Chris Stevens
Episode 3.20, "The
Final Frontier"
I made you, paddle
person, because I had a dream: A little
wooden man smiled at me. He sat in a
canoe on a snowbank on this hill. Now
the dream has begun to come true. The
sun spirit will look down at the snow
and the snow will melt and the water
will run downhill to the river, on down
to the Great Lakes, down again, on at
last to the Sea. You will go on with the
water and you will have adventures that
I would love to have. But I cannot go
with you because I have to stay and help
my father with the traps.
That's
Paddle to the Sea,
folks, the story of a little Indian boy who
sends a toy canoe on a journey that he
himself is too young to take.
We do the same thing,
you know -- Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo: our
standard bearers in the eternal human
crusade, exploration. And now we've hit the
cosmic trail. Why? Well, because earth's
played out.
You know, less than a
hundred years ago, Amundsen could have been
the first human being to reach the south
Pole, Falcon Scott could have died trying,
and now . . . well, last year China had to
close down Mt. Everest, too much litter. The
world's become a fragile place. It's not to
be conquered, it's -- it's to be protected,
coddled, nursed like a little baby. What do
we do now? We launch our surrogates into
interstellar space, dreaming of that one
fine day when we ourselves can go.
The lower half of the
falls was hidden in mist with a rainbow
across it. Paddle fell through the
rainbow and went on falling. Paddle had
ridden rapids. He had ridden the Mad
River and seen the rapids at the Sioux,
so big that ships went around them. But
these rapids -- thirty foot waves rushed
on shooting stars turning inside and out
at every jump. Paddle flew up on a chain
of wet volcanoes and plunged deep in
submarine dives and took sudden trips
toward the moon in green rockets.
There's probably a lot
of folks out there saying, "Man, I'm never
going to have me a rush like that. Earth's a
parking lot and outer space's just too
pricey." Let me tell you something: there's
lots of ways to blaze a trail. I always
think back to those unsung heroes of the
past, like that prehistoric gourmet who
looked at that lobster and said, "I'm going
to eat that," or the first healer who picked
up a knife and said "Let's operate, boys."
You see, adventures come in all kinds of
shapes and sizes, like -- getting your hair
cut, falling in love. Even getting behind
the wheel and backing out of the driveway
can be a sublime act of fate -- as well as a
monumental act of courage.
For that instant, he
looked like his own paddle. There was a
song in his heart. It crept to his lips
but only the water and the wind could
hear. You little traveler, you made the
journey -- the long journey. You now
know things I have yet to know, you
little traveler. You were given a name,
a true name in my father's lodge. Good
medicine, little traveler. You are truly
a paddle person.
[Chris plays
Enya's Caribbean Blue.] |
