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Crooked Blue Line

Under The Burn Of Going Without

All year long my skin whitened under the burn of going without. -No travel in the most beautiful and aesthetic vehicle I know -no slap of wave against it’s hull -no satin surface to carve with the wood of paddle -no taste of that freedom only a river or lake affords -only obligations and responsibilities ate at any true sense of that freedom

until i went alone

the big boisterous sky ahead

under a hot mid-October sun

on a rocky outcropping

in a Thermarest with

a beer

and a smoke

above the lip of Lake Umbagog

my skin ripening

my legs crossed

the wave against rock

discussing their fears

of the weakening economy

the ignited hills above

gesturing towards the south

its orange airline traffic lights waving

the lone kayak passing by

complimenting the earth on her choice of weather

the tandem canoe in the distance clearly loafing in the sun

the bow adrift in no direction

the sequence skirt of the lake’s surface

showing off her goods

and my eyes when closed

were starry against the bright red

of that smoldering day

hot enough for a swim

“Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world”

Going Solo

Untitled from rick beaty on Vimeo.

When You Can't Put Your Boat In A Cold New Hampshire River

...You can always find art in its folds

Bikerafting

There's something Inspector gadget-like in pulling a fully capable class IV boat from your backpack...or even more -your noisy muddy pannier a craft capable of your 35lb pack AND your bike! The infamous Alpacka Raft has quickly become the most versatile paddle craft available. Your first time, blinds all others-it becomes impossible to forget the absolute and incredible fun packrafting in rapids alone can be, forget it's utility. It's like taking a recliner down a river only this lazy-boy carrys your food, your bed, your shelter and has room enough after all that -for a beer nestled between your feet.

Packrafting The Pemigewasset

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3VP9dp3mOk

The Kank in the lonely White Mountain shoulder season

Last Tramp for Tea

When the cold cuts a bleed from the skin, theres no better liquor than the crunch of snow under snowshoe, bundled and wrapped. The faint flirt of sun fondling eyelids and the hoof of late winter stomping plumes from your throat. Nothing seems more fitting than a cup of tea under it's thawing thumb. Cutting trail, shoveling camp, carving kitchen from snow above the silence of ice edging into river and the creek of tree leaning into the swing of a warm hammock.

the culture of suspended droplets, riveted in sheets to the mountainside swarming, congregating, propositioning and quiet

quiet I say, as an arrangement of behavior unbecoming of quiet. quiet muddying the compass needle’s point, stung by frost -common looking quiet -until required to step through

and the curves, the swooping crowds of white pouring from the raked face of Allender Mountain, pour us as well, appearing from it’s folds without lack of clarity; we rummage through the vaporous waypoints

we are

after all

not looking for the trail