FLUX 2005

"Cash for books?!

That's the coolest!"

"What are your weekend plans?"

"Maybe I could pay Sally Sue to go out with me."

"Bobby couldn't pay me enough to go out with him."

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

EDITOR

Catherine Ryan

Ally Burguieres

MANAGING EDITOR

MANAGING EDITOR

"heh...sweet."

Josh Lintereur COpy EDITOR

Holly Homnick ART DIRECTOR

Emma Zaratian

Kaitlin Paul

RESEARCH EDITOR

. LEAD FLASH DESIGNER

Justin Gast ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Meg Krugel Karla Schack

Dan Beyer ASSISTANT FLASH DESIGNER

Aaron Heirtzler DESIGNERS

EDITORIAL INTERNS

Ursula Evans-Heritage Ashley Griffin Margaret McGladrey

Andrew MacKenzie Shaina Sullivan VIDEOGRAPHER

And rew Maser ART DIRECTOR

Stacy Wanless

ADVISER

Tim Coulter ART ASSOCIATES

Ada Mayer Tom O'Toole Brianne ShoHan Kirk Wedekind Crispin Young ART INTERNS

Jessica Nelson Hannah Shanks Paul Weinert PHOTO EDITOR

Sam Karp PHOTOGRAPHERS

Lindsay Abbott Ben Anderson Ryan Falley Rebecca Kennedy Alex Pajunas LaBree Shide Kai-Huei Yau PRODUCTION MANAGER

Times change, but saving money never goes out of style.

At your University of Oregon Bookstore, we want to make it easier for you to save time and money.

Go online to UOBookstore.com/coursebooks/CCRA and check current buyback prices for your books. Use our online class.ifieds to sell or find textbooks that other students are offering and more.

At the UO Bookstore, we give you more of what you want and less of what you don't.

Ryan Johnson PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS

Megan Gilgen Malen Maher BUSI NESS MANAGER

Elizabeth Tveit BUSI NESS INTERN

Katy Gagnon

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

http://UOBookstore.com/coursebooks/CCRA

BOOKSTORE 895 E. 13th • UOBookstore.com

ADVISERS

Mark Blaine Tom Penix

SPECIAL THAN KS

Carol Ann Bassett Brett Campbell Andr6 Chinn Michael Faris JR Gaddis Tim Gleason Petra Hagen Greg Kerber Tom Lundberg Libby Miskimins QSL Stephanie Risbrough Ryan Stasel Alan Stavitsky Erik Talbert Hideki Tomeoka UO Bookstore Sue Varani Tom Wheeler Elizabeth Wick

--

[ your campus news source]

elcome to another issue of the School of Journalism and Communication's Flux. This year's magazine focuses on nonconformists who brazenly challenge boundaries. Three fishermen temper risk with humor in their search for the valuable Dungeness crab. In the Belizean jungle, atour guide uses ecotourism and education to protect the country's precious biodiversity. By retaining her Mexican heritage, ayoung woman fosters cultural pride in her rural Latino community. And a peacekeeper in the Middle East exercises nonviolence to help improve the lives of Iraqis.

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Just as the subjects of this issue's stories refuse to settle for the status quo, the Flux staff found unconventional alternatives to the challenges of producing a magazine. Aphotographer shot the stunning photos for the crabbing story despite aviolent bout of seasickness during his eighteen-hour trip on the Delma Ann. When we decided not to use photos for the Belize story, a designer created the mixed media illustrations that perfectly complement the piece. An editorial intern who speaks Spanish as asecond language fact-checked the story about the Latino community. The author of "Waging Peace" managed to interview her source multiple times despite the difficulties of contacting him in awar zone.

This completely student-run magazine is designed to showcase the exceptional talent of the industry's next leaders. Creating a professional magazine in seven short weeks gives students the opportunity to build a portfolio and gain experience in what it's really like to edit, design, photograph, and write for a premium publication.

It is my hope that these stories inspire you as much as they have spurred us to create a unique magazine.

~~ Catherine Ryan

O I

SCHOOL OF JOURNALrSM AND COMMUNICATION Unl••rsltyofOregon

The online version of Flux, inFlux, is available at http://influx.uoregon.edu/2005.

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An Itch to Stitch Young men break stereotypes by picking up knitting and crochet needles.

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The Upside of aDownload Defying conventional thought about MP3s, some indie bands use free music to boost sales.

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The Dumpster Divide Bridging the gap between waste and charity, a high school teacher salvages and donates goods found in the trash.

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Prospectors of the Pacific Three fishermen on the Oregon Coast harvest Dungeness crab from the volatile sea.

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AHome without Borders Adedicated young woman encourages a burgeoning Latino community to embrace its heritage.

Falling Big for the Little White Aphoto essay reveals the spiritual connection and thrills of a dangerous yet alluring river.

On the Cover: At the end of a long day, two fisherman pull crab

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Labor of Limbs Patience and passion guide an artist to create sculptures and furniture from living trees.

from the Pacific Ocean.

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Blood of Honey, Bones of Steel While working through his own pain, a rheumatologist treats patients for their life-threatening disease.

On the Back Cover: At sunset, fisherman Tony Fultz returns to the docks in Newport, Oregon.

Photographs by Ryan Falley.

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The Royal Treatment With boundless enthusiasm, a coach develops talent and sportsmanship in young basketball players.

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Waging Peace Pledging to renounce violence, ayoung American pursues peace in Iraq.

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The Kingdom Next Door Adiverse group of people finds camaraderie in a pre-seventeenth-centu ry world.

The Thin Green Line ABelizean conservationist searches for a middle ground between tourism and environmentalism.

"Slowly but surely, we're getting over gender-specific crafts and jobs," says Sara Asher Morris, the copresident of the University Student Fibers Guild at the University of Oregon. Roughly 20 percent of the group is male. "[Men say], 'If my sister can do it, if my girlfriend can do it, why can't I?'"Today, some young men are defying the gender roles assigned to knitting and crocheting, one stitch at atime. uren started knitting eight years ago to pass the time during food cooperative meetings and fraternity gatherings. At thirty, he now teaches in a Portland, Oregon, yarn store, but he first taught mentally ill, homeless people to knit.

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In a Chicago YMCA residential psychiatric program, Guren used the opportunity to share something he loved to help boost patients' confidence. He taught men and women to make scarves and change purses in his newly formed knitting circle. Although only one student at the facility finished ascarf, Guren believes that learning a new skill increased their confidence and helped them use their time constructively.

He also worked at asimilar program in New Jersey. One of his favorite students there, Bill, was expelled from the facility for selling anti-anxiety medication. After he was asked to go, Bill stood in the entry way and said goodbye to his many friends. Guren spotted him leaving and met him in the parking lot.

AN ITCH TO

Todd Guren, a rugby player, looked up from his half-finished sock and smiled. He continued to add stitches to his project as the meeting progressed. The fraternity passed amendments banning his hobby every week, but Guren always ignpred their jokes and reJentless teasing.

"Luckily, I was bigger than them," he laughs.

Disregarding machismo, some men challenge convention with balls of wool story_Catherine Ryan photography_LaBree Shide

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iry~ ath!etic ~an stood ~n front of the assembled Brown University Phi Kappa PSI members. Following proper parliamentary procedure, he solemnly began the meeting. "We, the Social Chair, propose to have a party on Saturday. House funds of four hundred dollars are requested to fund the party. And Todd will be forbidden to knit in any and all of the Sunday night fraternity meetings."

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The Craft Yarn Council of America has no statistics about men who practice the craft, but yarn store employees and Internet blogs can attest to the rising popularity of the hobby. Despite a lack of male-targeted knitting groups or how-to books, men throughout the nation crochet and knit. Athree hundred-pound offensive tackle at Indiana's Ball State University knits washcloths. An air filter repairman in Maine knits while waiting to finish ajob. Some male knitters in California use tackle boxes and tool boxes to store their needles and yarn.

Men wielding needles may raise afew eyebrows today, but societies didn't always restrict yarn crafts to women. In seventeenth-century Europe, financially struggling men knitted and sold stockings to supplement their meager incomes, and both genders knitted gloves for soldiers during the two World Wars. For generations, men have darned socks, mended nets, and sewn clothes~

"Don't you want your needles?" Guren asked.

Asmile spread beneath Bill's strawberry-blond beard. "Oh, great.

Thanks," he said. "I'm definitely gonna need these."

Guren was glad that his student took the needles. "I hope Bill's still knitting," he says. "He had scarf potential." ames Walker isn't likely to grace the cover of Vogue Knitting anytime soon. He wears comfortable, wide shoes and baggy jeans that enable movement when he learns new skateboarding tricks. Awry smile constantly plays at his mouth, suggesting a perpetual joke only he understands. And his right-hand pinkie is still recovering from a minor skateboarding accident. The cast was only atemporary setback to his hobby, though. He has been hooked ever since his girlfriend taught him to crochet in November 2004.

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The twenty-year-old started so he could stitch hats as holiday gifts for family members. He later crocheted beanies with ear flaps to keep himself warm while skateboarding in the Eugene, Oregon, winter rain and wore his handmade headbands during tennis class.

Walker sets his aspirations much higher than hats and sweatbands, though. He plans to learn a new stitch, a pattern for mittens, and

some knitting techniques. Ultimately, he dreams of making a pair of crocheted trousers - or maybe a pair of woolen underpants.

His ambitious projects stem more from his irreverent sense of humor than his love of yarn clothing, yet he says he is addicted to crocheting. "I think it's the wave of the future," he says.

"It's fashion." ami Elshafei has become accustomed to the confusion his yarn crafts inspire. One evening, Elshafei sat on the couch in his living room with agroup of friends who had gathered to smoke from his bong. The twenty-year-old brought out his water pipe, covered in a light- and dark-blue wool jacket he crocheted. The words "The Cozie" were embroidered on its base.

S

"I hope

Bill's still knitting.

He had scarf potential. "

Elshafei's friends stared at the strangely attired pipe.

"Whoa. Why's the bong wearing asweater?"

The bong cozie, Elshafei's most prized accomplishment, certainly is unusual. After trying several techniques, he invented his own pattern to cover and protect the pipe's irregular shape. The design evolved as Elshafei later added the boxy lettering, astrap to hold the cozie tight, and a lighter holder.

Elshafei uses the same innovation to perfect patterns for his other creations. When learning to crochet from his mother, he experimented with designing hats and insulators for beer cans.

After about ten attempts, he perfected the "can cozie" pattern. He gave his mother a"Diet Coke holder," as she calls it, in gratitude for her help.

BELOW_James Walker demonstrates how to crochet abeanie.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Todd Guren knits during slow moments at work in aPortland yam store.

Although his friends tease him about his unusual craft, it seems that they can accept his hobby as long as he crochets gifts for them. They often wear his hats to parties and carry chilled beers in green and yellow cozies, crocheted using the University of Oregon's colors, to school football games. Elshafei loves to see people use his creations but has not yet consented to the many requests for more bong sweaters. For now, the cozie remains a one-of-akind creation.•

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abil Ayers's band, Alien Crime Syndicate, is moving with the times. Its Web site links to Amazon.com and Ayers's label's online store, where a listener can buy a CD with the click of a button. The same site offers afree, downloadable track from each of the band's five albums for immediate aural gratification. It sounds like a savvy idea for a band to offer as many access options as possible to would-be listeners, but there's more to Ayers than just his drums and his label: Ayers also co-owns Sonic Boom, asmall, independent music store chain in Seattle.

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At atime when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIM) is complaining abou路t dwindling CD sales, Ayers's digitalized game plan sounds like a serious contradiction, not to mention a recipe for small-store sales disaster. But Ayers's record store has expanded three times in the past eight years, his Control Group label has signed twelve bands in athird of that time, and he still manages to tour with his band. And he's not the only one in the independent music community tapping into the promotional possibilities of free MP3s. It may seem unconventional, but for smaller, lesser-known bands, MP3s are an incorruptible demo tape to the world, the counterculture's answer to the mediabroadcasting giant Clear Channel.

"We really just want people to be able to hear the bands' music, pass it around, and tell people about it," explains Nate Krenkel, cofounder of Omaha's Team Love, a maverick indie label whose iconoclastic marketing strategy includes complimentary downloadable albums from the label's Web site. That's an entire album for nada, and although it might have worked for an exasperated, label-less Wilco some years back, it's still as far off the recording track as anyone can get these days. With all of the majorlabel hype about MP3 downloads hurting CD sales, most people are likely to find the concept absurd. But Krenkel, who grew fed up with his former job at Sony/ATV Music Publishing because of its hard-line posture against file sharing, is willing to take the risk. He argues that just because Sony (or any major label) assumes that file sharing is the equivalent to online stealing doesn't make it gospel.

isn't simply contained to the four largest recording companies that control more than 80 percent of the U.S. recording business.

Independently owned labels, which share the remainder of the

" [People] want to be identified by more than just what's in their iPod. " market, also worry about their copyright property being exploited and undervalued - the fundamental reason why only the spunkiest are using the controversial MP3.

But there's more to this controversial distribution method than just risky-venture jitters, as the clashing of reputable economic analyses reveals. Arecent report compiled by two University of Pennsylvania professors found that for every five albums (not tracks) college students downloaded, the U.S. music industry lost one CD sale. This conflicts with a 2002 market study by Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, which indicated that downloading music has relatively no impact on CD sales.

But the seeming incongruity of the two studies might have more to do with methodology than anything else. While the University of Pennsylvania's study represents solely the behavior of 412 college students, Oberholzer-Gee's represents total popular downloads against total album sales (in other words, overall consumer behavior). His 2002 report concluded that the majority of downloaders either sampled music before purchasing or would never have bought the CD anyway because they couldn't afford to.

This makes perfect sense to Krenkel, who reasons that just because someone has access to more music doesn't mean that they have more purchasing power. "Before, you might have bought ten records ayear and got afew copies from friends. Now you have access to

BELOW_Nabil Ayers plays at alive concert in Portland, Oregon.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Ayers stands next to the entrance of Sonic Boom's Vinyl Annex in seattle's Fremont district.

Sir Howard Stringer, the chairman of the Sony Corporation of America, likened downloaders to shoplifter Winona Ryder in an interview with the New Yorker in 2003. "That actress wandering around Hollywood helping herself," he said, "should have adopted the Internet defense - 'I was downloading music in the morning, downloading movies in the afternoon, and then I thought I'd rustle a few dresses out of the local department store. And it's been agood day, and. all of asudden I'm arrested. How is that fair?'" Asimilarly hostile sentiment against downloaders resonates throughout the major labels, with more than nine thousand lawsuits filed against unsuspecting individuals since September 2003. And this feeling

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everything, but I don't know why that would stop you from going out and buying those ten new records." Many people with Internet access do buy CDs, and not just moral zealots dissatisfied by iTunes' digital rights management. In fact, according to the RIM's 2004 year-end report, CD sales rose by 2.8 percent since 2003.

So what's keeping the CD pressers pressing? It's possible that there's more to music than just music.

Kianna Alarid, avocalist and percussionist for Tilly and the Wall, Team Love's premier band, argues that it's about people identifying with a community, especially for indie fans. "Indie kids in general really like to support their bands. If people have a chance to listen to [our album] and they're into it, I have faith that indie kids will be excited to go out and buy it afterward." Confidence in listeners seems prevalent among Team Love's members: "People are still going to want to buy a record occasionally, or buy aT-shirt," affirms Krenkel. "They want to be identified by more than just what's in their iPod." Krenkel's label, which he cofounded in 2003 with Bright Eyes's frontman, Conor Oberst, currently carries two pop-rock albums and a hip-hop album. So far, everyone on the label feels positive about what they're doing, stressing that they're not in the music business to make a killing. "I wouldn't want someone who didn't like [our] album to buy it," insists Nick White, Tilly's keyboardist.

"For most indie bands, if you're going to make a living [in music],

"CDs are too expensive now, and you can't just run out because you've heard of something and say, 'Great. I'm going to spend fifteen to twenty dollars on this disc I've never heard. '" it's all about playing at shows and selling T-shirts." Tilly has been touring relentlessly since the release of its full-length debut album, Wild Like Children, and Krenkel attributes a lot of the record sales

to the band's van mileage. Since the album's launch in June 2004, Tilly has sold more than ten thousand copies and momentarily outranked Scotland's new-wave sweetheart Franz Ferdinand in sales on Amazon.com last August. As any small label will attest, the publicity garnered from touring is paramount to cash flow. Even if people haven't heard a band's album, they might go to ashow on the tip-off of adownload, and if the band's live performance knocks some socks off, the merchandise table always offers aquick fix.

Jason Kulbel, manager of Saddle Creek Records, firmly believes in this theory: "Our bands have to tour. If you're in any band and not touring and not selling T-shirts, then there's no way. Don't even try, 'cause bands that don't tour don't sell records."

Obviously, Team Love represents an extreme (and tiny) end of the recording industry spectrum. With its lean single-track helpings, Ayers's band practices a more tempered approach to free MP3s, as do afair number of other indie bands, such as Franz Ferdinand and Saddle Creek's the Faint. Saddle Creek has been posting sample MP3s from each album it's released since its Web site's inception in 1998, and Kulbel believes the gains have outweighed the losses.

"It's certainly been a part of our success," claims Kulbel. "That's how a lot of people have heard of our bands." After all, hearing, even possessing, one or two songs from an album is nothing new.

Kids have been taping hit singles off the radio since the advent of cassette recording. And although an MP3 might sound clearer than astatic-laden cassette, the marketing effects remain the same: as word spreads, so do sales.

the main idea, but also just creating a homegrown sense of anticipation or excitement," Bazan explains. "People can listen to [the live tracks] and make a decision whether they want to come see the show." But Bazan isn't sure he'll keep comping live tracks.

With more than 150,000 downloads the summer of 2004, it's plausible that heavy traffic like that could yield him another small revenue stream. "People are going to share music, and I don't have aspecific problem with that, but [how] that affects the way people value music can be detrimental. So I think we'd like to encourage people to buy music." As everyone in the music industry presumably would.

But while some indie labels' are willing to explore the possibilities of MP3s, the majors condemn the perennial, ever-obliging digital format as a cancer eating away at the muscle of their collective empire. The music industry columnist for the Village Voice, Douglas Wolk, believes the steadily merging major labels are using file sharing as ascapegoat for market stagnation. "They're focused on file sharing in part because it's something that's new, that affects the way music is experienced, and that they can seize on as a reason why their business is in trouble," Wolk explains (even as he disputes the notion that they're actually in trouble). "But it also means that they can't really embrace the particular technology they're demonizing." Sony, which was unavailable for comment, doesn't support the MP3 format at all, but does sell protected media files through its online store, Sony Connect.

Although the recording association claims on its Web site that "expanding the portability and use options of music is an exciting part of future growth," it's clear that the RIM is adamantly opposed to any insecure file sharing technology that might hinder copyright royalties - or shareholder relations. If anything, the majors would like to harness digital technology purely for measurable revenue. For them, promotion is Clear Channel's job.

Back in Seattle, Ayers's Fremont store is bustling on asunny April afternoon. Two twenty-somethings stand at two listening stations, headsets on, sampling the latest from the Decemberists and Yo La Tengo. Awoman sifts through the used-CD racks nearby, and another four searching souls are scattered about the small poster-laden space. The shop isn't exactly hopping like an Alabama Wal-Mart, but it's far from dead. Although it's easy to chalk up success to Seattle's music-committed community (Ayers definitely does), Sonic Boom has worked ardently to get this far. "There has to be away for people to find out about what they want to buy and be excited enough to go get it - and we can do that," says Ayers. "I think the reason we haven't had as many sales problems is because [our clientele] grew up buying records. The thing I worry about is in five or ten years when the generation that is spending money has grown up not knowing how to do so on records." After all, ageneration of iTunes and iPods could drastically alter the way we relate to musicians, relegating music to a purely ethereal function. But, at least for now, it seems not everyone is ready to give up the tangible.•

BELOW_Alien Crime Syndicate pertonns at aPortland concert.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Even with the rising popularity of MP3s, some customers still prefer to purchase tangible albums.

or most musicians, getting their music onto public airwaves is half the battle, but there's little promotional funding or airtime support available to the working-class recording bracket.

Except for college and listener-funded radio stations, which generally attract niche audiences, the airwaves are predominately reserved for major-label artists. Ayers, who thinks more than ten dollars a CD is asking too much, is convinced that MP3s are the marketing wave of the future, at least for smaller labels. He can recall countless times when customers have come into Sonic Boom looking for aspecific album after hearing an MP3, and he welcomes this new trend in educated music consumption. "CDs are too expensive now, and you can't just run out because you've heard of something and say, 'Great. I'm going to spend fifteen to twenty dollars on this disc I've never heard.' You have to be able to hear it. You have to feel safe because there [are] also a lot of bad records out there."

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David Bazan's band, Pedro the Lion, experimented with another MP3 ploy in 2004: daily snippets from its summer tour. All afan had to do was buy the latest album for a username and password to access the sonic freebies. Whether it boosted album sales is conjectural, but this type of reward system undoubtedly fosters favorable fan relations. "I think attracting people to our site was

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In one swift motion, Horowitz props his stomach on the dumpster's edge and tips his body inward. Arobed woman walking an overweight terrier appears puzzled by the sight of an inverted torso protruding from her trash but says nothing and continues on her way. Horowitz returns to the surface clutching a powder-blue pillow streaked with tapioca. Undeterred by the mess, he simply discards the soiled pillowcase and tucks the pillow under his arm. "There's still something good down there. I think I'll try the grabber," he says, walking back to his aging Toyota pickup.

Horowitz unloads the salvaged items onto the bed of his truck and returns with the grabber, atwo-pronged mechanical gripping stick.

Reaching into the back of the bin, he snags an abandoned bath towel with surgical precision. "It's kind of like fishing," he notes,

"Even people with no money throwaway

quality stuff." slinging the find over his shoulder. So far, the morning's catch is piled into the back of his truck. The bounty includes afleece jacket, afull-length mirror, five cans of sardines in hot sauce, atwo-disc DVD set of World War II movies, T-shirts, a plastic bowling pin, and, yes, afishing rod. Not bad for a brief search before the start of a school day.

uring the creep of dawn, while the residents of Eugene, Oregon, remain burrowed in their blankets, Michael Horowitz peers over the edge of a dumpster and examines its contents. During the week, someone has managed to jam acouch into the receptacle by breaking it into three pieces, creating an obstruction for the fifty-three-year-old physics teacher. Horowitz reaches between splintered shards of wood and retrieves six unblemished coffee mugs from agarbage bag, carefully lining them up on the lip of the dumpster like aset of ceramic teeth. Something in the far corner of the bin draws his attention. "I'm going in," he says.

D Trash can alchemist Michael Horowitz turns waste into something that matters story_Brian Burke photography_Kai-Huei Yau

Without fail, Horowitz scours more than two hundred dumpsters every week in hopes of giving reusable items asecond chance. In the nine years since Horowitz began his crusade against waste, he has yet to miss asingle weekend. Not for rain, not for holidays, not for a broken toe or the temporary loss of vision in his left eye. Once, when his truck broke down, Horowitz went so far as to spend seventy-five dollars on a rental car to complete the ritual. "A worthwhile investment, considering it was a better-than-average weekend," he says. And these weekends add up. In asingle year, the soft-spoken high school teacher finds, washes, and donates more than eleven thousand dollars in household items to local charitable organizations. Because of Horowitz, these throwaways end up in the arms of people in need, instead of the local landfill.

On Monday morning, cardboard boxes begin to pile up on the living room floor. By week's end, there are enough of them to block the entry way to the one-bedroom ranch house. Inside lie neatly folded jackets, jeans, sweaters, socks, T-shirts, and towels. For one week of scavenging, the amount of reclaimed goods is staggering.

Aside from the constant sound of awasher and dryer humming in unison, the house is painfully quiet. Christmas poinsettias and other

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abandoned plants crowd the living room window, depriving the area of its natural light.

Horowitz found most of the house's furniture and many of its appliances in the trash.

Broken items are relegated to a backyard shed, where they await the discovery of their missing parts.

ABOVE_Michael Horowitz requested alate start to his teaching day in order to facilitate his mid-week dawn dumpster runs.

PREVIOUS PAGE_Horowitz spends thirty hours each week searching dumpsters for discarded treasure, including clothing, furniture, school supplies, and other salvageable goods.

Although many of his dumpster discoveries are functional, Horowitz also relies on the edible. The freezer is consistently packed with steaks, ground beef, and chicken breasts, all in their original packaging, found frozen in the garbage. Slightly bruised fruits and vegetables fill the refrigerator, as does a large Mason jar full of applesauce, made from reclaimed apples. Horowitz stands in the center of the small kitchen, showing off his well-stocked shelves with all the pride of a hunter and his quarry. "I haven't bought a loaf of bread in five years, and I don't eat white bread," he says. As a homeowner with no family to support, Horowitz lives off thirty-five hundred dollars each year, a mere fraction of his salary. In fact, the physics teacher spends more money on snacks for his students than he does feeding himself.

For a man who devotes thirty hours each week to picking through garbage, Horowitz has a penchant for cleanliness. In preparation for a day of dumpster diving, he puts on no fewer than four shirts and two pairs of gloves. The soles of his black sneakers are smooth from walking hundreds of miles along the city's streets. On his way out of the door, Horowitz brandishes a pair of plastic safety goggles, which remain affixed to his face until the end of the day. With his lanky frame and just atouch of gray in his dark, wavy hair, Horowitz looks younger than most men his age. "All this climbing in and out of dumpsters gives the abs agood workout," he quips.

With an hour to spare before school and still plenty of room in the back of the pickup truck, Horowitz steps out of his vehicle and onto the streets of Eugene's University neighborhood. Nearby, a dumpster overflows with bags of refuse, but before approaching, the teacher

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instinctively reaches down to scoop up aflattened beer can from the pavement. During a day of dumpster diving, Horowitz picks up litter within his line of sight and then deposits it in the proper receptacle.

Continuing past his dentist's office en route to the trash, Horowitz exchanges brief pleasantries with a woman entering the building.

"That's my dental hygienist," he says. "She doesn't know what to make of me."

Horowitz fine-tuned his environmental ethic while studying nutrition at Colorado State University in the early 1980s. "I had one of those roommates who was into natural foods and sustainability," Horowitz says. "He ended up having more of an influence than I realized."

After graduation, Horowitz chose to pursue ateaching career, a decision that would lead him to Eugene. There, Horowitz thought he'd discovered "Ecotopia."The progressive college town was nothing like the concrete-coated neighborhood in the Bronx where he grew up, and the mix of open space and intellectualism was exactly what he was looking for. However, as the years pressed on, Horowitz

"When people ask me if I'm having a good day, I say 'yeah, I'm not finding anything.'" discovered that although Eugene was full of ideals, action was in short supply. "Here they talk the talk, but it's all too superficial," he says. "Even people with no money throwaway quality stuff."

The dumpster revelation came to Horowitz while attending a physics teachers' conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "I had just read an article called 'My Twenty Foot Swath,' which said that if you keep your little path clean, the people coming behind you can enjoy it.

I was appreciating this city [Minneapolis] and started picking up trash." The simple premise of the article appealed to Horowitz's sensibilities, and when he returned to Eugene, he stuck with the philosophy. One day, while walking downtown to meet friends for coffee, Horowitz began to collect litter along the sidewalk. Before long his hands were full, and he took the trash to a nearby trash bin.

To his surprise, inside was a pair of discarded T-shirts. "I said, 'If it's in this dumpster, it must be all over town,'" Horowitz recalls.

Soon enough, the respected physics teacher was snaking through back alleys and apartment complexes every Saturday and Sunday as part of an intricate and ever-evolving collection route. To avoid missing reliable recoveries, Horowitz soon incorporated midweek collections into the routine. "It's become kind of an obsession," says Whitey Lueck, a landscape architecture professor at the University of Oregon who has

known Horowitz for more than twenty years. "People want to know how he can do what he does and still have a life. Well, it is his life." he cardboard boxes that fill Horowitz's living room have also accumulated in the corners of his classroom at Winston Churchill High School. Astack of seven boxes, each one filled with binders and backpacks, stands taller than any of his students.

Across the room, an ethically emblematic quote on the chalkboard reads, "No snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible." The students, however, appear more interested in the chocolate milk and apple juice from one of the room's three mini-refrigerators. Despite suspicions, the snacks Horowitz provides to his students come from the supermarket, not agarbage can. "It costs me athousand dollars ayear, but they have something good to drink instead of Mountain Dew and the stuff in the machine," he says with satisfaction.

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Around the holidays, Horowitz decorates his classroom and sends the rest of the supplies to the Assistance League of Eugene. He is delighted that the organization relieves him of the hundreds of feet of Christmas lights that he saves, but even more so, he's happy to help someone. When the lunch bell rings, asurprising number of students remain in the classroom, either to feast on the available snacks or to peruse the "free table" for a book or CD their teacher picked up over the weekend. While the kids get comfortable, Horowitz walks the halls of Ch.urchill High, pulling recyclable bottles out of the garbage cans. "The only problem is [that] kids think I'm a custodian," he says. Though some students laugh at the sight of their teacher digging through the trash, Horowitz believes others quietly acknowledge his commitment to waste reduction. "I believe the best thing ateacher can be is a role model."

For Horowitz, the week of dumpster diving all leads up to Saturday morning. The routine begins when Horowitz transfers box after box of goods from his living room floor to the back of his trUCk. This week,

four boxes of men's shoes and clothing are destined for the Eugene Mission; the rest is divided among nearby family shelters. Horowitz is a regular at the Assistance League where he donates a considerable amount of clothing every week. "Mike is methodical and serious," says shop Chairman Shannon Allen. "He folds everything neatly, labels the boxes, and even brings in the plastic hangers." The ten to fifteen loads of laundry Horowitz washes each week are unloaded in a matter of fifteen minutes. Next Saturday he'll do it all over again. Those who benefit from his actions will never meet the man, and the revolving cast of charity workers seldom recognizes this humble donor. But Lueck has witnessed the steady progress of Horowitz's charitable actions through the years. "The effect one person makes is just a drop in the bucket," he says. "But with Mike, it's a big drop."

Although Horowitz's salvaged items have brought relief to many lives, the modest physics teacher has bolder ambitions for the future. "I'm just sitting on all this money right now. Sooner or later I'll find the right way to use it." For Horowitz, the "right way" won't be a new convertible or avacation in the islands. Two years ago, Horowitz began helping aformer student pay his way through college as a more direct way of reaching out to those in need.

Although Horowitz is occasionally tempted to break the nine-year streak of dumpster diving, the knowledge that he's bringing a bit of comfort into the lives of others is enough to keep him returning to the trash bins week after week. "When people ask me if I'm having agood day, I say, 'Yeah, I'm not finding anything.'" And as long as the dumpsters continue to bear fruit, Horowitz will be out there peeking under their lids.•

BElOW_Horowitz donates his weekly collection of towels, pillows, and blankets to Eugene's First Place Family Center.

------........-ABOR OF Richard Reames bends living trees into works of art story_Carey Connell photography_Rebecca Kennedy

rom the winding roads of Williams Highway, trees line the hilltops in a blanket of green as far as the eye can see. Among the lush background of Richard Reames's tree farm, one tree, vastly different from the others, stands out from the rest. Instead of growing straight and tall, its midsection curves into a peace sign. The cherry tree is one of his intricate sculptures that zig, zag, and swirl in ways that defy logic. While nature has inspired artists for centuries, Reames takes this one step further: he turns living trees into art.

His dogs nip at the heels of his sturdy brown work boots as Reames, forty-seven, strides from his self-built log cabin to the adjacent Arborsmith Studios, his workshop and gallery. Agraying beard frames his leathery face, and his coarse, unkempt hair is tied in astubby ponytail at the nape of his neck. His army-green clothes almost blend in with the trees around him. The clear, silver-blue eyes of this quiet, unpretentious man display afierce belief in the potential of his unique art to change how humans relate to the landscape.

With the steady and careful hands of asculptor, Reames starts his day's work. As his strong, calloused fingers coax the supple wood of aseven-foot alder sapling, one of fourteen young trees that form a semicircle around the peace sign tree, the sun breaks through the clouds and shines brightly on the plant's dewy leaves.

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OPPOSITE PAGE_This tree, one of Richard Reames's earlier experiments, is astudy of how to create aliving staircase.

RIGHT_Trees of the same species can share resources when they are grafted together.

In every direction, arborsculpture projects stand in varying stages of growth. Two birch trees weave together to form a hole resembling the portal into Alice's Wonderland. On the opposite end of Reames's gallery, an alder twists into acrooked, three-dimensional cube before merging into asingle leafy treetop. Scattered throughout the yard, thin, young "experiment trees" shoot up from the rich soil, weaving, winding, and connecting. In another corner, living benches and chairs grow strong enough to support afull-grown man. To prove it can be done, Reames sits on a chair made from an Oregon ash, and with the proud look of a king atop his throne, he tells his favorite joke: "See? After all these years, I can finally just sit on my ash."

While Reames enjoys the simple life, he is dedicated to expanding the practical possibilities of his art. After experimenting with grafting

trees into simple shapes like hearts, peace signs, and curlicues, he is working on a living house made of pear, peach, and apple trees.

Located in the center of Arborsmith Studios, his project reaches ten

feet high and is in full springtime blossom. It's just in the beginning stages of growth, but in about fifty years, the trees' bark will grow together into asingle treetop roof. Reames hopes that once the house is full grown, he will be able to pluck the fruit right off the walls.

"You can extrapolate on this idea," Reames says, gesturing to a living staircase growing five feet from the fruit house. "You could

"The first year, they sleep.

The second year, they creep, and the third year, they leap." grow living furniture out of the house's walls and floors. You could have an entire house that forms one connected tree." He grins. "And maybe in fifty years, when the fruit house is done, it'll be time to grow the nut house."

After years of wandering the Wes~ Coast, Reames found his life's work in his unconventional art. He knew he would never be happy

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working a normal nine-to-five job, so as aUvolunteer homeless person," he spent ten years thumbing rides and hiking through forests. Along the way, he met his future wife, Maya. But settling down was far from his mind - until he found out his wife was pregnant. Shaken by this news, Reames went into the woods near Williams Highway to contemplate the direction his life should take. As he watched the trees swaying in the midsummer breeze, he prayed for answers. ul asked the universe for guidance," Reames recalls.

"And I flashed back to Axel Erlandson's Tree Circus I had visited as a child. I knew I wanted to discover the secrets to his trees and spread [them] to the world."

Although Reames grew up ten miles away from the Tree Circus in Santa Cruz, California, he never considered the impact it would have on his life. Axel Erlandson, the enigmatic creator of the exhibition, developed an amazing display of living trees on his property that he turned into a roadside attraction. When asked how he got his trees to grow so impossibly, Erlandson would whimsically reply, Ult's simple - I talk to them."

Erlandson later regretted that he hadn't found an apprentice and that his art was doomed to wither and die trapped inside his neglected giants. He never witnessed the work of Richard Reames.

"With his trees, Erlandson opened up the door to afield of possibilities," Reames says. "I understand why Erlandson kept his art a secret, but if we try to keep our art to ourselves, it only leads to our own constriction. Sharing attracts open people, and that's when a synergy of ideas can happen."

The philosophical roots of Reames's arborsculpture are synergy and growth. Instead of emulating nature, his sculptures become nature.

His trees counteract the ideas behind modern artificial and wasteful culture and prove that humans don't have to destroy the environment to use it for comfort, shelter, and enjoyment. While art by definition implies human workmanship rather than natural creation, Reames's sculptures demonstrate that humans and nature don't have to exist in opposition.

Reames's philosophy formulates the motto of Arborsmith Studios: "Growing trees into forests of ideas." Through arborsculpture, Reames seeks to foster a love and deeper understanding of the environment by working with the trees to create his vision. Yet it isn't always easy to work with nature. Curious, hungry deer often nibble at the delicate bark of his sculptures, and insects feast on the wood,

causing them to rot. His trees also sunburn easily under the fierce summer sun because he strips the trees of their protective lower branches to form his designs. When one tree dies, Reames weaves in a new sapling and it eventually merges with the older trees. "All trees of the same species have the same root systems," Reames explains. Ult's evolutionary altruism. Different species compete for the best soil and nutrients, but trees of the same species merge so that they can spread their type of seed."

Despite the difficulties, Reames earns asuccessful living crafting arborsculptures for clients. When customers contact him, he makes travel arrangements and starts his projects using a pair of malleable five-year-old trees he transports in wine barrels. He plants the sap-

Reames explains that trees grow in three stages. "The first year, they sleep," he says. "The second year, they creep, and the third year, they leap." Reames is in his own leaping stage. He has finished planning his exhibit for the World Expo Fair, which is open until November, and the ambitious Reames doesn't show any signs of slowing down. Next year, he will publish his second book, ArborsGulpture: Solutions for a Small Planet, the sequel to How to Grow a Chair, which he published in 1995. Reames will also teach his first class on arborscultpure at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina and hopes to begin a lecture tour of universities around the country. Reames's devotion to spreading his art has been fruitful, and the possibilities for his ecological vision seem as vast as the forest surrounding Arborsmith Studios. •

"If we try to keep our art to ourselves, it only leads to our own constriction. " lings on location, puts frames into the ground to control the trees' growth, and grafts the branches so that they grow together into the shape of a chair, atable, or an abstract design. Once the initial grafting is finished, he returns once ayear - all clients pay his travel and lodging fees - and prunes as needed. After three years, the living furniture is strong enough to sit on. Prices vary depending on the size and intricacy of the project; clients pay $700 for chairs, $1,000 for athree-person bench, and $5,000 for agazebo. In eight years, Reames has created more than twenty-five arborsculptures for clients: gazebos, tables, benches, houses, nightstands, and sculptures. Individuals can even order pre-shaped trees from his catalog.

"When you have children, you can start planting their houses," Reames says of the possibilities available to his clients. UBy the time they are full grown, their new house will be, too."

When he isn't serving his clientele, Reames contributes to the GroWing Village in Japan, a project with even greater artistic scope than Erlandson's original Tree Circus. This project, avillage composed entirely of living trees, contains play structures for children, chairs and benches upon which elders can tranquilly repose, and beautiful arborsculptures for everyone to enjoy. Reames also worked with John Gathright, creator and chief producer of the Growing Village, to grow asimilar park called Mokshow-en, which means "Laughing Happy Tree Park." It is home to hundreds of trees and won the Ecological Design Award from the Japanese Ministry of Industrial Design in 2002. "In general, arborsculpture has huge potential," Reames says. "We've just begun scratching the surface."

RIGHT_Reames stands next to his sculpted peace sign tree.

OPPOSITE PAGE_The three-dimensional cube crafted from an alder shows a lighthearted side to Reames's art.

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oelho was born on Terceira Island, a Portuguese island in the Azores Archipelago, located in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. His family lived in asmall home without indoor plumbing where he remembers digging holes in the living room floor to play marbles with his siblings. When he was ten years old, the family moved to Harrisburg, Oregon, and they didn't speak aword of English. The rural community, in which fewer than athousand people lived, didn't offer a language program for immigrants, but Coelho's fourth-grade teacher selflessly taught the entire family English on her own.

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While the family slowly adjusted to American culture, Coelho's parents grappled with his decision to try out for the local high school basketball team. "We all came from the old country, as

The early morning practice sessions and dribbling marathons paid off. By Coelho's senior year, he had transformed himself from the worst player on the team to one of the best. Despite his accomplishments, his parents never attended asingle practice or game during his four years on the team. After the birth of his own children, he vowed not to do the same.

With plenty of encouragement and support, each of his five children became involved in youth sports, such as soccer and basketball, and Coelho often volunteered as coach. The majority of youth leagues they participated in emphasized the games, with little time for practice and lots of pressure on the kids to win. The competitive nature favored the more talented players, which Coelho found too reminiscent of his experience as ayoung athlete.

By his mid-forties, after accumulating more than twenty years of experience as ayouth sports coach, he began exploring the idea of starting his own basketball academy - where kids would be given the opportunity to constantly practice rather than watch from the bench. He researched other local programs and realized that most kids in his neighborhood would never be able to pay for them. His idea was to launch an affordable basketball academy, that emphasized fundamentals and sportsmanship. He set the price at one dollar per session.

ABOVE_Joe Coelho reads abook to the players between Saturday afternoon sessions.

PREVIOUS PAGE_Coelho leans against the mural at his home in Eugene.

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everybody calls it. We were raised to work and not to play," Coelho says. His mother still often puts in afull day of work. "This is the way all of the kids were brought up."

In June 2001, Coelho began setting aside time from his handyman business and opened his academy with asingle group of eight kids, two of whom were his own boys. Feeling guilty that his daughter was too young to participate, he quickly opened aseparate session for younger boys and girls. The kids couldn't always make it, and often attendance was thin. He still keeps a picture of an early practice session that shows him with his daughter and one other girl posed in front of a set of empty folding chairs intended for parents to watch from. The photo serves as a reminder of how far he's come.

In three-and-a-half years, the initial group of eight kids has ballooned to more than three hundred.

Without any support from his parents, Coelho arrived at the tryout.

Despite his embarrassing display, the coach kept him on the team because of his height and athleticism. Determined to improve, Coelho regularly rose at dawn to practice alone in the high school gym. His motivation stemmed from spending each game on the bench. One minute and forty-six seconds was the longest he played in asingle game his first season.

Some parents drive their children more than an hour just to attend Coelho's practices, while other players depend on volunteer coaches or friends to drive them. "I can spot those kids a mile away. I love to help all kids, but those that are less fortunate bring back memories of when I was young," Coelho says. "They don't have the fancy shoes, the cool basketballs, or hoops in the front yard. They don't get to attend several summer basketball camps each year."

Sitting down for a quick break during a recent Saturday practice, Coelho smiles and says he's tired. Within fifteen seconds he excitedly springs to his feet and sets up avideo of a recent middle school basketball game he plans to screen for the kids. The video shows an RBA player offering a hand to afallen opponent. Coelho, beaming because it was caught on tape, brought atrophy for the player - just one of many acknowledgments presented at each session for players exemplifying good sportsmanship.

The message rubs off. During an intense scrimmage, agirl throws a bad pass to an open teammate and immediately says, "I'm sorry."

The teammate smiles and says, "That's okay."

Part of the reason Coelho's athletes behave so well is because he's selective. They come by invitation or recommendation but aren't accepted into the RBA until Coelho feels assured that the players treat others politely, listen to coaches, and work hard. He often relies on the advice of other coaches and players but values the behavior of an athlete's parents most. "Considerate parents have considerate kids," he explains.

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love to help all kids, but those that are less fortunate bring back memories of when I was young." people." Lee recalls when Coelho decided to have the kids pick up trash on the bike path. The idea, Lee explains, was to teach kids to take care of their community.

Coelho's success in developing talented athletes with valuable life skills has several major college athletic coaches taking notice.

Ernie Kent, head coach of the University of Oregon men's basketball team, recently wrote Coelho a letter praising the RBA, as did UO head football coach Mike Bellotti. During the past year, Bev Smith, head coach of the UO women's basketball team, and Jay John, head

While attending a recent middle school basketball game, he sat next to an "unruly" parent who incessantly complained about the officiating. When the parent later approached Coelho about enrolling her daughter in the academy, he sensed trouble and talked her out of it. According to Coelho, he can discerningly choose players because he isn't trying to make money. Without the burden of increasing the RBA's profits, Coelho feels comfortable turning away kids who may not heed his instruction.

Once he assembles agroup of kids, Coelho's work begins. "What makes his program so unique is his ability to teach children to be disciplined, highly skilled, and aggressive competitors, while simultaneously maintaining asoft-spoken gentleness in his coaching style," says Mary Holo, whose eight-year-old son, Ty, is an RBA member.

"He'll never say you did that wrong but instead says, 'Thank you for reminding me that I need to teach that better.'"

Coelho adjusts his coaching style to each individual, Holo says. He knows every athlete's name, home situation, personality, and skill level. "It is as though he personally remembers each stage of his own development and recalls what it felt like to be an eight-year-old and is able to relate to them like few adults I have ever met."

Under Coelho's guidance, the RBA goes a long way toward reversing the pampering culture of modern sports, in which young athletes are exploited for their talent but grow up woefully unprepared for the real world. "He's got a dream," Stacy Lee says, whose two daughters attend the academy. "Yes, he wants them to become great basketball players, but he also wants to see them go on to be great

RIGHT_RBA members practice dribbling skills.

Coelho bases practices on all-inclusive drills so that no player sits on the bench.

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coach of the Oregon State University men's basketball team, both visited RBA practices.

"We talk a lot as coaches about how you should be a good person a lot longer than you should be a good basketball player," says Smith.

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hooked me was failure and not getting to participate. I want to leave my community better than what it was."

What is so special about the RBA, she explains, is that by reinforcing "caring about others and ateam attitude," Coelho does more than just talk about it.

BELOW_Micah Robinson, fourteen, practices ball control.

Smith also values Coelho's emphasis on fundamental skills and participation. During RBA practices, rather than holding scrimmages involving only ten players at once, Coelho focuses on all-inclusive drills emphasizing passing, defense, and footwork. Only parents watch from the bench, and Coelho insists that all players hold a

basketball in their hands throughout the practice session.

had just been diagnosed with cancer and was given afew weeks to live. "/'11 give him the royal treatment," Coelho told her. Immediately after the boy arrived at the camp, Coelho put his arm around him and introduced him to all of the players. At the end, Coelho took a picture of all the children in attendance and placed the boy front and center. Afterward, he insisted on meeting the boy's mother to show her the photo and reassure her that her son would always have afamily of friends waiting for him.

"A lot of us forget it's a process to become agood player. We are so focused on the outcome rather than the process," Smith says. "It is really about the journey," she says. "Joe understands that."

Coelho feels proud of the recognition, but his focus always remains on doing more for the RBA, which takes up an increasing amount of his time. In addition to accompanying kids while they dribble a basketball down the bike path during the summer, he runs atwoweek camp for all of the players every August. Coelho's year-round nine-hour practice marathons each Saturday make many parents worry he'll grow tired. When they find out he spends ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week on RBA matters, they assume he's exhausted. He dismisses the idea, saying, "When you're passionate, it energizes you."

Alot of that passion comes from the letters he gets from players and the teary-eyed parents thanking him for all he's done for their kids.

Holo sees the RBA's effects firsthand through the transformation of her son, who before joining the academy couldn't talk to adults,

shake their hands, or look them in the eye. After eight months in the academy, Ty now raises his hand in class, volunteers to sing a solo in the choir, and speaks with confidence to adults.

Parents are increasingly grateful for Coelho's impact on the community, and they continually ask him why he doesn't charge more money, but Coelho remains ambivalent about turning the RBA into a solvent endeavor. He currently charges each player ten dollars per month, and those who can't afford that get scholarships.

Most of the fee goes toward covering the one thousand dollars per month rental cost for the gym and the prizes he gives away at each practice. Yet, Coelho says, the academy still costs him money out of his own pocket, not to mention the hours it takes away from his handyman business. Coelho realizes that many of the families could easily afford more, and his closest competitors often charge anywhere from $35 to $175 per month.

That group of friends means a lot to Coelho and has become his extended family. Coelho's own family remains supportive of his work, despite the time he puts into it. His children regularly attend RBA practices each Saturday, along with his wife, who is heavily involved with running the program. But not everyone approves.

"My mom today is seventy-five, and says, 'Joe, you're foolish and you're wasting your time,'" Coelho says. But rejection is something he overcame long ago, and he would like to pass the lesson on. "What hooked me was failure and not getting to participate," he says. "I want to leave my community better than what it was. It is my passion. If I die today, I die happy." •

BElOW_ Joey Peterson, four, concentrates on his dribbling.

ABOVE_Jordan Alexander, nine, was Oregon's champion in the national free-throw competition and continues to participate in the RBA.

"I wouldn't need my handyman business if I charged more," he says.

"I just don't want anyone to ever think this is about making money."

Knowing he can't operate in the red forever, he explains that his goal is to raise more money through donations and sponsors rather than increase prices.

Though he recently found several local sponsors to offset the financial burden, Coe1ho brings two donation jars to each session.

The first, no larger than aspaghetti sauce jar, is for the RBA, and the larger one, a replica of a real-size basketball, will be donated to Womenspace, a local shelter for battered women. "I want to teach our kids to give back," he says.

Chris Nystrom of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce found out how much Coelho is giving back when several RBA parents nominated the coach for one of the organization's Emerald Awards.

Nystrom says the chamber received letters from parents emphasizing how Coelho is "changing kids' lives with selflessness and persistent dedication to the community." Nystrom also pointed out that the dedication many parents described surpassed Coelho's duties with the RBA. "We always say he's like an angel," Holo says. This past summer, she approached Coelho about bringing Ty's best friend, a non-RBA member, to the academy's summer camp for a day. The boy's mother

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Matt Chandler adopts a nonviolent approach to eradicate injustice in Iraq story_Meg Krugel photography courtesy of Christian Peacemaker Teams

he remnants of war - of fear and loss - melted into the parched Middle-Eastern landscape. Weeks ago, an improvised explosive device targeting the Iraqi police detonated in front of asmall video shop in Baghdad. Businesses surrounding the shop were brutally damaged by the force of the explosion. Like bone-deep scars, severe cracks were permanently scribed into the stone walls and storefronts that lined this once busy street. Slowly and steadily, the foundation of the video shop crumbled into the pale brown silt of the Iraqi earth.

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Ablackening sky began to fall on the war-torn country of Iraq, signaling the end of another day of conflict. For thousands of Iraqi and American families, the closing of the day brought another sleepless night without aloved one and another morning of uncertainty, danger, and heartache. Beneath the night sky, a man in a red baseball cap walked along the wounded street. He approached the video store with caution until he saw afriend inside. The Iraqi video shop owner embraced his American friend with one arm. His right arm, which was injured by gunfire near his home in Sadr City, was bound in a makeshift sling. It had been an important day for the twenty-three-year-old American, Matt Chandler, and the two men had much to discuss.

LEFT_Matt Chandler photographs a demonstration by followers of Moqtada AI-Sadr, aShiite cleric who has led uprisings against the U.S.-led coalition.The protest came after the coalition banned AI-Sadr's newspaper and arrested several of his aides.

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hat was Thursday, September 30, 2004. After hundreds of interviews with Iraqi victims and their families, Chandler had spent the day finalizing reports detailing the abuse of Iraqi detainees.

According to these documents, military actions designed to ensure the short-term security of the American guard, such as strict control of detention camps like the Abu Ghraib prison, actually compromised the long-term security interests of Iraqis. The reports of extended abuse and the work of Chandler's human rights advocacy would soon spread to media outlets around the world. It would

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and conduct face-to-face interviews with detainees to understand their perspective. On May 11, 2005, Chandler returned to his Springfield, Oregon, home following his fourth, but not final, peacekeeping mission.

The walls and ceiling of Chandler's street-side apartment were cracking. The effects of the war had shaken this building too many times to count. But Chandler called this rundown apartment home.

On September 23, 2004, he stood in front of the apartment's window overlooking a row of businesses. At 10:30 P.M., there was little to observe on this darkened street.

But, suddenly, gunfire ripped through the still air. The loud and rapid shooting lasted for three long minutes. Pressing his hands to the glass, Chandler watched civilians flee as several armed men barged out of a building directly across the street from where he stood. Impulsively, Chandler thought to race out and help awounded man lying face down on the ground. Before he turned, the armed men carried the wounded man to a nearby van and drove away.

Then, as it was before, the air became still, marred only by the memory of this short, violent episode.

ABOVE_Chandler participates in ahuman rights demonstration for detainees. CPT workers held regular demonstrations with family members of detainees before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal first surfaced.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Chandler gives blood at a Baghdad hospital aday after witnessing the bombing of the Kadhum shrine in the city's AI-Kadhamiya district.

ignite the emotions of both pro- and anti-war proponents. The September Report on Detainees, published in 2004, would become one of the milestone achievements for Chandler and his ongoing work with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT).

Four months after his college graduation, Chandler made his first trip to Iraq as afull-time member of CPT's Iraq Project team.

Inspired by the idea that peacemakers must be willing, just as soldiers, to die for their cause, Chandler has completed four round trips to Iraq since September 2003 as avolunteer with the nonprofit human rights organization. The group strives to serve as a watchdog of military actions in conflict zones throughout the world.

CPT workers hold peace activist training groups for Iraqis

The next day, Chandler's landlord arrived and explained that the previous night's shooting was unrelated to insurgent activity; it was only street crime. He urged Chandler and his five CPT coworkers not to worry - the apartment's security guard had plenty of "machine guns to keep us safe." Somehow, Chandler and the team found little solace in the idea of more firearms at the ready. In a conversation with a neighbor and friend, Chandler explained that the current level of danger might not subside until after the January 2005 Iraqi elections - still four months away.

Chandler couldn't seem to shake the memory of the shooting. The recent violence and its emotional after-effects seemed too familiar to the Thurston High School graduate. When gunshots rang out on the Thurston campus on May 21, 1998, Chandler was eating

breakfast off school grounds with friends from his church youth group. During his absence, piercing screams ricocheted across the campus as fellow classmate Kip Kinkel opened fire on the student body. Just as Chandler witnessed unarmed Iraqis fleeing the building across the street, he remembers arriving at school and seeing hundreds of terrified students flooding from the cafeteria.

During the weeks and months that followed the Thurston shooting, Chandler and his community grieved the death of two Thurston classmates. He saw the city of Springfield unite in support of the. twenty-two students who were injured, and he sensed the underlying dismay of his own friends and the general public because of this unjust act of violence. As awitness to the effects of the shooting on both the individual and the community at large, Chandler began to develop a deep personal ethic to resist violence at all costs.

In the fall of 1999, Chandler enrolled in George Fox University, a small Quaker-run college near Portland, Oregon, to study Christian ministries and philosophy. His classes led him through deep religious, political, and philosophical discussions that helped shape his emerging views on the nonviolent approach. "Violence didn't seem to square with Jesus' teachings about mercy, grace, forgiveness, and love for friends and foes alike," Chandler says. This spiritual conviction became the foundation for Chandler's ongoing work in Iraqi war zones.

On the morning of Friday, April 4, 2004, Chandler tied the laces of his worn brown shoes but left his signature red cap, embroidered with "CPT" in black thread, at home. He and his teammates only wear their hats to signal the organization's presence while conducting human rights work, but not for personal business. On this day, he had been invited to the house of Musa, agood friend of the team.

When he arrived, Musa welcomed Chandler through the front door and into the sitting room. Acurious four-year-old girl peeked at Chandler from around the corner. Fatima, Musa's daughter, walked cautiously toward him as she attempted to tame her thick, black hair with asmall comb. Because of the language barrier, the two did not share any words.

Musa walked into the sitting room carrying a pot of hot liquid and ushered Fatima away. The stories he was about to tell Chandler were not suitable for the innocent ears of his young daughter. He began to talk about his work as astationery and map printer, but soon the discussion delved into Musa's experiences under Saddam Hussein.

"He told me that he spent thirteen months in prison between 1999 and 2000 for reasons of which he is still unsure," Chandler remembers. "Then he demonstrated how he was forced to hang from the ceiling by his hands tied behind his back for long hours."

Even five years later, Musa felt the effects of Hussein's dictatorship

- he still suffers from intestinal problems from the poor prison conditions. "I give thanks [to] my God I am alive," Musa says with a small smile.

"When they saw the retaliation and abuse of American soldiers toward detainees, they asked us 路 d emocracy.'? '" . . . 'Th路IS IS According to Doug Pritchard, codirector of CPT, Musa's story is all too common among the Iraqis whom team members interview. "The people in Iraq had horrible experiences under Saddam Hussein," Pritchard says. But there is another side to the story, which CPT members learned through their interactions with the locals. "When they saw the retaliation and abuse of American soldiers toward detainees, they asked us ... 'This is democracy? We knew this kind of treatment under Saddam, but we didn't expect it from you [the U.S. troops] ,'" Pritchard explains.

Pritchard says that CPT members travel only into regions' where Iraqis will welcome their human rights work. On January 27, 2005, volunteers conducted atraining session for Iraqi peace activists in the city of Karbala. The day began as nine Iraqis and four CPT workers stood in asmall circle discussing their traumatic experiences. Ared piece of construction paper, neatly trimmed into the

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ecause of this family tension, Chandler and his parents rarely discuss the detainee abuse situation. Since he's been serving in Iraq, however, both Chandler and his parents have learned to set aside their differences. The safety of her son is, above all, Brenda's main concern. "I spend each day wondering what he's doing and worrying about him." Her warm voice shakes as she speaks.

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Three weeks before Chandler was scheduled to return to his Springfield home in October 2004 for ashort leave of absence, insurgents intensified retaliatory strikes against the U.S. presence. Kidnappings of both soldiers and foreign aid workers increased. The country was distraught with the ongoing violence by both the U.S. troops and the anti-Western insurgents. Chandler knew that it was too dangerous for the entire CPT team to be in the country at this time.

As Iraq Project Coordinator, Chandler advised Pritchard and the other CPT directors to reduce the team size to two individuals.

Soon after this decision, several volunteers packed their meager belongings into small suitcases and boarded planes to return home.

Chandler and coworker Tom Fox locked themselves inside their apartment for several days as kidnappings became more frequent.

ABOVE_Chandler stands with the family of adetainee in Abu Sifa, avillage just north of Baghdad.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Chandler listens as aman identifies the family members of an Iraqi detainee in aphotograph.

shape of a heart, passed from hand to hand around the circle. Each individual was to tell a memory about trauma and then tear asmall piece from the heart. Looking at the red paper, one Iraqi said, "The heart isn't big enough to show all the pain we have experienced."

Slowly, the stories unfolded. Tears flowed freely as Iraqis shared memories of life under Hussein and of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A young man named Assad shared this: "In the Iraq/Iran War, people died all around me. I slept with dead bodies until they were carried away. I helped bury the bodies after the 1991 resistance [against] Saddam Hussein. In this war [the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq], I watched afriend explode before my eyes as he defused U.S. cluster bombs." As his words slowed, his fingers ripped acorner from the heart and pushed the small piece of paper into his pants pocket.

At the conclusion of the day, Assad reflected, "I am an angry person, easily agitated." As he looked at the training team, he said, "I am

"The heart isn't big enough to show all the pain we have experienced." a different person because of you. I want to participate in a CPT action." The volunteers smiled. Assad's comment was the highest form of praise.

The team often works with the U.S. military in its peace-building efforts, enabling workers to balance their anti-war conscience with

the military's perspective. In January 2004, CPT suggested that the U.S. military demarcate unexploded ordinance zones with brightly colored tape to warn civilians of possible danger. Army Captain Matthew Wheeler's rejection of the idea angered several of the volunteer workers and spurred asmall conflict between U.S. troops and the CPT unit. In a letter, however, Wheeler proposed that the group use its resources as a non-governmental organization to train and assist Iraqis with cleaning up the bombs.

In his letter to CPT, Wheeler explained that he understood the team's anger and frustration over his unwillingness to compromise, but drawing attention to the peacemaking cause did not include attacking "low-level officers {and fellow Christians)." He wrote, "We do not set national policy, and often we are torn between a trichotomy of what are orders, what is best, and what is ethical."

Wheeler recognized that CPT could have significant influence on the peacemaking cause by simply employing "a warm smile with demonstrated action."

Understanding the military comes somewhat naturally to Chandler, who hasn't always been surrounded by pacifists. Chandler's father was raised in a military family and his grandfather served in Vietnam.

His parents, Bill and Brenda Chandler, say that there are just some conflicts that require military action. When Chandler announced his decision to join CPT, dissent bubbled in the family's home. His parents, particularly his father, had difficulty showing support for their son in light of the U.S. military's invasion of Iraq. "It's been hard because we all love him," Brenda Chandler says of her son, "but we are just different."

Chandler remembers a discussion he had with aShia cleric and an accompanying translator during the somber period. The cleric told Chandler that Iraqi terrorists wouldn't know the difference between the intentions of armed and unarmed Americans.

"Don't be victims," the cleric told Chandler and Fox. The simple words stuck with the two men during their quiet three-week stay in Baghdad.

Sunday. The audience attentively listened as Chandler, the evening's guest speaker, shared his experiences as aChristian peacemaker in Iraq. His hands gestured easily as he described his interactions with the Iraqi men, women, and children he had met.

As Chandler read quotations from his interviews with detainees, photos of him in Iraq circulated the room. In one, he stands beside the Sunni imam Sheik Moayed - often said to be the most influential Sunni imam in Iraq. In other photos, the effects of war are more vivid. One depicted CPT workers lining a busy but dilapidated street corner holding poster-sized images of missing detainees. The photos aroused asense of urgency concerning the Iraqi detainee situation, but Chandler's stories also spread hope to pacifists seeking to end the war.

Chandler doesn't know where he'll go after CPT. Shortly before he left for his fourth trip to Iraq, Brenda Chandler overheard her son telling his younger brother that he'd like to write a book about his work as a peacekeeper. That might be years away - there is still much work to be done in order to bring peace to the Middle-Eastern country.

For now, Chandler continues to make his footprint in the war-torn Iraqi soil for four months at atime, inspired and comforted by the experiences of his brave, spiritual journey. •

When the time came for Chandler to leave Iraq and return to Oregon on November 6, 2004, his flight was delayed at Baghdad International Airport. Abomb had exploded nearby, and all flights were postponed. He escaped the incident without injury but was emotionally traumatized and exhausted. He had seen similar violence on innocent victims before - both at home and in Iraq. And, though anxious to return to his family and friends, the terrified expressions of those at the airport and the shards of broken glass that littered the front entrance sent aclear message: Chandler's work in Iraq was not complete.

Shortly before Chandler left for Iraq in January 2005, he gathered with agroup of Oregonian peace activists in the small sanctuary of the Eugene Friends' meeting house, where the local Quakers gather to hold silent worship every

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nthe coastal waters of Oregon, men - some barely out of high school - work around the clock to earn the kinds of paychecks that doctors see. For afew months amid the unforgiving winter swells of the North Pacific, they pick their way along the rocky Oregon coast, hauling crab pots.

Claude Badet, a Frenchman who fell into fishing half a lifetime ago, says life on the boat is like the Wild West. Trade buffalo for migrating gray whales clipping along at twenty-six knots per hour and dusty leather chaps for orange rubber suits slick with rain and fish guts, and the image is apt. These men are governed by few rules, and they work in awild and dangerous place. The time the men spend beyond the jetties at the mouth of Oregon's Yaquina Bay may be the only thing that holds them together in their boomand-bust lifestyles. But one day, they will return from a run, look into the hold at too few crabs, and realize that the season is almost over.

ABOVE_Functioning on little to no sleep, blockman Claude Badet spends eighteen-hour days aboard AI Pazar's boat.

PREVIOUS PAGE_Guiding the line through Delma Ann's hydraulic pulley, Badet and crewman Tony Fultz prepare to pull acrab pot from the Pacific's waters.

The work is dangerous: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and depending on the year, fishing and logging vie for the title of most perilous profession in the United States. In the beginning of the crabbing season, which opens December 1, crews spend weeks on the ocean derby fishing - working night and day with no respite.

To add to the danger of difficult work on zero sleep, the Dungeness crabbing season can be the most volatile fishing time of the year, with sudden swells periodically capsizing boats led by weary skippers. Most fishing fatalities occur in December and January - the two most profitable months of the season.

Perhaps danger, and its payoff, is the draw. Dungeness crab is the most valuable single-species fishery in the state of Oregon.

Last year, fishermen caught an unprecedented thirty-one million dollars-worth of Dungeness. AI Pazar, aforty-nine-year-old lifetime fisherman, holds one of the 350 coveted permits that allow Oregon fishermen to catch the crustaceans commercially. He inspires my confidence with his paternal mien and a kind, knowledgeable bearing when he agrees to let me come along on an eighteen-hour run.

I meet Pazar in Yaquina Bay at 7 A.M. (an atypical late start) near his boat on Dock 5. Delma Ann, afifty-one-foot crabbing boat, can be retrofitted with equipment for fishing Chinook salmon and albacore tuna during Dungeness off-seasons. He leads me through the cramped cabin of the forty-two-year-old boat, up a ladder precariously mounted to the cabin wall, and through atrap door.

We enter the top house, acontrol room and an office rolled into one - with the spaciousness of a handicapped bathroom stall. It contains a Global Positioning System, asonar Downsounder that doubles as aTV, a laptop, a CD player, a FISH 12 MK-11 (a device that records Delma's path, or "slug trail"), and about a dozen other gadgets either tacked to the ceiling or balanced on the dash. This is where Pazar spends most of his time on the boat, shouting orders through an open window to his two-man crew, joking with other fishermen over a CB radio, tracking weather conditions, keeping an eye on currents, and navigating Delma Ann over swells as smoothly as possible.

Pazar leans against an upholstered swivel chair bolted to the floor, and I sit down next to him on a matching blue vinyl bench, its color corroded by the briny ocean air. Aschool portrait of his sixteen-yearold daughter is mounted to the front windshield. He engages the throttle, flips afew rusty switches, and we're off to sea.

Pazar explains through his coarse gray mustache that the first leg - crossing the bar - is the most dangerous part of the journey. "I've had some experiences on this bar that have made my knees weak," he says. The blood drains from my face. To cross the bar, Pazar must navigate through two jetties that redirect the Yaquina River into the Pacific Ocean. The competing currents of the two bodies of water can cause thirty-foot swells. Noticing my white hands death-gripping the vinyl bench, Pazar assures me that things are pretty calm today.

As we make our way out to sea, we pass Hallmark Fisheries, a large seafood distributor where fishermen can load bait directly onto their

boats and unloa"d their catch at the end of their run. As agift to the fishermen, Hallmark commissioned a mural of awell-endowed, topless mermaid on one of its large facades facing the bay. On the side visible to tourists is a breaching gray whale.

Pazar confidently maneuvers Delma Ann under the Yaquina Bay Bridge and "between the jaws," or the jetties, as he tells me his life story. "You know, there are old fishermen and there are dumb fishermen. But there are no old, dumb fishermen," he says with a wry smile. Pazar's father was aschoolteacher in Tacoma, Washington, who ran a charter boat in the summers, so Pazar has been fishing since he was eight. He bought his first boat at sixteen and fixed it up in his high school shop class. Pazar enrolled in the fishery science program at Oregon State University but dropped out after running out of money. There, he met his wife, a business major, and they began fishing for salmon together in Washington.

Shortly after the Boldt decision passed in 1974, which allotted half of harvestable salmon to Native American tribes, they moved to Florence, Oregon, and continued fishing together until they had kids.

In 1986, they bought the Krab Kettle, aseafood market in Florence, which Pazar's wife runs during the labor-intensive Dungeness crabbing season.

ABOVE_From the top house, Pazar looks west into what he calls areverse sunrise - a bad omen for fishermen, signaling astorm on the horizon.

LEFT_A quiet laborer, Fultz carries 125-pound crab pots to the boat's stem.

ythe time we're safely through the jaws, I feel a little queasy.

Pazar recommends I get some fresh air. I climb down into the cabin where ayoung crewman is sleeping and head to the back deck. There, Badet, thirty-nine, is leaning against the railing. He pulls a cigarette from a blue box of American Spirits, offering one to me.

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Badet looks no older than thirty - which he attributes to the sea air - despite a penchant for chain-smoking. He is friendly, yet he smiles rarely and unconvincingly. Badet amuses me with stories of his recent five-week transatlantic adveoture as he pulls on his cigarette between sentences. After spending the summer traveling Europe, he hitched a ride on a French charter boat to make it back to the United States before the Dungeness season began. He landed in Annapolis, Maryland, and made his way to Newport in time to help Pazar ready Delma Ann for the start of the crabbing season.

In preparation for the season, the men baited six hundred buoyed crab pots, each weighing up to 125 pounds when empty. They positioned the traps on the ocean floor by attaching them along strings. Each buoy has a number, identifying the fisherman who owns the trap. The boat moves along astring, and each successive trap is emptied. Some strings have as few as a dozen pots, others more than one hundred. When fishermen find agood spot to place astring, they hold onto it for seasons to come. "Crabs are like the swallows at [San Juan] Capistrano or the butterflies at Monterey," Pazar explains. "They come back to the same place at the same time every year."

One thing has become routine in Badet's life - he always comes back to the same little coastal town to crab with Pazar.

The same could be said for Badet. After a couple months of eighteen-hour days, he has the money, hence the freedom, to do things he enjoys: traveling, playing guitar, silk-screening T-shirts with

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had a near-death experience at sea. "I had a boat sink on me once."

He shrugs. "So I went for aswim for awhile."

We enter the cabin, and I lie down in ashoebox of a bottom bunk, still feeling nauseous. Badet steps into his rubber suit - bright orange overalls that rise midway up the chest - seeming to intuitively anticipate that the first pots will soon be unloaded.

He sits down at atiny galley table littered with heavy mugs, their bottoms crusted with hot chocolate dregs, and flips through an issue of the Smithsonian. After afew minutes, Pazar disengages the throttle, turning off the soothing hum of the John Deere engine in the hull. The silence stirs Tony Fultz, twenty-two, who has been sleeping soundly for the two hours since we left port.

ABOVE_Exhausted, Fultz and Badet take a brief break while Pazar pilots the boat to his "secret spot" to drop off one last string before heading home.

OPPOSITE PAGE_An orange glow emanates from overhead lights, illuminating the boat and surrounding waters. Weather permitting, Delma Ann and her crew sail through the night and into the next day.

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had a

boat sink on me once.

So I went for a swim for a while. jj

a homemade printing machine, and picking up new hobbies on a whim. But one thing has become routine in Badet's life - he always comes back to the same little coastal town to crab with Pazar.

Badet is a renegade among renegades. "I'm a minimalist," he says.

"That's the thing about fishermen - they're not very smart," he comments, referring to the many who blow all their money early in the season on big trucks and alcohol.

Badet started fishing as a"freak accident" in Alaska. He was living in San Francisco and bought atwenty-dollar book entitled How to Make a Lot of Money that directed him to travel to Seattle and join an Alaskan fishing crew. After three months at sea working eighteen-hour days fishing for black cod, he received the biggest paycheck he'd ever seen. "I brought it to the bank and was like, 'Is this ajoke?'" Badet says. When they cashed it, he succumbed to the impulse common in other fishermen - he threw a party and bought a motorcycle, riding it home to San Francisco.

With Dungeness crab meat selling for up to fifty dollars per pound, the money is good - paychecks for crewmen in the first two weeks average ten thousand dollars. Pazar cuts his crew 25 percent of the boat's revenue. But about 75 percent of the season's Dungeness crop is caught in the first two months, so profits quickly dwindle. Although Dungeness fishing season is long - running from December 1 until August 14 - few fishermen find it profitable to fish the "scratch," the meager harvest left after the first few months.

Like gold, the Dungeness is a potentially exhaustible resource despite strict industry-imposed regulations that attempt to maintain the crab's population. Furthermore, the West has a monopoly on the crustacean; the Dungeness can only be found along atwentythree hundred-mile swath of coast from central California to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, the most dangerous North American region for fishing.

Even after two decades in the profession, Badet claims he's never

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scruffy goatee sprouts from Fultz's chin and thick metal hoops pierce two earlobes and one eyebrow. He is initially a little reticent around me, probably because women rarely board crabbing boats. He hops off the top bunk and suits up in orange rubber, concealing the flame and skull tattoos adorning his lean arms. Fultz and Badet slide on shiny, brown rubber boots and wrap themselves in hooded jackets, readying themselves for the first pots of the day.

They slip on cotton gloves, then blue rubber ones, and take their places on deck.

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I ascend the ladder to the top house, and Pazar yells explanatory notes as I watch the crewmen's maneuvers. Badet, the blockman, dips a hooked ten-foot stick called a buoy stick into the ocean and fishes out a rope attached to a buoy. He winds the rope around the block, a hydraulic pulley on an adjustable metal arm.

As the contraption whirls, sputtering saltwater, it pulls up the first crab pot. There is a one-way trap door, called atrigger, and two escape rings the precise size to allow small, unharvestable crabs to flee the pot.

Badet and Fultz hoist the pot onto the ledge of the boat and chuck the usable crabs into the dump box, an open-topped wooden box on four legs. They toss the females and small males - which are illegal to harvest - back to sea and pitch the large males into the fish hole, a 280-cubic-foot pit filled with circulating seawater for storing live crabs. Fultz, the "baiter" (generally prefixed with an obvious joke indicating his proficiency of skill), slaps avile handful of chopped sardines, razor clams, and squid into the bait jars atop the crab pots.

Even though they're working with the most repugnant materials - fish guts, acrid base detergents, and all kinds of sea scum dredged up by the pots - the men move together in a graceful pas de deux, each of their quick gestures silently interpreted by the other and reciprocated by an appropriate response.

Between strings, Badet shoots pictures of the shoreline with a

35mm camera. "Every day you see things that no one else sees," he says. The Oregon shoreline is exquisite: misty coves with waterfalls spouting from jagged cliffs, green, wooded mountains, and fogeclipsed bluffs. Then Fultz approaches me: "So, you're from Eugene?

There's some good reefer there, eh?"

Fultz grew up near Newport in Siletz, population 1,133, and has never been more than a hundred miles from home. When he graduated from high school, he went into logging. Shaken after witnessing a gruesome accident involving his father's best friend, he took a couple of weeks off and never went back. He then decided to try his hand at another dangerous profession - crabbing.

Badet offers his couch for me to crash on. His place is meticulously clean and uncluttered - avast contrast to the cramped, chaotic cabin on the boat. He brews peppermint tea and I quickly pass out to the sound of the ocean winds.

I awake early, the foggy sky outside aglow with awarm sun. Badet emerges from his bedroom. He smiles at me and walks to a large window facing west. There, a pair of binoculars sits near the window.

He raises them to his eyes and stares out to sea. •

But, for Fultz, greater dangers may lie on solid ground. In the last six months, he has attended two funerals of friends who died in drunkdriving accidents and has blown up or totaled three automobiles of his own. "I fuckin' like to party real hard, and I fuckin' hate being tied down," he declares. Apicture of the most recent incendiary vehicle - aglossy, raised red truck - is taped to the ceiling of his bunk as a memento.

I head into the cabin to chug some water, dehydrated from the salt and sun so ubiquitous on deck. Pazar descends the ladder. "I guess I haven't explained the bathroom situation," he says. "We have a bucket."

The men continue to work the strings until dark, repeating the same graceful motions with precision and complete concentration.

Between pots, Fultz rips up razor clams with bare hands, saws through partially frozen sardines, and slices up afour-foot squid - its vivid red, green, and orange viscera oozing from its rubbery body. nthe muted watery plain, streaks of purple clouds obscure the setting sun, suffusing their edges with afiery orange glow - the same colors as the Dungeness.

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Delma Ann covered about a hundred miles that day, zig-zagging deeper out to sea, from Newport to Neskowin. We sail back to port on an obsidian landscape - chipped black water heaving beneath our feet. The men's boots dry on electric boot warmers, Fultz's with "Fultzy" scrawled in black marker.

It is 1 A.M. when we reach harbor and unload the day's catch under the mermaid at Hallmark. Badet descends into the fish hole and crates up crabs, as Fultz hoists them onto Hallmark's platform. Fultz shouts to Badet in a mock French accent, "Claude-eel Claude-eel" Badet ignores him and continues to work earnestly with Pazar. "You can see the bottom," Badet says disappointedly, pointing to the bright aqua floor of the fish hole peeking through atangle of legs and claws. Scratch season has already begun.

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AHOME WITHOUT BORDERS In achanging land, aLatina immigrant keeps her heritage alive story_Sara Wachter-Boettcher photography_Lindsay Abbott Editor's note: This story takes place in November 2004. For an update, please visit influx.uoregon.eduj2005.

amilies spill through the door, rushing to escape the icy fog that chokes the air outside and turns the dusky autumn evening into athick November night.

Young mothers herd ruddy-cheeked children through the heavy doors and seat themselves in wooden pews, unwinding their scarves and removing their coats. Some whisper to one another, saying hello. Others stare ahead, eyes fixed upon the warmly lit altar. They cross themselves reverently in Jesus' presence, droplets of holy water still glistening on their foreheads.

Ahush falls over the crowd of thirty or so worshippers - not nearly enough to fill the large, wood-paneled church - as Liliana Ortiz stands at the edge of the altar, her round face partially obscured by a music stand. Her voice is quiet, almost timid, as she begins to speak, welcoming the crowd with asmile and an offer of song. She flicks on atape player behind her, and the hollow sound of recorded drums and horns fills the near-empty room.

"Creo en Jesus, creo en Jesus. £1 es mi amigo, £1 es mi alegria, £1 es mi amor," the congregation begins to sing. I believe in Jesus, I believe in Jesus. He is my friend, He is my joy, He is my love.

Ortiz stops the tape as the song begins to fade, taking her seat for the start of Mass, and Father Charles Zach begins to recite the Lord's Prayer. "Padre nuestro, que estas en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre," he says, his voice tinged with a Latin accent from years of teaching the dead language. No one seems to mind, though - least of all Ortiz, who sits calmly, her face radiating joy.

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OPPOSITE PAGE_Liliana Ortiz works in her church to unite her Latino community.

ere, at Saint Helen's Catholic Church, Ortiz leads a flock of Latinos - first-generation immigrants still reeling from flights across the border and former migrant workers who have settled in the towns where they have harvested crops for years.

Every Saturday these families come here, to Junction City - one of the many Oregonian farming and mill towns that have transformed into bedroom communities - to attend Mass and receive Communion in their native language.

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she notices a new family from neighboring Monroe, a six hundredperson hamlet one-tenth the size of Junction City. She smiles at them, making sure to say hello before the family bundles up to face the suffocating fog outside.

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As Father Charles's assistant, twenty-eight-year-old Ortiz serves as a liaison between the Latino community and the church, giving the solace of Spanish services to those who feel isolated or homesick.

Perched near the altar, hymnbook in hand, she leads a community pulled in two different directions in an attempt to find a middle road between the assimilation of American ideals and the preservation of Mexican customs.

uring the work week, Ortiz leads a different life. She wakes up before dawn and works the six-to-six shift at Country Coach, a recreational vehicle manufacturer, putting the finishing touches on counter tops and cabinets for one hundred-thousand-dollar motor homes. It's agood job - one she worked long and hard to get, and after just a couple of months, her boss has already mentioned that someday she'll be the one training people. After four years as a supervisor at the Junction City Arby's, the job - with its higher wages and four-day workweek - is astep up.

The first time Saint Helen's offered services in Spanish, in the spring of 2003, four people came. The next week, another family showed up. As time wore on, more and more Latinos attended - often at Ortiz's direct invitation. Now, ayear and a half later,

Back at home at the end of atwelve-hour day, she starts her household duties: cooking dinner for her husband, Martfn, and their three children; making sure the kids do their homework; keeping the compact house clean and tidy.

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Ortiz and her husband bought the house, a cozy, unassuming place in a quiet neighborhood, six years ago. Filled with plush sofas and oak furniture, family photos and accent lamps, it looks like the perfect home for ayoung middle-class family. Only the few Mexicanmade Catholic icons settled on curio shelves distinguish it from a typical suburban home.

After dinner, Ortiz's husband settles himself on the couch with the couple's eleven-year-old son, Martfn Jr., nestled at his side. Jylene, who's five, horses around on the floor with Abraham, achubby-faced eighteen-month-old who smiles and squeals as they play. The father speaks to his children in Spanish, settling them down to watch Shrek 2 on DVD. Martfn Jr. responds in an English-Spanish hybrid, throwing in American slang whenever he sees fit. "Sometimes I get confused between English and Spanish," he says. "It's real hard for me."

But Ortiz won't take that for an answer. "I don't want my kids to forget my language," she says. So when Martfn Jr. starts adding English words to Spanish sentences, saying things like "Mami, yo necesito clothes," Ortiz shakes her head. "I say, 'Tell me en Espano/,'" she says, adding that holding onto his language is essential for him to retain his Mexican heritage.

"Es diferente aquf," Ortiz says - it's different here. American children leave their families as soon as they grow up. They stop going to church. They stop calling home. They stop making friends

with their neighbors and taking care of their elders. They forget where they're from.

She doesn't want that to happen with Martfn Jr., but she does want him to take advantage of the opportunities she sees in Oregon. She dreams that one day her eldest son will go to college and become

"If you speak Spanish, you can help more people.

I crossed the border. I work so hard - I work so hard so you can go to school. jj

a doctor or a lawyer - something important, with lots of education, where he can use his heritage to help other Latinos.

So far, Ortiz's dream seems to be coming true. Her son does well in school; he brings home honor certificates and talks about college.

Ortiz knows this could change in afew years, when Martfn Jr. enters high school, but she tries not to think about that. "I don't worry too much because I know him," she says - she knows he won't show up with a lackluster report card or a detention slip in hand. Instead, Martfn Jr. comes home boasting that his teacher asked for help translating words into Spanish.

ABOVE_Outside their Junction City house sit (from left): Jylene, Martfn Sr., Abraham, Liliana, and Martfn Jr. OPPOSITE PAGE_Ortiz and afellow church member converse over tamales at aSunday church gathering.

This clearly makes her proud. After twelve years of working with noisy machinery and sizzling oil vats, Ortiz's face lights up when thinking about the doors that are open to her son. "If you speak Spanish, you can help more people," she tells him. "I crossed the border. I work so hard - I work so hard so you can go to schooL" LA FRONTERA na late night in 1992, after the desert sun had set and a crisp, dry coldness had set in the Nogales air, Ortiz crossed /a frontera, the Mexico-Arizona border. Not quite sixteen years old, she had married Martfn some months before. While he waited for her in Monroe, she traveled from her parents' home near Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco, to cross the Rfo Grande alone, sinking chest deep into murky brown water that froze her small frame to the core. For fifteen minutes, she waded through the cloudy, dirty river, terrified of what - or who - might be waiting for her in the night.

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Isolated in a new land and unable to speak English, Ortiz found herself terrified of interacting with strangers. Her first trip to the grocery store, asimple errand to pick up aluminum foil, turned disastrous when she couldn't read the packaging. She felt as if the whole world was staring at her as she muddled her way through the market; she felt unwelcome, strange, and out of place. It was then that she went to work with her husband, finding seasonal jobs harvesting Christmas trees in the fertile valley around Monroe.

"There's a big Mexican population here nobody's serving them. " When she first arrived in the tiny farming town, Ortiz remembers just two or three immigrant families living there, all of them from the same area of Jalisco as herself. Most of them were seasonal laborers or temporary workers - like Ortiz, people who had crossed the border for a better future - and many of them struggled with English.

country. Inside, cheap displays piled with everything from masa (corn flour used for tortillas) to Mexican shampoos and lotions line the tiled floor. Arefrigerated case carries Coca-Cola and Jarritos, a Mexican soda.

Rosa Munoz relaxes at the front of the store, her eighteen-month-old daughter, Itzel, running around the shelves and racks by her side.

She opened La Poderosa in August 2004 with her husband, Rafael Ayala, after seeing how large the Latino population in Monroe had become. They don't live in Monroe - their home is in Corvallis, some twenty miles to the north - but Munoz was interested in reaching out to this somewhat isolated town.

"There's a big Mexican population here - nobody's serving them," she says, pointing across the highway toward the residential part of town.

"Even though it's just alittle Mexican store, it's a political action."

In contrast to the hostile-feeling grocery store Ortiz encountered twelve years before, La Poderosa aims to be awelcoming, safe place for Latinos to get ataste of home. In addition to selling household goods, Munoz also volunteers her services as a notary and translator to those who need help with things such as immigration paperwork

- skills she learned at Oregon State University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in health and human services in 2004.

Unlike Ortiz, Munoz was born aU.S. citizen. Her mother crossed the border as a pregnant teen turned out of her parents' home and eventually settled in Eastern Oregon when Munoz was seven. She remembers her mother working long factory shifts back then, toiling for hours to make ends meet. Her mother never had time to teach her kids about tradition, Munoz says, and so it slipped away.

At seventeen, Munoz was a mother herself. By twenty, she had two children. Now, at twenty-six, she is the mother of three, each with a different father. "I had a problem as far as not really being committed to one individual because in this society you're raised to say, 'If we can't communicate, let's just split up,'" she says. But when she met Ayala six years ago, shortly after her second child was born, things changed.

"There have probably been, like, a million times that I wanted to leave her dad," she says, nodding toward Itzel. But she hasn't. "When I met him, I realized how important the family is."

Determined to learn the language of her new land, Ortiz began taking lessons from awoman she worked with. Her English still isn't perfect, but it has improved greatly in the months since she started working at Country Coach. Once she gets warmed up, the sentences fly out. This is not awoman who likes to stay silent.

Ortiz got pregnant during that first year, and about two years after arriving, when Martin Jr. was a baby, the family moved to Junction City to settle down. But the Monroe they left - a poor town, its formerly picturesque buildings beginning to sag under the weight of adeclining farming economy - is not the same as the Monroe of a decade later, the place that agrowing Latino population calls home.

ABOVE_Ortiz kisses her youngest son, Abraham.

She rose from the water on the other bank, touching American soil for the first time. Her body shook with cold and fear as she looked around for the coyote, the helper who would take her away from the danger of the border. He wasn't there. With nowhere else to go, Ortiz sat at the river's edge, shivering and wet, and waited.

The coyote eventually showed up, taking her to her brother-in-law, who brought her to Monroe. Although her husband had his work visa before the couple got married, it took the United States two years to process Ortiz's papers. In the meantime, she had to live in the shadows.

LA COMUNIDAD he drive from Junction City's car dealerships and manufacturing facilities to downtown Monroe takes less than ten minutes on U.S. 99, the winding north-south route now largely abandoned for the interstate to the east. Nestled between lush farmland and tree farms, a small pocket of businesses - a drivethrough coffee stand, a Dari-Mart - adorns a one-mile stretch of the highway. Tucked into the edge of asmall strip mall at the north end of town is La Poderosa, astore catering to this burgeoning community. Meaning "the powerful" in Spanish, La Poderosa sells Mexican foods, videos, and calling cards good for phoning the

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children, Ortiz gets a chance to talk with the priest about her plans for the feast for the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12.

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The celebration commemorates an apparition of Mary in front of an indigenous man in 1531, shortly after the fall of the Aztec empire,

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"People from Mexico come here with a dream.

But they don't understand that the price they're going to pay is a big one."

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near present-day Mexico City. The legend holds that a heavenly being appeared before the man, telling him that she was the Mother of God and instructing him to build a church on the site. Each December, Latin American Catholics celebrate her appearance with early morning feasts, flowers, and aserenade to the Virgin Mother.

ABOVE_latino and Anglo youth peer into a duckling-filled font at aSaint Helen's First Communion ceremony.

OPPOSITE PAGE_ Ortiz serves tamales while volunteering at aSunday church gathering.

Unlike Munoz and the men she used to date, Ayala grew up in Mexico, where family ties and marriage bonds are nearly unbreakable. He crossed the border illegally to settle in Corvallis, where many of his family members live. At one point, he was caught crossing and was deported. Now, even though he and Munoz are legally married, he's still undocumented. Because of the offense, the United States will not grant him immigration rights unless he can document himself living in Mexico for afull decade.

Although Ayala lives here without papers, the couple has built a life here - a life where, like Ortiz's, keeping the Spanish language alive is essential. When her eldest child was young, Munoz spoke English at home. Even now, at nine years old, her son sometimes refuses to speak Spanish. When he does speak English, Munoz just looks at him with mock confusion and says "No entiendo" - I don't understand.

She and Ayala only speak Spanish at home now, and the family is even considering moving back to Mexico to immerse the kids in the culture of their families. She worries that if they stay here, the same things will happen to Itzel that happened to her: bad relationships and misplaced priorities.

"People from Mexico come here with a dream," she says. "But they don't understand that the price they're going to pay is a big one.

Family values begin to change." She purses her darkly lined lips, rolling her eyes as she brushes wisps of hair away from her lashes.

She knows she's living proof of the high price of changing values - proof that without daily struggle, her Mexican heritage could once again disappear.

"It's a contradiction - we're Mexican and we're supposed to be kind of American at the same time," she sighs. But Munoz still attempts to bridge that gap, giving her children the tradition she lacked.

This struggle is exactly what Ortiz is trying to avoid for her children.

She doesn't want to see her kids forget her language, only to have them realize decades later how much more they really lost. Instead, she adheres to tradition - and encourages the Latino community to do the same.

LA TRADICION ack at Saint Helen's, Spanish Mass has ended and Father Charles is preparing for the next morning's English services.

As the families put on their coats and scarves and collect their

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tradition and assimilation - and she's facing the challenge, as usual, with asmile. "I want to help the people," she explains simply, before noticing two families still waiting by the door of the church. She excuses herself from the preparations with Father Charles and turns to help them, quickly ascertaining in aseries of Spanish queries that there are two boys who need to be enrolled in the church's First Communion classes. In the past year, the church has performed sixteen such communions for Latino youth, and this spring, Ortiz plans to be involved with at least five more, instructing Spanish-speaking parents in their responsibilities and incorporating Latino traditions into the ceremony.

While Ortiz informs the parents of what to expect, Fat~er Charles begins to talk about the Spanish-speaking community. "Hispanics feel like outsiders looking in," he says. He stops mid-sentence, and, turning to Ortiz, asks, "Which is correct, Latino or Hispanic?"

"It doesn't matter. It's the same," she replies with a laugh - as if semantics meant much to her. But Martin Jr. looks up, sticks out his chest, and proclaims his preference: "I'm a Latino," he says with a proud swagger. The look on Ortiz's face shows that it makes her proud, too. •

Last year, the church celebrated the holiday with asmall fiesta. But this year, December 12 falls on aSunday, and Ortiz is more excited than ever. Her cheeks glow and her eyes shine when she talks about her preparations for the event, which is seldom celebrated in American Catholic churches. At Father Charles's suggestion, the church will invite the English-speak~ng members to participate in the celebration, which will include afeast, music, and aSunday morning Mass held in Spanish only.

For Ortiz, this is the crux of her work: to get the Latinos involved - to bring Mexican traditions alive in anew place - without creating awall between the two cultures. Her American Dream isn't just wall-to-wall carpeting in asuburban home. Nor is it just financial security and a better tomorrow for her kids. It's all of those things - and everything she took with her from Mexico. It's recognizing that Mexican heritage and the American way don't have to be mutually exclusive.

The celebration for the Virgin of Guadalupe is Ortiz's hallmark achievement in the marriage between the two cultures - a crossroads of

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ike any living thing, the river changes. During the winter, one may find it swollen and pushing to escape its borders. In summer months, it may dry up to a stream. It dances to its own rhythm through the forests that line its banks. But the secrets that lie beneath the river's surface truly arouse its spirit.

The Little White Salmon River is breathtaking; its icy blue waters roar over boulders and falls. But the river is legendary for more than its looks. Frigid temperatures, swift currents, sudden drops, and hidden caves make this river ajoy ride for some and a deathtrap for others.

The Little White, which flows into the Columbia River Gorge about an hour east of Portland, Oregon, is only for true Class Vkayakers.

Spirit Falls, the run's highlight, is a dangerous thirty-three-foot plunge near the end of the trip. In the last three years, at least five paddlers have broken their backs from landing too flat in the pool beneath the falls. Last summer, a visitor from Norway smashed his face on the rock wall, resulting in a crushed jaw and the need for reconstru live facial surgery. Despite these dang e Lit~fe White attracts world-ctass paddlers to its winding, raging current.

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efore attempting an especially difficult run such as Spirit Falls, it is common for kayakers to scout the drop for any potential hazards and mentally fortify themselves for the experience. Billy Jones, twenty-nine, says he prepares himself by visualizing what he wants to do. "I just close my eyes and imagine," he says.

Paul Heffernan, thirty-one, says he has no particular ritual before running the falls. "I just have to want to do it. I listen to whatever my body and head are telling me." Heffernan also says if it weren't for the "comfortable anxiety" he experiences when kayaking, he probably wouldn't do it. "I might just hike instead," he says.

RIGHT_Andrew Maser leaves Spirit's lip.

ABOVE_Jesse Bierman and friends carry their gear to the river to put in.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Ben Rieff adjusts for the landing halfway down Spirit Falls.

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PREVIOUS PAGE_Paul Heffernan dives off the Little White's thirty-three-foot-high Spirit Falls.

ones says he loves kayaking primarily because of the rivers. He believes there is a psychic connection between the human body, which is mostly made up of water, and the river. "How you think affects how you kayak," says Jones. "Water is receptive to subtle energies. It's the only medium where you can get that kind of action, you dig?"

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effernan loves everything about kayaking, from the friends to the forest. "It's been in my blood for awhile. I don't know how much I need it for my personality, or if my personality needs kayaking. I just love to do it," he says.

Heffernan began kayaking at age fifteen with his father in the waters of the Appalachian Mountains, near his hometown of Bristol, Virginia.

Last fall, his father died in a kayaking accident.

Yet he can't imagine not kayaking because the river forms his only connection to his father, he says.

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Many kayakers seem to feel aspecial bond with the Little White. "It's easy to get to, and it has unparalleled action," Jones says. "It's so good you could do it for years and not be bored." He F L U X

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says he believes that there is only one other river in the country that compares to the Little White: the Green River near Asheville, North Carolina.

"So many kayakers wish they had this kind of quality in their backyards," says Jones. Heffernan agrees. He says that although the Little White is not his personal favorite, "it's the best bang for your buck."

To safely navigate the Little White, kayakers must take the time to learn its secrets. They must understand the power of the river and its ability to evolve. Most of all, kayakers must respect the river, which holds their lives in its hands. •

RIGHT_Travis Winn treats acut with iodine after he smacked his nose with his paddle when he landed the falls too flat.

ABOVE_Back on land, Billy Jones reflects on his earlier run.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Spirit Falls is the heart of the Little White for thrill-seekers.

of Honey; of Steel Dr. Muhammad Asim Khan defies his debilitating disease to treat the illness of others story_Aleta Cadwallader photography_Ben Anderson ive them to old men who look like me. Don't give them to the healthy, young guys," Dr. Muhammad Asim Khan said through a clear Pakistani accent across the crowded Newmark Theatre lobby to the conference director as she hurried to give away extra tickets to his lecture. He smiled through athick black mustache tinseled with a few gray hairs, and his shrinking frame hardly filled out his heavy winter coat. Hunched over, he limped toward the theater doors, looking up through his giant cinnamoncolored eyes to direct his short steps.

Khan traveled two thousand miles from Cleveland to a Portland, Oregon, medical convention to present clinical research on atreatment that can halt the progression of and reverse deformities caused by afatal disease. But the treatment has come too late for Khan. His disease has progressed so far that it would do little to improve his health.

lEFT_Having spent his youth in Pakistan, Dr. Muhammad Asim Khan now practices medicine in the United States, treating the disease he knows so intimately.

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han has Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS, pronounced ang-kiLO-sing spon-dl-I-tis), an immobilizing disease that has completely fused his spine and skull, causing him to stoop drastically forward. Achronic inflammatory disease prevalent in males, AS usually develops in the teenage or early adult years of genetically predisposed people. Inflammation in the joints between bones, such as the vertebrae, causes the ligaments and discs to calcify and harden. AS has fused Khan's pelvis and rib cage to his spine, up through each vertebra to his skull. His spine is locked into one long bamboo-like rod so that he cannot turn his head or nod - or even stand up on his own after kneeling down to pick up a piece of paper from the floor.

K BELOW_A condition informally known as "bamboo spine" fuses the hips, spine, ribs, and skull of some AS patients and limits the distance Khan can walk.

OPPOSITE PAGE_Khan advises an AS patient on how to prevent deformities like his own.

Khan knows that carrying this disease means decreased mobility for the rest of his life.

It also can and probably will kill him one day. AS causes many complications, including abnormal and failing heart valves. Like those of many other AS patients, Khan's ribs can no longer hinge open on his spine. If he were to have a heart attack, paramedics would be unable to compress his chest enough to resuscitate him. Asimple fender-bender could crack the brittle, hollow straw that is his spine, and the resulting serrated edges could sever the spinal cord inside, leaving him paralyzed.

Or it could stop his already compromised heart.

The condition's complications are nothing new to Khan. He has suffered the pain and problems of AS for almost fifty of his sixty-one years.

BLOOD OF HONEY

into a Muslim Pakistan, and millions of refugees, left homeless from the violence, migrated across the nation. At three years of age, Khan fled with his family from India to Pakistan, carried across the desert in the back of a moving van. During the next decade, the Pakistani government established small clinics in rural areas of the new country, but it inherited the only hospital in the border city of Lahore, Pakistan, where Khan's family settled. The country that took in Khan's family and provided him free education and medical care battled its neighbor over the disputed Kashmir region during the first decades of his life.

Neither his age nor his illness would hold him back. He never failed a class and never took time off for the pain.

At twelve, Khan started to notice pain and stiffness in his back but thought little of it. The symptoms hardly inconvenienced him then - they were just tiny obstacles in his everyday life. The pain limited his flexibility and affected his skill at sports, but Khan found ways to manage. Children all around him played cricket, running and throwing the ball. Khan chose afielding position close to the wicket that required him to run less. He soon learned that by practicing honest umpiring, his peers would choose him to fill the stationary position. Being brutally honest was already in his nature. "I could never be a politician. I am as straight as an arrow, even though I have a humped back," Khan says, chuckling.

As a child, Khan couldn't twist his back to chase and slip through windows like the other boys. Instead, the twelve-year-old jumped off three-story-high walls when others would not. In retrospect, his bravery probably worsened the condition of his hips, Khan says.

As the young boy grew into adolescence, his symptoms worsened.

He finally admitted to the other boys that his back hurt most of the time. To recompense his pride, he began to excel academically. His teachers skipped him ahead twice.

frequent bed rests and hospitalizations. Because exercise is crucial to keeping the joints mobile, Khan's pain only worsened.

Along year passed. The anti-TB medication did nothing to help the restless child. His doctor ran out of solutions and never reached a proper diagnosis.

By the time Khan was sixteen years old, his doctor sought anything that might help relieve the pain. He intravenously injected Khan with honey imported from West Germany; many Muslims believe, as it is written in the Qur'an, that honey has aspecial ability to heal ailments and cure diseases. Risk always accompanies the injection of foreign substances into the blood stream, though. However harmless it turned out to be, this treatment also proved worthless.

he purchased aVespa - a motorized scooter designed for girls in skirts. During hospitalizations, he would climb out of his hospital bed onto the Vespa, parked next to him, ride through the hospital halls to class, and then return directly to the hospital bed. He never failed a class and never took time off for the pain.

Khan was in his third year of medical school and attending rounds with clinicians when his life changed dramatically. He met a professor who examined him, listened to the student tell his medical history, and diagnosed him with AS. The professor immediately prescribed phenylbutazine, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that dramatically affected his symptoms. The next day, Khan began to ride his bicycle again, and within weeks he was even able to run.

BONES OF STEEL

"All the honey I got - that's why I'm so sweet," Khan teases. hen the British granted India's independence in 1946, Calcutta erupted in violence. Muslims and Hindus demanded independent states.

Northern India partitioned

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When the back pain sharpened and spread from his tailbone upward, Khan's parents searched out the chief of orthopedics at the local hospital, the highest-held medical opinion available to them.

Rheumatologists (arthritis specialists) were unheard of in Pakistan.

Similar symptoms shared by tuberculosis (TB) patients, including hip and chest pain, led the doctor to prescribe anti-TB drugs and order

While still sixteen, Khan attended the King Edward Medical College in Lahore as the youngest in his class. For the first two years he held the highest placement in his class, despite the chronic pain. Neither his age nor his illness would hold him back. When Khan lost the ability to lift his leg high enough to ride his bike to medical school,

fter graduating medical school at the age of twenty-one, Khan made plans to continue his education by studying a medical specialty overseas. That year, though, Pakistan entered asecond war with India over Kashmir. Khan felt spurred to serve the country that had accepted his family as refugees eighteen years prior and had provided him with afree medical education.

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(.(.1 won't mind comIng back to this world suffering from this disease again. "

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Adiagnosis of AS would surely keep the former refugee from serving in the Pakistan Army Medical Corps. But, during a routine physical to check soldiers for common physical ailments such as an irregular heartbeat or flat feet, the attending army physician forgot to check the mobility of his spine. The doctor remembered as Khan was fastening his last shirt button and asked him to undress again.

"Come on, you want me to do all that again?" Khan asked discouragingly. The doctor dismissed the task, and Khan slipped into the corps.

Khan served on the front line, stitching up army casualties. At night, when the soldiers advanced the line through the desert, Khan marched with them, opting not to ride in the air-conditioned ambulance. The ambulance was for patients, he insisted. When soldiers asked how they could get a ride, he sarcastically suggested they break their own legs.

BElOW_Despite his limited mobility, Khan often dedicates more than nine hours aday to practicing medicine.

The summer after the new physician finished his service in 1967, he arrived in London for his postgraduate medical studies. Cardiology was his first choice, but he knew that with his limited ability to bend, twist, and even walk smoothly, he would eventually be unable to lean over to administer CPR to resuscitate his patients. Instead, he chose orthopedics, knowing that one day he, too, would be under the knife for atotal hip arthroplasty - asurgical procedure that reconstructs joints using metal implants.

By the 1970s, Khan decided to move to the United States to advance his academic career. Some of his classmates had already established themselves there and would be able to offer him a

The inflammation has nothing left to destroy, and the drugs can't return what AS has taken away. position, but Khan landed in Cleveland on his own terms. There he chose to study rheumatology - the subspecialty he was so intimately familiar with as a patient - and began research on AS. That decade, medical advancements in the human genome project linked a genetic marker, HLA-B27, to AS. Researchers like Khan and his team were busy discovering why some people were predisposed to the illness and how that translated from DNA to disease.

Meanwhile, Khan endured atotal hip-joint replacement, giving him bones of steel. His surgeons replaced his brittle bones with metal prostheses. Today, years after this major surgery, the rheumatologist shuffles with aside-step gait.

Soon after his hip surgery, his doctors found afracture in his cervical spine, near the skull. They ordered him to wear a medical halo and vest, aseven-pound metal ring that doctors screwed into his skull to immobilize his neck so that the fracture could fuse and wouldn't sever his spinal cord. Khan felt that the vest was too loose. He could twist and lean his neck too far, and he worried that the fracture would not heal. His doctor assured him that it was fine.

For five months, Khan slept sitting up. Despite his efforts, the fracture did not fuse on its own and Khan underwent surgery to manually fuse it. The determined doctor continued to see his patients. One frustrated and pain-ridden patient waited six months to see Khan for his own rheumatic disease. As the disabled rheumatologist carefully pushed the door open and entered the examination room, the patient told him that by seeing his own doctor struggling in the medical halo, suddenly he didn't feel as bad. Following his spinal surgery, Khan wore the halo for three more months.

FACING THE ANSWER h~ landscape ~f rheumato~ogy has i~proved Sig~ificantly. With biotechnology In gene coding advanCing dramatically during the late 80s and throughout the next decade, researchers found the

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receptors (structures in cell walls) for cytokines (small molecules that communicate between cells) and later investigated their role in the inflammatory response. In the last seven years, researchers have discovered that by blocking one of these communicators, the inflammatory response that causes the destruction and calcification in the joints of rheumatic disease patients can slow down or even stop. By pinpointing the mechanisms of rheumatic disease on a microcellular level, scientists could finally design a drug to block that receptor, halt disease progression, and reverse deformities. In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of a biologic drug for treatment in Ankylosing Spondylitis - avirtual cure.

For Khan as a patient, this revelation comes too late. His disease has advanced so far that his spine is already fused. The inflammation has nothing left to destroy, and the drugs can't return what AS has taken away.

Today, Khan works continuously so that his patients' immobility will no longer mean death. Because the new AS drugs work against inflammation and the immune system, they are risky and expensive.

Some patients have rare, immediate allergic reactions to the medication. Some patients' hearts stop. The most common danger of these life-altering drugs is severe, potentially fatal infections that can't be staved off by aweakened immune system. Khan travels the world teaching other rheumatologists the parameters in which to administer these drugs so that the medications improve the lives of AS patients, not threaten them.

For Khan's colleagues, his diligence is as impressive as his accomplishments. "Not everyone can handle their illness and keep going like he can. You have to be especially tough and especially smart," says friend and rheumatologist Cody Wasner, M.D., who has seen many patients become unemployed due to depression and immobility.

As a patient and a doctor, Khan never expected to see acure in his lifetime. Although the new biologic treatments are not atrue cure, they are still overwhelmingly effective, Khan emphasizes.

"I won't mind coming back to this world suffering from this disease again," he says.

Last year, Khan celebrated thirty years in the United States and nearly athird of a century working with AS. At the medical conference in Portland, Khan couldn't walk the ten city blocks from the Multnomah Hotel to the Newmark Theatre. He took the shuttle.

But every day, Khan shuffles tiny steps toward eradicating his own deforming disease, knowing that although the cure he pursued for more than athird of a century has passed him by, it remains, thanks in part to his efforts, within reach of many of his patients.•

Ankylosing Spondylitis Explained A nkylosing Spondylitis affects at least one in two hundred adults, mostly men. At least a half a million people in the United States are diagnosed with AS, but because it is difficult to identify, its prevalence is surely greater than the numbers reveal. The condition afflicts more people than multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, and lou Gherig's disease combined. It can damage joints, such as hips and shoulders, as well as other areas of the body including the eyes, heart, and lungs.

Some patients' spines harden into one brittle pole when the ligaments and discs between the vertebrae fuse together (illustration). Most patients endure symptoms for years before receiving acorrect diagnosis.

The exact cause of AS is unknown but scientists have discovered that genetics playa major role. Ninety-five percent of patients have a gene that produces a"genetic marker" called HLA-B27, but a person doesn't have to harbor this marker to have AS. In fact, the majority of people with HLA-B27 do not develop the condition. Other genes and a

Healthy vertebra

Diseased vertebra

triggering environmental factor (such as a bacterial infection) are needed to activate AS in susceptible people.

Once the disease is properly diagnosed, a rheumatologist can prescribe treatments such as medication, exercise, physical therapy, good posture practices to help prevent the forward-stooping effect, and, in some cases, surgery to heal fractures and replace damaged joints. Treatment by medication can cause harmful side effects, such as damage to the gastrointestinal tract, so rheumatologists only prescribe these medications when the benefits (reduced inflammation and increased mobility) outweigh the risks.

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Fantasy meets reality in the Society for Creative Anachronism story_Ally Burguieres photography_Sam Karp_Crispin Young

he Kingdom of An Tir stretches across thick evergreen forests and boasts wild rivers that cut through mountain gorges with reckless abandon.

In this land of fantasy and intrigue, chivalry is prized and positions of power are seized with the tip of asword (and likely aflair of lace). Here, feasts, games, and great drunken parties reign supreme. Welcome to An Tir - otherwise known as Oregon, Washington, the northern tip of Idaho, and parts of Canada.

The year is Anno Societatis XXXIX. The thirty thousand members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) spend their weekdays in the present and much of their weekends and nights recreating the lifestyle of pre-seventeenth-century Europe.

Outside of the society, members are students, waiters, historians, doctors - jobs more fitting for this century than the positions most members hold within the society. Although there are some who build social worlds and maintain lucrative businesses entirely within the SCA, there are also those who participate in societal activities only once ayear. Even the most casual member can register an SCA name, afictional history, and a coat of arms.

Rob Alba, athirty-three-year-old resident of Eugene, Oregon, embodies the alter ego of Captain Juan Ramirez and has participated in SCA events for nearly adecade. In his own history, Alba was not very social. But now, he considers bringing people together his greatest talent. His smile broadens as he gazes across his living room, packed with fellow society members. Among the crowd are afew

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OPPOSITE PAGE_Beneath aheavy coat of armor, Sir Ambrose engages in heavy-fighting.

Armor is often built by hand, and the most meticulously crafted pieces can take more than forty hours to construct.

strays, the unsuspecting friends of afriend who have no idea that they're surrounded by people with lavish pseudonyms and sharp fencing skills. Nor do they know the humble home they have crashed doubles as a merchant ship named "The Devil's Whore."

THE EARLY YEARS Iba's pre-society life in the Los Angeles suburbs was one of quiet desperation. "I had nowhere I was going in my life, nothing that was going on," he says. The organization has been his vehicle of escape from loneliness and awkwardness. "When I created that character [Captain Ramirez], I gave him astory that would lead to the existence of all the traits I felt were lacking in my life," Alba says. "He would be charming, gregarious, clever, dashing, dependable, trusting - and social."

Two-and-a-half years since the creation of Captain Ramirez, Alba says he can now claim those traits as his own. The loud and heavily attended parties he often throws in his modest two-bedroom house support this declaration. The dependable members of his "crew," the core group of friends that participates with Alba in official events, also attend his informal fetes. Alba maintains that his main goal, within the SCA and as an informal host, is to help others find the confidence and social contentment he struggled so long to obtain.

Alba recalls having a miserable time at the first events he attended.

Later, when he discovered that he could create an alter ego within the society, Alba began to see the benefits of the SCA. Eventually,

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When the mast is up, "there isn't a single person aboard who doesn't stop, look up at the rigging, and say, '~VT wow.f Look what I belong t o. '"

his newfound congeniality allowed him to give back to the society by helping those who also needed a shepherd in the social sphere.

Luke Langstraat is one crew member who appreciates Alba's efforts.

After the workday, he transforms from a Federal Credit Union teller in his mid-twenties (with a degree in exercise and movement science) to Andrew Crowe, an Englishman aboard a sixteenth-century Dutch galleon with the manual dexterity necessary to tie a mean knot (an essential talent if the ship is to be seaworthy). "Luke used to be so quiet," says Kori Beyer, another crew member who shares Alba's goals of bringing out the extrovert in everyone.

"We're not very good at letting people stay in their shell," says Alba.

He states his goals are to "bring people in and not have them feel like I did those first three or so years." To build community, official SCA events usually involve camping, feasting, and drinking - all done with a pre-seventeenth-century panache. For Alba's crew, they also involve raising afifty-foot wooden mast on the crew's campsite. When the mast is up, "there isn't a single person aboard who doesn't stop, look up at the rigging, and say, 'Wow! Look what I belong to,'" Alba says.

THE MIDDLE AGES eau Gardiepy was recently elected for athree-year term as Baron of Adiantum, a province that includes Eugene and the surrounding area. The thirty-three-year-old spent fifteen years as a bodyguard but is now afull-time student training to becoming a physical therapist. Akind, courteous man who speaks with confidence, Gardiepy takes his job as baron seriously. "Here in Adiantum,

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we're a working barony," he says, his leather jacket wrapped around his thick frame. "For the people, by the people. My job is to get behind the people, to encourage them."

After becoming involved in the SCA when afriend held awedding at an SCA event about six years ago, Gardiepy gradually came to see the society as an organization that offers unlimited enrichment and enjoyment for a diverse group of people. "There is literally anything to catch your fancy," Gardiepy says, noting that people who join the group can explore skills and develop talents such as carpentry, metalwork, alchemy, nobility, and myriad other trades and positions of authority.

Viscountess Magistra Marian Staarveld, who in the "real world" answers to the name Marian Harris, has served as baroness in the past and recognizes the challenges Gardiepy faces. The king owns the land, but the baron and baroness manage it and serve as a resource for the people. "It's the job of the baron and baroness to make sure that the populace is happy, well-fed, productive, and has someone they can go to when they have problems within the SCA," Harris says. Her boyfriend, Sir Ambrose, who once served alongside her as the baron, adds that the perks, while strong within the SCA, rarely extend beyond its borders. "My comparison is that it's like being president of the local Moose lodge," he says. "You're a big man in the Moose lodge and your own town, and you get a lot of respect, or at least minimal respect, from Meese [sic] the world over - but it doesn't matter to anybody else. [In you get stopped by the police, they're not going to care that you're Baron of Adiantum."

Although Gardiepy finds the task fulfilling, he concedes it's not always awalk in the park. "Sometimes the coronet can be very heavy," he says with a slightly weathered smile. The pressures are easier to bear than those of his previous job, however, where he had been stabbed and shot at.

THELATER YEARS ir Ambrose peeks with stony brown eyes from beneath long silver eyebrows. His slight shoulders and small stature are hidden beneath a bulky coat of armor. With a pipe or a pointed hat, he could be Gandalf or Merlin. Tonight, with his metal helmet equivalent in weight to a mediumsized dog, he is a heavy-fighter.

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RIGHT_Two society members cross swords beneath abridge in Eugene. The winner is decided when afighter concedes that ablow landed by an opponent was of sufficient force to have caused death.

Wednesday nights, under a concrete bridge in Eugene, silhouettes brandish swords and sticks in intricate fights that centuries ago might have decided the fates of countries. Within the SCA,

fencing tournaments determine positions of power in the society's eighteen kingdoms. But unofficial meetings such as these are merely chances for fencers and fighters to flaunt their skills and engage in sport.

While the fencing is relatively tame (an honor-based sport more focused on flair than brute strength), heavy-fighting, the darker, more dangerous brother of fencing, evokes combat styles from the Middle Ages. Langstraat describes heavy-fighting as "guys in heavy armor beating the crap out of each other with pieces of wood and stuff."

Ambrose has nearly twenty-four years of fighting under his belt (which is white, incidentally - to signify his stature as a knight). He sparkles with an energy that could be a result of the intense physical conditioning demanded of him as afighter. But his glow may also be the result of something much simpler - heavy-fighting makes him happy.

Late in 1982, Ambrose (also known as Karl Kokensparger) often passed the heavy-fighters under the Eugene bridge. One day, while walking to a meeting (he won't say where - "That's in the past"), he decided to change his life. "I just thought to myself, 'They look like they're having more fun than I am!'"

Although entertaining, heavy-fighting poses significant risks. "I stick with fencing," says the younger but more reserved Langstraat, "because heavy-fighting leads to broken bones." He pauses, then adds, "And we're prettier," referring to the lacey garb of fencers.

"We stay true to the way it was [in the Middle Ages] ," says Gardiepy

of heavy-fighting, "right down to the helmets made of metaL" The helmets can weigh from fifteen to twenty pounds, and although they're worn in addition to other armor, the risk of injury is still high. After one intense fight, Gardiepy needed shoulder reconstruction. "I was fighting two other guys, and, basically, he took a cheap shot," Gardiepy says of the opponent who broke his shoulder. "He came from the blind spot. The chivalrous thing to do would have been to announce himself."This cheap shot resulted in a slew of surgeries.

'There've been people who have had their necks broken, knees blown out, backs severely injured - it's a dangerous sport."

Ambrose explains through his wispy storm cloud of a beard that heavy-fighting schools used to be prevalent in big cities like London, until the crown started fearing for its head. That civilians would have the skills to defeat a king in combat was understandably worrisome to any monarch, so schools were shut down and fighting was forbidden. Perhaps another secret to Ambrose's mischievous smirk is the knowledge that he's defying a royal decree, no matter how many centuries the order has been moot. Without further ado, he dons his helmet, grabs his sword, and prepares to fight.

BELOW_ Society member Amy Carpenter prepares dessert while adhering to centuries-old cooking methods - and plastic wrap.

ABOVE_Dancing concludes aday dedicated to learning the roles and traditions of heralds in pre-seventeenth-century societies.

sthe you nger crowd parties in historical garb and the unconventional athlete sharpens his sword skills, a key element of the SCA is illuminated: the organization appeals to all types of people.

"It's a whole little world," says Langstraat. And, although this fantastical world seems to have little in common with the modern world occupied by most, the social need remains the same: people seek happiness, be it by mastering a sport, finding a core group of friends, or sailing into the sunset on a Dutch galleon.•

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"The more visitors that come to a site, generall the less looting occurs - but there is greater impact on the cave's ecosystem. " ew still clings to grass as Marcos Cucul, athirty-sevenyear-old Qeqchi Mayan guide from Belize, gets out of his weathered Land Cruiser. With aworn backpack slung over his shoulder, he holds a massive flashlight in his left hand and the smoking remnant of acigarette in his right.

The melodies of dozens of bird species float through the air as the stocky man makes his way to the park's visitor center. Vibrant red hibiscus flowers offset the lush green of the jungle and the crisp blue of the Belizean sky. The day is already warm as Cucul's heavy trekking boots stomp up the cracked wooden steps of the Saint Herman's Blue Hole National Park Visitor Center in the Cayo District of Belize. Cucul is one of many Belizeans who work to protect parks such as the Blue Hole.

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The 575-acre preserve harbors a range of species surprisingly diverse for the park's petite size. Orchids, bananas, and mahoganies thrive in the volcanic landscape that surrounds the park's namesake, the Blue Hole, awater-filled limestone sinkhole. Species as furtive as the jaguar and as unassuming as the opossum find refuge near the sapphire waters.

Belize, the only country in Central America with English as its official language, attracted 220,500 foreign visitors in 2003. It's roughly the size of Massachusetts and has a population less than half the size of Boston. With 48 percent of the country's territory dedicated to conservation, the government has preserved nearly three times as much wilderness as eco-conscious Costa Rica has. The combination of Belize's blossoming tourism industry, asmall population, and pristine tropical environments enables the country to carry out progressive policies. But, as conservationists such as Cucul have come to understand, preserving land in developing nations is atask riddled with challenges.

Cucul's love for the diverse Belizean landscape began when he was achild and later grew during his three-year stint as ajungle survival guide for the British Army. Today, he is a member of the Belize Cave and Wilderness Rescue Team, acertified first responder, and a volunteer firefighter.

One of Cucul's favorite trips is through Mountain Cow Cave, one of several geological and cultural masterpiece of the Blue Hole. He

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estimates that fewer than two hundred people visit the cave each year, which is part of the reason it retains a regional reputation as one of the most unspoiled caves in the area.

Roos Leemhuis and Vincent de Gouw, a Dutch couple traveling by bicycle through Central America, hired Cucul to guide them through the cave. To reach the entrance, the group spends an arduous fortyfive minutes climbing atrail that the jungle constantly threatens to reclaim.

he discusses the faults of Belize's conservation policies.

"They don't replant the broadleaf forest they log with broadleaf forest," he says, unconsciously slapping a mosquito from his arm.

Faster-growing pine trees, which are native in parts of Belize, generally replace the logged jungle, says Cucul. The sight of diverse jungle adjacent to groves of pine trees is not only counterintuitive and unsettling, but the replanting also leaves the jungle more homogeneous. If left unchecked, these intrusive species can overwhelm native plants.

On the hike, Cucul pauses and points to a patch of small, spindly ferns clumped together on the limestone hillside. The fronds blend in with the greens and browns of the thick jungle undergrowth, but Cucul effortlessly identifies them as Maidenhair Ferns. When Cucul points at them, Leemhuis recognizes the plants immediately. "We have those in Holland," she says.

, welcome to Xilbalba," Cucul says, as the trail plateaus at the entrance of Mountain Cow. The Mayan word means "a place of fright" and refers to all entrances to the underworld, such as acave.

The plant, which is exclusive to Belize but can grow almost anywhere with moist soil, has become a popular houseplant in Europe and the United States. Leemhuis's seemingly benign recognition of the fern exemplifies achallenge faced by Belizean conservationists: thieves routinely remove valuable rainforest vegetation and sell it to nurseries. Once there, either the plant or its seedlings are shipped to collectors abroad. Maidenhair Ferns sell for as little as two dollars; rare Belizean orchids can sell for hundreds.

After ashort break, Cuculleads ascramble down aseries of limestone boulders. As he descends into the chamber, the stale air muffles sound like athick layer of snow. White limestone formations that could adorn the walls of agrand cathedral glow softly in the daylight, which still illuminates the chamber. At what appears to be a dead end, Cucul stops, flicks on his headlamp, and removes climbing gear from his backpack.

But money is not the only reason harvesters illegally enter the park. Many of the unsanctioned trails cut by plant poachers pass by groves of pacaya trees and cohune palms. Locals harvest the pacaya's tender flowers for traditional meals and use the palm's small, acorn-like nuts to make cooking oil.

One by one, each hiker grabs the rope and descends into the cave. Cucul, Leemhuis, and de Gouw begin down a narrow passage, carefully. lowering their heads to dodge the glittering stalactites that hang from the ceiling.

"They don't harvest sustainedly [sic]," Cucul said. Poachers typically remove all of the target species in a particular area, and it may take years for the plants to return to their original numbers.

Soon, Cucul pauses near acalcified human skull that most likely dates back to the Late to Terminal Classic period of the Mayan Empire - approximately 1,200 years ago. , It is the only known skull in the park, and its presence is an anomaly.

After pausing to look at the ferns, the group returns to the hike. The thin jungle path begins to climb steeply and soon the screeches of Aztec parakeets mix with the tired tourists' heavy breathing. The trail passes the buttressed roots of ceiba trees, over established highways blazed by leafcutter ants, and under the brilliance of the quamwood tree's yellow flowers. As Cucul plods up the steep path,

Allan Moore, the director of the Tourism and Development Project for Belize's National Institute of Culture and History, estimates

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National Monument in southwest Oregon has a budget more than fifteen times that). The Blue Hole's budget finances everything from the sawdust used in the composting toilets to the bimonthly, armed night patrols that scour the park for illegal intruders. "Armed guards patrol the park's interior and boundaries, but it is difficult to find a guard willing to shoot or be shot at by poachers," Escalante says.

Despite the presence of special law enforcement officers armed with M-16s, an arrest has yet to be made. The depleted populations of pacaya shoots exemplify the continuing violations of park laws. To combat this problem, the Belize Audubon Society now employs a different tactic: education.

"We hope that by working closer with local communities we can convey the importance of preserving the sensitive ecosystems inside the park," Escalante says. To demonstrate their commitment, on April 22, Earth Day, the park staff offered awork exchange to local school children. The staff provided food, free admittance into the park, and instruction on the importance of preserving biodiversity while the students helped remove litter within the park.

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we act as responsible stewards to the land, then this beauty can be preserved for generations to come. If not, it could be gone tomorrow. " that 10 percent of the artifacts in the area have been looted. Those that remain either lack financial value or are undiscovered, he says.

"It's a double-edged sword," Moore says. "The more visitors that come to asite, generally, the less looting occurs - but there is greater impact on the cave's ecosystem. That's why proper management is so important."

The Belize Audubon Society, the non-governmental organization that manages the park, employs only five full-time wardens to limit the incidences of looting, to control the impact of tourism on the environment, and to handle the day-to-day needs of the park.

Alex Escalante, the park director of the Blue Hole, says that the park needs more wardens but understands the unlikelihood of actually getting more staff. The annual budget for the entire preserve is only seventy-five hundred dollars (the similarly sized Oregon Caves

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The park employees are making progress in changing the mindsets of the youth, but the children do not make decisions about the environment. When the next generation comes into power, conservationists will finally see the substantial changes they have effected in the youth, Escalante says.

After nearly an hour of plodding through the darkness of the cave, the hikers reach the geological highlight of the cave: Wonderland.

The rock formations inside Wonderland look more like icicles than stone. They grow in every direction. The sight is dauntingly beautiful, and it feels as if the jagged jaws of the cave are closing. Water droplets sporadically fall from the stalactites into puddles of water.

The sound, one of the park's many symphonies, echoes off the walls of the confined space.

On the return hike, Cucul stops at the base of agive-and-take tree.

Dangerous spines line the tree, and a medicinal sap flows just beneath the treacherous bark. Instead of visiting a modern hospital for everyday injuries, many indigenous people seek out the pink sap to stem bleeding and heal wounds. This reliance upon the natural world is asymbol of a larger ecological ethos held by the Belizean people. Just as seekers of the sap must fight through an armada of barbs to acquire their remedy, Belizean conservationists must struggle through modern-day challenges to protect the country's ecological treasures.

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"If we act as responsible stewards to the land, then this beauty can be preserved for generations to come - if not, it could be gone tomorrow," Cucul says. •

influx.uoregon.eduj2005