Ageless in Spirit: Discussions and interests for our times

January 17, 2022

I am a risk taker, I am an adventurer. I like to explore and learn about the world by immersing myself in it. I began this journey in my childhood. I had a boat with outboard motor which I took out for adventures in the creeks and bays and ocean of Long Island, New York. My mother did worry but helped me learn to fry the snappers I caught with my bamboo pole. I then graduated to scuba diving including getting a thicker wetsuit to dive in the winter off of Far Rockaway beach. One time I recall my mother was there after I emerged by the the rocky jetty shivering and happy to be on dry land. College adventures were tamer. Medical school and residency training in psychiatry limited my adventures mostly in the mind and learning more about myself and my hang-ups. However, during my senior year for six months I traveled with my wife to Liberia and Nigeria where we lived in Abeokuta first at a mental hospital then renting a concrete bunker home while I learned about psychiatry African style. The big deal then was that schizophrenia was reported to be less prevalent in Nigeria due to the social family network of relationships though there were the Were ne the wandering homeless psychotics easily identified in my travels. We traveled around Nigeria going places that now are not safe. We even had a horrible day in Johannesburg when returning to U.S.A. at Soweto viewing apartheid up close. We traveled to then northern Rhodesia and Zambia, to game reserves and Livingston Falls. Our trip from Addis Ababa to Axum by plane and bus above the blue Nile was an adventure. My walking at night to the Coptic church services while in Abyssinia attending their holiday services reminded me of orthodox jewish traditions. The clear air at night over one mile high revealed the milky way to my delight. We even got to Asmara now a very conflicted part of the world. Cairo and the pyramids was exotic yet tamer. My interest in traveling included years later nine months in Jerusalem where I taught at Hadassah Hospital and traveled the country including twice to the Sinai including Santa Katerina where we hiked up a mountain next to Jebbal Musa (mount Moses). We were able to travel safely into the Golan Heights and to the West Bank safely. My memories of these trips and hikes in the Sinai has assisted me in finding excitement in traveling, learning , and living in different cultures and surroundings. On the way home from Israel we toured from New Delhi to Kashmir and then rode by jeep over the passes in the Himalayas over 14000 feet up to the city of Leh in Ladakh. Our keep broke down a few times and on one occasion we hitch hiked in a live sheep crowded huge truck (crowded sheep smell really bad). This adventure was very risky and exciting something very difficult to do these days. Our travels continued through the U.S.A., Mexico to the Yucatan (Chicen Itza), Canada, Europe including England and Czechoslovakia with friends, France and Italy as an in love college student with his lover and then wife, and again to Italy with family to meet my daughters husbands relatives. and, Japan, the Russian Far East including Birobidzhan and Vladivostok. Our journeys were in part inspired by our children including touring Thailand from Bangkok to Mai Sa Long and Australia hiking in the Blue Mountains and Perth areas. We met my daughter one year in New Zealand and she and I kayaked with a group overnight into Doubtful sound where I was severely bitten on my hands by sand fleas when we overnighted in our covered tent. Luckily the fleas missed my penis when I had to go outside to urinate. When our children were younger we went to working cattle ranches for horseback riding and into Kings Canyon National Park on horseback for a four night adventure. My skiing and winter adventures included snowmobiling for three days in Yellowstone National Park where on our return to Jackson Hole our car spun out of control doing three sixties hitting the snow embankments and fracturing my daughters collar bone (she healed well). Another year my friend persuaded me in going helicopter skiing in the Bugaboo Mountains of Canada where on day I was forced to jump off of a cliff and then quick turn away from a tree. I managed to fall in a tree well upside down but my friend was there to retreive me. Our activities included hiking and skiing with the last big hike in Iceland with my son and grandson. I cataloged very briefly some of my travels since I consider many of them adventures that involve getting out of my comfort zone and experiencing new cultures and places hard to reach except through some physical effort. One year our intrepid hiker then my age now ninety persuaded me to organize a small group to hike the Chilkoot Trail from Skagway into the Yukon up the Golden Staircase into Canada and the snow and ice of winter in July. Since my wife Ann did not usually hike we spent times traveling with children visiting Europe a few times including spending six weeks in Portugal doing volunteer "teaching" and then touring. Before this she surprised all of use with a trip with three children and she and I for over eleven days into the White Cloud mountains of Idaho backpacking with the Sierra Club! She and I had adventures in Vancouver Island where I took a guided spelunking adventure into one of the caves. We visited our daughter in Flagstaff Arizona and I had adventures while borrowing her car hiking the San Francisco mountain when the aspen were in bloom with her dog Tazz. She arranged for me to hike from the north rim to the south rim of Grand Canyon National Park three day hike. On another trip I took her car to Zion and Escalante to hike into Peekaboo slot canyon off of the Hole In the Rock dirt road. I got disoriented when exiting Peek A Boo but luckily there was another adventurer who guided me back up from the arroyo to the ridge or else I could be still there. Another time we got a permit to visit the Wave out of Kanab Utah a very special limestone area outstandingly beautiful. When in New Zealand my wife, daughter and I with wet suits and head lamp descended into the dripping water filled limestone cave to see the stalagmites and stalactites. I had to dive through the "birth canal opening" and scrunched my glasses. My last trip abroad was to Greece with my daughter and wife the hiking was awesome but the company was the greatest.

When we moved to Hawaii I had access to an 18 foot hobie cat sail boat which provided many adventures in Kailua Bay with family and solo. We even went scuba diving off of the sailboat. One time with my daughter then 10 or 11 years old I overturned the boat. With my weight and hers on the pontoon we could not turn the boat over until someone came by to assist.I became interested in body surfing off of Kailua beach and then made my own body board out of wood and tried Makapuu. After near drowning myself in the high winter surf I got some thrills being hurled towards shore on giant waves making sounds like a seal. I became an avid cyclist using the roads on Oahu to speed along the roads and byways and then to the island of Hawaii to continue adventures around this bigger island stopping for the night in small hotel. Yes adventures that unfortunately taught me that the tires and tubes can be punctured and I can go flying to hit the road surface is hard with bones shattered and head knocked silly. Twice was enough so no more bike adventures but hiking continues. Yes for a time I even road on silk tires glued to the rim! My friend talked me into buying inflatable kayaks with a keel and off we flew to Molokai launching at Halawa Bay and kayaking with two overnights with tents to Kalaupapa where we were greeted by some of the Hansen residents who were patients of my friend. Along the way we me another kayaker who had come to retrieve his hard shell kayak he left buried in the sand after making it through the high winter surf after launching from the airport in Honolulu after landing from Canada. He kayaked to Molokai in the winter on this hard shelled kayak to the north shore of Molokai able to survive the surf at Kelipuni beach! When we met him her was slim shirtless with a long beard with deep eyes that only saw my friends daughter that he followed while we kayaked to at shipwrights home with his wife opposite Kalaupapa where we spent the night. The next day we headed out to sea with my friend towing my son and his girlfriend (later his wife) in their kayak into the open ocean with huge swells so we landed leeward by the airstrip of Kalaupapa. When sixty my son gave me his gift of parachuting out of an airplane at 3500 feet with a static line. We went to the class at Dillingham airfield in the morning and learned how to exit the plane and steer the parachute and flare it properly. Then we each had a turn exiting the plane, holding onto the wing strut with legs flying outside the airplane like superman and then on signal letting go. Obviously I made it down.

Well, I did tear my left achilles hiking and I am not a candidate for surgical repair since I have lymphedema of my left foot due to an infection I picked up while crewing on the lake in Worcester, Massachusetts during my college years. Oh, Yeah! now I remember I was admitted to the hospital somewhat delirious and with high fever and terrible pain in my left foot and groin with sepsis. Ann told me there was some discussion of amputating my foot.

My hiking enthusiasm took off maybe twenty years ago when my son told me about a group of hikers he joined and welcomed me to my first hike with them. Then recovered from open heart coronary bypass surgery I was more mellow, much more appreciative of my family and career interests and pursuits but wanting some adventure. That first hike was a killer. Hahaione Ridge to the top of the Koolaus along the spires of mountain range to Kuliouou then down and back. My son was concerned for my welfare but out of shape, out of breath, I struggled up this steep incline including using some ropes to traverse the sometimes narrow trail while looking at Waimanalo two thousand feet below me and the sea. So always a photographer my hobby of picture taking mushroomed into becoming much more proficient and enjoying printing large pictures which I think could have helped me have another career.

The mountains with its ridges, gorges, ravines, and valleys full of life. Birds chirping, bees and wasps diving near you, mosquitos ready to bite, frogs and toads, crawfish and stream fish with surrounding trees, vegetation including vines, guava for the picking and eating and if lucky lilikoi to pick and savor. The sky meeting the mountains and the sea sometimes with glimpses of whales cavorting give us all the ah ha moments with sighs. But then again if we meander into more wilderness and less familiar surrounding we can have days like Saturday where we started at 9:15 AM and finished near dusk 5.30 PM. The uluhe impeded our vision of the meandering roller coaster trail once we reached the summit. Our elevation gain totaled over sixteen hundred feet. The steepness was severe in a number of parts so my fellow hiker another octogenarian with his chronic illness roster sometime crawled up. When finished at our cars rehydrating and taking electrolytes our legs cramping we smiled and decided that this particular hike was off our list (for now). A good number of months previously while hiking with two friends up Hahaione again but now towards pyramid rock the steep descent was O.K. until at the last steeper exit I leaned on a tree and it was rotten so I went head over heels probably cracking so ribs with some gashes on my leg. We lost the trail on our exit and it was pitch black night wandering in the guava forrest above the Hahaione Street exit using our cell phone lights to stay upright through the guava forest jungle. My other experience with my wife and friend was our hike into Palm Valley where we exited the valley on the ridge with stubby guava trees and slippery mud ever going diagonally up with my panting and stopping to regroup my wits and push on ever up. Did I tell you I have intermittent atrial fibrillation and am on blood thinners. Wooh! Made it to the summit of that ridge but again we had to go down from Iliahi to cross the stream and then steep up to Manana!

So why do I go into detail over my adventures? Well, for my benefit to look more closely at my risk taking and make appropriate adjustments I write but am I rationalizing and really neurotic and prone to continue my adventures to these extremes?

My last hike finished successfully and full of wonder at the sights, sounds, and smells along the way. I met today with a fellow hiker who could not join us at our departure time so she came later and went for some reason into Palm Valley to get lost and wind up going up a ridge similar to what I just described to find herself nowhere she knew so she went down to the valley and went up the other ridge to the top now lost. She saw some mountain bikers who heard her yelling and one of them road her back to Mililani though they had a tumble from the bike where she landed short of a rock that could have done her some damage. She was concerned for my friend and I hiking by ourselves while we were not lost just spent. A few months before we were hiking up Hahaione Ridge. She became separated from her husband and myself took a wrong turn down a impossible ridge with no real trail and stuck at a precipice. Her husband went looking for her, found her, talked her down from the ridge to safety. Today we were asking ourselves why and for what end.

My hiking and other adventures usually included friends, family and spouse. My wife Ann was game but not into vigorous and difficult skiing and hiking though we rode elephants, horses, and even camels together. She did do a difficult backpack trip into the Idaho wilderness tent camping. Rebecca likes more the hiking into the wilderness and waits patiently for me at the top of the hill with her loving smile.

Now I can probably come up with some good rational reasons and suggested motivations. First I suggest watching 14 peaks and The Alpinist on Netflix and Dirtbag The Legend of Fred Beckey on Amazon Prime. There's a whole culture of adventure seekers and fans and followers that test their limits sometimes sadly with injury and death. I’ll just mention here that falling injuries have hospitalized some of my friends who fortunately have recovered enough to continue walking on our trails.

Hiking physiology does inform us that our metabolism changes during our hikes include endorphin releases that act as a natural high. The more extreme hikers going up to altitudes called the death zone are moving ever slowly up with nostril that are dry and crusted with blood and scabs breathing is very labored even with oxygen supplementation. Jon Kraukaur Into Thin Air describes the 1997 tragedy on Everest and details the physical painful efforts with loss of body parts and life and limb. So I know I would never attempt these efforts though I was in the Himalayas above Srinagar sipping tea above 13000 feet after horseback riding from 11000 feet. I'm reminded that one year while in Colorado hiking by myself out of Estes Park I hiked to the summit of Mount Ida (12900 fett elevation) and then had to make my way down a cliff face jumping from shelf to shelf to the lake a few thousand feet down and then hiking out to the highway six more mile now ten miles from my car. So I take it back I have it in me but thank goodness I have not gone the extreme rappelling rope climbing route.

Well, how can I have opinions about other people, events, and political rightness when I sometimes behave as described in some of my hikes? Well, I don't accept others opinions just because they as authority figures say so I am not tenacious and stubborn and will change my mind. I don't accept my government family and community affiliation viewpoints just because they believe so. I don't just find excuses a priori reason to justify my actions. I'm open to inquiry and looking at data and coming up with reasonable hypotheses for my proclivities and actions (as well as others and the worlds). So Using Charles Pierces philosophical system scientific method is the best approach towards clarity and knowledge. https://www.konsyse.com/articles/the-fixation-of-belief-the-four-methods/

Nevertheless, art finds great insight and pleasure in this puzzle of our lives. So I came across some Rumi as a closing.

Love said: If you are not mad, you are not welcome in this house!

So I became mad and stumbled through the wilderness

Love said: If you are too clever and sober, you are not welcome!

So I became intoxicated with love

I drowned myself in the sacred wine

Love said: Oh Candle, you are using your light to attract a crowd

So I screamed: Take my light, take my light!

Now I’m nothing but smoke

The Divani Shamsi Tabriz XV

Let go of your worries

and be completely clear-hearted,