2 in a Row

Joe Klementovich
October 31, 2024

A Deeper Dive

Thanks to everyone who signed up for this little experiment. I appreciate your willingness to swim in the deep end and explore a bit further than the algorithm serves up.

Please pass this along to anyone who might find it entertaining, or maybe even useful.

Dusting One Off - Into the Archive

Lake Meade 2004

If you’ve never cruised around on a house boat, start planning, because it’s a blast. An RV on a lake, not much traffic, tons of shoreline to explore. This is from a trip back in 2004 to Lake Meade before it got so low, it was remarkable, it was the ultimate way to explore a lake and desert at the same time. Easy access to hikes and the desert world with no long dusty roads to drive on. The lake looks a lot lower today, maybe 80 feet lower.

Worth your Time

A Walk In the Park - Keeping with the Desert theme I just finished listening to (reading) the wonderful book by Kevin Fedarko. A worthwhile read that covers a lot of ground from Indigenous cultures past and present to aviation traffic. It absolutely doesn’t skimp on pain, suffering and adventure along the way.

Adventure of the week

This past Spring I spent some time down around the Maryland West Virginia border with Tom Martin at Heavy Water Anglers. We did a 26 mile float on the North Branch of the Potomac River on a Boulder Boatworks high-sided driftboat, and it was awesome. Since then we’ve been working to get on the water again, but a nasty 30-year drought has been making it tough to get back down there. So we shifted gears and connected with a few other folks and floated the Delaware River, East and West Branches. Pulling in Simms and Sawyer Oars we fished and created some great images over 3 days last week. Pretty perfect weather and a great crew including Dan Z, Cags, and Morgan made it all come together.

Beautiful late Autumn foliage along the river. Sadly the bank, all in orange is infested with Knotweed, an invasive plant quickly taking over our riverbanks up and down the East Coast and beyond.

A Bit of Creative Juice

This is a lovely poem by Kahlil Gibran:

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river cannot go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that's where the river will know
it's not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.