The Threshold Moment

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When Kevin Fedarko stepped through the door of the O.A.R.S. boathouse in Flagstaff, AZ, he didn’t realize he had crossed a figurative threshold as well as a literal one. Kevin had planned on rafting the Grand Canyon for a wilderness medicine course. Then, he planned to go back to his life as a successful freelance writer. But what he saw in that warehouse and in that first week on the Colorado River left him desperate to find a way to keep coming back. Kevin spent the next smelly, humiliating, beautiful and life-altering decade of his life developing a relationship with the Grand Canyon, writing about the Grand Canyon, and, ultimately, fighting to protect it.

To learn more about the current threats to the Grand Canyon and how you can help, visit Save the Confluence and Grand Canyon Trust.

You can purchase Kevin’s book, The Emerald Mile, here.

Brendan Leonard wrote and narrated this episode. You can find more of his work at Semi-Rad.com.

Music: Moving On by Andrew Ferris    •    Bad to the Bone by Finn    •    Existential by Gordon Bell    •    Shit Outta Luck by Life Has Teeth    •     Clover by Little Glass Men    •     A Garden Grows by Jason Tyler Burton

Music provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, Free Music Archive, Diaries‘ listener Jason Tyler Burton.

Additional scoring by Amy Stolzenbach.