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Tim DeChristopher was to go to prison, convicted of disrupting a government sale of oil and gas leases. He called his actions an act off civil disobedience against climate change. Prosecutors called them felonies. Ahead of his confinement, DeChristopher wanted to go on a final wilderness adventure.
Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.GUY RAZ, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Guy Raz.
This summer, a federal judge in Salt Lake City sentenced a climate activist named Tim DeChristopher to two years in prison. His crime: disrupting an auction of government, oil and gas leases. DeChristopher was a 27-year-old college student in the closing days of the Bush administration when he bid for and won almost two-dozen parcels that he knew he couldn't pay for. He called it an act of climate civil disobedience.
A couple of months ago, a jury found him guilty of two felonies. Now, before his sentencing, the activist set out on a last wilderness adventure - the descent of a river in Utah.
An old friend of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, reporter Alex Chadwick, was along.
ALEX CHADWICK: I'd been following energy stories in the West, which is how I met Tim DeChristopher and John Weisheit.
JOHN WEISHEIT: So the snow melt has started, and every day the river is going to rise until it's exhausted.
CHADWICK: That's John, used to be a river guide, now a river advocate - an activist.
WEISHEIT: And they're saying that this year will be a high year.
CHADWICK: You hear that (unintelligible). John is rowing us down the Green River in eastern Utah. It's peaceful, but that's going to change. The Green is a tributary of the Colorado, and we'll reach it in a few days and we'll start down Cataract Canyon, 20 miles of almost continuous rapids that John knows well.
WEISHEIT: I've done it so many times and I've done all the failures that can be done.
CHADWICK: Cataract Canyon is one of the most notorious runs in the country at normal water flow, and we will be way past that. Too late now, there's no way off the river but down it.
WEISHEIT: I'm not worried at all. I think we'll do fine.
CHADWICK: I'm less confident of the outcome, or really of anything else. John invited me on this trip because of my wife and radio partner, Carolyn. She died a year ago. I tried to save her for months and failed. I stopped working and couldn't start again. I've been lost. John thinks the river is restorative, healing. And it is the kind of place that Carolyn liked.
There are several other guides on the trip - it's fun to go when it's scary. And there's Tim DeChristopher, a former wilderness guide, about 30, solidly built, hair clipped as short as the stubble on his face, calm like a monk. With a degree in economics and two federal felonies, the sentence pending then.
TIM DECHRISTOPHER: I'm expecting around two or three years. But it's hard to say.
CHADWICK: The felonies are from a Salt Lake City oil and gas auction Tim disrupted with fake bids he couldn't pay. He says it was an unplanned, spontaneous act of climate protest.
DECHRISTOPHER: I lost hope in a lot of things. I lost hope in having any sort of normal future, anything that my parents would define as a normal future of, you know, a career and retirement, and a family and all that stuff.
CHADWICK: The auction and his arrest made Tim DeChristopher a hero among the Greens. He was someone willing to risk all and then risk again.
DECHRISTOPHER: I have no remorse at all for my actions.
CHADWICK: Courts looks for remorse.
DECHRISTOPHER: Yeah, I don't have it.
CHADWICK: I get it that he wants to run Cataract Canyon in high water. But no remorse may be even riskier. He's about to be sentenced. Contrition might help.
(SOUNDBITE OF SQUAWKING)
CHADWICK: The ravens. They're mad at us because we don't leave anything at our campsite. It's still several days to the rapids - water high, but smooth. And days settle in unhurried patterns - row, camp, fire, talk. I'm making notes and interviewing Tim, partly from habit, partly to see if I can still do it without Carolyn there.
DECHRISTOPHER: At the height of the Somali pirate thing a couple of years ago, the pirate leaders released a statement to the Western world where he said: You have no idea what life in Somalia is like. You can't possibly understand how desperate our situation is. And he said: Your power comes from your ability to take things away from people. And therefore you can't stop us, because you have nothing left to take away. And it was a statement that really struck me as really profound.
CHADWICK: The Greens need a charismatic leader, but this is a man with a very dark view - climate change as Apocalypse, rising seas, flood, drought, famine, all in decades. Further, Tim DeChristopher believes it's too late now to stop, and the danger isn't so much from climate. It's us, human societies under severe stress. It's what we will become, maybe something like the Dark Ages, that's what he thinks climate change will mean.
I wonder if the people you're targeting might not really enjoy hearing you say this. They'll say: Look, this guy is a radical, a self-described radical. And he's on the side of the Somali pirates, for God's sakes. If you want to be on that side, that's who you're standing with.
DECHRISTOPHER: From what I've seen, my opponents really don't like to have people hear what I have to say. They do like to, you know, try to put words into my mouth. You know, say, oh, he mentioned the Somali pirates and saw something profound in what they were saying, so therefore he's on their side. But they've actually really avoided spreading anything that I say.
I think they know that when people see someone like me as a person, and start to actually, you know, consider the things that I'm saying, it's hard to vilify someone like that. And I think that's dangerous to those in power, when the people on the bottom start to see that the people they're told to hate aren't really their enemy.
CHADWICK: Day seven. We reached the Colorado yesterday. The water is bigger, faster. It rained overnight, the wind tore down my shelter, storm bands keep coming, everyone looks rattier. It's just light now, a little after six. John Weisheit's wife is headed toward the boats.
Here comes an experienced river guide, Susette Weisheit. Susette, how does the river look today?
SUSETTE WEISCHEIT: Fantastic. I mean we're up, the river is cooking along. It surprised us all by coming up a little bit further than we thought it would, and kind of encroached on our camp. But, you know, more is better.
CHADWICK: More is better? Hmm.
WEISCHEIT: I love it.
CHADWICK: We are going down Cataract Canyon today at six times normal flow. Small driftwood trees rush by, parts of bigger ones. We air-pump the boats, so the rubberized skin is drum tight. John's boat is 17-feet long, the beam not half that. The river is 50-yards wide and it looks bad all the way across.
WEISHEIT: I've seen it this high a lot, and I know what's down here and what to expect. And so, it really doesn't terrify me anymore.
CHADWICK: The first big rapid, John shoves an oar hard, the boat finds a narrowing V. The water is fast, but the moment stretches like a dream, as though we're falling very slowly and there's always enough time to save ourselves.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSHING WATER)
CHADWICK: Bam, bam, bam through a series of waves, and we pull to the riverbank out of the tumble and froth to the safe solidity of land. On a high point on the rocky slope ahead, we stand looking down at the ugly place we are about to go.
What rapid are you all talking about?
WEISHEIT: Well, that's Rapid Number 15. Some people call it Capsize. Some people call it Hell-to-Pay.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
CHADWICK: A big piece of driftwood shoots through perfectly. Looks easy. Then a log the size of a person catches the channel wrong, hits a rock, rolls under, disappears.
WEISHEIT: How do you think we should run it?
WEISCHEIT: Hay-diddle-diddle...
WEISHEIT: What does that mean?
WEISCHEIT: Right down the middle.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
WEISCHEIT: But there's a huge momma hole on the left side. So just don't get there.
CHADWICK: Watching them watch the river, I see the patterns. Even in the places that look crazy, some ways are better than others. Stay calm. See what's there. It's still dangerous, but it's more interesting than scary. And I'm thinking about Tim, and the judge, and the sentencing, and risk.
This is not a good time for him to be testing any more limits. But it's like the river you're caught in the currents. You can see the patterns, look for them, find the way.
DECHRISTOPHER: I think I can be dangerous to them in either place.
CHADWICK: He told me he's been talking with other activists about whether a political dissident can be more dangerous to the government in prison than out.
DECHRISTOPHER: There is certainly a power in an activist going to jail. I think it undermines the moral legitimacy of the current government if, in order to continue what they're doing, they have to put principled, honest people in jail. But, you know, I'll also continue organizing if they don't lock me up. So, I think it's a no-win for them. That's why it's a powerful thing if we're willing to actually make those sacrifices.
CHADWICK: A huge, dim mass ahead to the left, blurry under a layer of fast water. We're in a steep drop and behind the boulder, there's a hole like the gateway to another dimension. It's close enough to spit in. The boat hesitates and pushes by. That's the Buttonhook, John says, and he's looking down river at the next rapid coming on.
In prison, Tim will begin writing a book, a series of letters to his father. During the Salt Lake trial, his mother and sister came over from Denver for support. His father, a retired executive from the energy industry, did not.
When he talks to you about you about who you are and what you've done, what your beliefs are, do you understand him?
DECHRISTOPHER: I think I do. I think he comes from a genuine belief that we have a system that works and it has for him. You know, he came from a poor family and worked hard and studied hard and became an engineer. And, you know, moved up through the ranks and became secure and very comfortable. I guess I kind of view my father as a prototypical, comfortable liberal in America.
And I feel like that's the audience that I'm most drawn to addressing. And so, I think, you know, a book is a series of letters to him, you know, without the kind of emotional directness of our actual conversations. I think it might be a good way to address the comfortable liberal audience.
CHADWICK: When did you last speak with him?
DECHRISTOPHER: Christmas.
CHADWICK: That's a long time.
DECHRISTOPHER: Yup.
CHADWICK: But maybe it's not so long. Carolyn died nine months earlier and she's still present, always. Early in the morning of the last day, I tell her about this trip that she should have joined. We'd run Cataract Canyon the day before in six hours. We're loading boats again now and I find my friend, the river guide, John Weisheit.
DECHRISTOPHER: I'm trying to remember that thing that you told me that you have to do when things get really bad.
WEISHEIT: Oh, yes. Sometimes, things don't happen very well on the river and boats slip or driftwood gets in the way and one of the things that I've learned through the years is, when things get, like, you're actually combating nature and you're not getting anywhere, it's best to surrender. When you're out here, there's nothing wrong with surrender. It's actually a good idea.
CHADWICK: The next day, Tim and I share a ride a ride back to Salt Lake. We talk about prison, about being in, waiting to get out, about patience and finding that line through the bad parts where the patterns start to blur and it will help, maybe, to remember what happens on the river.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RAZ: Producer Alex Chadwick gathered material for his story this summer. Tim DeChristopher is now serving a two-year sentence in federal prison in California.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RAZ: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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ATLANTA (AP) — The number of athletic children going to hospitals with concussions is up 60 percent in the past decade, a finding that is likely due to parents and coaches being more careful about treating head injuries, according to a new federal study."It's a good increase, if that makes any sense," said Steve Marshall, interim director of the University of North Carolina's Injury Prevention and Research Center."These injuries were always there. It's not that there are more injuries now. It's just that now people are getting treatment that they weren't getting before," said Marshall, who was not involved in the new research.Bicycling and football were the leading reasons for the kids' brain injuries, but health officials said that could be at least partly related to the popularity of those activities. For example, it's possible many more kids bike, so a larger number of bike-related injuries would be expected.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study is based on a survey of 66 hospital emergency departments that was designed to be nationally representative. The CDC looked at non-fatal data for the years 2001 through 2009 for kids and teens ages 19 and younger.The agency looked at traumatic brain injuries, a category of injuries that mostly counts concussions but also includes skull fractures and bleeding in the brain.The estimated numbers of kids coming into ERs with these brain injuries rose dramatically, about 153,000 in 2001 to nearly 250,000 in 2009. The rate also rose, also by about 60 percent.However, there was not a significant increase in the rate of kids who were immediately admitted to the main hospital for further treatment. That suggests that more so than in the past, more coaches and parents have been bringing kids to the ER with mild concussions and blows to the head, said Dr. Julie Gilchrist, a CDC epidemiologist who led the study.That's probably due to more awareness of the formerly under-appreciated long-term hazards of concussions, she added.In 2003, the CDC started a "Heads Up" youth concussion awareness campaign targeting doctors. Since then, the agency has expanded the focus to coaches and school officials.That effort was bolstered by a series of studies that began to appear around 2005 that showed damage in the brains of former National Football League players. Media coverage of such studies has intensified in the past four years, too, with reports focusing not only on football players but also the actress Natasha Richardson, who died in 2009 from a brain injury from a skiing accident.At the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York state, nearly all of the kids who come in with concussions are brought in by their parents. Such visits have been increasing, and many parents seem to have become aware of the danger of concussions by reports on television, said Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian, an emergency physician there."I think the TV specials on this have them spooked," he said.Parents may also be motivated by recently passed state laws in New York and elsewhere that require student athletes with concussion symptoms to be cleared by a medical professional before being allowed to participate in sports, Bazarian said.In 2011, bills were introduced in at least 39 states that were aimed at better management of traumatic brain injuries, and most targeted sports-related concussions in youths, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Other highlights from the CDC study:—About 70 percent of the ER visits were by boys.—About 70 percent were kids ages 10 to 19.—Younger kids commonly got their injuries on the playground or from biking. Older kids were more likely to get them from sports, with football being the leading source for brain injuries in older boys, and biking, soccer and basketball for older girls.—The estimated number of traumatic brain injuries in athletic kids held about steady from 2001 to 2004, but then shot up afterward, rising most dramatically from 2008 to 2009.—Overall, about 15 percent of such traumatic brain injuries each year was from bicycling, on average, making that the leading cause. Football was a close second.Health officials have long advocated the use of bicycle helmets as a way to reduce the severity of head injuries, but helmet use dropped after the early 1990s and has been holding at a fairly low rate for more than a decade. About 85 percent of youths say they rarely or never wear a bicycle helmet, according to one government survey.___Online:CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwrAssociated Press 
