A Place on Earth: An Appreciation

Wendell Berry (photo by Guy Mendes)

Some books speak directly to my heart, and find a permanent home there. I don’t recall precisely when I first read Wendell Berry’s novel A Place on Earth (1^st edition 1967), but it immediately took root in my heart. I must have encountered this book in the mid- to late-1980s, a time when I was living and working in St. Paul, and actively seeking my own place on Earth. Berry’s loving yet clear-eyed descriptions of a way of life deeply rooted in a particular place, in a particular way of being in community, intimately connected to the rhythms of nature, spoke to a deep longing in me for a more authentic way of living than the conventional American Dream I saw being sold as the ticket to the good life.

Either shortly before or after encountering A Place on Earth, Berry’s influential non-fiction book The Unsettling of America (1^st edition 1977) had a similarly profound impact on me. I purchased a new (2015) edition of The Unsettling of America recently, and look forward to re-reading it closely. In an afterword included in this edition, Berry writing in the 1990s says:

“In The Unsettling of America I argue that industrial agriculture and the assumptions on which it rests are wrong, root and branch; I argue that this kind of agriculture grows out of the worst of human history and the worst of human nature. From my own point of view, the happiest fate of my labors would have been disproof. I would have been much relieved if somebody had proved me wrong, or if events had shown that I need not have worried. For this book certainly was written out of worry. It was written, in fact, out of the belief that we were living under the rule of an ideology that was destroying our land, our communities, and our culture—as we still are.”

Both books, in their own ways, are reflections of Berry’s fierce commitment to a way of life that is nurturing and sustainable rather than exploitive. His explicit and implicit criticisms of the contemporary (and historical) American drive to dominate nature in a relentless and uncritical devotion to growth, consumption, and profit, are deeply countercultural, and are unflinching critiques of our entire society, not just our agricultural practices. In A Place on Earth, set in 1944 and 1945 as World War II winds down, Berry lovingly creates a fictional community that is, I’m sure, an honest literary counterpart, with human warts and wrinkles included, of the community of his youth. While it is a community where the best farmers attempt to undo the damage unthinking predecessors have done to the land, and where hard work mindfully done is its own reward, it is also a place touched by family discord, untimely deaths, alcoholism, and suicide.

What I realized only upon re-reading A Place on Earth recently is that it is the second of eight novels (and 51 short stories), all centered on the fictional community of Port William, Kentucky. This lifelong literary project comprises the entire body of Berry’s fiction. (He has also published several collections of poetry and numerous non-fiction works.) I read the novel Jayber Crow (2000) perhaps five or 10 years ago, and, after re-reading A Place on Earth, felt compelled to dive more deeply into Port William, and followed with A World Lost (1996) and Hannah Coulter (2004). In all of these novels Berry writes out of an obvious love and deep concern for connection to the land, and commitment to family and community. These four novels span the years 1944 to 2001, and can be read in any order. Jayber Crow, A World Lost, and Hannah Coulter flesh out the Port William that I first came to know in A Place on Earth. A World Lost is a tale of violence and loss (of the protagonist’s murdered uncle), told in the voice of Andy Catlett, who was clearly Berry’s fictional alter ego (both born in 1934; both the son of a lawyer and farmer). I found Hannah Coulter, a reflection by the titular character, looking back from her old age in 2001 on a lifetime of change in her family, the community, and on the land, to be particularly moving.

Berry was born and raised in the part of Kentucky where these novels are set, and has lived virtually his entire life in the same area, with the exception of a year at Stanford studying under Wallace Stegner (along with Edward Abbey and other literary luminaries) in a seminar, a year as a Guggenheim Fellow in Italy and France, and three years teaching at New York University. He has lived and farmed since 1965 on the western bank of the Kentucky River near its confluence with the Ohio River.

In the 1980s, when I encountered Berry’s writing, while most of my contemporary young middle-class, well-educated Americans were embarking on careers for themselves, I found myself dreaming of a life in the country, making a living by the sweat of my brow, so started saving money with the goal of making that life possible. I also honed my organic gardening skills in the large backyard garden in the home that my wife Anne and I owned in St. Paul at the time, with the intention of becoming an organic market gardener. By 1989, when we had our first child, we were actively looking at rural properties near our hometown of Northfield. After looking at many properties, we made an offer on a beautiful 54-acre bit of heaven-on-earth with woodlands and tillable acreage, and a tumble-down 1890 farmhouse at the end of a quarter-mile-long driveway off Farmer Trail, but the deal fell through when we were unable to borrow the funds needed to renovate the farmhouse. Shortly thereafter, we found a classic dairy farm near Circle and Fox Lakes, about 12 miles southwest of town. The 1925 farmhouse, dairy barn, outbuildings, and 10 acres were on offer, and we became proud rural landowners on September 1, 1990, with 19-month-old Maia in tow.

That first fall and winter I worked on the house, installed a woodstove that was to be our primary heating source, cut  and split firewood, and made plans for the next year’s market garden. Anne was teaching in Rosemount at the time. I was working two ten hour days a week at my previously full-time energy auditing job in St. Paul, and having a grand time with toddler Maia on the farm on the days when I was home. The property had about two acres of tillable land that had been planted in alfalfa for a number of years. As soon as the ground could be worked in the spring, I tilled up about a half-acre, and planted a broad range of vegetables and herbs both for our own use and storage, and for sale at the Northfield farmers market. That spring of 1991, with the help of my father and father-in-law, we planted 500 black walnut and bur oak trees to begin reforesting part of the property.

In some ways, this early time on our farm was idyllic. The first night we slept in our farmhouse, a great horned owl serenaded us from a tree outside our bedroom window. A wetland just to the east of our farmhouse was alive with birdsong, morning and evening, spring through fall. I had many beautiful walks with young Maia in a backpack on our land, and on the nearby gravel roads. Bringing home a Christmas tree from a conifer planting on adjacent land, tromping through the deep snow with the tree in tow, is a cherished memory. Our dear friends Andy and Lizabeth came down from St. Paul to visit us several times with their son Ben, Maia’s age. From late spring through late fall we harvested huge quantities of high-quality organically grown veggies, ate all we could, shared the abundance with family and friends, sold what we could at the farmers market, and stored potatoes, onions, and winter squash in the farmhouse’s ample root cellar.

However, not all was as envisioned. While we did connect with another young couple with similar back-to-the-land ideals who lived a few miles away, we had no nearby neighbors, and Anne, in particular, felt extremely isolated with the farm being 12 miles from town. There were no realistic prospects for creating community in the area. The Community Supported Agriculture movement had not quite yet hit the Northfield area (the first CSA in the area, Big Woods Farm, was established in 1992), and it was not obvious when or if it would be possible for me to make anything like a living on the farm.

The constellation of these and other factors led us to decide to sell and move back to live in St. Paul, and I started graduate school in Minneapolis at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs the fall of 1992. Before long, I found myself on the career environmental policy path, doing work as a bureaucrat in state government in St. Paul. When I quickly learned that even a lowly environmental policy wonk would have the essence of his work output determined by, and intellectually undermined by, the political orientation of an agency head, I found this to be a soul-crushingly unsatisfying, short and straight path to a deep depression. I realized that this was not the path for me, and, with Anne’s blessings, chucked the job to become a stay-at-home dad and move back to Northfield, in town.

That move took place the summer of 1993. Almost 25 years later, still living in the old house we moved into that summer, though my heart still constricts with sometimes-painful memories of the path not taken whenever I ride my bike down Farmer Trail or past the old farmhouse southwest of Circle Lake, I feel like I have nonetheless found my place on Earth.

I may not be living on the land, but I have family and community that I care about deeply in Northfield. I am doing meaningful work that benefits humanity, and my backyard garden has produced abundantly these past 24 years (more abundantly some years than others; 2018 will be The Year of the Garden!). I have cut firewood in beautiful area woodlands, and hand-split it to provide heat for our home for many years, though my aging lower back begins to protest at that process. I have come to a deep and intimate sense of connection to the streams, farmland, woodlands and quiet gravel roads of this place on Earth with which I spend as much time as possible in communion. All these years after first reading A Place on Earth, it still speaks to my heart. In re-reading the book, I grieve a bit for my younger, more idealistic self that first read and was inspired by Berry, but take some solace in recognizing that I still have good work to do here on my place on Earth.

I also look forward to reading Berry’s other four novels and 51 short stories about his beloved place on Earth in the hope of gaining a deeper appreciation of what it means to connect with the land and its people. We live in a time where the news daily brings us incontrovertible evidence that our society is seriously dysfunctional, and that the path that we are collectively traveling is unhealthy, deeply damaging to people, communities, and the natural world. Perhaps we would all be wise to reflect upon the good life, based on intimate, long-term connections to the land and stable communities, that Wendell Berry has envisioned, lived, and written about for the past 60 years.

Reflections on a Barbarian

There is perhaps no author who elicits more mixed feelings from me than Edward Abbey (1927-1989). Abbey’s best-known works, both fiction (e.g. The Monkey Wrench Gang) and non-fiction (e.g. Desert Solitaire), earned him a deserved reputation as an intellectual godfather of the radical environmental movement. I read much of his fiction and non-fiction when I was in my twenties, between the late ‘70s and late ‘80s, and was greatly influenced and moved by his beautiful descriptions of the desert, canyon, mesa, plateau, and mountain country of the American Southwest, exuberantly passionate descriptions of a life fully lived, and fierce defense of preserving wilderness in its raw, unspoiled state. However, even then, 30 and more years ago, I was troubled by his obnoxious self-assurance, bald misanthropy, love of guns, sometimes racist language and (seemingly) views, and his apparent sexism. Concerning race and gender, his written views were complicated but his language was frequently blunt and offensive, even by the standards of the time. In short, while Ed was a fascinating thinker and fantastic writer, he was also an asshole, at least as viewed only through his writing.

Abbey clearly relished his image as something of a barbarian, and likely intentionally exaggerated some of his views and made them inflammatory as intellectual sport. He once stated that “I write in a deliberately provocative and outrageous manner because I like to startle people. I hope to wake up people. I have no desire to simply soothe or please. I would rather risk making people angry than putting them to sleep. And I try to write in a style that’s entertaining as well as provocative. It’s hard for me to stay serious for more than half a page at a time.”[i]

Friends and I recently started a new book club, focusing on nature- and adventure-oriented writing, and we selected Desert Solitaire as our first month’s book, partially because of its focus on the part of the Southwest affected by the Trump Administration’s drastic reductions in the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments. I thus recently reread Desert Solitaire and found it just as enjoyable and provocative, and composed in as distinct and unique a voice, as the first time I read it so many years ago. His descriptions of his experiences in (then) Arches National Monument, a float trip down the Colorado River through Glen Canyon shortly before it was to be flooded and irrevocably altered by the Glen Canyon Dam, and perambulations in the environs of Arches are those of a man who knows these areas intimately and loves them deeply. His language is vivid and often hilarious, and his thinking clear and unfettered by convention. His savagely critical and trenchant view of what he called Industrial Tourism (the “development” of national parks and other wild areas by building paved  roads, campgrounds for motorhomes, and other “amenities”) was completely in keeping with my own views (which were reinforced and probably initially formed partly by reading Abbey lo these many years ago). Fifty years ago, when Desert Solitaire was published, these views were hardly mainstream, even among those sympathetic to traditional conservation efforts. Keep the wild wild!

After rereading Desert Solitaire, Abbey’s breakout first non-fiction work, I decided to reread one of his last novels, the semi-autobiographical The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel. Abbey’s protagonist in the novel, Henry Holyoak Lightcap, seems like a pretty faithful self-portrait of Abbey himself. (A digression: If Abbey was half the lusty womanizer that Henry was, he must have been pretty hard to take. While I mostly loved the novel, I found myself wearying of his descriptions of his tingling groin and massive manhood. In actual fact, Abbey was married five times, fathering five children—ironic for a man who kvetched at length about overpopulation and the overbreeding immigrants and poor—compared to the three wives and one child for the fictional Henry…)

Henry comes by many of his irascible ways and opinions naturally through his father, Joe, who was eulogized at his funeral in the novel by Henry in a way that I imagine Abbey would perhaps see himself: “My father was a vain stubborn self-centered stiff-necked poker-playing whiskey-drinking gun-toting old son of a—gun. ….He never gave his wife the kind of home she wanted or the kind of life she deserved. He was cantankerous, ornery, short-tempered and contentious—probably the most contentious man that ever lived in Shawnee County. He was so contentious he never even realized how contentious he was. He had strong opinions on everything and a neighborly view on almost nothing. He was a hard man to get along with. But I’ll say this for him: he was honest. He never cheated anyone. He was gentle with children and animals. He always spoke his mind. And he was a true independent. Independent, like we say, as a hog on ice.”

Henry also has this to say about his own prodigious reading and what it provided him: “He remembered best not the development of character or the unraveling of plot or the structure of an argument—philosophy is an art form, not a science—but simply the character of the author’s mind. That part remained and by that standard alone he finally judged his author and either threw the book aside or read it through and searched out more by the same writer.” I guess I have much the same approach to reading, and the fact that I read many of Abbey’s books through and searched out more says a lot about the character of his mind and the quality of his writing, the occasionally offensive rants notwithstanding. In fact, I find myself wanting to seek out the rest of his canon which I have not yet read.

Abbey includes this half-hearted mea culpa for his prickly, often offensive style in the introduction to Desert Solitaire: “Certain faults will be obvious to the general reader of course, and for these I wish to apologize. I quite agree that much of the book will seem coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive—even frankly antisocial in its point of view. Serious critics, serious librarians, serious associate professors of English will if they read this work dislike it intensely; at least I hope so. To others I can only say that if the book has virtues they cannot be disentangled from the faults; that there is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right.”

Ed Abbey is someone with whom I would have loved to spend an evening around a desert campfire, drinking and philosophizing, or a day floating down the Colorado River, or scrambling through canyon country. Had I been able to do so, I might have a better sense of whether or not this man who described undeniable problems with overpopulation, illegal immigration, poverty among the Navajo, and welfare dependence in offensively racist language and terms was really a racist. I might have a better sense of whether this man who loved to describe his serial womanizing was simply a man who loved women too much, or whether he was really a grotesquely sexist pig. Based on his writing, he certainly comes across as a racist and sexist asshole. Maybe that is his “way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right.” I can’t help feeling, though, that his immense literary talents could have been even more broadly effective, and resonated with a broader segment of the population, had he been less of a seemingly racist, sexist guy.

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[i] Trimble, Stephen, ed. (1995). “Introduction.” Words from the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing. University of Nevada Press, p. 27.

American Original Sin and Life Out of Balance

The daily news is getting harder to take all the time. Mass shootings by seriously disturbed (mostly white) men occur on a regular basis. The United States has an overall gun death rate that is alarmingly higher than in other developed, high-income countries. Cops who kill (mostly black) citizens under the most questionable circumstances face no legal consequences. We have a president who practices nuclear diplomacy by issuing threatening tweets, has abdicated the United States’ role as global leader in fighting climate change, and careens from one appallingly naïve and offensive national or international executive action to the next with no strategic thinking or serious involvement of key cabinet members. The list of disheartening news events goes on and on.

While the actions of our current President are unique in American history in many ways, both he and the issues mentioned above cannot be seen in a cultural or historical vacuum. Our current dismal state of affairs has been a long time coming.

Surely there is some reason why a study published in 2015 in The Journal of American Medicine found that, compared to those living in 22 other high-income countries,

“…as an American you are:

·         Seven times more likely to be violently killed

·         Twenty-five times more likely to be violently killed with a gun

·         Six times more likely to be accidentally killed with a gun

·         Eight times more likely to commit suicide using a gun

·         Ten times more likely to die from a firearm death overall”

Surely there is some reason why racism in so many and varied forms continues to plague our nation.

Surely there is a reason why a man with innumerable serious personal and professional flaws that would have disqualified any other candidate for the presidency before his campaign even began stunned the world when he was elected on a promise to “make America great again.”

Surely gaining an understanding of why we find ourselves where we are today is a necessary precursor to making headway on righting these wrongs.

I love my country, in spite of the bedeviling problems mentioned above and many others not mentioned. I think that America is still a pretty great country, with many freedoms and positive qualities admired worldwide. Yet this greatness is accompanied by many deeply troubling realities, not only the present ones I’ve briefly touched on, but historical realities.

Not the least of these troubling historical realities is American original sin. Many use this term to refer to slavery. I prefer to think of it as the combination of the genocidal European takeover of the Americas from the indigenous people here when Columbus arrived on October 12^th, 1492, and the African (and Indian) slave labor that built the economic base of this country prior to the Civil War. Unless we, as a people, come to fully acknowledge, understand, and take collective responsibility for this tragic past, and make amends for it, we cannot hope to become a whole and healthy people.

 When Columbus landed on San Salvador in 1492, the Americas were fully and richly populated in a way explicated for the layperson in Charles C. Mann’s 2005 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. The Americas were no virgin wilderness. They were a complex ecological, anthropological, and political web of sovereign nations, some of them Neolithic hunter-gatherer societies, some of them hierarchical agrarian societies, and many some blend of the two.

When Spain, and then France, Britain and other European powers brought germs and guns to the Americas, they triggered the intentional and unintentional genocidal depopulation of two continents that were home to an estimated 50 million to 100 million or more people (including an estimated two to 18 million in what is now the United States), with disease doing most of the dirty work, helped significantly by warfare and violence.

This European-perpetrated genocide first prepared the way for an eventual American toehold on the eastern seaboard, and then was followed by an American-perpetrated genocide as westward expansion occurred during the 19^th century. The end game of the total subjugation of Native peoples in the United States is told in Dee Brown’s heartbreaking 1970 book Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. By the time of the Wounded Knee massacre in December 1890, Native population numbers in what is now the United States had declined to about 250,000. The brutal treatment of Indians and the trail of broken treaties that accompanied westward expansion is well documented.

Both the European and American genocides were contemporary with the enslavement first of Native peoples, and then with importation of staggering numbers of enslaved Africans (12.5 million total to the New World, including about 305,000 brought to areas currently part of the United States). Brutal enforced slave labor built the United States’ economy from the colonial era up to the Civil War.
 

Should we be surprised that the 2.9 million Americans of Native American heritage, or the 46.3 million Americans who self-identify as at least partially African-American, might be dubious of the project to “make American great again”? Fortunately, both Native American and African-American cultures are strong and resilient in spite of this tragic history, though both communities are beset by problems which are largely the lingering result of this American original sin and the resulting catastrophic consequences for these peoples.

I have no doubt that the violent reality of our nation’s past plays a large role in the violent reality of our present. I have no doubt that the mythology of the strong individual, armed and ready to dispense frontier justice, also plays a role. I have no doubt there are many other factors, but most of all I have no doubt that the inability to honestly come to terms with American original sin is at the root of many of our problems.

I have found myself thinking often the past year or so of the film Koyaanisqatsi. First released in 1982, I had never heard of the movie until I happened to see it on public television sometime in about 1987, and was blown away by its combination of arresting slow motion and time-lapse imagery (courtesy of director Godfrey Reggio and cinematographer Ron Fricke) and Philip Glass’ soundtrack. I was captivated from the opening image of the Great Gallery pictograph in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. Gorgeous time-lapse scenes in the unspoiled desert Southwest, and of billowing cloud- and seascapes followed, segueing to jarring mining and war scenes, frenetic industrial and urban scenes, slow-motion close-ups of faces of despair, building to the dizzying near-conclusion several minutes from the end of the film with a flaming, smoking rocket engine tumbling through the atmosphere after an explosive launch failure. The film instantly struck me as an artistic tour de force summarizing the feeling that I had had since the age of about 16: in spite of the many wonderful and beautiful features of American life, especially for a middle class white kid, there was something seriously amiss with our culture. The violence that we Americans had visited upon much of this once-beautiful land, the disconnection of the mainstream of American life from the timeless rhythms depicted in the opening scenes of Koyaanisqatsi, seemed viscerally obvious and obscene.

The next-to-last shot in the film is this image:

As a roughly 29-year-old eco-freak living in Ronald Reagan’s America, this hit me like a punch in the solar plexus. Crazy life. Life in turmoil. Life out of balance. Life disintegrating. A state of life that calls for another way of living. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Fast-forward 30 years. As a 59-year-old eco-freak in Donald Trump’s America, I watched this film again a few nights ago, and was struck anew by its power and clear vision. As crazy as life seemed to me, as out of touch with the rhythms of nature as American society had seemed to me as a 16-year-old in 1974, and as a 29-year-old in 1987, it seems even more so in 2017. Coupled with, and perhaps as a natural outcome of, American original sin, this Life Out of Balance is getting crazier and crazier. The stakes for the planet and for the rest of humanity are getting higher and higher, and likely future outcomes more and more dire.

I hope we still have the ability to transition out of this “state of life that calls for another way of living”. Whether or not we can do so without catastrophic disruption remains to be seen. Honesty about our roots as a people and hard work in healing the human and ecological wounds of the centuries are necessary first steps.

In Search of Wildness: The Trailless Wind River Range

The wild has been calling my entire life. I've often felt I was born in the wrong place and time, that I should have been an 18th-century voyageur, paddling into the interior of New France with trade goods, a Lakota bison hunter during the height of plains horse culture, or a botanist seeking new plants in the remote Amazon interior a century or more ago.

Since I was instead born in 1958 in Minneapolis, and have chosen to live a relatively mainstream life, far from the wild, I seek whiffs of the wild in everyday life, in the semi-wild places near my home in Northfield. Regularly though, the wild calls strongly, and to the wild I go. While I generally bring a camera and shoot photos, that is not my primary motivation. I simply want to be in these places, to experience life as a human animal in the wild, to steep myself in the wildness lacking in everyday life. 

The late Minnesota conservationist and author Paul Gruchow wrote eloquently of this urge in his beautiful book The Necessity of Empty Places: "Nevertheless, some value and meaning clearly resides in such (empty) places, as in all places. Despite ourselves and our beliefs, some among us continue impulsively to seek them out. We go to a mountaintop, or retreat to the desert, or repair to some lonely cove along the wide and empty sea. We are drawn toward wildness as water is toward the level. And there we find the something that we cannot name. We find ourselves, we say. But I suppose that what we really find is the void within ourselves, the loneliness, the surviving heart of wildness that binds us to all the living earth."

Anatomically modern humans, with brains much like our own, have roamed the earth for about the last 200,000 years. For almost all of this time, our hunter-gatherer forebears spent all of their time in what we moderns would consider wild places. Given this history, it seems only natural that some among us maintain the urge to abide in the wild for at least a time. 

On the African savanna, then the Eurasian steppe, the Australasian archipelago and Australia, and later, the North American plains, bands of men would go out, armed only with stone and fire-hardened wood weapons, and hunt animals small and large in these wild places. Women would gather roots, berries, seeds, mushrooms and other edibles, care for children, and make home places, permanent, semi-permanent or nomadic, for their people to shelter in the wild. 

The wildness remaining in 2017 is far tamer than the wildness our doughty ancestors spent the entirety of their lifetimes in. We moderns don’t have to worry about saber-toothed cat or dire wolf attack, needn’t bring down a woolly mammoth to feed ourselves in the wilderness, and enjoy the comfort of high-tech clothing, cooking equipment and sleeping quarters. Nonetheless, a multi-day journey into modern wildness connects us with 10,000 generations of ancestors and their everyday reality, and reminds us what it means to be a human animal, in direct contact with the wild, a microscopic speck of consciousness contemplating the vast cosmos.

While I spent lots of time pottering about in neighborhood streams, vacant lots, and scrubby second-growth woodlands as a young child, and did some state park car camping with my family, my first exposure to what could be considered a wild place occurred when my parents, to their everlasting credit, took our family of four kids -- Scott (15), Gwen (14), me (13) and little sister Gail (7) on a multi-day trip in northeastern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I was immediately hooked, and have returned to the BWCA and other wilderness areas countless times in the 46 years since. My parents were not intrepid outdoorspeople, so it’s unclear why they took this leap into the wild with four kids. Whatever their motivation, I'm forever grateful to my parents for this early introduction to the wild.

I began planning my most recent foray into the wild when the urge to return to the mountains became irresistible in the past year or so. The mountains hold a special appeal to this flatlander. I was ready for a fix of mountain wilds. My most frequent wilderness experiences are in the BWCA, where I have taken perhaps 30 or more multi-day trips since that memorable 1971 family trip. I've done fewer backpacking trips, but have been to Isle Royale (in Lake Superior), Grand Teton National Park (twice), Glacier National Park (twice), Rocky Mountain National Park, and Alberta's Banff National Park in the past. My last trip was 10 years ago (far too long ago), a memorable one to Glacier in 2007 with my then-15-year-old son Jakob, where we both learned a lot about ourselves and each other. 

I decided back in January, after registering for the August 19th Gravel World Championships (a tongue-in-cheek name for a seriously hard gravel bike race put on annually by the equally cheeky Pirate Cycling League of Lincoln, Nebraska), that I would take the opportunity afforded by being 400 miles closer to the Wyoming mountains than I am at home in southern Minnesota to head west after the race for some backpacking. My destination of choice: the Wind River Range, a fabled climbing and backpacking area, home to the Bridger Wilderness (west of the continental divide) and the Fitzpatrick Wilderness (east of the divide) in the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

I had traveled to Lincoln the afternoon of Friday, August 18 to ride in the Gravel Worlds. My friend Dave S and I both stayed the nights before and after the race with pal Joe P and his mate Julie Y, who had moved to Lincoln about three years ago. On Saturday we had a fine, grueling 151-mile bike ride on ever-rolling hills in the ever-warming Nebraska heat, with 10,000 feet of climbing and a temperature of 90 degrees by ride’s end. With the distance, the climbing and the heat, I was crushed, utterly spent by the end of the race around 4:30 p.m. Saturday -- a perfect warmup for my backpacking adventure!

The next morning (Sunday the 20th) I jumped in my trusty Prius adventuremobile at about 6:00 a.m. and pointed it westward. Onward, Prius! I lashed the rig which I normally drive as conservatively as possible at 80 mph, hurtling toward the mountains! It was a mere 800 miles, and I pulled into Pinedale, Wyoming around 6:00 p.m.

Months after I planned the trip I realized, to my delight, that the August 21 total solar eclipse would be viewable around 11:35 a.m. in the Wind River Range. Unbelievable serendipity! I realized that this meant more people would be in the wilderness than would typically be the case, but this seemed a small price to pay (especially since I was confident most of the eclipse-viewers would be within a day’s hike of my trailhead, and wouldn’t be in the truly remote and wild interior of the range). Pulling into Pinedale, I could tell the circus had come to town, as there was lots of small-town traffic, and a big tent set up on the outskirts of town by local law enforcement with a prominent "Eclipse Info" sign plastered on its side.

A friendly law enforcement staffer told me, when I inquired about the conditions at the Elkhart Park campground (the National Forest Service campground 30 minutes farther into the mountains, my chosen trailhead launch point for the trip into the Wind River Range), that "it's like Woodstock up there. There's nowhere to park, and you'll get turned back." I, of course, had to see this, so drove up there post-haste only to find that it was indeed (while not quite Woodstock) a circus, with cars parked along the narrow mountain road for the last mile heading up to the parking lot. After surveying the remarkable scene, I headed a bit back down the mountain to a nearby ski resort where I had been told I could camp for $20 for the night.


After pulling into the funky White Pine Ski Resort and wandering around a bit, I found what appeared to be a camping area, with a number of semi-permanent tipis and canvas tent-house things set up. An elderly couple greeted me and told me the owners had left for the evening, but I could camp anywhere. I set up overlooking a beautiful meadow, shared a bit of proffered Jack Daniels with a friendly chappy about my age, chatted with the oldsters (Marty and Anna from Carpinteria, California -- Marty and a friend had biked cross-country from New York to Carpinteria in 1961!), ate a few tacos offered by a friendly young mountain biker, and got a good night's sleep before the backpacking was to begin.

Photographer's Point

I was up early the next morning (Monday the 21st, eclipse day!), eager to hit the trails. I was on the trail by around 7:30 a.m., and immediately saw a remarkable stream of people heading back toward civilization from the interior. This seemed very odd to me, as I was keen to see the eclipse in the wild. Obviously, all sorts of folks had come for the eclipse, but many of them were not staying in the wilderness for it. Weird. Whatever the explanation, people and dogs, dogs, and more dogs kept passing me. It seemed every other group had a hound or two with his/her own little backpack. Very sweet! The first four miles or so were mellow, and not spectacular, just a beautiful meander through


Dogs, dogs everywhere the first day!

mountain spruce-fir forest. The first knockout spot was an overlook of some rugged peaks known as "Photographer's Point," which I had actually day-hiked to with Jakob in 2004 when he and I were driving cross-country to meet my wife Anne and daughter Maia on the Oregon coast. I had internally vowed then to return for a bigger trip, deep into the wild; here I was, 13 years later! YEAH!!!

Things got steadily more interesting and craggy as the morning progressed. By around 10:30 a group of hikers I passed asked if I had seen the beginning of the eclipse yet. No! I put on my eclipse glasses and saw that indeed, a sliver of the sun was gone! I hiked on, as I wanted to get as far into the wilderness as I could by totality.

About 45 minutes later I found a beautiful spot by a little pond, with the sun high in the sky to the south-southeast above a cliff, framed by surrounding conifers. I set up my camera on its tripod, slipped on my glasses, and began watching the dwindling crescent of sun. The deepening twilight was noticeable well before totality was reached. It was surreal to watch the crescent of sun shrink and finally wink out, with darkness falling all around. I heard a shout from across the pond where I had set up -- others were hanging out in the area.

 The cosmic alignment (sun, moon, my Personal Speck of Consciousness) was almost too much to take in. It was a truly memorable couple of minutes, needless to say. Annie Dillard described the experience brilliantly in her essay “Total Eclipse”: 

“At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world. We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the earth rolled down. Our minds were light-years distant, forgetful of almost everything.”

When a blazing slice of the sun began reappearing, I felt dazed, but packed up once again in the weird, otherworldly light, and began hiking deeper into the wilderness. I soon met a few more groups of hikers, and we exchanged giddy greetings, realizing we had shared an incredibly rare and wonderful experience in the wilderness.

After stopping for a quick lunch with my already sore feet (harbinger of much pain to come) soaking in Lake Seneca, I passed through a country of beautiful wildflower- and boulder-strewn meadows and streams. I had been climbing steadily from the beginning (starting at about 9,350'; by day's end I would be at about 10,400'), but none of it was particularly hard climbing. I finally called it a day in the late afternoon after hiking about 12 miles and set up camp. While I felt a good tired, this was really too much, given that I wasn't acclimated to the altitude. After a beautiful evening in camp, I turned in early so I could get a well-rested start to what promised to be a strenuous day in the high country on Tuesday.


Island Lake, home for my first night on the trail at 10,400'

I soon realized that my ancient Thermarest pad had a slow leak, and I was essentially sleeping on the hard ground. NO!!! Well-rested was now a vain hope, as I tossed and turned all night, getting some but not much sleep, with my arthritic, 59-year-old lower back and sacroiliac joints protesting all night long.

I rose early, and after a quick breakfast, packed up and headed toward Titcomb Basin and Indian Basin, two famously-beautiful backpacking and climbing destinations. I admired both as I hiked past Titcomb and through Indian Basin on the way to the first major climb of the trip, up 12,150-foot Indian Pass.

Fremont and Jackson Peaks, Indian Basin

Small jewel-like lakes dotted Indian Basin, and patches of snowfield left over from last winter’s much-heavier-than-normal snowpack began showing up. The trail became less and less distinct the higher I went, and soon I was scrambling over boulder fields and snowfields. This was to be the norm for most of the next three days. 

At about this point, I came upon another solo hiker. He suggested that we stick together going up and over Indian Pass, as it was looking pretty gnarly. I agreed, though not wholeheartedly, as I was really looking for solitude on this trip.

John S and I join forces while climbing toward Indian Pass

As it turned out, I was eventually extremely glad that we did stick together. For parts of each of the next four days John S (a 40-year-old who had emigrated as a college student from a small town in central China and is now an IT professional in Ann Arbor, Michigan) and I spent quite a bit of time hiking together and camped together one night. I got to know him quite well. John proved to be a really sweet guy, and an excellent traveling companion. We helped each other navigate through some extremely confusing and difficult off-trail terrain, and I think we both benefitted greatly from our cooperation.

The climb to Indian Pass was all over snow for the last hour or so.

A third solo hiker, 22-year-old Alan, also from Ann Arbor, by coincidence, joined us for parts of this climb. This was high, craggy, wild country, with gorgeous alpine views in all directions. When we finally arrived at the pass, a solo woman day-hiker (from a campsite somewhere in Indian Basin) was resting and admiring the view over the pass to the east of the Continental Divide, overlooking the Knife Point Glacier. A group of four 20-somethings also made it up the pass while we were there. Alan was heading down Knife Point Glacier and north; John, the 20-somethings and I were all traversing the glacier to nearby Alpine Lakes Pass, also at about 12,150. Day-Hiker Woman commented on how

Closing in on Indian Pass

she found Knife Point Glacier anti-climactic, as it wasn't as large as it appears on maps. She was right: climate change's effect was dramatically visible, though the late-August remains of last winter’s heavy snowpack expanded the appearance of the remaining glacier. Nonetheless, it was still an impressive sight. It was also steep, and frankly looked scary as hell to someone with no experience on glaciers.



John sets foot on Knife Point Glacier

The traverse of Knife Point Glacier, and the subsequent descent of the glacier on the far side of Alpine Lakes Pass, was grueling, exhausting work. Though the glacier surface was soft, each footstep had to be kicked in and held hard on the steep crossing. Without crampons or an ice axe (damn fool! I berated myself), it was somewhat harrowing at times, but I eventually made it up and over the pass, and down the glacier on the far side of the pass to Upper Alpine Lake. This also included crossing several extremely rough talus fields exposed by the retreating glaciers. 

Traversing Knife Point Glacier sans crampons or ice axe (damn fool!)

En route, I realized to my horror that I had somehow, inexplicably, lost both my iPhone (with several photos of detailed maps showing how to navigate through the trailless area I now planned to cross over the next three days) and one of my two hard-copy maps, the one that covered pretty much the entire off-trail portion of the trip. ARGHHHHH!!!!!! In my 40-plus years of wilderness travel, I had never previously lost anything of significance. I’m still not sure what happened. The effects of altitude had perhaps clouded my mental faculties and led me to set the map and/or the phone down on a boulder while resting. It’s also possible that the phone came out of my Velcroed pocket on a fast and fun glissade down the glacier toward Upper Alpine Lake. In any case, I now knew I had would have to rely on the kindness of others to make it through the wilderness. I also felt sick that I had littered the wilderness through my carelessness.

Exhausted by the climbing, glacier crossings and boulder-hopping, I camped that second night on the first bit of relatively flat terrain I came to on my descent from Alpine Lakes Pass, a tiny patch of tundra overlooking an alpine lake. I've never known greater solitude. 

Camp 2: Give me oxygen!

I was over 11,000 feet, sleep was difficult, and I was feeling the effects of the altitude (headache, loss of appetite, low energy). I fretted a bit about being in the heart of exceedingly wild country without a map, but consoled myself with the likelihood I would come across someone early in the next day’s hike who would allow me to photograph their maps.

Sue and Kirsten save my bacon!

Awaking early the next morning, I downed a couple of cups of coffee and forced down some breakfast. I felt good in spite of the lack of sleep and altitude effects, and after descending through rugged boulder fields for about 30 minutes, came upon a mother and daughter breaking camp, Sue and Kirsten from Bozeman, who let me photograph their maps.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou, Sue and Kirsten!!!

John and I soon re-connected while puzzling our way through complicated, broken terrain, and for the next two days we scrambled up and down valleys, over another high (though not glaciated) pass (Hay Pass, 11,003'), and generally wandered in awe through the prelapsarian alpine wonderland.

Another alpine jewel below Douglas Peak

Craggy peaks, tiny glacial-meltwater ponds, boulder fields, occasional patches of meadow bursting with wildflowers, all was amazing.


Rocky Mountain columbine

In places Rocky Mountain columbine was thick. Indian paintbrush and a dizzying array of other exotic (to my Midwestern eyes) wildflowers of all hues grew everywhere.John and I hiked together part of the time, and we hiked solo at other times.

Micro icebergs in August

Though I saw none of the large mammals that call the Winds home (grizzly and black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, bighorn sheep), here and there I came upon an inquisitive marmot or pika, peering at the two-legged interloper in their alpine domain. All was good, though my toes were swollen and sore, and my legs ached from all the boulder scrambling. 

Marmot on the lookout

I spent the third night at another beautiful solo campsite on aptly-named Camp Lake. John pushed farther on along Camp Lake. He later told me he would have camped with me, but I had mentioned that I was seeking solitude on this trip, so he pushed on alone. I felt like a bit of an antisocial cad when he told me this on the fourth day, but he seemed genuinely unoffended.

The fourth night John and I did camp together just above a beautiful, small, unnamed lake after descending a stunningly gorgeous valley with views of the Golden Lakes chain, and continuing past the Golden Lakes.


Gorgeous view, looking south, of the Golden Lakes chain

I told John that evening that I had originally planned to exit the wilderness the next day (Friday), but that the 24 miles remaining was simply too much to cover in one day, so my plan was to cover 15 up and down miles to Pole Creek Lake, and then hike the final nine miles to the trailhead on Saturday. I had covered only about 18 hard, hard miles in three days of off-trail scrambling, far less than I had expected to cover, since the boulder-hopping was such slow going. Along with the first day’s 12 miles, I had traveled about 30 miles total from the trailhead in the first four days, much less than the 40 to 45 miles I had expected to cover in that time.

Camp 4 sunrise

The next morning we broke camp early, and hiked at a good clip. After wandering for a couple of miles, we found ourselves on actual trails again. It felt like we were back in civilization (though that was still waaaaaaaaay off). We made good time, and stopped for the first time for an early lunch after covering about five miles. At this point John bid me farewell, as he knew I wanted to move it along and he didn't want to hold me

Stream crossings? No problem

back. We exchanged phone numbers so we could share photos with each other, and made plans to get together for drinks in December when he planned to be in St. Paul to visit a good friend.

Friday afternoon I felt like a world-beater. My legs were feeling strong, my toes had settled down a bit, and I began thinking "you know, if I can make it 15 miles, I can surely make it 24..." This was crazy thinking, but I knew that: a) Anne was worried sick about me, and the longer it took me to get out to where I could message her (with someone else's phone!), the longer she would worry; b) I didn't really want to sleep on the ground another night -- the allure of a soft bed and a shower was becoming powerful; and c) I really kinda like doing crazy hard things. YEAH, let's go for it!!!


I hiked through seven stream crossings that day. Yeah, baby! I hiked up and over 10,800' Hat Pass. Feelin' strong! I hiked another seven miles to Pole Creek Lake, my original planned stop for the night, crossing the last stream with the sun still an hour or two high in the sky. I took off my soaked boots, let my sore feet breath, ate a quick dinner, and did a brief reality check. Was I really up to doing another nine miles, much of it in the dark, by headlamp? My grip on reality is tenuous at best; I decided to push on. 

Final stream crossing at the Pole Creek Lake outlet.
I should have camped here. I REALLY should have camped here.

Unable to face the prospect of putting my seriously sore feet back in my boots, I put on my Keen sandals to hike the final nine miles, as the trail was not likely to be excessively rocky and rugged anymore.  About three miles down the trail, after some beautiful twilight hiking, I turned the headlamp on, and total exhaustion was setting in. Another mile-and-a-half down the trail, I could barely walk. I staggered into an area that I knew was the Photographer's Point outcropping I had passed Monday morning, four-and-a-half miles from the trailhead. I shrugged off my pack and laid on the bare rock, utterly exhausted, for about 15 minutes. I knew I could find some relatively flat spot nearby to pitch my tent, and finish the hike in the morning, but noooooooooo, I'm a stubborn son of a bitch, so I shouldered the pack for one last time. I would have taken more breaks, but I knew if I stopped again and took the pack off, I would never be able to continue. 

The last two miles or so of hiking were, without a doubt, the physically most difficult thing I have done in a 59-year life full of doing physically hard things. I was fighting off sharp pain in my right Achilles' tendon, basically dragging my left leg along, and bending over every 10 minutes or so to take some pack-pressure off my shoulders and give myself a chance to collect my breath for 20 seconds or so, then carry on. 

Just when I thought that I truly couldn't go on, I saw a campfire through the trees. YES! Civilization! I shuffled the last few hundred feet through the woods, staggered out into the parking lot, made my way to the parked Prius, and nearly collapsed as I took off my pack. I slumped into the driver's seat, too tired to even move for several minutes. I looked at the car’s clock: 12:03 a.m. I had started around 8:00 a.m., so had been on the trail the last day for about 16 hours to cover the final 24 miles.

After driving the 30 minutes or so down the mountain to Pinedale, I sought out a brew-pub I remembered seeing on Sunday. I had been fantasizing all evening about having a big fish sandwich (with lots of tartar sauce and freshly-squeezed lemon juice), a pile of fries, a pint or two of good beer, and a chocolate shake. I found the brew-pub; it was closed, of course. I drove on and found a 24-hour gas station, bought a turkey wrap and some hot chocolate (I couldn't eat, and could barely drink, over the last nine miles, so was now famished and felt a raging thirst), and made my way to the nearest hotel so I could take a shower and collapse. I could barely walk into the hotel to book a room, my legs, ankles, feet and toes hurt so badly, but I eventually made it up to my second-floor room, where I slowly and painfully stripped, showered, and collapsed into bed around 1:30 a.m.

The next morning, I hobbled down to the car after eating a sumptuous hotel continental breakfast, and pointed the Prius eastward for the 1100-mile trip home. A great chunk of the interior of the country (Wyoming, South Dakota and southern Minnesota), much of it beautiful, flashed by with the cruise control mostly pegged at 82 for the next 17 hours or so. My normally incredibly SLOW and energy-saving driving habits were thrown out the window in the interest of GETTING THE HELL HOME for this trip.

After driving slowly through fog for the last three hours in southern Minnesota, I finally pulled into the driveway at home. Opening the car door and shuffling up to the front door, I found Anne smiling and waiting for me with a hug as I crept painfully into the house at 3:05 a.m. Sunday. All was well. I was home. 

My animal spirits have been renewed. Though I’m happy to be back in civilization, and realize that I am living in the precise place and time I should be (right here, right now), I cherish the memories of five filled-to-overflowing days spent living intensely in the high, snowy, craggy, boulder-strewn wilds of the Winds. I’m now ready to sit by the figurative winter campfire and relive the memories for a long time to come. Though I'm in the process of losing a few toenails, I found what I was seeking on this trip, the pulsing heart of the wild.