On the River we became Yahoos, four brothers, butt naked, rolling in the black silt of the river’s edge. We spent our informative years returning almost daily to our river playground, smoking driftwood, gathering clams in the laughing shallows and tentatively exploring the depth of the river’s numerous, murky dark pools.

How time flied away, slips away and all these years later those adolescent memories serve as the matrix and metaphor for what I “Felieve”, drawn from this river of laughing fast water and silent deep.

I had always assumed belief was final, fixed and absolute, once proclaimed inviolate, set in stone. Belief is not fixed and final, it is fleeting. A scoop of wet river sand in a sieve left to dry sees the sand sift through the sieve till none remains and so it is with belief, a train of two tracks, the train we ride North today may be the same we ride South tomorrow. There must be something more.

We have two brains, a primitive “gut” brain of feeling, submerged in the still deep pools and a “conscious” brain of believing seated atop our shoulders, preoccupied with the multitudes of noise of the river’s fast water.

Thus the conundrum of humanity, two disjointed brains, one drawn to the frenetic pace and traffic of fast water, the other immersed in the quiet deep of the contemplative, one feeling the other believing, one the yearning hand the other the lonely glove, a disjointed, deep vexing, that has been with us since and throughout the “crealution” of mankind.

Life for all is in the merging waters. At the interface of fast and deep there exists a magical, mysterious union of the primitive and conscious, of feeling and believing, where the hand once and finally merges with it’s glove, a communion of the contemplative and conscious, a magical synaptic spark whose creation is “Felief” -- profound, life changing and everlasting. It is my “Felief” the river waits for all.

I “Felieve” in the parable of the river, I live in the fast water. Everyday I return to dig for clams. I need clams for sustenance. I’m always hungry for clams and it seems I can never find enough to satisfy me. I worry about becoming too full of clams, losing by balance and being swept away, I spend my quality time by the deep pool under the canopy of old cottonwoods where the fast water merges with the deep. There I muse, smoking a driftwood, basking in the abundance of my butt naked freedom. I’m glad you cannot see me. I’m a portly 52.

Dr. Tharp has been practicing his form of “felief” on the critters of the Big Horn Basin for many years as a veterinarian. Dr. Tharp is also well-known in the area for the programs he volunteers for including Special Olympics, Young Authors, high school athletics and many, many, many other “fings”.