The Dreamcatcher Expedition

Into The Forest

2006-10-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

Friends say, "Where are you? You're not blogging. Are you okay?"

Yes. I am more than okay. After two weeks of struggle, I am slipping gently back into soft old skin. I am melting back into desert time. Dream time, the aboriginals called it. The sun rises and sets outside Sanctuary, and unlike last week when I wanted so to be hospitalized for my own safety from my mad self, now I give in to the rhythm of the desert dream, and I sleep and rise to eat and read then sleep again and rise and read again. The wind's whistle siings me to sleep, gentle breezes even, talking thru thin lips of windowpanes barely open.

In one day, maybe two, I read "Into The Forest" by Jean Hegland, and all the while I am in two places, present desert and redwood forest of my youth. Two young sisters learn to subsist in a collapsing society waiting for lights and computers to spring back to life, waiting in vain. Uniquely protected by the location of their home deep down a forest road, they learn over time to live off their environment, to live with less and yet so much more. I read by lamplight with wicks fading, then headlamp with batteries dying. I am right there with them. I am in the story 100 percent. Then it ends, and I want to go with them steeped in their fiction. But the cooing of the wind and constancy of crickets bring me back. I close the book smiling and mount the loft for another slide into dreamtime. - RSM
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Filmmaker, Flame Meister

2006-10-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

THIS JUST IN!
MY crazy cousin caught HIS crazy cousin on digital video doing a nasty little fire act on the Appalachian Trail in 2004. He's done an awesome job editing and adding music to it. I've always felt/known that Justin was born to make movies, and I'm glad to see he's moving in that direction. By way of brief explanation, that's me showing Justin, Jess, and Party Girl Molly how to ignite a soda-can-alcohol-stove using Heet as fuel. Here it is, ready or not:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1254284787

(maybe you have to be a MySpace member, I dunno? Hope not)

The Grand Rapids Article, reprised

2006-10-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

The way this Blogger shit works, it makes telling a story kind of difficult. The whole thing comes out ass-backwards. I printed it out the other day for the bathroom reading ease of a friend who doesn't compute, and jeezus. It took forever to unbuild the backwards time progression of the blog into the correct chronology in a Word document. And that was done in Bisbee's Copper Queen Library, not on my laptop, which means I gotta do it all over again cuz I couldn't save it. Incidentally, I donated a copy of "Dead Men Hike No Trails" to this, our local library, so that nickel-poor friends like me could read it. Five months later, they have yet to catalogue it and get it on the shelf. Now, whazzup with that? Shit.

[Postscript 11-16-06: The lovely librarians at the Copper Queen, hard-working and undoubtedly underpaid for their efforts, made a special effort to get my book on the shelf when I brought it to their attention. I apologize for my above rudely-stated impatience. I sometimes forget that anyone reads this shit, and I go mouthing off.]

Anyway, point is, I went looking for the Grand Rapids Herald-Review article by Marie Nitke that day at the library and all I could find of it was a reprint in some online mag called Paddler's News or some such thing. Well, I found it today over a beer, here in the newly-Wifi'd saloon at Bisbee's cool old haunted hotel, The Copper Queen. The article appears at the beginning of this backwards-blogged story, thanks to my friend Mary, under "August," but you may not stumble upon it if yer half as web dumb as I. So here it is again, cut and pasted but also linked, should you wish to go print it out from the original source (something I like to do, makes it more official-lookin'!). "Dreamcatchers paddle through town"

'Dreamcatchers' paddle through town
Marie Nitke
Herald-Review
Last Updated: Wednesday, September 06th, 2006 12:19:05 PM

A line taken from the lyrics of the hit song, "Proud Mary," which was written by John Fogerty about life on a Mississippi riverboat around the turn of the 20th Century, states: "People on the river are happy to give." According to some canoeists who recently paddled through Grand Rapids, those words still ring true today.

The canoeists were Rick McKinney and Frank Grandau -- modern-day adventurers on a "Dreamcatcher Expedition" down the Mississippi River. They began their journey about one week ago from Lake Bemidji, and hope to make it to New Orleans by the end of October, collecting the dreams and wishes of river people along the way.

"This journey is all about hope and connections between people," said McKinney during an interview Tuesday. "We want to meet people as we go, and collect their dreams. I'm asking people what their life-long dream is, or what their wish would be if they were granted one."

These dreams and wishes are then written down on small pieces of paper, which McKinney plans to put together into a sealed and corked glass bottle. Like classic "messages in a bottle," the dreams will be sent out to sea at the end of McKinney and Grandau's expedition.

"This trip," said McKinney, "is a mission of hope."

In the last week, McKinney and Grandau have already collected about two dozen dreams, including a few written down during casual conversations and interviews the men had while dining at the Forest Lake restaurant on Monday night.
"We talked to the bartender, and some others," said McKinney.

Most of the "dreamers' the men meet either live or work on the river. Grandau, who McKinney describes as "gregarious and bolder than I am," paddles over to almost anyone he sees to meet them and spark up conversations. McKinney, meanwhile, talks to people directly about their dreams and the purpose of this expedition.

According to McKinney, Grandau is the logical, practical goal-setter, while he is more the artistic, creative type.
"He's the pragmatist and I'm the dreamer," said McKinney. "We make an interesting team. We balance each other out."
The friends met only two years ago, when each was on a solo hike along the Appalachian Trail in 2004. McKinney was hiking to soothe his soul from the loss of a friend to suicide, while Grandau had recently retired from 26 years of service in the Navy - most recently as a Captain - and completing the hike was one of his personal goals.

Although both men were complete hiking amateurs when they met on the Appalachian Trail, they enjoyed the physical and mental challenges of their feat. That's what made them decide, two years later, to embark on this latest journey, to which they are also amateurs.

"We're hurting," admitted McKinney. "Neither of us had done any real training, and, boy, do my shoulders hurt. But we've got a long way to go. They say it takes about one million paddle strokes to get from one end of the Mississippi to the other."
Sore muscles aside, however, McKinney said he and Grandau have been enjoying their trip so far -- and have especially appreciated the kindness of strangers they have met along the way.

For example, when the two pulled their canoe over to the shore of "Pinky" Jetland's home Monday night, McKinney said, they were pleased to be welcomed with unexpected kindness. Seeking nothing more than a place to lay their canoe while they stayed in a motel in town, the men were bowled over by Jetland's good graces. According to McKinney, Jetland offered to haul the men's canoe and equipment to Steamboat Park for them on his trailer, saving McKinney and Grandau a long walk around the dam.
"He was great," said McKinney. "People have been really, really friendly. It's been really nice to meet such friendly people along the river."

"The lyrics that go, 'people on the river are happy to give' are true," said Grandau. "People need to know that."
Those interested in McKinney and Grandau's travels can follow along at www.jigglebox.com/ dreamcatcherexpedition.

Hunter Mann, My Man

2006-10-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

Below is a wonderfully crafted, kind and warm-hearted salute to my recent fore-shortened journey, a gift of my dear friend Hunter Mann. Hunter is a very private man, especially with his words. He hasn't given me permission to print it. I'm just hoping this is one of those cases where asking forgiveness will be easier than asking permission:-> He's such a great wordsmith. I just can't resist. The trip down the Hudson to which he refers happened concurrently with my AT hike in 2004. He was part of film crew filming a man who swam the whole length of the river. In all likelihood, Hunter probably passed right under me as I crossed the Hudson high on some bridge in New York somewhere. Hunter and I, as with many of friends, are so "on the same wave length," or better said, we are riding the same blanket of clouds to some new, unnamed and far more interesting Heaven on Earth, together if often apart. - RSM

Written September 24, 2006

Hi Rick,
  I've enjoyed the photos and river tales, your pen
dipped in muddy water this time instead of ink,
well... better muddy water than blood. Your blog seems 
such a valuable use of the computer medium, not to
mention the hi-tech ease the Blackberry and other
tools have provided you a link to your readers.
Whether you're on the trail of dirt or the trail of
river water, you bring an intimate window to many of 
us who are mostly rafting upstream, out here in the
badlands, the hinterlands, the wastelands, the
Hollywoodlands.
  As I felt the whole two months I was along the
Hudson River, rivers are such a metaphor, as though 
they are more poetic than actual physical, tangible
bodies of H2O. Stream of water, stream of
consciousness, streaming video, unspooling in real
time with the naked eye watching it all flow.
  I salute your success that has been the river trip, 
some things like this take longer than the scheduled
and press-released two month duration we promise the
world and ourselves. Well, do what you need to do,
which is obviously to stop being a slave to the
 paddle, to ask the river for a break, so you can heal,
recondition and maybe return to where you last dipped
wood into water, or not, maybe just start a new
adventure, a new dream collection service, perhaps
even a cross country trip from Atlantic to Pacific to 
then toss the bottle of dreams to the sea, for her to
swallow then regurgitate on a beach in Tahiti at
sunrise, where an old fisherman finds it, and takes it
to his great-grand daughter to translate into Tahitian 
French. 
  I know this sounds nearly Hallmark Card-ish, but you
gotta remember that it's about the journey, not the
destination. Whether you return to muddy waters to
continue the trip someday or just let it flow away 
from you, the paddle trip is/was/will be what it was
to be, etc, etc, as they/I say.  
  I'm reminded of dear amigo Aaron Makinen, who rode
bikes with me from Seattle to Helena, MT. From their
he continued riding solo, zig-zagging the map. He was 
29, and as he rode he wrote, giving ink to his
non-fiction road story he was calling Turning Thirty
Across America. He was nearly 33 by the time he
finished that continental crossing, since he had to do
it in hop, skips and stumbles to compete. Now he's 
turning 43 and still editing his manuscript, so
Turning Thirty was just a poetic thought really, a new
title I guess he'll be fishing for along the river or
seashore.
  Be well, let the river flow where it does, life will 
keep rolling, the waters will be muddy, clear, calm
and rough...that's why they call if "life."
  Love and admiration,
   Hunter

Injury or No Injury

2006-10-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

I gotta say, I think I've been feeling a lot more remorse for the death of the Dreamcatcher Mississippi River run of 2006 than I realized, or let on. That, and guilt. It was one thing to come to terms with the fact that my body was screaming for me to stop and having to heed that warning, but yet another thing when three days later Frank quit, too. I felt REALLY bad, in fact, so bad that my mind's only defense was to just shut down, shut it out, work towards the next goal which was getting home.

Well, I'm pleased to have received these words from Frank in an email tonight. He writes:

"Don't kick yourself too much for stopping. Injury or no injury, the river was just TOO BIG for a little canoe this time of year. With the first of the winter storms just over the horizon, and water temperature dropping by the day, it would have been absolutely foolhardy to continue. One unfortunate dunk in the middle of a mile-wide section in the river and hyperthermia would have set in before we could get dry and safe. In this case, much better safe than sorry."

Thank you, again, to all those who helped us along the way. I will safeguard your dreams, I promise. - RSM

Bones, the Bale & a Genie's Bottle Waiting

2006-10-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Red Hot Chilli Peppers on the radio singing some jazzy funeral dirge for California, rest in peace. Radio. How weird to hear radio out here in the BF Egypt outskirts of Bisbee halfway to Palominas and just a stone's throw from Mexico. But I had to buy a little one, to hear the outside world. Back in the Bale.

Sanctuary. Today I take that name quite literally and be it ever so Munday(ne) in the outside world, clocks ticking and workaday people clicking their heels saying "There's no place like home," (I agree) I pay no heed and never leave the house to begin with. It's a snow day, kids! Donnie flooded the school! I've got the thermometer-under-hot-tap-water flu! Yahoo.

Now what? Emails comin thru. Dad says I oughta return to Maine where there are people who can help promote my book. Ski Bum says come to South America, join Deia and him on their round the horn hike to del Fuego and back up the continent's eastern flank. Mina in my mind says "Minneapolis." My heart of Hope says "Back to the river with ye! Deliver the bottle to the sea." Kate says "Welcome back to Bisbeeland" as do others, many a local friend.

Back five nights now, drunk with James 3, maybe 4. Next day morning hungover psyche says "REHAB!" But even sober yesterday, today all day, shadows crawl across me, blot out all Hope. Stormy in my dreams returns, says "No pain will follow you into this night of nights." And I am tempted, by everything and nothing, and once again alone. Jack says, "Go roll your bones, alone." No, Jack. You went it alone with pickled nose and slur in young old age, and I don't wanna go that "Road," Jack. I wan't love again, or at very least a partner with whom I share scent attraction. Like dogs, yes, I gotta smell her. Let animal attraction do the rest.

Five dozen dreams sit in a lovely genie bottle on the table 'neath my loft bed. I fear I have taken on a mission I cannot finiish, a burden I cannot bear.

For now I will sit here in the desert and wait. Perhaps the genie will come for her bottle, roll me up and stuff me inside with all the others, assimilate me into the stuff of dreams. And I will think no more. - RSM
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Temperature Warp

2006-09-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

Holy Cheezusssss! I left Arizona in late May to escape the desert summer heat. I stepped outa the airport twenty minutes ago and bang! It's hotter than when I left! Which get's ya thinkin. Did I, in fact, ever really leave? If I got on a computer terminal right now and scanned back thru this blog, would I find that I had dreamed this whole past four months in New England and on the Mighty Mississippi? What the FUCK is going on?!

Man, maybe I should cut down on the drugs and flying thing. May.. be.

Nah.

I'll be in the Autotransportes de Guasave shuttle van in a matter of minutes now, the lone gringo on an all Mexican shuttle bound for Douglas and my car. There will be air conditioning and the ever-soothing unintelligible banter of hispanic white noise (soothing because I don't comprende a word of it).

We will be somewhere around Tombstone when the drugs loose their hold. My brain will right itself, shake off these pesky bats, and this nightmare will be over. - RSM
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Cumulus Intoxicatum

2006-09-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

I never leave the ground these days without the theme song from "Spiderman 2" blasting across the cathedral of my cranium. Today it was that, then Staind's Funeral March as we entered the clouds reclined out of our minds, then Peter Tosh chimed in just in time for a bumpy ride through the lowest of clouds with Stepping Razor.

I'm bad, I know. But I'm also 99 percent sure that the music from my mp3 player is not going to scramble the radar or jam communications from the tower. That's a bucha hooey. And I simply must have blastoff accompaniment music. MUST. So, I get it all cued up - the player tucked beneath my thigh, discretely install the earpiece in my window-side ear, tuck the other in my coat for easy access and, as soon as the last flight attendant plops down in their jumpseat, install the other earpiece and unpause the song, just begun.

This is usually right when the pilot calls out about being cleared for takeoff and the plane rounds that last bend and for a split second you can see right down the pipe, the runway all black streaked and badass, right where you're going, your immediate future, 100 or so riveting seconds of mad torque as the pilot stomps on it and it's damn the torpedos away! The music builds quickly, and it is loud enough to be heard very well over the jets a-roaring. It was recorded right thru a friend's DVD player with the input frequency bars topped out, full intake, peak volume. So it's the right song for screaming down the runway and reaching for the sky.

God, I love liftoff. Takeoff, whatever. Maybe someday I'll be om my back grinning with 5 or 6 G's and it will indeed be a liftoff! Yeee-hah! Chuck Yeager, here I come. Totally doable in my lifetime, I figger.

Yes. Have to put that on my list of life goals. Or stick it in the cool genie bottle given me by Carolle Oldenburg upriver a ways: The Bottle of Dreams. Gotta dream, friends. Gotta. Or nothing ever happens. How can any dream come true if no expectations were ever given it to stand up to? Look out. I've got a magic bottle and I'm comin' for you.

Hey, that's right! Got another dream last night in Groundhog Town! And three other great ones from friends Mina, Jan & Dave (Jan "Corktruck" Elftmann's husband Dave). Man can that dude cook! What a fabulous Minnesota sendoff meal he served me up the other night: Alaskan Cod, corn on the cob fresh as butter taffy, and melt in your mouth mushroom strips to give the finest cut of a cow a run for its money. Yum!

Captain says, "1,149 miles to Tucson, and we'll be traveling at 40,000 feet." Wow. That's high. Of course, high is a relative term here in seat #22F. Being high inside and out of own's body is, well, a lot like swimming in a pool of body temp water. It's nice. It's just what the doctor ordered. And the good doc never let's me down when it comes time to fly. - RSM
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Tomorrow Came

2006-09-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

But did I roll over in bed to smell the sweet lilac scent of Andy McDowell's long black wavy hair splayed out across her pillow? I think not. Ipso facto: I think, therefore I go.

(I did enjoy a very comfortable night's rest in the plush guestroom bed at Frank's house. Thank you Frank.)

The commuter train rolls out of Punksatawny on this fine sunny morning - the next day, a day Bill Murray's struggle to achieve made for a great film plot. On the 9:48 am train I have escaped the commuter rush. The jovial chit-chat of retirees and ladies en route to a relaxed day of shopping in the big city flutter up to me from below. I prefer the upper catwalk section of these commuter trains and so sit perched above all others. I have the upstairs to myself. The car smells of plastic and cranked up air conditioning. My "ginormous" backpack takes up an entire seat behind me.

I watch the auto shops and pizza joints and car lots and clean industry of suburban Illinois race by like images in a non-sequential flipbook and try not think about the complex of trains, subways, shuttles and airplane that will compise my entire day. I am thankful merely to be moving.

Moving, after all, it what I do best. - RSM
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"I'm not worthy!"

2006-09-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

What movie is that from? I dunno. The only movie I care about right now is the one I'm being a total sycophantic fan in, or of. I'm not so delusional to think I'm actually IN the film "Groundhog Day," but I have had fun running around the town square snappin' off digits like a tourist, or a location scout. But I doubt I could pass for the latter in a real town where the filmmakers used everything in town and built, so far as I can tell, only a handful of interior sets.

One I'm sure they didn't change a bit is where I now sit, the bar at The Dew Drop Inn, aka the town's only bowling alley, all 8 lanes of it (will spare you its real name). On pure instinct or perhaps just luck, I place myself at a barstool where the camera would have been and snap some shots. It's only after talking with barteder that I discover I'm dead on. Naturally, I'm pleased. But like every effin' bar in the U.S., the TVs on. Two of em, broadcasting alternately a sitcom on one, sports on the other.

(A few minutes later..)
Ha! The few patrons in the bar departed, and before the next came in, I leapt on the juke, a hungry leopard with a fiver in my teeth. I stacked the juke box with 15 classic rock hits, sat back at the bar, the sitcom now muted, grabbed my beer & Blackberry, felt very princely, set thumbs to keyboard and.. and in walked Frank.

Well bueno. We need this time to decompress together. "I don't mind telling you now," Frank says, "I'm sore and tired." Telling me now, I grumble, echoing his words. "Stoicism is greatly admired in the military," he continues. "It is a well-heeled virtue in my character." I'm speechless.

Frank is already scheming in his head about next year. "A re-attack," he calls it. "The soft approach didn't work so well." Deeply steeped in my own P.T.S.D., I am too shell-shocked to entertain future campaign ideas. As it is, Frank earlier made me a gift of one of his $285 paddles. It was a trophy I had hoped for in New Orleans. Having come only 500 miles, I didn't feel worthy. I graciously thanked him, however, and marveled at its magnificence, its weightlessness yet incredible durability. I wondered at how I'd get it on the plane.

Frank tells Kim the bartender what lovely, sparkling eyes she has. He's right. She has a certain twinkle. He compliments me on my jukebox choices, then pronounces to Kim and me, "You wanna know the best Rolling Stone song ever? Gimme shelter." Tonight both Frank and I will take shelter here in Punksatawny, beneath his very own roof.

As if reading my mind, the captain now jolly with a few beers whispers at me, "Well there's only one thing to do now. Meet a couple of locals, get in their car and drive down the railroad tracks."

On the juke, Manfred Mann sings the poetry of my 70s youth from Blinded by the Light. "She got down but she never got round, she's gonna make it thru the night."

The bowling alley, near vacant when I entered, is suddenly alive with some league game. But I hear little of the racket of balls and pins, tucked as we are back here in the bar. I hear only Frank to my left breaking down the fortress waters of the Mighty Miss into algorithms (sp?) and logical rationale. And in stereo I hear my chosen music:
Joe Walsh - Rocky Mtn Way
George Thorougood - One scotch, one bourbon, one beer
Steve Miller - Fly like an Eagle
Rolling Stones - You can't always get what you want

Not long after, Frank and I depart for real food on the town plaza. Together we devour some two dozen baby back ribs, chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, goumet salads, Octoberfest beers and cheesecake. It is a gorging, the kind of feeding that ferries romping summer and hard-won harvest into the winter of hibernation.

"Even Lewis and Clark took the winter off," quips Frank, to which I add, crass but not dishonest to my own needs, "Sure, and if they were smart they were fucking squaws."

Unplanned, but it'll be nice to know as I sail at 30,000 feet tomorrow back to my native earth that my captain is not out there going it alone, and furthermore that he, too, is happy to be home. - RSM
(Pure Gonzo Journalism, hot off the fire to you!)
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A Groundhog Kinda Day

2006-09-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

I'm in a car zooming down the freeway headed toward the Chicago area. There's a canoe on the roof. A yellow, Kevlar canoe. Frank's sister Cherrie is at the wheel, I'm in the pasenger seat. In the backseat sleeps Clyde with his master, Frank, at his side. There's something oddly familiar about all this.

Yes, it's true. Captain Frank is now off the river as well. He's headed home to manicure his lawn and walk his dog in peace. After three days of paddling (not alone but with his guest paddler Cherrie) he came to the same conclusion we together had once or twice come to upriver: we were nuts. In this case, he realized he would have to be crazy to continue on, alone.

Frank spoke of how, even with his sister in my place in the bow, he was humbled by the massive 6 or 8 or 12-packs of barges (each one huge in its own right but all lashed together - whoa!) being ferried downriver by tugs. "And the size of the river!" He exclaimed. Beneath the Twin Cities, the Miss had really gone mighty on him. Monster barges, speedboats flying by with no heed for the tiny canoe being tossed and sloshed by their violent wakes. And the lakes.

With not much exception, the Miss is really just a big-beaded necklace of lake after wide lake all the way to St. Louis. "It's not fun anymore," he sighed. I could relate. It had been a hardass endeavor from the get-go, but thru northern Minnesota it had at least been pretty. I felt sad for him, but the result of those early hard days zapped me like a taser as I forgot myself and tried to lift some gear with my right as we prepared to pack the car. My race was run. There was nothing I could do to help him, not anymore.

And so officially ends Frank & Rick's Mississippi bid for the Fall of 2006. We're goin' home. But The Dreamcatcher Expedition? That ain't over til I say so. That ain't over til I quit collecting dreams. That's the beauty of a conceptual journey. It's boundless. You can't kill it. It has taken on a life of its own. And right now, this very instant flying across land in a late model silver sedan, right now it is morphing.

Speaking of things you can't kill...
Frank lives in Woodstock, Illinois, that old town square and gazebo town that anyone who's seen Groundhog Day has had burned into their memory forever. How could we forget it? We walked its cobbled streets time and time again with poor grumpy Bill Murray until he got ungrumpy and learned to do good for others and appreciate the simple things in life at which point his time-loop curse was lifted and he got to wake up in bed with Andy McDowell.

Well, things generally go back to their source, and here am I on my way back to the fictional Punksatawny, PA where, after we've unloaded the canoe and gear, I have every intention of strolling over to the non-fictional, very real bowling alley featured in the film and sittin' down for a beer right where Bill Murray sat before deciding to take his local drunken buddies on a suicidal ride down the railroad tracks that pass by right near the alley.

This wasn't in the plan. I was merely to drive Cherrie's car dowriver to wherever they ended up after three days on the river, then ride into Chicago with her (she lives somewhere nearby), hole up in a cheap motel room for the night, and fly outa Midway Airport tomorrow afternoon.

But things are morphing, like I said. Let's just hope "tomorrow begins tomorrow," as the rock lyric goes, and I get to leave Punksatawny and tomorrow night lay my head in an Arizona desert bed. (smile) - RSM
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Motorized Mini-barge

2006-09-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't you know the day after I make up my mad mind to pack it in and go home, Jan Elftmann returns from the West, takes me down to her marina and out on the Miss in her cool 20-foot sailboat-turned-mini-barge with raised sleeping quarters. Loved it! So Jan says, "Wanna take it to New Orleans?" (It had a motor, people.) Almost had me. All most. But nope. Time to revisit the desert, touch base, feel home again. Thank you, Jan. Twas a grand offer. You are a gem. - RSM
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The Bringer

2006-09-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

Mina just flipped open her brother Matthew Wood's book "The Book of Herbal Wisdom" and a moment later gave a chuckle. She handed me the book and this is what I read:

"Whether we have a happy life or not is another issue. It is a "revolutionary act," as physician/clown Patch Adams likes to say. Happiness does not originate in the stick-in-the-mud boring material world to which we are born, but is interjected by surprise from another dimension. Humor, art, and true medicine come from this other/magical place. The contrary, clown, trickster, poet, artist, crazy person, shaman, physician, steals a fleck of light from that world and brings it to this world, where it works its liberating, healing, happy-making, regenerating ferment. The bringer is wounded in the process." - Matthew Wood

I never once told anyone from whom I was collecting wishes the dark place from which I was reaching out to lift them up and give them hope in the drawing out of their dreams. This time, I kept death and pain out of the equation, until, that is, the tangible physical pain became too great. I am glad of that and happy with what I accomplished, for others as well as for myself. - RSM

What Now?

2006-09-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

Where do we go from here? So many choices, so little enthusiasm for anything.

Having a wonderful time here in Minneapolis staying with Mina & Greg Leierwood (check 'em out at Leierwood.com!) and their teenage son Avram and German exchange student Julius. They're amazing people, and their home is so homey (in an artist's way, my way), so full of art and life and spirit. My entire experience of Minneapolis thus far has been likewise. Last night out late at a local performance space for a "Romp," a night of wild skits and dance and puppetry and song, some scripted, most impromptu, all of it great. Place was packed. I could just stay here forever, so tenuous is my hold on the concept of home.

But the dreams! I must deliver the Bottle of Dreams to its destination. Or perhaps not. Not yet anyway. Ways have been suggested to me how I might bicycle down alongside the Mississippi or borrow a canoe and go it my own at a more relaxed pace, or walk it even, continue my mission to collect dreams. But I think not. I think I have set in motion a great thing, and I don't intend to let a shoulder sprain stop me. But I'm also not convinced that the Mississippi River has to continue to be the platform for my mission. My desire to return to the desert and my Bisbee extended family of friends is strong (I've been couch surfing and camping out since late May). I believe the bottle will be going "home" with me, and once there I will continue to fill it, now with the dreams of Bisbee folk, artists, Bisbee's many homeless dreamers (people like me yet a generation younger), Border Patrol Agents, illegal aliens, whoever. Maybe I'll take the bottle into Mexico and with the aide of friend Hunter and collect the dreams of Mexicans, really mix it up.

Frank is gone now, downriver a ways. God be with him on his journey, now solo. Many have done it solo, and he is more than competent and has the best equipment money can buy. He'll be fine. He wishes I would rejoin him when my shoulder heals. But the doctor looked at me grim-faced when I posited that idea, said the injury would likely return in spades. So it isn't likely. As I say, Frank will be fine. He's a rock. Or at least that's the appearance he puts out, the military in him no doubt.

It is me who has deflated like a sad day-after-the-party balloon. I might endeavor to just live here. The people seem great. I like the town. But winter is coming. And I need my sun. I might endeavor to continue the river trip, somehow, some way. But I lack the mental stamina (or any desire) to go it alone. I lack the mental and physical stamina to go looking for another partner or a canoe or a living situation here. I do, however, have the stamina to get on a bus or a plane and motor back to the desert, to rejoin my car and scant belongings, to drive out to the Strawbale and take refuge there again from the things of the world, from decision making and media-campaigning and failed book signing tours and such. I do have that. And after a few days of rest there, I can drive into Old Bisbee and find again my place amongst its citizenry once again.

Many have turned the dream question back on me after I've gotten a dream out of them. They ask, "What's your dream?"

Right now, I just want to go home, wherever that be. - RSM

Kodak Slideshow of Dreamcatcher Expedition

2006-09-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

Rick has shared photos with you.

You're invited to view my online photos at the Gallery. Enjoy!
(Note: you don't have to sign up, just click slideshow link!)

- Rick

Mississippi River Dream

(1 album)

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ER B.S.

2006-09-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

Diagnosis: soft tissue upper extremity injury, shoulder sprain.

Discharge instructions (digested): cease repetitive movement of shoulder or risk chronic injury.

Game Over.

Can I go home now?
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Paddling Hands

2006-09-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait by me, RSM

Big Water, Deep Thoughts

2006-09-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

Photo Credit: Max Haynes (MaxHaynes.com)

Triumph by any account

2006-09-21T09:55:00.000-07:00

We made it! To Minneapolis, yes, not yet New Orleans, but heh. Take what the river gives you, as Frank is fond of saying. Or, in the case of my torn up shoulder, take what your body can handle.

So here we are at the very warm fuzzy home of Mina and Greg in downtown Minneapolis. Mina is a friend from the ever-growing art car community, a friend of Corktruck Jan particularly, but also one I met personally when we met out in the desert during a ceremonial burning of a 6-foot long polar bear she'd amazingly transported as "luggage" on her cross country flight to mount on her rental car for an art car caravan out west.

Mina and friend Yumi (sp?) cheered as Frank and I surfaced from the locks below St. Anthony's Falls in the very last moments of twilght, giving us a fine official arrival into town. A spectacular feast awaited the intrepid travelers and our cheering squad, and we heartily thanked Avram, chef and Mina's teenage son for his chicken & potatoes & duel salad creation. Greg returned home around 10, pleasant if somewhat somnambulant conversation ensued, we said our thank yous and goodnights, and I hit the bed and promptly passed out.

Today, I rest. This entry marks the sum total of work I have planned for the day. Screw the ER, too, by the way. Today, only rest.

It's true, I am not going forward with Frank tomorrow. I have decided to convalesce a matter of days, see how I feel, what the doc has to say. Frank hopes that I will rejoin him downriver a bit. I would wish it so, but I just don't know. Not now. Must rest. Both body and soul.

Congratulations, retired U.S. Navy Captain Frank Grandau, for making it one hard-bitch-of-a-beautiful first quarter of one lofty-ass goal. You have my respect and admiration and gratitude. If I make it no further, know that I am with you in spirit on this, your "Magnificent Folly." It is a triumph by any account.

- RSM

(Special thanks to Max Haynes for bounding thru forests along the river like Daniel Day Last of the Mohicans Lewis and then up on that bridge to capture a good shot of us entering the greater Twin Cities area, to say nothing of our gratitude for your family's hospitaliy night before last. Also, thanks to Mike Strickland for getting Max's photo up on the site the very same day:)
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Reaching Minneapolis

2006-09-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

Photo Credit: Max Haynes (MaxHaynes.com)

The Titanic & a renewed appreciation of my simple life

2006-09-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

(Written Sept. 19th)
Everyone has their breaking point. Last night while dreaming, I reached mine. I've listed all the reasons, more & plenty good reasons why anyone in their right mind would jump ship before the iceberg hits, so we'll skip all that for now. When you read this two days from now, we will have reached Minneapolis where I am checking into the closest ER on behalf of my shoulder. It's nothing, right? A shoulder. We'll see.

This shoulder, however, is an integral link in the movement of my arm and one I would therefore prefer to preserve for future use than expend on one manly & truly grand conquest of the entire Mississippi River. This shoulder is the lynchpin, and if the doctor says what I think he'll say about it, I'm out. But I'll give it that last chance. I'm not out yet, just discouraged and very much in pain, a pain that has begun moving down my arm, ofttimes rendering it useless.

I'm glad I walked the Appalachian to its end. I will have that victory to recollect whenever reminded of my halfass run at the Mighty Miss. Sad. I am. But not crestfallen. I lack the insane drive, the overdrive, that hell-bent-for-weather spirit which got me thru the toughest times on the AT. I lack a purpose for this journey, a sense of meaning on par with the "hiking off" of overwhelming grief for a dead friend. I have no more grief in me. Luci's gone. Hunter's gone. Stormy, too. Gone. But I LIVE! And I'm sick of beating myself up on a river that throws us new curveballs every day.

For every obstacle we overcome, there awaits a new one around the bend. Wind at our backs now, winter arrives. Then more low water, mile after mile of it resulting in stretches where we must get out and walk the boat over shoals. It's an endless mine field of rocks. I'm on watch every minute for the hidden boulder that will shred our hull. Then whammo! There it is! Power strokes on the right and suddenly, "Aauurgh!" the shoulder snaps. Frank was right: injured, I am a liability. "What will you do if my injury prevents me from going on, Frank?" I ask him. "I'll adjust the gear, sit forward and keep going." Pragmatic to the end.

"But what of the collection of dreams?" you ask. Indeed. I can answer that. I have collected several dozen, and they are wonderful dreams. And in the collecting I have learned something invaluable, a new approach to life, to people. The dreams WILL make it to the sea. And I will make it, a little wiser for the exercise of looking at people not as strangers, not as threats, but as people with dreams, people like me. - RSM
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Locking Through the River Glass

2006-09-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

Here goes. Minneapolis downtown, sunset. Freaky. We sit in our tiny watercraft and wait on a green light to enter the first of two locks that will, like elevators and draining bathtubs, carry us down St. Anthony's Falls, the single highest vertical drop on the entire Mississippi River. Once inside, the giant tubs empty out, the gates open and we are home free. Our first 500 miles of the river is history. Now we rest and be among friends. We have paddled non-stop for 20 days under every imaginable sort of worst-case scenario. The kindness of Minnesotans got us through. - RSM
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Better & Worse

2006-09-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

Okay. Conditions have improved greatly for our ragged dream team. Wind is at our back. Naturally it no longer blows 25 mph which would propel us forward as fast as it did backward. More like 6. We have current. The threatening skies yield less rain than we expected. Granted, it is 47 degrees F and I look like a neon snowman with all my fleece and thermals and "orange alert" life vest. But all is relatively well. So why am I miserable?

Geese by the dozen blabber amongst themselves on a sandbar. Eagles soar overhead. And today in particular a hundred or so tiny jays seem constantly a-spin around and over us, like the cartoons birds one sees when bonked over the head. They don't appear to be feeding from bugs off the water, so what are they doing with us? Which begs the question what am I doing with us?

I'm in constant pain in my shoulder and every hundred strokes or so it spasms, sending sharp daggers up my arm and rendering the arm useless for a minute until the muscle calms down. I've kept it quiet from Frank. I mean, what's the point to pragmatist him? Either it works or it doesn't. I'm worried, however, lest I'm causing irrepairable damage to the shoulder by pushiing it.

Tomorrow we reach the Twin Cities. I will visit an ER there and see what they say. I already know what I say. I'm miserable, even now on one of our better days, our 20th day on the river, our 16th day without rest. - RSM

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The comforts of a hotel help, but the rain and the cold await

2006-09-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

Some nondescript town called Sartel just north of St. Cloud. We pulled in just shy of a power dam and the inevitable portage, the carrying out and all around of all our gear and canoe, too.

We'd been lucky as hell from the get-go with our "pull up to hospitality" trick. But the law of averages caught up with us last night. The folks we approached said yes, but the vibe was damn freaky. I found out later that the daughter, about my age, was going through a divorce. That alone could have been the bad vibe. Franked picked up on it, too, but set off to walk Clyde anyway.

So there I stood, not welcome in the house and feeling very out of place pitching my tent right outside their living room window. Then shazzam! Frank came back suddenly and said "This is weird here. Let's leave our stuff here and pay the son to take us to a hotel." Yes!

Now we're back in his truck again, Monday morn, low 50s, light rain, being portaged in style aroung not one, but two dams within a few miles of one another, a stretch that (w/this weather) would have made for a real shit morning. So boom. We're in St. Cloud and I can weep over the missed 7 miles this winter with my arms resting on the bar at St. Elmo's, a pint of Electric Dave's IPA in one hand, clove cig in the other.

All I can say is THANK GOD Frank is a man who appreciates his comforts.

Alone well after midnight, gliding weightless through the womb-warm waters of the hotel's pool, I felt REALLY good for a change. Warm and safe, a spaceman afloat in bliss.

Now I gotta get out, get cold, get rained on, and paddle, paddle, paddle. Yee-hah.

Minneapolis, here we come! Wednesday I hope. - RSM
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The Monster, the Miss

2006-09-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

We wrestle daily with a monster so much older and wiser than we that I can do naught but give every paddle stroke my all and then some as I repeatedly die tiny, insignificant deaths of exhaustion and stare out at her million gallon per.. per what? Hour? Minute? Second? At her movement, her pulse downward to the sea. I am nothing to this river. I am flotsam.

First it was following her as she crossed lakes bigger than seas. Frank says due to the curvature of the Earth, we cannot see land across a 7-mile lake. We crossed such lakes in rain and high swells driven by wind. Then came the meanders, endless loopdiloops where you just knew the river was near touching itself across some road or spit of land, but necessity and the heavy load of gear made paddling, not portaging (in this case skipping) the only choice. Thus no choice. Meander. Thru forest divine yet endless, thru pasture soiled and stunk up by cattle, meander.

Now it's width and record low rains. Result: ankle deep water a mile wide that often as not makes you get out and walk, and rocks to tear up a canoe or hang you up, spin you sideways and wow! suddenly there IS a current and she's all too willing to swamp you - gear, Snoopy dog Clyde, backpacks with your very "home" inside of tent, bag, pad, dry clothes. Not an option.

Now its wind. Wind gusts up to 40 mph, perhaps more, blow at us head on. A small tornado in the area claims the life of a 10-year old girl, splintering her large suburban home. We sleep in tents a few miles upriver. Fate is whimsical.

Waves break over the bow as we dart from the lee (shelter) of one headland and, with a "Ready? Go!" paddle 150 hard strokes fast as we can to attain the opposite shore and another lee before the wind-driven swells can swamp us. It's madness. It's unbridled freedom. It's joy and intense pain, and best of all it's real. But it hurts, and every night that I lay my broken body down to sleep, I pray for twice the value in rest as hours until dawn. -RSM

PS: Who is Emile Durkheim (sp?) and why does Zack the bartender compare me to him?
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