For nearly five
years now, a box at my left foot under my desk has been waiting to be
made into
a scrapbook for this trip. Katy leaves
for Azusa Pacific University at the end of the summer where she will
begin with
their "High Sierra" program, Oxford style studies at a lodge near
Yosemite. She claims to like being out
in the wild like that. We know from
this book that she is at least accustomed to it.
Katy, now nearly as
tall as I am, went to Junior - Senior Prom this weekend.
The future that I had feared and anticipated
no longer seems infinitely far away. It
is this summer.
I explained much of
my failure as a great author in the "Note to the Reader" of Viannah's
book. Now, putting this book to bed
nearly five years after its own events, I would say all of that again. In addition, some other interesting bits of
personal and family psychology have appeared.
Like it's predecessor, the best chapters of this book are the
ones in
the middle describing the actual trip Katy and I took.
All the rest is there for completeness. Read
whatever parts you want but the
recommendation to Katy, the target audience is to some day read the
whole
thing. In addition to being a detailed
memoir of this chapter in our lives together, it may help you
understand your
dad, your family, and most importantly, yourself.
Viewed from the
vantage of five years later, I am surprised at the number of items on
our list
that have just slipped through the cracks or otherwise been forgotten. We said, for instance, that we'd be sure to
go snorkeling someplace where it was safer.
We said we would go to Magic Mountain together or something like
that
every fall. We thought that we might do
a major whole-family trip in summer 2005 (presumably after I was done
with John's
trip which, today, at the opening of summer 2005, is still in process). I said that Katy and I would do things
together like book reports and that for my part I would try to form
more common
ground in areas like Anime or Pokemon.
None of this happened, largely due to the rough year that
followed (see
Chapter 14), but I'm surprised that I totally lost track of those
intentions.
A theme that runs
through both books is worry. I worry a
lot. We have a motto in the family
that, when spoken by me, goes, "Don't worry, I'll worry!"
By calibrating your reading of this text for
over-worry, you can find a more or less normal adventure at fairly low
risk,
led by a novice. Perhaps I should have
pushed further and taken more risk. I
have limits, however, and am getting too old to exceed them by far or
by
accident too often. I am aware of the
words of Jesus about worry. I am also
aware of the words of my wife and children on the subject.
It's an ongoing issue. Bear with me.
Viann has a totally
different approach to all of these things.
She just naturally builds common ground everywhere and all the
time, she
never worries until something actually happens and then it's too late
for
worry, she merely responds appropriately.
She never plays "what am I going to do if."
She, therefore, suffers differently, and
less, than I do.
In Chapter 14, one
of the many transitions discussed was Viannah driving.
In the intervening years, she has had two
minor accidents. In one of them, dad's
truck was totaled and a law suite resulted which consumed significant
time and
energy until our insurance settled out of court only last month. Meanwhile, driving to Texas for Thanksgiving
last year, Katy had her own scary, one car wreck on the freeway. John and I were in the car with her. We were all fine and the car was more or
less totally repaired (over about two months), but things like this do
interfere with my ability to make a lot of progress on my issues with
chronic
worry.
Oh, and John plans
to start driving this fall after turning fifteen. I
plan to work harder on all of his skills before letting him
go. Remind me not to forget to do this.
I was surprised at
the number of ongoing habits or struggles that I'd thought were recent
which
are mentioned in this book and therefore must have started at least
five years
ago. Has the ongoing discussion of
"Peak Oil" really been going on that long? Guess
so. Was it that
long ago that I lost thirty pounds then, broken finally by kayak
training,
regained it? Guess so.
Once again, it has
taken a long time, nearly five years, to get down to this final edit. I did keep better notes (a "lessons
learned" from the Grand Canyon) so the material is allegedly more
"complete" and "accurate" but it continues to amaze me how
long an item like this can remain at high priority without sufficient
headway
being made. (By comparison, however,
Viann and I just signed Wills last month too!)
Getting kids through high school and into college, and keeping
them in
college has required more of our attention than I had anticipated. Some wonder why I try to do anything else.
In any case, keep in
mind that you are only reading my expanded and amplified journal, not a
narrative designed to keep you captivated, unless you just happen to
have been
there, as a couple of us were. Still, I
think this labor serves the intended purpose, documentation of an
important and
memorable episode in our lives around, oh, the turn of the millennium.
Courtney Duncan
La Canada,
California, 2005 May 31
Dedicated
to my dad…
who
took me hiking.
A.
Bailey Duncan, 1926-2000
A Beginning With Katherine
By Courtney Duncan and Katherine Duncan, August 2000.
The year was 1997. The place was the Grand Canyon. The child was Viannah, the firstborn. The Big Event With Each Kid had been inaugurated, the first book was drafted, and now it was time to do the process over with the second born, Katherine Louellyn, Katy to me, Bunny to her friends. But what would it be? How would we decide? It had to be equivalent, but Katy was a different person. It couldn’t be the same.
Our lives these days are defined by a barrage of information and opportunities and by our struggle to do the best in the midst of it all. The week’s calendar doesn’t seem complete that doesn’t have double and even triple bookings in it. Every day I try to accomplish much more than can be done in a day because there are so many competing goals and time seems so short. I rail against this regularly as we slog forward in this swamp. For some years now one of my main goals has been to cut back to the point of achieving at least a bit of boredom.
Then, Friday August 18, 2000, Katy and I were dropped off on the pier at Santa Rosa Island about 11 a.m. There we were with our camping gear and about a dozen other campers. The skipper shouted up “OK, see you Monday at three” and motored off west to drop off the rest of his load in the surf of San Miguel Island. For seventy-six hours we would be in free fall, away from nearly all of that input, away from nearly all of that demanding life structure or any substitute for it. This was no approximation for Disneyland. We were away from rationed computer and Nintendo and TV watching, projects and stacks of magazines to try to keep up with and church committees and schools and careers and payment plans and repairs to all our equipment that runs our lives in “comfort.” We were separated from most of that pressure to keep busy, the busyness which helps us avoid much exposure to the true pains of living but which also shields us from many of life’s true pleasures, those pains and pleasures that often appear to be complimentary and inextricably intertwined.
The island looked desolate, windswept, bright, dry and dusty, even here on the few acres that had any human development. The few trees in sight constituted a man-made windbreak. I felt despair. What would we do with all that time? Unstructured time for “just living” was in fact one of my prime goals but also one of my prime fears. This was not like marching across the Grand Canyon with Viannah. She and I spent sixty-one hours down on the trail and most of that time was spent struggling to make forward progress, or worrying about whether we were making enough of it. Here, there was nothing that we had to do except get back to the pier Monday afternoon. And make do somehow until then….
Ultimately I would cope by grasping for what little structure was offered, by stretching everything we did out and suppressing all impatience to get on to the next job or to do two or three things at once, my usual tactics against the flood of tasks back home.
Katy took it all in her usual stride. “Well, it’s a good thing I brought my book, I might have gotten bored,” she said sometime late Saturday, but even being bored for a while would have been OK with her, no Big Fear there for her. Having mildly resisted each transition (as is her style) involved in getting our “Big Trip Together” up to this point, now she was here and that was just as fine as anyplace else. I would ask, “Are you OK?” and she would always say, “Yes, I’m fine, are you OK?” She would ask, “What’s your favorite part so far?” (an echo of her mother) and I would say, “Being here with you.” Or I would ask her and she would list several things we’d seen or done, but then say, “I think sitting in the tent talking about stuff is the best part.”
As our tiny list of what we had to do each day became exhausted and wind blew the tent around us for most of the night, I realized once again that we were not here to check another campground off our list or to do everything on the island that could be done, or to see all the wildlife and geology, or to occupy and survey all the places, or to experience all the weather or to make some other contribution to humanity or some personal collection. We were here just to get acquainted and if that meant making playing cards out of notebook paper and playing Go Fish or laying in the tent for long times reading our books and talking about them a little, that’s what it meant. All the planning and all the preparation and all the activity and all the training, in short, all the doing associated with this event was just a backdrop, a structure against which we would get to know each other; paintings on the walls of our sojourn together, just a rough map really.
And, I realized that I didn’t know Katherine as well as I could and that I didn’t always use what I did know about her appropriately and that these three days “on the rock” weren’t going to suddenly fix all that. Her character was complicated and harder to get at and she was more reserved (except when it came to pestering her brother) than her younger brother and older sister. Although this was the culmination of our “Big Event Together” towards which we had worked for three years, it couldn’t be the end, there was a lot more to Katy than that, and “fairness” to her, between her sister and brother was not just an equal amount of training time or an equal amount of effort and money spent on some Big Trip, it was a full acquaintanceship with her as with each other family member. Such a goal seems unreachable but a dad must try.
This is just A Beginning. “A Beginning With Katherine”
Courtney Duncan, August 22, 2000.
An account of our Big Event Together by
Courtney Duncan and Katherine Duncan
August 2000
Note to Reader
Dedication
Introduction
Part I. An
Ongoing Work
Chapter 1. And Now…
Chapter 2. Early Plans, a Busy Year
Chapter 3. Training Events
Chapter 4. More Training, More Planning
Chapter 5. Kayaking
Chapter 6. Family Camp
Chapter 8. From the Pier to the Campground
Chapter 9. Canada Lobo
Chapter 10. East Point
Chapter 11. Monday, August 21, 2000
Chapter 12. From Santa Rosa Island to La Canada
Chapter 13. The Aftermath, Lessons Learned
Chapter 14. Transitions
Appendix A. Pictures
Appendix B. GPS Positions
Appendix C. Girl Scouts
Appendix D. OAARS
Appendix E. Dad's Transition, the Longer Version
Appendix F. Family Camping List (Raw)