A love letter to guiding and the river.
By Ali Rusch
Hold me in the present so that I may move at the pace of what is real. -My Soul’s prayer to the River’s Current
It was middle school, I was probably turning ten when I started to forget about what it meant to be held in the present. I started worrying about, then or when…
My unapologetic Self took refuge somewhere deep within my existence while this Fearful body decided it knew better on how I was to best protect myself from what was or what will be. This pre-designed, familiar body readily knew what choices I was going to make, step by step it led the way.
The next eighteen years of my life, Fear captained my ship; overthinking past actions that provided an abundance of guilt and nervously anticipating future moves that kept me on edge. At twenty-three I was married with a full time teaching job, house, and puppy. My body grew intimate in its ways of how to remain safe: be quiet and stay small. Fearful body, happy.
Our unapologetic Self is just that, unapologetic. Unlike the Fearful body that is given to us through several external modalities, the unapologetic Self is uniquely ours at existence.
A root will find its way to water in order to survive; we too are roots of this world and must blindly trust our intuitive callings. In order to survive, I began to answer that child who took refuge.
The Middle Fork of the Salmon River moves at the pace of what is real; present time. My roots, my child, slowly gravitated towards her waters. A virgin to the world of boating, my child was humorously unapologetic. She knew that in order to survive, I was going to have to make intuitive decisions in the moment and ultimately won’t have the seconds to overthink the past… House of Rocks is right after Devil’s Tooth darling! ;)
At the time, I couldn’t even tell you the difference between the bow and the stern but, do pre-double digit kids really care about being right. Not really, unapologetically we play and figure it out along the way.
“To play is to free ourselves from arbitrary restrictions and expand our field of action. Our play fosters richness of response and adaptive flexibility. This is the evolutionary value of play--play makes us flexible. By reinterpreting reality and begetting novelty, we keep from becoming rigid. Play enables us to rearrange our capacities and our very identity so that they can be used in unforeseen ways.” -Stephen Nachmanovitch
Living in the wild I am able to embody my pre-ten-year-old self: no mirrors to see the chin hairs, no apps to count the calories, and only the drops to let me know… it is raining. When I am on the river, I train my adult Self on how to play, how to be free from arbitrary restrictions and expand my field of action.
Through surrender and fight, the Middle Fork of the Salmon River holds me in the present so that I may move at the pace of what is real. This is the current, this is the now.
I listened to a ted-talk by Michael Brody-Waite, who shared his story of drug addiction and homelesslness to founding and leading his own company. He quotes, “Practice rigorous authenticity, surrender the outcome, and do uncomfortable work.” I am honored to be a guide, a teacher, and a continual student of the Earth. I am willing to surrender my outcome to do the uncomfortable work. I can no longer practice a falsity which kept me “comfortable” and “safe” but rather a truth that is quaking and uncomfortable.
I am always so excited to share with others that the Redside Foundation exists. My honoring: "In honor to the guides that were, that are, and that will be. In physical form, we then transform to guide, from the other side. Thank you Redside." Thank you Redside Foundation, for supporting the quaking and the uncomfortable so that we may continue to exist in the current.
In love,
Ali Rusch
