His nickname is 'The Hook", and we met in our kayaks in an eddy of the Rio Grande, over 10 years ago.  I had been talking to him for about 10 minutes before I realized he was missing his left forearm and had been paddling his kayak using a prosthesis designed over 80 years ago, a medical invention that was mothered by necessity in the aftermath of WWI.  He'll happily tell you the story of how he lost his arm at age nine when he reached into an uncovered electrical transformer.  A playmate of his watched as he was blown out of his sneakers by 7200 volts of electricity, launching him 30 feet through the air.  The treating physicians hypothesized that the impact of landing on his chest most likely restarted his heart.  He has met and corresponded with many victims of electrical shock, but has yet to meet one who has survived one of that magnitude.  He was lucky.  His mom, a RN, rushed him to medical care, where he spent 6 days in a coma, and another week watching his forearm wither and die in the bed beside him prior to its' amputation.  He recounts how even at that young age, he felt like the gods had placed a task before him, and he thought, "Yeah!  I can do this!".   He grokked his handicap as his mantra and mission.  It was a defining moment, and in a sense provided him at least one raison d'être.  If you ask him, he will tell you he has two birthdays: on his first, he well and truly entered this world, and on his second he lost his left forearm and embarked on a new journey separate from the path he previously traveled.  His sense of humor would probably compel him to describe it as a journey he undertook single-handed. 


Hook spent his youth following a military communications contractor father to remote outposts, and came of age as the only white kid in an Athabaskan village on the Alaskan coast.  Following his amputation, the physical therapists suggested 'bowling' as a physical sport he would be physically capable of pursuing.  Smiling with a spirit not easily relegated to the bowling alleys of America he bought a whitewater kayak, and began taking it to the local pool in order to learn an 'eskimo roll'.  He later met someone who actually knew how to kayak, and the next morning he found himself on his first whitewater run down a freezing, class 3, Alaskan river.  It was another defining moment in his life.  He's been one of my favorite kayaking buddies for some time now, and I trust his abilities on a river more than the vast majority of two handed paddlers.  He's an extraordinary outdoorsman, an expert skier, as well as a certified level 2 ski instructor in which he specializes in the teaching of children with physical handicaps.  He's worked with the special Olympics as a  coach.  He competes in outdoor wilderness footraces, and sometimes guides back country wilderness raft and overland trips in Alaska.  He has kayaked the 200+ miles of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.  This is one bad-ass, one-armed vato, and if you don't believe it, he'll glibly inform you, "I've got a mean left hook".

During the past week as we traveled together in search of Rocky Mountain snow melt with our kayaks, he told the story of his teenage participation as the sole Anglo in a pole dance ceremony commemorating the life, (and death), of one of his Athabaskan friends from his village in Alaska.  The villagers danced around a pole, festooned with the furs of every native mammalian species...  For days...  In the end the furs were given away to the dancers as a remembrance of their departed friend, a young man who passed out drunk, mere feet from his home, where the unforgiving Alaskan climate of late winter claimed him.  Death is never far away in the extreme climate in which he grew up, and he wears the gestalt of an old soul like a favorite and comfortable jacket.  He is a man who's seen a lot of life, including death, and doesn't look away from either.   

After completing an undergraduate degree in biology, he spent seasons in the arctic doing field studies for the government and various academicians.  Hook now has a masters in education and teaches 'special needs' kids.  He's a world traveler who counts his month spent exploring pre-Soviet invasion Afghanistan as one of the more remarkable cultures he's visited.  Asked if he knows how many countries he's visited, he pauses and tells me he stopped counting when the number reached the mid 50s.  Growing up in a native American culture probably helped infuse in him an ability and desire to open himself to other cultures without losing sight of himself.  Recently he spent a year in Kuwait teaching handicapped Kuwaiti kids.  He laughed as he told me of his homecoming to the US following that year spent in a desert heat and culture that did not fully captivate his imagination.  Arriving at the US Customs desk, the 20 something agent looked at his passport, noted the year he had spent in the Mid-East, and inquired in a matter of fact way, "Don't you love your country?".  Hook's jaw dropped, probably conveying the facial equivalent of 'nonplussed'.  What can you say in those circumstances?  Where do you begin?  If the agent interviewing him had any clue as to how happy he was to be back in the US, Hook felt incapable of relaying the complexity of his emotions.  Disregarding the ignorance belied by the question, how do you convey the mixed emotions one feels upon returning from an immersion in a foreign culture to someone who likely hasn't ventured more than a state or two in any direction from his birthplace and seemingly has no interest in doing so.   

A mutual friend of ours described our friend, an adept at describing natural, as well as cultural phenomena as an "encyclopedia on acid".  I would add that he invariably keeps a more positive attitude than the Encyclopedia Brittanica, as well as most humans I've  chanced to meet.  One of our campfire conversations this past week centered on transformation, something Hook sees as the common thread binding most world religions.  The ability to shift paradigms seamlessly.  To move to the next level.  He's talking about consciousness.  And how we need to help it along all over the world right now.  And then, he waxes on, as to how that message of transformation seems to be perennially subsumed by the organized part of religion, which often turns church imperatives to the accumulation of wealth and power.  "Filthy Lucre" as he described it that night.  He's good company in general and around a campfire especially.   

He believes that the electrical gods have an affinity for certain people, and he knows he is one of their favored few.  When those gods are nearby, his usual easy going nature can be disrupted. When an electrical storm appears on the horizon as we're paddling our boats downstream, we usually make for cover with Hook leading the way.  With a metal prosthesis as his own personal lightning rod, I can't fault him.  I'm tempted to describe him as an icon of what a handicapped person can overcome, and how such a person can transform his or her life, but I think I'd be selling this dude short.  I've known plenty of physically intact people, myself among them who struggle to keep pace with him both physically and mentally.  You have no doubt when you meet him and he tells the story of the electrical transformer, that he was indeed transformed that day, and that life is now coursing through him at 7200 volts.  He strikes me as a master at 'transformation' and his handicap is just the beginning of his story.  There is a breadth, depth, intelligence, and good humor to his humanity and his life that awaits all those who are fortunate enough to meet him, and even more so, those of us lucky enough to call him our friend.