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Legacy Journal: Tuesday Tribute from Nepal

The following was sent from Nepal, near the base of the Himalyas, by daughter Tanya (Sugar) Fisk .  The occasion is the worrisome detention of three American explorers who recently wandered across the northern Iraqi - Iranian border. Josh is one of her friends from Cottage Grove, Oregon near Eugene.  We would all wish that poetry and prose from the heart would carry the day.  But, we know that “real politique” is the name of game.

                                                  ‘On the seashore of endless worlds, children meet.’
                                                            -Rabindranath Tagore

  He would get really excited when you’d pull out a map of the waterways. The tea would be moved aside, and the piles of acorns and walnuts we’d gathered, and a dozen open magazines, books, references. To make room in the center of the floor. To give it space, as if the local creeks and rivers were already flowing, in miniature, across the floor, in and out his windows and open door.  He was living in small town rural Oregon, southern end of the Willamette Valley and would be leaving in the fall after three years. This was it, last chance Texaco and I know he felt the clock ticking for some time with the twin questions : how can I cherish and deepen my last 9 months in this place and where shall I go from here? He did what he did when he sought focus, direction and felt the intimate press of time’s passing…he made A Plan. This would be the Year of the Local, he would explore local history, grow, eat and teach about local food, join the local radio station as a DJ. And the foundational study, walking the land and learning the watershed.

  It wasn’t just Spring and Summer he explored the waters. He adored being in the rainy Autumn woods and walking through the Winter chill until he warmed. He talked about watersheds like he talked about great libraries. He spoke of their sources and confluences like he spoke about the perennial wisdom of the spiritual traditions of the world. For my beloved friend, Josh Fattal, co-founder of the Free Walkers Society (of which we were the only members, for now), water was source. And tracing it’s footprint, finding it’s origin, knowing what connected to what, was adventure, discovery and history in one silvery wave after the next. All the way to the sea. To him it seemed knowing your watershed was like knowing the streets that would take you back home. There was drive and determination and a boyish joy in the walking that pushed him forward. And there was something very personal in the seeking, as if the water and it’s connections were a thread to his life. That walking through the land was the way to understand where he was.

  On a rainy spring afternoon, after his work at Apro was done, he’d call up and declare, “I think the Free Walkers need to go find where Silk Creek starts.” We’d be soaked when we returned to town after dark and he’d be full of questions. Not that there weren’t answers, he was brilliant at research, it’s just that under the scope of his fierce curiosity, the answers would generate five times their weight in questions. We walked through the spring and summer along creeks and streams and rivers that ran through the town and fields and forests, in the woods behind the school where he worked. We swam in the cold river on the edge of town and talked about the big reservoir just upstream, how it affected the local waterways, how up from there it became a river again, joined with Brice Creek and had it’s source somewhere in the snows of the Cascades. It was always a tracing back and had the intimate element of tracing his past and memories.

  He’d been dreaming, I knew, of an epic Source-to-Sea boat journey that would take him from below the dam of Lake Dorena(our source)to where Row River joined the Coast Fork of the Willamette, outside our village. Through Eugene, where it merged with the impressive Middle Fork and flowed heroically on through the state until it passed the docks, bridges and waterfront of central Portland, joined the oceanic Columbia, with her dramatic history and finally out to sea! When the beautiful boater’s map of the Willamette River Keepers arrived in the mail, he read it like a history book, which he loved. He wanted to go all the way. That’s a month in a boat, I thought, with visions of rain and pre-planning drudgery. But I didn’t say it because Josh had that look he gets after listening to Dylan. It’s the same with a Great Plan. He decided stages was a good idea. It was mid-summer and we had borrowed a friend’s boat. It would be Bottom-of-the-Dam to Behind-the-Lumber mill outside the next town: Stage One.

  By mid morning, we were lifting the boat off the van and walking it through the forest’s edge. It was a short unknown stretch to us and we’d asked around but didn’t get much. Josh never minded going in with some unknowns, honored it as the larger nature of the journey, but on the river he was watchful and could be serious. It was a gorgeous morning, the river running strong and sweet. Josh was excited, he rowed like crazing. He was steering in back when, no more than fifteen minutes into our maiden voyage, the boat cantilevered over a precipice of water. I looked down into a huge sinkhole and we got swallowed whole. We were flung from the boat, turned in circles underwater like flimsy laundry, (this is the part you don’t tell your mother) and spat out at the surface gasping. Everything was soaked, our water bottles had floated away and we dragged ourselves exhausted onto shore and lay splayed on the warm gravel road. We agreed later, the only possible action after seeing that hole was to take the biggest breath of you life and head in. By the end of the day we had flipped, gone under, been sent flying three times in one dramatic rapid after the next. We had seen water life and aspects of the river and land we had never imagined. Tired and happy, Josh suggested next week for Stage Two.

  Speaking to his family outside Philadelphia, he had heard that a family friend, in his retirement, had taken to methodically walking the streets of his native Philly. Josh was fascinated and taken by this notion. I suggested he get in touch and they collaborate on a book, a city mouse/country mouse account of their relative discoveries of their environments on opposite ends of the country. He liked the idea, enjoyed collecting subjects for the books he should write. Near Philadelphia later that fall, just before he would go abroad, he took me to follow the streams near his childhood house through yards of neighbors, parks, an old school, a boyhood friend’s house. He told the stories of his youth. It was the same seeking of the water’s path, source and connections he was doing in Oregon and here, I could see it was exhilarating and empowering. I watched him making a bridge along the long stretch of waters from his past to the present and into the visions for his future.

  That summer in Oregon we completed Stage One, Two and an epic 35 mile(in a single day)final Stage three that had all the makings of a great adventure… danger, strong winds, big vistas, dark gathering clouds, unknown rapids ahead, a big fight in the middle of the river, wondering if we could make it before dark, before the rain. And beauty, stunning and complex on the water. And ultimately a breathtaking brilliant success. I don’t remember if we vowed to finish the plan and go all the way to the sea someday or just silently held that desire. On reflection we agreed the vantage from the river had completely changed our perspective of the land, gave us new ways of seeing our place. Like seeing a garden through an insects eyes, from ground level, inside things. I knew this was Josh’s vision for himself and for the world:  to be continually opening to new ways of seeing and experiencing the world more authentically, more truly. Of changing and growing from this place of clearer sight and deeper insight. And I knew that for him this journey of seeking source and it’s completion would continue. On to the seas and beyond.

  And so it not only makes sense but is a strong and clean poetry that Josh would be found seeking the most beautiful waterfall in the land of his ancestors. In war and in peace may he continue.

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