The Mackenzie river
Solo to the Arctic- A Journey from Paraplegia!
It is now available $14.95 plus s&h
Soon !
Another Adventure
40 Cripples down the Mackenzie River. (see the description)
My new home near Inuvik - What a view !
Learning
to Kayak
The Journey:
Philosophy: On being crippled and going Solo
Our Lady of Good Hope Church: Fort Good Hope
Coming & Going: The Mackenzie Hwy, the Dempster Hwy
Benefactors & Links and Friends:
Family Pictures:
The Burro! Bringing in firewood, before the accident! 1993
My wife Linda and daughter Paige
Northern BC - 1980
Dedication and the Original Story:
With the passing of Chris Reeve on Sunday Oct. 10, 2004 I want to dedicate this voyage to him. For were it not for his inspiration I never could have made it. Upon being released from the rehab center on Oct 10, 1999 I returned to our new home in a wheel chair - paralyzed now only from the waist down. That was an improvement. While I lay in bed in a dark bedroom feeling sorry for myself and depressed my wife gave me an audio tape entitled "Still Me" by Chris Reeve.
I listened to it over and over again. At some point in that darkened bedroom I decided I wasn't going to let my accident beat me down. I too decided I would walk again. Like Chris, I was "Still Me"
History
At 15 years old I was the youngest canoe guide in Algonquin Park Ontario. At 24 I found the park too crowded in the summer and switched over to dog sledding. The city then became too crowded for the dogs and I. It all became a question of whether my wife and I should move someplace where we could use the team - or sell them.
We moved - to Ft Ware British Columbia. Ft Ware is a small native Sekani village a short way from the Yukon border, 350 miles by bush plane from the nearest town in BC. It was glorious dog sledding and canoeing. I also bought two horses for prospecting and packing. Life was perfect. A few years later we had to leave and move back to “town”. This time it was Las Vegas, NV. We spent 15 years there and I became a horse packer - spending weekends in the Desert Southwest and summers in Montana in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
Finally in 1999 we found our dream - a 400 acre ranch in southern New Mexico. We bought Texas long horn cattle and had our horses. I couldn’t imagine life being much better than that at 52 years old.
The Story
I remember the sound. It was just a small crack – like a branch broken in the winter back east.
I had been dumped from my burro - again! My wife Linda was reading her book and we were getting ready to go for a horse back ride on our new ranch in New Mexico.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Not this time.”
It must have been hours. But then I heard it, the slow thwack, thwack, thwack of the helicopter. Suddenly there was noise, lights, voices and commotion.
I awoke from what seemed like a long sleep. As they started the IV I looked up at the face of the paramedic, haloed by the spotlight from the chopper.
“Hang in there sir you’re going to be alright”. I had no feeling in my body below my neck.
I had to be flown by helicopter to the University Medical Hospital in Albuquerque. The 20 mile dirt road that led to our ranch was too rough for an ambulance to get me to a hospital, owing to the nature of the injury - a cervical cord contusion and ligamentous injury at C2- 3, C5,C6 & 7. There was also head trauma.
The diagnosis was paraplegia!
Well, now I can walk a bit and even if I do fall down –
which happens a lot, I can get up again, and up again, and up
again...
Probably the worst aspect of an injury like mine is depression. It’s the suffering of all the physical pain and then also suddenly not being able to do the things that you’ve done all your life and the dreams you’ve worked for. They all just seem to have gone away in a flash. They really don’t have to. It is loosing these dreams that is the real disability and that can be overcome.
What I learned and want to pass on to others is that you cannot give up – ever –on anything you want to do. Things I used to take for granted like walking, driving, even going to the bathroom are new challenges. Being crippled you do not necessarily have to give up the things you love. You just need a different prospective. You have to overcome!
Through strength and perseverance we can gain back the things we dreamed of. We just need to try harder, work harder and dream harder. Disability is a thing that happens to you not something that happens because of you. It can be overcome! I am part of a group that deals with this stuff and my point to a lot of them is that you can’t be lazy about your disability. If you want to be rich you work harder, if you want to be well you work harder and if you want get your dreams back you dream harder.
I am not giving up! I am going down the Mackenzie River. I am going solo – 1000 miles by canoe. I might be the first spinal cord injury kind of guy to do this but that’s not the reason. I won’t stop living because of an injury and I want others with disabilities to learn that. You just can’t give up!
I will take digital pictures along the way to upload them to the web site for others to see the beauty of Canada’s longest river. I will travel from Fort Simpson at the beginning of the Mackenzie to Inuvik a small community in the Mackenzie Delta - close to the Beaufort Sea in the Artic Ocean
Sponsor
for Mackenzie- 2005
- A trip to locate, mark and document campsites that stand a
chance of being accessible to the disabled.
In June 2005 I will recreate last summer's trip, but take much more time on the river locating suitable places for people in wheel chairs to stop along the river. I will take GPS coordinates and digital pictures and then hopefully publish a guide book so that others can enjoy that rare and unique river called the Mackenzie.
Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. 'Nothing' is the worst thing that can happen to us!
richard bach
