My Special Evening in the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon
Chet Shupe
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On our way back from our Laughlin run on Sunday, it occurred to me that I would have to time take a short detour and hike the West Fork of Oak Creek Canyon. I parted company with the other riders at Williams and arrived at my hiking destination at around 3:00 PM. Heading up the canyon I found it somewhat past its fall colors prime—virtually all of the dark red leaves were gone—but yet quite nice. Because of my late start, I was one of the last out. It was getting dark when I arrived at the last of many water crossings where a middle-aged woman was waiting on the far bank. When approaching her I asked if she was waiting for me. When she said no, I said, “What’s the matter, aren’t I good enough?” After assuring me that I was OK, she told me that she was waiting for someone who hadn’t come out yet. She was naturally concerned. After sharing her concern and wishing her well, I continued on.
When I was about ready to leave the parking area ten or so minutes later, I saw an individual approaching through the growing darkness. Only one vehicle remained in the large parking area. I thought it was a park ranger checking that everyone had gotten out. As she came closer, I could see it was the woman I had talked to before when leaving the canyon. Kathy, was her name, had come to ask if I could get help. She feared that her brother was lost in the canyon. (Our cell phones weren’t useful amidst the canyon walls.)
I told her I would wait with her for a while to see if he came out. If not, I would see what I could do. Well, it got dark fast. I mean really dark, really fast. So, it wasn’t long before I was heading down the road where I found a public phone at a resort, and called 911. After I related my story, the operator told me they would soon dispatch help from Flagstaff. I wanted to know how soon, so she checked with dispatch and said they would be leaving immediately. I had intended to head on home but couldn’t deal with the thought of leaving Kathy alone there in the darkness. Her brother had the car keys, so she didn’t even have warmth. So, I turned back to tell her what the situation was, and to wait with her.
I parked the bike with the engine running and the front wheel cocked to the right so, when leaning to the left on the side stand, the headlight would shine as high as possible on the trees and cliffs at the entrance of the canyon. I gave Kathy some of my extra clothing for warmth, and we waited. The idling engine was our fireplace, particularly when the radiator fan turned on, from time to time. She was anxious. When not sharing the “fireplace” with me, she was walking circles in the parking lot, or staring in the direction of the canyon entrance lit up by my headlight, hoping for any sign of movement. We tightly hugged, from time to time, because she needed reassurance, and offering it felt good to me.
Finally, after about 50 minutes, long after we were expecting help to arrive, I got a call from the Sheriff. I had given them my cell number when making the 911 call, and fortunately my phone had contact on the part of the parking area where we were then located. He talked to Kathy for about 15 minutes, getting all kinds of info, much of it seeming beside the point—like her home address in Utah, for instance. But he did get her brother’s cell number. That part was important!
We continued waiting, figuring he would be there, at the most, in 30 minutes. Kathy and her brother, Greg, had apparently gotten separated in the canyon. She decided to come back and wait for him at the car, but he must have kept going deeper into the canyon, looking for her.
And we waited. Kathy thanked me profusely for staying with her. I told her, “This gives me the opportunity to do what all human souls love more than anything else—to help someone who is in trouble.” “By soul,” I said, “I mean our instincts, our emotions, our spirits.”
“I understand,” she assured me.
“So you see,” I continued, “you are doing me the favor. If you are really concerned, however, you can more than pay me back by reading Take Us Home, Girls!”—a short book I had recently written which I was planning to give her, anyway. She seemed pleased with that, and we waited.”
With time to kill, and as a break from the immediate problem, we talked about things, specifically relationships. I asked her if she was married.
“Yes,” she replied. “We have three grown children.”
“How is your relationship?”
After a few moments of thought, Kathy replied, “I would say that our relationship is interesting. Sometimes, I feel my life’s lesson is to learn what I can from that relationship.” She paused. “We get along fine. There are no serious disagreements. I haven’t been abused. And I have never abused him, either.“
“That last part is nice to hear,” I said.
“But there are problems.”
I asked her how she would characterize one of the problems, then added, “By the way, you don’t owe me an answer to that question.”
“That’s OK. I want to answer,” she said. Then, after about thirty seconds of silence, during which I figured she had decided not to answer after all, she hesitantly replied. “It’s kind of hard to describe… Derik doesn’t feel… He doesn’t feel enough to know himself.”
Kathy didn’t know it, but her statement hit right at what I see as the core issue for modern men: In this world there is no place where men can be themselves, thus no way to know themselves. It’s rare for me to hear someone else so directly voice that concern.
I replied, “I’ll tell you a situation where I believe Derik would know himself. Suppose he were serving a mission in Afghanistan, fighting with soldiers in an isolated unit. Men bond, in such situations, both to survive and to assure the fulfillment of the mission. I’ll bet he would know himself, in that situation.”
Kathy and I were standing against the front of the motorcycle, she on the right side of the headlight, I on the left. In the dim light reflecting from the area lit up by the high beam, she remained silent, looking straight down at the ground with her head tilted slightly to the left, while fingering a few strands of her hair. Finally, she said, “Yes, he would know himself.”
“The problem, as I see it,” I told her, “is that the modern world offers men no natural place to feel, no place to really know themselves. It’s not your fault that Derik doesn’t feel. For men to know who they are, they need to be part of a brotherhood serving a mission that’s more important to each man than his own life.
“You see, that’s our natural state! That’s what it means to function as a social species. Before human relationships were institutionalized, that’s how we lived—as an organic amalgam of brotherhoods and sisterhoods.” Kathy seemed interested in what I was saying, which emboldened me to continue.
“Sisterhoods. Our female ancestors bonded together because they had a natural need for one another’s support in creating a secure home in which to bear and raise their children. And those female bonds formed the core of the organic family relationships that humans took for granted, at that time. The brotherhood’s mission was to help provide for and protect the sisterhood. By virtue of who men, by instinct, really are, they value the lives of the women and children they are protecting more than their own. This is what makes them so effective at serving their natural protective role.”
“But, in the modern world, family relationships are based on institutionally imposed obligations, not on people’s natural need for one another. There are no sisterhoods, thus no need for brotherhoods to support and protect them. Instead of men knowing themselves as people who, at a moment’s notice, are ready to place their lives on the line, on behalf of the women and children they love, their identity is largely based on their success at serving self, through the accumulation of wealth and privilege.”
I grimaced and shook my head. “What a comedown for a sense of purpose! Some men, like your husband, accommodate the situation by not feeling much of anything, in their effort to ignore the pain of it all. Other men are so focused on trying to serve self in their relentless pursuit of wealth and privilege—well, in effect, they are just distracted from the pain.
“The lack of sisterhoods, and supporting brotherhoods, costs both men and women dearly, in terms of intimacy. But, regarding identity, that’s not nearly the problem for women that it is for men. Women have many ways to feel, and to know themselves, even without sisterhoods. Women know who they are through their natural devotion to their children, their home, other family members, and their girlfriends.”
About then, realizing how far we had strayed from the issue at hand, I apologized.
“That’s OK,” Kathy said. “That was interesting, and I needed something to get my mind elsewhere, for awhile, anyhow.”
It was now 45 minutes to an hour since she had talked to the Sheriff. Where could he be?! Her brother was wearing only shorts and a sweatshirt. And it was cold in the canyon—in the 40’s. I tried calling the Sheriff a couple of times, but to no avail. Finally, I called 911, again. It turns out they had been working the case. They had fixed his coordinates by pinging his phone, and had even talked to him. The sheriff, they said, would be at our location, shortly.
Soon, the Sheriff did arrive, armed with flashlights to light the way up the canyon, to find Greg. Kathy and I gave each other a tight goodbye squeeze, at which point the Sheriff asked, “Do you two know each other?”
“We do now,” I replied.
By then, it was around nine. Having had enough exposure, for one evening, and with the universal joint of my bike on its last leg, I decided to stay in Sedona, that night. After a good dinner and a night’s rest, I nursed the bike on home, the next morning.
Copyright © 2015 by Chet Shupe
