When stone meets sky

White water kayaking is the core of my life. It judges what decisions I make as to where I go, when I go there, and for what reason. There is no other place I would like to be than deep in a canyon in my kayak, or paddling an alpine creek. When there are rivers everywhere it seems impossible to have just one life-place. Every new canyon, river, mountain and hill has new views, new feels, and a different attitude. That is what I like about each new place

It is amazing the amount of connection you can have to a stretch of water. Nice. You respect it as you know it can give or take life at a whim. You are grateful of it as it brings life, and enjoyment. That is why I look very much forward to Missoula. There are new rivers to run. More rivers mean more adventure and memories. I love to explore these types of places and they make me look forward to those yet unexplored.
As Edward Abbey says regarding adventurers “a countryman has a place on earth that is his own, and much as he may love to wonder, as I myself do, he loves the wondering more because he has a place to return to, a place where he belongs” (79). My home is Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Like many other places that I have travelled Missoula is just another adventure right now. There is a river here I have walked it bank. Witness the swirling whirlpools that form off the bridge pilings. Seen the ducks that did not fly skirt skitter and slide on the ice that hugs the rocks. I have wandered through the streets in town, and climbed up the hills that overlook the city. I have marvelled at the lights glistening in the dark. My experiences here have been great. It has been an adventure; adventure is what I live for.
If there was one place that means more to me than anywhere else it would be a section of the Green River on the western border of Colorado. A place where two rivers come together and sandstone meets sky. First explored by Native Americans then later by John Wesley Powell and after a while I came to learn the secrets this canyon held. In between Whirlpool and Lodore Canyons lays Steamboat Rock. A sandstone peninsula rising hundreds of feet while only about fifty feet wide encircled by the river. Soaring as a mountain does it is something I hold in the highest regards in my heart and sparks so much curiosity in my mind.
My freshman year of high school was my initiation to this wondrous place. It was a school river trip one week in length doing the standard Lodore run. We had been on the river for two days prior. Two days of cold and rain with a wind that bites to the bone. They had been two days full of rapids, which with my then limited kayak experience meant days filled with swimming in cold October water. We had woken up to another cold morning, the sun not appearing over the rim of the canyon until noon. Coincidentally this was the same time we paddled into Echo Park where Steamboat Rock is situated. The sight was other worldly. The sun lighting the sandstone and warming our bodies; it was, after the long morning a truly blissful experience.
There are these sorts of moments all the time. They manifest themselves in so many different ways. They are what make somewhere special. I may not remember all of the details of Steamboat Rock, but I know the feelings. A life place does not need to be a certain location, not a solid landscape, not trees, or mountains or rivers. It is feelings. It is finding somewhere that makes you feel like you. It is the sun breaking through the clouds on a grey day and warming your body. A life place can be anywhere.
When I am here in Missoula I feel like refreshed. Everything around here is so new, so interesting. I want to learn about everything. Why the snow falls the way it does. What trees populate the forest and how the mountains got to be so jagged? I want to learn all that I can here before I am truly ready to call it home. It is a temporary place for me though. A place I can call home if someone were to ask me. Missoula is a stop on more adventures that I can call my home. The mountains are getting more familiar, less alien. The trees, Douglas fir, ponderosa and lodge poll pines, are not too far if at all off from what I miss of Colorado. The river as I see it day after day becomes a healthy normalcy. Oh how I wish it were the spring year around here. I have walked down to Brennen’s Wave and watched the discordant crashing pattern of its foam. I am starting to feel this place bring me into it. Even the adventures out I do from it makes me have a stronger connection.
I am happy to be in Missoula. It is beautiful place not too much unlike my home back in Colorado. That is why I feel so much of a connection to here. It is different, yet when I look deeper so much is the same. As each day passes I slip more into the comforts of this place around me. The mountains do not look so alien anymore, the trees are the same. My mind has been opened from its previously narrow self, things are not different. The rivers have different names, as do the mountains, but that does not make them something to be afraid of. Missoula’s new beginning is not only a new place, a new school; it is a restructuring of the places that I call adventures and the places I call home. Missoula is my new home.

Matt Hill



 
Bibliography
Abbey, Edward. Down the River. New York: Dutton, 1982. Print.