COMING OF AGE
CEREMONY K
The mother of us all, the oldest of all, hard,
splendid as rock Whatever there is that is of the land it is she
who nourishes it, it is the Earth that I sing.
~ Homer, "Hymn to the Earth"
BY ALAN KESSELHEIM
Left to right: Sawyer, Ruby, Marypat, Eli, and Alan Kesselheim
esselheim's book, Let Them Paddle: Coming of Age on the Water, chronicles a series of coming- of-age family expeditions. Each trip commemo- rates an earlier journey taken when Kesselheim and his wife, Marypat Zitzer, were pregnant with that child. As each kid turned 13, the family returned to that "birth river" to honor that transition to adulthood that our culture does so little to recognize. The trips took place over a span of four years and covered a geographic sweep from subarctic Can- ada to the borderlands with Mexico. The following excerpt is taken from the journey down the entire navigable length of the Yellowstone River, across Montana, from the town of Gardiner to the confluence with the Missouri. It is Sawyer's journey, and was followed by a week-long hike to reach the headwaters of the Yellowstone, near 12,000' Younts Peak, in northern Wyoming.
www.distinctlymontana.com
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