Rich Rambles

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Nature’s Temple

The soundtrack to my personal experiences in canyons is almost always Native American flute music. Surrounded by silence I hear the music in my head. I am at peace.

Recently that silence was broken by the yelling and screaming of someone’s children. I back-tracked until I met six kids; guessing their ages ranged from six to twelve. I explained to them that many people come to places like this to enjoy serenity and their noise was disrespectful. A man – who I assumed to be the dad of at least some of the kids – caught up with them and chimed in to the conversation. He understood and reinforced my message to the kids … to a point. When I suggested this place was a temple he said he wouldn’t take it that far.

I guess we all have our own concept of what constitutes a temple. Personally, I feel much closer to God in nature than I ever could in a multi-million-dollar structure built by man.

 

“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.” — John Muir

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Internet Forums

I started the first canyoneering forum on the internet back in May of 2000. The original platform was called eGroups, which was later acquired by Yahoo! Those who have been around long enough likely remember it best as the Canyons Group on Yahoo! To get it up and running I did an internet search for “canyoneering”, “canyoning”, “slot canyons”, “gorge walking”, “river tracing”, “kloofing”, and every other related word or phrase I could imagine; inviting anyone and everyone who came up in the search to participate in the group. I was naive enough to imagine we would all come together in a spirit of cooperation to share ideas and information, learn from each other and help each other. Two years later I become extremely frustrated and turned the group over to someone else.

Since then I have been involved in one way or another with several more forums and groups. I certainly see the potential benefits. Unfortunately, I have also witnessed an abundance of pitfalls. Canyoneering existed long before there was an internet, but the exponential growth of the sport has paralleled the exponential growth of the internet. The two have grown up together. Some of the pitfalls that plague canyoneering internet forums are the same ones that plague the internet in general. Others are more specific to the canyoneering community.

Those just getting started in canyoneering have access to a wealth of information that did not exist 15-20 years ago. That’s a good thing, but it presents a significant challenge; sorting through all that information – often conflicting information – to figure out what is worth learning and what should be ignored.

This isn’t a blog post intended to tell you what information is good and what is bad. It’s just a personal rant about the pitfalls. Here is my list of some of those pitfalls:

  • Context – “It depends”
  • Opinions vs Facts
  • How to Think vs What to Think
  • Ego, Ethics and Tenacity
  • Ego and The Need to Right
  • Biases, Motives and Manipulation
  • Credentials

I might add some comments with more details about each of these pitfalls. Maybe not. It’s just a rant after all. If I do, someone is bound to disagree. Sometimes people disagree just to disagree. And those folks tend to be much more tenacious than me with their arguments.

In my old age I’d rather be at peace than be right.