehow Cody Roman was quiet but not shy, affectionate but not weak, often caring but sometimes distant.

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He could wield a scowl with some precision, made sharper by muscular arms, but his heart was big, too, his compassion a reward for love, his affection physical.

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He had a habit of scratching his head with both hands, of thinking before speaking. He shared his treats. He didn’t complain. He pitched-in to help, rather than sit-back and watch.

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He’d rather try and risk failing than not try at all.

During a road-trip he sent home post cards and bourbon, limited-edition from Kentucky for his family and friends to enjoy. We did, still do, savoring in that mash of corn, malt, and rye warm memories that linger.

Conceived in the Brooks Range, Cody Roman was an Alaskan, born and raised. He went to Chester Valley Elementary, Steller Secondary, attended William and Mary on a scholarship, with help from student loans and family. After graduating in biology, he moved back to Anchorage, took a year off, then entered the graduate program in environmental science at Alaska Pacific University.

He avoided debt and saved, paying off his student loans by 23.

He worked summers and holidays over a decade at the USGS Molecular Ecology Lab, starting at 16 in the school district’s mentorship program. There he learned to extract DNA, run PCRs, read LiCor gels. He looked forward to next gen sequencing and eDNA.

For his master’s degree he sequenced the DNA of a thumb-sized isopod called Saduria entomon. The genetic samples from around the Arctic he collected himself from Teshekpuk Lake, Barrow, Kaktovik, Cook Inlet, or from other scientists in Scandinavia, Bristol Bay, and the Chigniks.

By 25 he’d published peer-reviewed journal articles on the DNA of snowy owls and the biogeography of ice worms. He did field-work, too, catching shrews and voles in Gates of the Arctic, Cape Krusenstern, Bering Land Bridge, Nogahabara Sand Dunes, the North Slope, and on JBER.

He loved to share what he knew or debate what he thought and eagerly, insatiably, sought to know more about everything, but especially history, economics, and science.

He was careful, knowledgeable, curious and creative. He thought critically in science and spoke cynically of politics but helped with his hands when he could.

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His future was bright, promising, wide-open.

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