An addiction to kinesthesia may be satisfied and indulged in many vehicles. Currently, at the venerable age of 63, driving an 80,000 pound gasoline tanker fits the bill just fine. At one time it had to be satisfied at the controls of an aircraft. It was the only conveyance that would satisfy the need for movement at the time. Then, one day I discovered the sublime pleasures of a wild river kayak and the zaney people who run the frothy white.

Kayak Dreams in Westwater Canyon

Drifting on unseen currents,

quiet, somber, trills the Canyon Wren.

Osprey tears the flesh of captured prey.

Sweet sun shines hard,

Hot, white paddle rises, falls,

flichers in a play of light.

Channel main, the mighty Colorado,

slow, facile, comes the drop.

Low rumble, strains the senses, try to hear it,

try to feel it, reach out and touch its fury.

Drawing ever closer, trepidation is for not.

No path to portage, no place to walk.

Enter now the gates of madness,

throw yourself upon its mercies, sublime the gifts to be bestowed.

Cataracts roar, white frothy leaping waters,

a gift of melting snows.

Sunlight splits each droplet,

precisely placed prisims,

every sun beamed hue in regal brilliance.

Suddenly without resolve to roll capsized beneath the churning waves, darkness,

far off thunderous sound now muffled by the deep.

Once jagged rocks, now ghostly smooth dark apparitions fly by at near sonic speeds.

Their ghastly tentacles anchored deep into the earth, mock the hydraulic power of the flow.

Composed of schist and gneiss from some Precambrian time a billion years ago.

Will the monolith dubbed Skull fly to close and end my journey before the waters are again at peace?

A smashed and lifeless corps predestined a million millennia ago, ages and ages now past; the soul catcher waiting eons.

Beckons now the Room of Doom.

Torn viciously from the tiny craft, my dive begins as if some leviathan has hold.

Lungs scream to burst.

From brilliant light, to murky dim, to crushing awesome bleack, eyes search for the light yet dark and cold engulf as if prelude to my final act.

Eternity seems to pass as I am thrown and churned like a girl child's rag doll in her mothers immense Maytag.

My lungs burn - There! There is hope!

A flash of light, though diminished by the flood,

finds my tiny aqueous pupil and signals hope directly to my soul.

Another flash and I am thrown free, to know the glory of another breath of air.

Sheppard Hobgood,

after one of the rougher trips through Westwater, Canyon, Utah