MISSION: with billy harris: Mission: Fear understanding and pics from the top of the world.

Mission: Fear understanding and pics from the top of the world.

Carly on top of the volcano.

I can’t help it but I am a teacher. I have been teaching kayaking for the last 15 years and I love it. Like most things in kayaking, not all, it makes little money but provides a lifestyle only some people can boast living. Fear has always been present in teaching, from people learning, to my place in the sport, fear is alive and well. Controlling that fear, containing the thought process of the flight or fight I have found, is the essential. I have often found that if I can control the quality of my communication. The quality of my self-communication rather, I can control the complex release of chemicals that produce the flight or fight response within my body.

My friend, a guy I have paddled with for a long time, has a great roll. He can roll for the most part every time. He has a back up roll I call the Pallada, or extended roll that he uses as his back up incase the first roll fails him. The problem is his self talk before the trip, during the rapid and after. He finds demons where there are none. He experiences an entirely different river trip than others without the same fear.

My struggle has been how to control that. Fear itself is the biggest explosion of chemicals your body can produce, it’s not something that you can just teach away or explain to yourself, “slow down” or relax too. In my teaching time I have found, that the emotions that lead to the explosion of chemicals. Such as fear, anxiety, alarm, are within your conscious thoughts and thus can be controlled to some extent. The Delivery of this to a student unfortunately doesn’t have the same delivery for every person. My friend for instance, I climb up on him about seeing monsters at every bend in the river, and he’s so transfixed by them that he does indeed find them. I would like to say to everyone I have a way to solve that. I really don’t. I want his experience to be much like mine but I can’t make that happen. Each one of us has to make the decision, each one of us has to say, “there are not monsters around the next bend”. I can do this, I am in control of my own fear. Easy to say as a teacher standing where I am, harder to accomplish when you are alone with your thoughts and a wild river in front of you.

I took a crazy hike yesterday, some time away from the river. Here are the photos.