Lost Worlds Read Free

see the real country—you’re actually there, in this canyon, this gorge…you get to keep all the memories—the dangers, the feeling of being on the edge of things, being in these beautiful places with nature at its best, its wildest…and you’re part of it all.
    “It leaves its mark. You’re stronger, you feel more confident…you feel you can face things better than before…it’s something you can always draw on…nothing has got anywhere close to what I had to face on those rivers…you feel so …alive !”
     
     
    MARIANNE: “I’m a perfectionist. I want things done right, I want results, I want things perfect…but when you’re on the river, it’s not perfect, you have to let go, stop controlling…. I suppose you learn to have faith that somehow you’ll be okay.
    “I remember one time on the Moose. We were there for the snow runoff—real rough—beautiful—and I fell in on the worst rapids, boat flipped…what scared me most was that it was so cold that I couldn’t catch my breath. Then I got pinned under the boat—my head was banging on the keel…. I was trying to breathe in the air pocket…. I was panicking.
    “Then it was slow-motion. Everything changed. After that first panic I just gave in to it…you’ve just got to go with it, don’t fight it…. Sometimes it seems like an eternity, so much longer when you’re pinned underneath…but somehow there’s that peace…you feel really free, just letting go like that…. The shock only hits you when you’re out of the rapids and you remember how cold you are. It doesn’t take long before you hit the shore, but it can seem like forever on that last stretch.
    “But you survived—that’s the big thing. You give it your best shot and then you learn to have faith…. That sense of letting go is the best feeling you’ll ever have…you know you’re part of something so much greater than yourself and that you’ll be okay no matter what happens…. And you carry that feeling with you…. You become a true optimist.”
     
     
    Which is a key fourth confession: I too am an incorrigible optimist, not just in terms of my own personal well-being, but also in the belief that our fragile planet will survive intact despite the enormous threats of overpopulation, disease, pollution, the destruction of the wild environment, and the mindless eradication of natural resources.
    Optimists are not very fashionable species today in the aftermath of the 1992 Rio conference and the gory, pessimistic gloating of “Greens” in all their myriad forms and frenetic guises. Of course I’ve seen the destruction—driven by roaring greed and the lure of quick wealth. I’ve walked through the burned-out rain forests of Panama; I’ve seen the eroded slopes of southern Tasmania’s mountains after the clear-cutting of ancient forests; I’ve seen pollution in all its varied forms in India, Latin America, Africa, the South Pacific islands, the Mediterranean, and the United States. I know those threats are real and must be remedied. Regrettably the remedies are rarely simple. The issuing of eloquent eulogies, strict dictates, and hand-wringing homilies will do little to stem the tidal waves of human hopes, material expectations, and Western-inspired concepts of “progress.” My years as a city planner taught me the dangers of fast, slick solutions based on a naive obliviousness to the enormously complex and entangled forces that create, shape, and define the destiny of cities. Invariably, too little time is given to understanding the cause-and-effect whiplash effects of ill-shaped “solutions” to urban ills. In the United States in particular we seem to have a habit of pouring great caldrons of cash into the sinkholes of problems without ever seriously examining the endlessly porous nature of the bedrock. And there we stand on the edge—peering into the maw—asking ourselves, “Where did it all go? What happened to all our solutions?”
    I remember my time in