Day Trips to Yosemite

Staying true to our on-going relationships, two groups of four Boys and Girls Club youth returned to continue enjoying the adventure of being in Yosemite. One group which came first in March for the snow storm decided to wait until the snow melted before braving the elements, and they got to play in Tenaya Creek under Half Dome.

The other group that first came in February enjoyed a day under El Capitan at the river on a sandy beach. For both groups, even after just their second trip, it confirms for me the importance of continued relationships that connect us. We learn from each other every time we get together.

The probation guys also returned twice. Their first trip was spent observing the river along the Lower Merced Canyon.

From there, we went to the top from the backside of a 1,000 foot cliff to consider the perspective of looking back down on the river.

Interestingly enough, we ran across the Yosemite Search and Rescue team taking time to practice their rescue techniques, including Jesse McGahey the climbing ranger. Jesse has been part of our collaboration. He has helped Sacred Rok to join in with the Park Service and the Yosemite Conservancy on some trail work to fix some of the approaches up to popular climbs where erosion has become a problem due to years of a lack of care-taking.

So the following trip found us working in the Cascade Falls area – we put in a few good hours reshaping the trail building steps with rock work so that it would better endure the traffic – the guys worked hard.

It was a great exercise in working together, and that felt good. To top it off, we celebrated by then going down by the river to have a picnic that Katie prepared.

We were also fortunate to have a Mariposa middle school group of five come up.

This came about after being invited to give a presentation back in February where I showed “Return to Balance” and shared stories of my life spent climbing and its symbolic lessons. Their teacher Karen and I talked about arranging a trip to Yosemite in May or June. I didn’t hear from her for a long time and was wondering what might have happened. After months she emailed me saying she was sorry to say the middle school would be closing due to budget cuts and they wouldn’t be able to do the trip. I called her and told her that it wasn’t necessary that the school be involved in getting the youth up here and that we would be happy to fund the trip. She was so happy and thanked us for staying positive. It made me feel good that we at Sacred Rok could say yes.

I must thank everyone for the help you have given Sacred Rok and it’s against-all-odds approach where we feel it’s time to remember what it means to be human and work together for the future of all life. When we say Education Nature’s Way, we really mean it — bringing the young people to one of the most beautiful places on Earth is about inspiration, education, healing and the search for the wisdom of nature and our place as human beings. Nothing lives without water. Yosemite in spring and throughout the year is a display of the beauty and Sacred reality of water.

We feel that ongoing relationships with our young people will help us all to develop together, making better sense of the reality of Nature and to become truly educated into responsible, compassionate, caring human beings! From our experiences it’s interesting to imagine where these ongoing relationships will lead us as we creatively engage in conversations and generate possibilities such as connecting youth to work in the park. I feel that at Sacred Rok, one of our strengths is to grow organically, and so we appreciate hearing from you about what you think, and how you might participate.

Ron

Note: The trips with the Boys and Girls Club are funded by a grant from The North Face Explorer Fund and United Way of Merced County. The probation trips are funded through a flexible grant from Clif Bar. The Mariposa middle school trip was funded by your generosity. Thanks for the support!

Spring

Spring has arrived and with it Sacred Rok is excited to be starting off another year of continued relationships with young people in Yosemite.

Clif Bar

The start of the year found me at the Emeryville headquarters of Clif Bar, participating in their weekly company meeting as the invited guest of their founder, Gary Erickson. Gary and I share a friendship that goes back many years, and interestingly enough, we were born on the same year and day. We are connected in our appreciation for the Sierras and nature in general.

While I went about my life as a climber, Gary has shaped his company on sustainability and respect for nature, so in a way, it was natural for him to be excited about Sacred Rok, and he invited me down to the company to talk about our mission, and to celebrate our collaboration on the new packaging for the Builder Bar, in which he used an image of me.

My visit to Clif Bar showed a good example of what the world of business can be when there is respect for the natural environment, which provided for the business in the first place. The company environment is amazingly happy, a dog-friendly, open space created from natural and recycled materials with exercise and relaxation areas, a child care center, and a great kitchen. Being there I saw what they mean about building a business and brand through their values of commitment to the planet, the community, and their people. Gary has inspired me to consider what is possible with a good collaboration of people who have diverse talents.

I got to continue my conversation with Gary as we drove together north of the Bay Area to St. Helena – Velo Vino – which he and his wife Kit Crawford started. There in the company of a nice gathering, Gary and I did a presentation about our shared adventures and I got to talk about my life as a climber and, again, about Sacred Rok. It was an exciting evening to feel the response and support of many people who could relate to our story. After these two events, Gary and I were talking and we agreed that our theme of the past few days was “What does it mean to be human?” What is the true meaning of education? That’s our commitment, to understand the true meaning of education. Everybody agrees we have to have a good education, but our definition of education needs to be challenged — otherwise why are we polluting the air and water and blowing each other up?

Trips with Young People

Thanks to support from Clif Bar and our other partners including United Way of Merced and North Face Explorer Fund and many individual donors, we have continued to have a steady stream of trips, working with the Boys and Girls Club of Merced and the probation department. In one of the recent trips, four young people came up for the day on the YARTS bus, and Katie and I took them to Cascade Falls for lunch, where one of the boys announced that he could spend all day right there. Just “being” in Yosemite can be as simple as learning to relax and be inspired by the nature and the beauty, stimulating the senses and remembering how to be human.

Boys & Girls Club Februray Trip

Boys & Girls Club March Trip

After Cascade, we stopped at Fern Spring where we looked at the water coming up through the ground and filled up our bottles. How interesting it is to observe how naturally the young people are drawn to the water… I stood marveling at how profoundly powerful the expression of this spring is when we stop to acknowledge the reality of it — this water has been held under the earth and surfaces at the entrance to Yosemite Valley. We stop here not just for the water but to reference the sacred nature of the place. In acknowledging this spring it helps to orient our group to why we are here and what we are doing. From this point it helps harmonize and synchronize ourselves to the surroundings – the river, the trees, the rocks, the breeze, the birds — all of this is the curriculum, the greatest teacher is nature, and my job is to be the facilitator. When the young people reach down to the water and put it on their own face, a connection is being made. And when we recognize the value of water we come to respect and acknowledge it as our life source.

One of the probation youth on another trip up the Yosemite Falls trail – possible in this dry winter — wanted to know how far the trails go, and when I told him that these trails go for hundreds of miles in different directions, he said, “I just wanna keep going.” The way he said that was a really strong expression of his sincerity and the inspiration that he was getting as we went up the trail , and the way that he said it made me feel that we are on the right track.

The Moon and the Sun at the Cookie

Cookie Cliff

As I was preparing to climb up the cliff the other day, I noticed the moon rising over the mountain to the east, but I was still feeling the sun setting in the west. After climbing about 200 feet, I came to a foot-wide ledge, where I turned to face the canyon. I’ve been coming to this cliff – the Cookie – at the entrance of Yosemite since age 15. I know this place well, and call it my sacred space.

This moment was powerful. I felt as though I stood suspended between the moon and the sun on this one-foot ledge on earth, overlooking the flowing river with its own history. This moment signaled to me what I mean by learning, and summarized what the great teacher – the earth – has taught me over time by the feeling of the wind and the sound of the river – it’s all based on learning to develop relationships through appreciation.

Cookie Cliff

I guess not every climber would think these thoughts at the Cookie. Later on at the base of the climb, I mentioned my experience of being between the sun and the moon to two climbers, who appreciated my sentiments but remained mostly excited about their climbing (I can understand that). My thoughts that day go back to my early exposure to the mountains when, as a 14-year old, I was given the opportunity to have three solo days in the midst of a 20-day backpacking trip, giving me the time to observe the stars and the flickering light on the boulders from the campfire. My interpretation of the experience at the Cookie has a very long history, and one that probably goes back to the very fabric of being human. Being in Yosemite as a climber and year-long resident for most of the past 36 years has inspired me to try to understand what it means to be human, and what it means to relate to the privilege of being in this beautiful place. I am still moved, even after all these years, with this sense of wonder.

• Ron Kauk

Message from the Board Chair

Wassup Sacred Rokers!

In reflecting on how far we have come since Kenji and my conversation with Ron at Inspiration Point in November of 2008, I am gratified for the generous support of so many – individuals, foundations, corporations — in helping Ron to realize his vision of education nature’s way. Thanks to your support, we have matured as an organization, and have been able to share the wonders and healing power of Yosemite with young people through day trips and camping trips. We have built ongoing relationships with many of these young people through our ability to bring them on multiple trips, and they continue to keep in touch with Ron. Please check out our annual report on our web site if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet!

• Nancy Goodban

Season of Water

This has been the season of water.  I can’t ever remember seeing so much water flowing.  And it’s remarkable when you have the time to be in nature and consider what it’s saying.  What does it mean to be human, being born into this world and continuing to age and to grow.

Observing these realities continues to promote my own education – marveling and humbled by the flow of nature, living in the Tuolumne campground all summer long, constantly exposed to these elements – wind, cloud, rain, early morning fires, and observing sunrises with the Tuolumne river flowing just a few hundred feet away.  I’ve been sleeping on the ground in the same spot for the fifth summer in a row.  The trees and the boulder feel closer, like family members next to you, and the respect that I have for them has grown because of this fact of sharing this space, which continues to bring me into the context of sense of place and the indigenous reality that all of us carry in our DNA.

From all these unique spots high in the Sierra the Tuolumne River flows into Hetch Hetchy in one direction, or down the Merced River in the other.  As the water flows down and gets trapped in dams and diverted into canals and aqueducts, its message also gets clogged and lost.  We don’t know what rocks it touched, what canyons it shaped, what waterfalls it created. We are connected by this history, but we have lost its meaning.

Life for me in Yosemite is about migrating with the earth’s rotation.  This summer felt so short because the campground in Tuolumne opened late due to the snow.  Already, the earth’s movement has asserted itself, and the changing season has taken me back down to 2,000 feet in El Portal, where I’m observing the Merced River that continues to drain out the water from the higher country.  I find myself sitting with the fire already going with winter wanting to show up early.

It’s fun to reflect on the past summer and the 12 foster youth that came up to the Tuolumne camp.  It felt really great to be with them, a lot of laughter and visiting and exploring Tuolumne Meadows, and lots of good food prepared by Katie.  It inspires us to come up with a language of what we mean by education nature’s way, and the three years we have been involved with this. In the third year of bringing Merced youths to Yosemite through Sacred Rok, one reflection is this: “What’s wrong with us humans?  Can’t we listen to what these young people are saying?”  My connections with them have been an incredible inspiration to me.

What the Sacred Rok youth are telling me is the power of our “relations.”  I say this in the indigenous sense of the Miwok elders who use the term relations: every act has a relation to the land and to the elements of water, sun, wind, animals, plant life and kin.  At Sacred Rok, our key is to restore the balance and harmony of the relations that have been knocked way off base by our society with its metrics of productivity and accountability and class structure.  It’s almost like the dams that block the flow of the water down the rivers.  We are trying to facilitate the kids coming back up the stream to connect to the life source. Society tries to train the kids to understand, master and manage nature, rather than to educate them to honor and learn from our relations.

Every time a Sacred Rok youth steps into a river, touches a rock, appreciates a sunset, and honors the earth, we are learning from their actions and marveling at the power of that ceremony.  The instructions are written in nature, and we are becoming more literate at deciphering what is written with every passing experience.

In all of this, Yosemite occupies a special place.  Our relations with nature are influenced by the specific spots where the experiences occur, not just at any old spot.  For me as a climber, I consider it a privilege to have had so much time in Yosemite, which influenced the way in which my relations have developed over a very long time.

Our goal is to have continuous relations for the youth from the Merced area to develop, as well, over a very long time.  I came to Yosemite at age 14, and now it’s been 40 years, and I’m still learning how to honor the wisdom of nature.  The goal of Sacred Rok is to continue to learn, connecting Yosemite to Merced, and providing a long-term base for the students with whom relations have developed.  We hope to be a life-long base from which life foundations are formed.

Conversations with David Tyack

David Tyack is a professor at Stanford who thinks and writes about the history of education. He has written lots of books about what public schools mean to a democratic society, the values that they convey, the place of citizenship.

David has mentored hundreds of students who have gone on to important jobs in education. For someone who’s done so much in life, he’s incredibly humble and grounded in the reality of humanity and the earth.

David is now retired from his position at Stanford, but he has continued in his role as a teacher. He came to visit last month, accompanied by Kenji who wanted to bring back some early memories and to connect him with Sacred Rok.

David said that he first came to Yosemite in 1948. Back then, David was a student in Massachusetts, and he hitchhiked out here on the summer between high school and college to work on Blister Rust Control for the Civilian Conservation Corps with the Forest Service. He worked off of Tioga Pass Road, which at that time was just a small dirt road. I marveled in meeting someone who’s been here so long ago, and appreciated connecting to his wisdom. The west drew him. Although raised and educated in the east, David hitchhiked back to California the following year to pick fruit in Loomis, and then he taught in Oregon and at Stanford. He loves the mountains, adventure, and the experience of being with people.

Kenji had planned on coming up with David to enjoy the rushing water, but they hadn’t planned on a rainy weekend in early June. They came anyway, and we were rewarded by a hike around the valley floor in constant soaking rain. Although David is not the kind of hiker he used to be, he’s still strong and has the enthusiasm of a kid plus the wisdom of his years. The valley was crowded despite the rain, but we still found a quiet spot that was sheltered from the rain under the trees. We sat and enjoyed some snacks and a good conversation.

We talked about trees, and about what nature has meant to his life – the experiences, the metaphors, and the friendships. After all these years of teaching at Stanford and the academic wisdom he has shared, he said that what so many students remember most about him were the hikes and the bike rides that they took. What I most appreciated was the intertwining of our two very different lives – mine as a lifelong climber and student of the ways of nature, and David’s as a respected scholar and also a student of nature.

What David says about education is so profound and almost serves as a motto for Sacred Rok. In discussing a book “Tinkering toward Utopia” that he wrote with his good friend Larry Cuban, he said: “For goodness sake, let's stop talking about the financial value of education and talk instead about human capital, about schools helping to create people who are fully developed as human beings and as democratic citizens.”

The next day, as we were talking about our hike and our conversation about trees, he said he’d like to share poem that he wrote several years back about trees, and about their strength and their fragility. And he said we could share it in our newsletter.

Girdling

Bristlecone pines cling to chalk cliffs expecting

fire to scatter seed over charred ground.

Redwoods shoot their green sprouts up dark canyons

toward the filtered sun.

Trees have gifts for living.

But girdle the tree and cut the cambium’s ever-circling flow,

and dead it will stand, erect awhile in central core, but

browning from decay.

This is how we feel about kids, with a gift for living, yet much of society is like girdling, suffocating the natural flow. David did share that he wrote this not with kids in mind, but about human relationships and love as well. David is not afraid to talk about love, its power and fragility, and about healing from suffering.

Later in the month, I participated in the annual spiritual camp in our Yosemite native circles, which always brings me back to the basics. The experience of people working together in our camp to honor and to connect to our life source and the powers of healing in the sweat lodge every morning and evening helped me consider our participation and responsibility as caretakers of the land. The songs that we sing are about nature and its ceremony. This went on from Monday to Friday, with the last day being the bear dance ceremony that brings people from all over the country.

The park rangers kept coming to give us daily reports of the potential of flooding in Yosemite Valley, which seemed like the outside world from the perspective of our camp. Curiously enough, just outside was also the world of Camp 4, where so many years of my youth as a climber were spent, as I’ve shared with you about Midnight Lightning and other climbs. Camp 4 was my high school, and now next door I’m in my university, continuing to learn to be human, now with indigenous perspective and knowledge about the reality of nature as our life source.

I so appreciated simply being under the trees at the spiritual camp, participating with the native elders and acknowledging that this is where people have been taking in the beauty for thousands of years, cultivating the richness of the wisdom and balance of knowing how to work together as a community.

It was special, too, having the conversations with David, the elder of his community of scholars with an understanding of the meaning of education, surrounded by these same trees. As these two experiences came together for me this past month, I could especially feel the force of rushing water that is the pulse of the earth. Kenji and I continue to reflect on what it means for Sacred Rok to bring kids from Merced, and how we can connect them to this community of nature and its power for healing.

Thanks to everyone for their donations and contributions, at this time it is what is keeping us going. Let's keep working together!