Brad Hooker
Job: Raft Guide & Ski Patrol
Primary Outdoor Sports: Rafting and Skiing
Favorite Beverage: Smoothie
Non-Outdoor Hobby: Wood Carving
Favorite River Snack: Dried Mangos
Post Trip Meal: Brunch and Mimosas
Book Recommendation: Dharma Bums
Three Words to Describe Yourself: Energetic, Caring, Playful
“With my ADHD, rafting gets me in the moment, in the zone, the flow. And so where normally my brain just doesn’t work in a lot of situations, or it’s like I’m being forced into something that doesn’t feel right, this relaxes me.
It’s like you’re seeking out this mind state where everything else melts away. And that only really happens when you challenge yourself to where your life is at risk. I think it’s what gets you in the zone where you really can’t think about everything else.
But you have to be intentional. If you just plug into it, you’re going to be riding these highs and lows. I think that leads towards that dangerous, leaning into the edge. Where things can become dangerous in these sports is when you’re relying on it for that dopamine and adrenaline rush. Then you’re pushing farther and farther just to normalize it.”
“I think it’s good to be nervous before class five whitewater. If you’re not nervous, something is wrong. Scouting it, I’m anxious. But once I push my raft off into the water and things are going, I just work with the water and the situation. Everything slows down and there’s no time for that anxiety.
The same powerful experience keeps happening over and over and over. That it’s worse in my head than it actually is, and that things are going to be alright once I get there. In the last year or so, I’ve really worked on that. Every time I do whitewater, I just try to relax. Try to do the things that are in my control that just make me feel better systematically, like in EMS. You have these systems you rely on to stay calm.”
“There’s times that I’ve been doing jumping jacks and dancing for 45 minutes to try to just feel my feet. I think it allows you to know yourself better and to know your limits. When you’ve been pushed to that level of discomfort and had to overcome and adapt, I think those challenges are what make everything else so much better.
The good times when you don’t have to suffer like that are just that much more pronounced and appreciated. It feels the most authentic and the most human to me.”
“I saw a lot of hypocrisy in the mainstream way of what my community was doing while growing up on the East Coast and going to college. I just saw a lot of people that were unhappy. And the happiest people I ever met were in Ecuador, living in total poverty. But they had the strongest community bonds I’ve ever seen.
I’ve been done wrong by institutions, you know, schools and all that. Made to feel that I was different because I just happened to be so energetic and outside the norm. But when I sleep under that starts out in nature, that’s where I’m the most calm.”
“I’ve seen people that ski patrol or raft guide their whole lives. The ones that stuck with it and that didn’t have to go get jobs that pay well, were the ones that strategized. They lived their lives in a certain way and made adaptations. Lived easier, simpler, reduced their overhead essentially.
Not having debt, that’s what's allowed me to live this lifestyle. I’ve lived at trailheads and parked in suburban areas outside my friends houses, and lived in my RV for free or dirt cheap. Haven’t paid utilities and had really cheap car insurance. Like, everything has been as cheap as possible.”
“Rivers connect me. They are spirituality to me, they are my religion. Giving yourself over to something that’s more powerful, a higher power than yourself. Something that is community to you. What is religion other than those things? That’s what it provides for me. Actually, I have a quote, an excerpt from a book written by Joe McHugh. Reb is the main character and this is how the quote begins…
“Reb also began to regard river guides in a different light. His first impression, mixed with a tinge of envy, was that they were just hedonistic, sun-tanned young people blowing off the summer having a bit of fun. There was that, of course, but there was something holy in the way they went about their work too. In fact, this sense of holiness so lingered with him for days afterwards that he went back several times to interview guides at their base camp on the river. The theory he came up with and managed to weave into the story was that river guides constituted a kind of religious order all their own. They lived simply, often communally, and were free of the greed and hunger for fame that goaded and tormented so many of their contemporaries. Many came from the upper ranks of society and had enjoyed every advantage that money and position could provide. And yet, like Franciscans of old, they had turned their backs on the world and its vanities. In much the same way that monks and nuns in other parts of the world served as keepers of sacred temples, raft guides kept the living rivers upon which they spent their days, temples whose names were the American, the Keweah, and the Salmon. Each raft was a sort of floating chapel in which differences in social rank and privilege quickly and naturally fell away. The banker and corporate CEO paddled along with the school custodian and taxi driver in a common purpose which was to stay alive and find a measure of spiritual renewal by absorbing the beauty, pulse, and non-humanness of the ancient river canyons. Reb observed first-hand how the experience transformed people. He watched the way they slowed down and became protective of others who only hours before had been complete strangers. For some, just escaping the tyranny of the clock was enough.””
“The most religious and spiritual I get is before going down big rapids. I’ve got this ritual where I recite…
Universe grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
So help me River Goddess.
I splash river water in my face, put my helmet on, drink some water, and get ready to go. And, it’s just letting go to a force that’s stronger than you are, that you have to work with. You can try to work against it and it works sometimes. Most of the time you have to just work with it.”
“This raft is named after a girl, a person that I loved that passed away. She brought me in touch with my childhood self and my authentic self. She created a safe space for me to be that, and she nurtured other people, especially the oddball out in a social group. You’d see her bring them under her wing and appreciate people.
And she just had this zest for life too. She reconnected me to that, honestly. And her passing away, I don’t take anyone or anything for granted. When we hug and leave, I’m going to take that as our last experience together because I can’t take anything else for granted after that, after I lost her in a car accident.
But, she is why I do these things. I’m trying to be my authentic self that I’ve wanted to be. I strive really hard towards it because she showed me that life is short and that you might not be able to actualize that ideal self.”
“I think that based off of your parents, your role models, your upbringing, your life experience, there are ways that you’re pre-programmed to think and to behave, often self-sabotaging and self-destructive. That even when you do all this work over years, you still resort back to it at times. You just learn better ways to get out of it. But there are people that have struggled and suffered like you have out there that can help. And there’s all these tried and true ways that work for some and not for others. But, you got to sample different things.
There are ways to actualize yourself. It takes letting your ego down and asking for help from other people. And it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Just throwing myself out there off a ledge and into the abyss and having to rely on people. My way and my things aren’t the answer for everyone. It’s that your thing and your people are out there.”
