Every now and then an idea comes along that is so bad that you are powerless to do anything besides see it through to the end. For me one such idea came when my friend John and I wondered if we could go rafting on the Santa Ana River after the spring rains, when the river was midway between a torrent and a trickle.
In the dark.
On air mattresses.
For us the inherent badness of the idea was revealed about two miles down the churning river when both of our air mattresses were caught on the branches of a submerged tree. John’s arm was caught on the tree as well, opening a deep gash. For John the wound was not fatal, at least not immediately. Who knew what horror was swimming in the bacteria laden water? But for the air mattresses this was the end of the line.
In the commotion we lost one of our flashlights and the other was drowned to the point of an intermittent flicker. The next three miles of our journey were a hypothermic slog through dense thickets of giant reed with its razor sharp leaves and spiders. Hundreds and thousands of spiders.
The Dirtbag Diaries podcasts by Fitz Cahall take this kind of bad-idea-run-wild to a transcendental level, where exhaustion, pain, terror and despair are experienced in their purest essence. These adventures take the shape of free-climbing the 1,700 foot face of a sandstone spire so soft that handholds crumble like granulated sugar. Or talking with a couple of adventure-hobos who took a bamboo raft down a river in Cambodia, only to find themselves in middle of Class IV rapids.
Cahall’s podcasts owe more than a little in style and tone to Ira Glass and This American Life, but it’s a good place for a boy to start. The production values are sometimes rough around the edges, and that fits nicely with the dirtbag ethos. I wouldn’t mind a few more rough edges if it meant getting even closer to the nitty and the gritty. Cahall’s prose is evocative and compelling, yet sometimes it can distance us from the action instead of pulling us into the chest cavity and pressing us against the beating heart of adventure. The music selections are excellent, giving fullness and body to each of the episodes. All in all, the first six adventures strike me as the sound of someone who is just starting to find his stride, and I hope more will follow.
Speaking as someone who is fat, balding and desk-bound, Cahall’s adventures take me into the throat of a beast that I may never see in real life. They are a lifeline to the dreams of wildness that stir in the back of my medulla oblongata. To paraphrase what Albert Newman said about the three bone rattling years he spent preparing to free-climb Tooth Rock–what would I be doing if I wasn’t listening to Dirtbag Diaries? Probably smoking crack.
You can tune into the Diaries here or subscribe on iTunes.