#47, July 26, 2000
When you've soaked up enough natural beauty, stillness, and
worldly wildness In the backcountry, you reach a critical mass of consciousness
where your identity bonds with the golden bark of the firs and the frantic
splash of the snowmelt cascade.
With peaceful exhilaration, you glide across the boulders
like a cat, despite the day's grueling hike. The past, present, and future
merge into song and you are the melody in the moment. You slow, then sit, and
study the endless variety of water and the jeweled stones in the diamond light,
and you know that you and all of this belong to each other forever.
You don't need to spend 40 days in the wilderness to find
this kind of promised land, as my daughter did this spring in southern Utah.
Sometimes only four days or even four hours will get you there. It depends upon
how you travel.
About this time every year, Americans head for the outdoors,
creating some re-creation of the life of their ancestors, before
we fashioned livelihoods that kept us indoors. It’s a fascinating range of ways
to take our household on the road, from a fifty pound pack to five ton motor
home.
I haven't tried the motor home approach, and probably won't
-- too big an eco-footprint. But tent camping, especially with friends, is
cool. For the last fifteen years, our family has joined a half-dozen former
neighbor families for four days in a group campsite. It's fun to play with and
like the kids, and I especially enjoy the tribal life aspect: a few dozen
people sharing adventures, chores, meals, and campfire entertainment.
But wilderness hiking, especially backpacking, holds a
special place in my heart. I remember my first
overnight trip, with my college roommates. We didn't have the word
"empowered" then, but that's what I felt, and this power grew as my
trips grew longer and strayed further from the trail. "Today, let's do Mt.
Sill, it's 14+. Tomorrow we can bushwack down Glacier Creek here, cross Bubbs
Creek, then scramble up the other side and have a look at Amphitheater
Lake." 11,000 feet elevation change in 11 miles, what the hell, why not?
We had everything we needed, including hardened legs and lungs.
Edward Abbey captured this sentiment in concluding his
definitive answer to the question, "why wilderness?", writing,
"Because we like the taste of freedom." But back country travel is no
picnic, and Abbey finished with: "Because we like the smell of
danger." Sometimes wilderness is a test of fire, like when our hastily
extinguished campfire woke us up the next morning, roaring toward a small stand
of ancient white pines. Putting it out required a brutal two hour water bottle
brigade.
Sometimes wilderness is facing death, halfway up a sandstone
cliff, deep in the Grand Canyon.
Sometimes it is a test of flood. My buddy and I were twenty
miles into the Sierra backcountry when the tropical storm blew in. Not wanting
to spend two more days in car wash conditions, we packed up and headed down.
Damn! Our path was blocked by a seemingly impassable torrent. I stood on a rock
at it's edge, staring at the violence. But my body grew impatient with my
mind's paralysis, and finally just leaped to the other side. My friend was able
to follow, and we made a safe return. The lesson of that leap has been with me
ever since; I often draw on its power.
Wild lands shape our character for the better, and we are
wise when we protect them from plunder, be it dams, clearcutting, or estate
homes. Abbey said that wilderness needs no defense, it only needs more
defenders. My daughter, who is headed this winter for a Congressional
internship with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, first fell in love with
the land one flower-filled spring day on Lafferty Ranch. I hope that, for the
sake of developing more people who will fight for nature, locally and globally,
we soon have a wilderness park not only at Lafferty, but all along the crest of
Sonoma Mountain. Bring home the promised land.