One man’s wilderness (48 page)

Eight and a half miles can be covered in minutes with a car on an expressway, but what does a man see? What he gains in time he loses in benefit to his body and his mind. At my pace I can notice things. A bubble on the water, an
arctic tern’s breast tinged with the blue reflection of the lake. The landscape is not just a monotonous blur on either side. The stroke of a paddle moves you forward about eleven feet. Sometimes I get lost in the rhythm of the paddling. I even count the strokes it takes to get me to a point of land. The play of muscles in one’s arms and shoulders, and the feel of palm against worn wood, are preferable to glancing at a speedometer.

I have surprised myself with what I could make with simple tools when a definite need arose. I made a tap out of a nail and cut a thread for a homemade screw that my tripod needed. I made a spring for the automatic timer on the camera, and countless other times repaired the camera, the gas lantern, and other accessories. I made a crimping tool to scallop the edges of some tin trays I fashioned from gas cans. I have made all kinds of things from gas cans. I don’t think a man knows what he actually can do until he is challenged.

Nature provides so many things if one has the eye to notice them. It is a pleasure to see what you can use instead of buying it all packaged and ready-made. Several stumps with just the right flare gave me my wooden hinges. Burls and peculiar branch growths afforded me bowls and wooden spoons and clothes hangers. Driftwood provided me with a curtain rod and my spruce buck horns. I found spruce cones to be as effective as Brillo pads or steel wool to scour my pots. Stones of all colors and shapes were the raw material for my fireplace. When I did resort to manufactured products such as polyethylene, nails, and cement, I felt as though I had cheated. I was not being true to the philosophy I was trying to follow.

I do think a man has missed a very deep feeling of satisfaction if he has never created or at least completed something with his own two hands. We have grown accustomed to work on pieces of things instead of wholes. It is a way of life with us now. The emphasis is on teamwork. I believe this trend bears much of the blame for the loss of pride in one’s work, the kind of pride the old craftsman felt when he started a job and finished it and stood back and admired it. How does a man on an assembly line feel any pride in the final product that rolls out at the other end?

I realize that men working together can perform miracles such as sending men to walk on the surface of the moon. There is definitely a need and a place for teamwork, but there is also a need for an individual sometime in his life to forget the world of parts and pieces and put something together on his own—complete something. He’s got to create.

Man is dependent upon man. I would be the last to argue that point. Babe brought me things that other men made or produced. We need each other; but nevertheless, in a jam the best friend you have is yourself.

I have often thought about what I would do out here if I were stricken with a serious illness, if I broke a leg, cut myself badly, or had an attack of appendicitis. Almost as quickly as the thought came, I dismissed it. Why worry about something that isn’t? Worrying about something that might happen is not a healthy pastime. A man’s a fool to live his life under a shadow like that. Maybe that’s how an ulcer begins.

I have thought briefly about getting caught in rock slides or falling from a rock face. If that happened, I would probably perish on the mountain in much the same way many of the big animals do. I would be long gone before anyone found me. My only wish would be that folks wouldn’t spend a lot of time searching. When the time comes for a man to look his Maker in the eye, where better could the meeting be held than in the wilderness?

News never changes much. It’s just the same things happening to different people. I would rather experience things happening to me than read about them happening to others. I am my own newspaper and my own radio. I honestly don’t believe that man was meant to know everything going on in the world, all at the same time. A man turns on the TV and all those commentators bombard him with the local, the national and the international news. The newspapers do the same thing, and the poor guy with all the immediate problems of his own life is burdened with those of the whole world.

I don’t know what the answer is. In time man gets used to almost anything, but the problem seems to be that technology is advancing faster than he can
adjust to it. I think it’s time we started applying the brakes, slowing down our greed and slowing down the world.

I have found that some of the simplest things have given me the most pleasure. They didn’t cost me a lot of money either. They just worked on my senses. Did you ever pick very large blueberries after a summer rain? Walk through a grove of cottonwoods, open like a park, and see the blue sky beyond the shimmering gold of the leaves? Pull on dry woolen socks after you’ve peeled off the wet ones? Come in out of the subzero and shiver yourself warm in front of a wood fire? The world is full of such things.

I’ve watched many hunters come and go. I don’t begrudge a hunter his Dall ram if he climbs to the crags to get one and packs it down the mountain. If he does this, he has earned those curved horns to put up on his wall. Yet there are so many who have not earned what they proudly exhibit. Even though the hunt may have cost them thousands of dollars, they did not pay the full price for it.

I have no doubt that to others I am an oddball in many ways. The Lord waited a little too long to put me on one of his worlds. I don’t like the look of progress, if that is what it’s called. I would have liked the beginnings better. That’s why this place has taken hold of me. It’s still in those early stages and man hasn’t left too many marks on the land. Surely I have been places up and down these mountains where other men have never been. How long before all this will change as the other places have changed?

I’ve seen a lot of sights from this old spruce chunk, and have thought a lot of thoughts. The more I think about it, the better off I think I am. The crime rate up here is close to zero. I forget what it is like to be sick or have a cold. I don’t have bills coming in every month to pay for things I really don’t need. My legs and canoe provide my transportation. They take me as far as I care to go.

To see game you must move a little and look a lot. What first appears to be a branch turns into that big caribou bull up there on the benches—I wonder what he thinks about? Is his brain just a blank as he lies there blinking in the sun and chewing his cud? I wonder if he feels as I do, that this small part of the world is enough to think about?

Until Another Spring

September 21st
. Forty-eight degrees. A gusty breeze down the lake that made the whitecaps toss.

I told Babe on his last trip that I would go out on September twenty-fifth or the first good day after that. I intended to spend the winter Outside. Dad was not his active self and he could use another pair of hands.

Babe allowed it was a good idea. “You’ll appreciate the wilderness more,” he said, “when you see that sick country again.”

The first day of fall and halfway to the shortest day of the year. It hardly seems possible. There is a batch of chores to do. Get the canoe ready to go into storage, wash and dry the heavy clothes that will stay behind.

There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you’re going is as good as where you’ve been.

I watched the sun go down, and watched the flames it left on the clouds. In less than a week the sun will sink behind the pyramid mountain. I remembered when it disappeared behind that same peak on its journey to the longest day.

September 22nd
. Frost on the beach. Clear, calm, and thirty degrees.

Today would be cleanup day. My first stop was Glacier Creek, where I buried some civilization scraps left behind by sheep hunters. Most hunters have
poor housekeeping habits. Their wives must spoil them at home. Out here there is no one to pick up after them.

Next stop the upper end. Much garbage to hide there as well, ration boxes, tin cans, and plastic wrappers.

After being deserted for a couple of years, the beaver lodge has a lived-in look. I see a big supply of willow groceries anchored nearby. The dam has been repaired. There are drag trails leading out in all directions. Good to see the beaver back on the upper end.

Back at the cabin by late afternoon. Seven spruce grouse picking in the gravel of my path. If they would eat rolled oats, I would have a nice flock of wild chickens. Are they becoming friendlier now that it is almost time to leave?

After supper I busied myself oiling tools and getting them ready to store.

The surf was restless on the gravel of the beach.

September 23rd
. Twenty-five degrees and fog patches.