Return, p.9
Return, page 9
Here and there small copses of larch and spruce trees provide us with plenty of fallen branches that we break into manageable lengths for the fire. The wood is dense and strong and will hold a coal in a banked fire all night long. There is plenty of open space, too, with rich, waving grasses that the horses munch hungrily as soon as we remove their packs and saddles. There is an advantage in being an herbivore; if only it was as easy for us humans to fatten and thrive on the abundance of simple green grass.
A firepit is scratched out on a bare patch of ground. I am not at all a fan of lining my firepits with rocks then leaving them dotted around the campsites throughout the wilderness. I prefer to scrape out a shallow pit, using a few rocks for balancing our clay pots on for cooking. Then clear it all away when we leave.
Rick pulls a fire kit from his pack and quickly drills an ember with the bow. He seems to have the most energy of everyone and entertains us as our little group relaxes around the fire, nibbling on quick, easy snacks of nuts, seeds, and dried fruits. Ali and Ben throw out their sleeping robes side by side. I have noticed for a while now how often they appear together in the mornings, surmising that an intimacy has grown between them. Although it’s hard to imagine they might forge a long-term liaison, nothing could seem better for Ali right now than the care of this sweet man. It’s common for these couplings to arise and now, seeing Falcon and Rick, cuddled up together, fingers interlaced, I wonder if they, too, are embarking on a new romantic exploration.
A huge smoke plume fills the afternoon sky to the north and, as the evening air cools at dusk, it colors the entire northern sky a muddy gray. The mosquitoes are out. Marcus and Jenny cook dinner in the big clay pot: wild rice, buffalo meat, and dried nettles. We sing together afterward, a strange concoction of animalistic sounds that belies our humanity. It’s too late and I’m too tired to consider starting a shelter tonight so I make my way across the meadow, away from the rest of the group, and lie down in my buffalo robe sleeping bag. Even from this distance, I hear the renewed chatter of the young people. They are laughing and talking loudly and having fun. I’m glad for them, but I’m slightly irritated. I want peace. Now that the classes are over, my role as teacher and leader has shifted slightly; we are now essentially a group of friends and equals experiencing this journey together. They still look to me for guidance since I know these mountains and have at least twenty years more experience than most of them, but I’m tired of my role as teacher all summer. I need to rest and want to fall into the mesmerizing stillness that comes as we relinquish the busy thoughts that are tied to the modern culture from which we were so recently released.
Here is my holy land and I want to listen. Will she sing to me in the silence of darkness?
I awaken in the blue hour to the hum, the thrum of the earth. I hear her, high in these mountains, far from the polluting noise of our civilization. I match the tone and fall back to sleep, snuggled down in the buffalo robe away from the separate and distinct whine of mosquitoes.
* * *
I greet the first day. Sunrise. The air is warm, it caresses me. A few slow mosquitoes search for blood. Soft sounds of water flowing downward, downward, pulled by the inevitable forces of gravity. Slowly the mountains crumble. Whose voice wrestled through my consciousness last night by the dying embers? Mesmerizing in its foreignness, its truth, its power.
I have been reveling in my body, the comfort of movement, stretch, and gentle friction. A handful of soft ripe huckleberries, sensation after sensation as the sun rises higher and the ants grow active.
Movement. We were made to move, our bodies are exquisitely designed to run with the greatest persistence of any other creature on Earth. Without movement our muscles atrophy, our joints stiffen, our bones become brittle, our lymph and blood stagnate, our hormones and life force are depleted. It is to ourselves that we most owe the practice of regular stimulating exercise. We humans are lucky to have the ability to walk, run, stretch, swim, climb, and dance; and we are no less capable today of the admirable physical feats of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
This is “trial week”: the first seven days of our journey, the last transition of our rewilding. It basically means we can bring in anything we want in addition to our Stone Age gear; we still have to carry it, though, so it doesn’t amount to much. Mostly it’s nonwild foods, about ten pounds for each person. Dense, high-calorie foods like salami and cheese, which are quick to eat on the trail and don’t require cooking. Most of us made up what we call energy balls or power mix that includes ground nuts and seeds, dried fruits and berries. They taste delicious. Mine has cashews, hemp seeds, cacao nibs, and coconut oil.
Food, nourishment. We fuel our bodies by the nutrients we absorb and digest. The quality of the foods we eat is no less important than the air we breathe or the water we drink. We eat, we defecate—this process is also symbiotic with the plant world, moving not only nutrients around but viable seed. When we disrupt this cycle, contain or condense it, the exchange becomes broken.
We love our foods and our habits and our preferences and addictions. What we eat and how and why we eat it is charged with so many personal reasons, traumas, and dogma. Our dietary health is directly proportional to the health of the land that we inhabit as well as the land where our food is produced.
Besides food, the group has some sewing supplies: needles, nail punches, and a pair of scissors. We will leave these behind after the trial week.
I have the commercially made packsaddle and two halters that I need to replace with rawhide or heavy moose hide rope before the week’s end.
On the last day of this week, regardless of whether we shall physically move on yet or not, we cache all the nonprimitive gear for the rest of the trip with the exception of journal, pencil, one camera and batteries, extra bowstring, glasses, medications, and birth control. That’s it. No phones, no matches, no GPS.
Our weather forecaster is the one who hikes to the ridge and comes back down to tell us what they saw. We watch and watch the sky, noticing patterns, subtle shifts in breeze, temperature, cloud formation. Having lived for much of my adult life on the eastern slopes of mountain ranges has taught me that the high, wispy cirrus clouds can foretell the arrival of rain. They will often build in the afternoons then dissipate, then build again for several days. I have also learned the folly of being too confident with weather forecasting. The adage “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes” is appropriate in these mountains. Camping in this style does not allow carelessness; we have no plastic tarps to erect quickly in a sudden mountain shower, and skin bedding and clothing must remain dry at almost any cost. It would take days for a soaked buffalo robe to dry and risks the hair slipping out.
The sun is up. I hear a horse nicker. It’s Christy telling me it’s time to move her picket rope so they have a fresh place to graze. Chaco and Karma are loose; they will not stray far from their lead mare.
I have had several horses in my life, but perhaps I will never love another horse the way I love Christy. My first horse was a young, sweet thoroughbred but he was so tall and a bit unfocused and would often trip and stumble. When I sat my child up there on his back it seemed like such a long way to the ground. One autumn while my family and I were in Sweden, I got to ride a Haflinger, a short, stocky draft breed, through some boggy, uneven ground. This horse was the perfect size to put a kid on and his draft temperament kept him steady as a rock. The Haflinger breed was developed in the Austrian mountains, and these ponies are a mixture of the hardy local mountain horses of that period and a single Arab stallion that was the sire to the entire breed. Being small draft horses they were bred to be versatile, calm, and easy keepers that could do small farm work and the kids could also ride them to school. Alas, I thought, these pedigreed horses are way out of my price range, but when we got back to our home in Montana, a good friend had just started breeding Haflingers and when I inquired he said I could buy a yearling and pay just $100 a month until he was paid off. I jumped at the chance and went to look at his herd and picked Chaco. I also borrowed a five-year-old mare for the winter while I did ground work with Chaco since he was still too young to ride. That’s when Christy came into my life. She had been started in harness and under saddle with just a few weeks of training. Christy is a queen, the old-style Haflinger with short legs and broad chest. She has to trot to keep up with all the other horses when they walk, but what a trot. She is the most comfortable couch. I rode her all winter and was so in love that by the time spring came around, I knew I couldn’t let her go. I found a neighbor who decided to buy Chaco instead, and for some years it was only me and Christy, together every day, learning, exploring, having our little tiffs and making up again. She has taught people terrified of horses to ride. I have put countless babies and small children on her back, up to six at a time! Four years after I sold Chaco, I got a call that he was up for sale again. He had been sold twice since he’d left my care. I went to check him out and was appalled. He was barely recognizable, thin, gaunt, depressed, his hair falling out. I took one look at him and said, “Don’t worry, buddy, you’re coming with me.” I really wasn’t sure if he was going to live, he had been so ignorantly neglected. He practically ran into the horse trailer to get away. I’m sure he could smell Christy all over me. Their reunion was marked with excited whinnies and exuberant racing around the meadow, which soon settled into a comfortable grooming session. So touching. Chaco quickly got his spark back with the good company and a lot of high-quality hay. I promised him I would never separate them again; they were in it for life. The gelded Chaco doesn’t have the charisma of Christy, and his trot is just awful, the “butter churn” trot as I like to call it. But he’s honest and dependable, a bit lazy but all around just a really good guy. In fourteen years with me these horses have done it all: been in parades, trekked in the desert, acted in a film, patrolled with the mounted security guards at a harvest fair. The only time I remember them really being upset was when two giant stilt walkers in flowing robes, fifteen feet tall, approached us at a parade and we had to steer a wide margin around such perilous beings. Compared to all their previous experiences, hauling packs on rocky slopes up a mountain in the wilderness doesn’t faze them at all.
* * *
We have much to do on this first day at our base camp. Clouds in the early morning reminded me that I must look for shelter. Building a shelter in these high elevations using only natural materials and without the assistance of saws and axes is a time-consuming endeavor. The best option is to look for a tight stand of spruces whose conical shape and dense branch formation give natural protection from the elements. I decide to make a personal shelter. Last night, I encouraged the rest of the clan to focus on building, too, as soon as they can. This morning, they’re quiet, still sleeping, and I sincerely hope they’ll respond to my nudging that this dry weather will not last. Nor do we want it to. Please, let it rain.
Before I get to my own shelter building, I explore the area and familiarize myself with the resources and the lay of the land. Scouting the valley, I find an old trail that leads up toward the ridge. Compelled by the desire to see the endless peaks again that lay beyond, I follow it to the sun-glittering pass where a cool breeze and sharp rocks greet my bare feet. Glaciers and snowfields stretch before me; the mountains are my ocean, waves cresting, peak after peak as far as my eyes can reach. Twenty or thirty ravens swirl, tornado-like in the updraft. Who could not be moved by the magnificence of this land? On the crumbling ridgetops a face appears with every angled contour, mighty beings, smiling, scowling, laughing, watching time, so meaningless, slip by through countless millions of years. And yet, each breath of wind that stirs the larch needles and trails a hair across my face is precious beyond all reason in this dazzling summer sunlight.
This is the mystery; it surrounds us constantly and we are part of it.
Would that every man, woman, and child entombed in urban cement could breathe a glimpse and knowing of this magic.
The trail continues down the other side and I make a mental note that it gives us another exit route with the horses from this basin in the event of fire. Below, from the direction of camp, I hear the sounds of branches cracking, telling me that the group is up and they’ve taken my advice to build shelter seriously. A wet storm and a drop in temperature are our biggest threats in this high country. Even in August while the sun is out, things can change suddenly. The wind blows from the northwest, from the fire across the river valley, and the air grows hazy.
I pile some slabs of broken, partially rotted fallen larch against a cluster of spruces as a shelter where I’ll sleep tonight. It makes a little nook, somewhat protected from the possibility of rain. The trees are tall, though, and if a thunderstorm came roaring through it might send me scurrying out into the tempest. Many are the trees here that bear the jagged scars of lightning strikes.
* * *
The next morning, the wind has changed direction again. The sun is up, shining weakly through the smoky pallor. The earth is beneath me. Water springs from the rocks at the base of the scree and boulder fields, feeding lush meadows of lupines; but today the skies show no hint of coming rain and I lie here under my spruce shelter watching the smoke in the valley move in the direction of my cabin some ten miles away. It’s hard to be present with the birdsong as I watch the smoke. I find myself thinking about whether I prepared everything I could back home for fire. Will someone move my truck? It has my driver’s license in it and a few hundred dollars in cash. The art of my parents and friends on the walls of my cabin is irreplaceable. What would it be like to return to find the crumpled metal roofing strewn upon the ashy remnants of my home?
I wander down to the lakes. The first one has clear signs of people having camped and fished here before us. There are worn trails and bare ground and I wince at the rock-ringed firepits. It is deserted and I’m glad I don’t have to explain myself and my unusual appearance or warily skirt the campers remaining unseen. The trail that leads on to the next lake is less obvious, and by the time I reach the lower lake another mile away, it’s hard to discern a trail at all and signs of humans passing give way increasingly to the haphazard crisscrossing paths of the deer. I skirt the lake, heading for the boulders where the water is deeper, peering into the crystal clear pools and scanning the surface for the telltale rippling rings. I am looking for the fish. A month ago I was here for the first time, scouting for this journey, and the trout were abundant and less wary in this place off the beaten path so seldom visited by other people. I had gently and slowly reached beneath the water-drenched logs in the shallows near the outlet and stroked the silky bodies thinking to myself, Don’t catch them now, wait until we need them.
Today the fish are absent, hiding in noonday sun, and I settle myself onto a soft bed of springy grasses and wildflowers. I wonder as I behold these strewn sharp boulders, if I were suddenly blinded could I find my way back to the meadow above where my clan, my food, my warmth and shelter would grant me another day? I half want to close my eyes and try but then I would probably stop at the fragrant flowers whose scent is so intoxicating and dwell in my sense of smell regardless of my vanished sight. My mind drifts away from this moment and I am roaming the faraway lands of my ancestors, lost in time, seeking that feeling of belonging, seeking broad, strong shoulders and calloused hands that are borne by a sentient being, seeking with mind the knowledge only heart can know.
I move from sun to shade seeking the cool breeze in the heat. Seeking, seeking, searching . . . Be still for all is here, now and always.
As a poet must, I love to string words together with intent to evoke the feelings of magic and wonder. And yet, I savor those moments of wordless awe and beg the words to give me another minute in priceless presence before they jostle for precedence once more in my unquiet mind. Rebel poet, know silence.
Back at camp my peaceful state is shattered by the commotion and activity of my clan, who are building a group shelter nestled under another stand of spruces. Ben is smashing branches against a rock to reduce their length and standing them side by side against the trunk of a large central spruce. It forms a conical design. Ali and Jenny arrive laughing, hauling armfuls of green spruce boughs that they have broken from several nearby trees. They take just a few from each tree to reduce the impact, then place them, shingle style, onto the walls to help shed the rain. Marcus, his vision obscured by a hefty load of poles, stumbles over Rick, who is prying rocks from the forest floor to create a flatter and more even surface to lie on. Falcon tests it out then rakes piles of needles and duff to make an insulative comfortable bed. All is happy, frantic pandemonium.
I love my people here. They are sweet and kind and young . . . but they are so noisy. They laugh and scream and yell so loudly sometimes that they startle me, making me think that something is wrong. I know why I resent this incessant noise. Civilization is so loud and brash and the mountains for me are the place to retreat, to leave the chaos behind. But here it is, still with me. Perhaps I should plan a solo trip for a full cycle of the sun from dawn to dawn or maybe one of the quieter ones would like to join me? I need to do it soon, though, to drop the old world and find myself in this new place, to be still.
I am twice the age of most of my clanspeople and I’m missing the companionship of more mature friends. Usually the immersion groups have a wider age range and there are often children who come with parents though it’s rare for them to join the Stone Age journey. I wish Michel, Annabelle, and Etienne had joined us. It feels so much more like a village with children. The youngest ever to be part of the program was definitely Lauren’s baby, who was in class within a week of being born! My most senior student was eighty-eight-year-old Uncle Lester who joined classes every week for the immersion phase. We used to pick him up with a horse-drawn wagon and drive him into camp since the trail was too rocky and uneven for the old man to walk in. He kept us in stitches with his silly jokes and I remember him saying that the key to longevity was to always learn something new.
