Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom (32 page)

His car door slammed and he began walking toward the van.

While it was true that my semester was almost over and while it was true that I wouldn’t have to live in a van next semester, deep down, I wasn’t ready to end my experiment or sell the van. I didn’t realize how much the van meant to me until I had reason to worry it could be taken away.

I listened to his footsteps get louder but then, to my relief, softer and softer.

.............

or
How I Learned to Live Simply

.............

Summer 2009—Noatak River, Alaska

SAVINGS: $10,000 AND GROWING

T
HE CESSNA CARAVAN BUZZED
noisily though a corridor of treeless, moss-bearded mountains. I craned my neck to look out the passenger-side window to watch the plane’s shadow below, a black arrowhead sailing over the sunny green tundra valley floor, wafting over creeks, and turning oblong and abstract when passing over stands of spruce trees.

It was the end of my second summer as a backcountry ranger. In a couple of weeks, I’d have over $15,000 in the bank: more than enough money to pay for next year’s tuition. Soon, I’d be out of the van and the wild, and finally inside a cozy apartment of my own.

I was about to be dropped off in the wilderness with Whitney, a Park Service volunteer who’d been helping out at the ranger station in Coldfoot. She and I were to paddle eighty miles of the Noatak River to the Gates’ western border, where we were told to keep our eyes out for sheep poachers.

The Noatak River is 420 miles long, stretching from the
glaciers of the Gates’ tallest mountain (the craggy, windswept 8,570-foot Mount Igikpak) to the Chukchi Sea on the western edge of Alaska. Because the Noatak National Preserve (6.5 million acres) is connected to the Gates of the Arctic National Park, the Noatak, which runs from one park and into the next, is one of the largest protected watershed basins in the world.

Our pilot gently dropped the plane’s aluminum floats down, skimming a placid lake that was a short distance from the Noatak. He helped us unload our gear before he got back into the plane and flew to the village of Bettles, a small native community just outside the park where a ranger station was located and where I’d been living when I was not on patrol.

From the lake, we had to portage our inflatable canoe and gear a mere quarter mile to the river. We had a large inflatable rubber canoe, canoe repair equipment, paddles, communication devices, and a shotgun, not to mention tents, clothes, sleeping bags, and food for the next eight days. I filled up my dry bag with everything I could, slid my arms through the shoulder straps, and marched toward the river, stepping carefully over tussocks and elbowed my way through a six-foot-tall tangle of willow and alder trees.

Whitney was far behind, so I arrived at a grassy clearing next to the river first. When I arrived, I knew I wasn’t alone. I felt the presence of something big. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something enormous and brown, an immovable tree trunk of muscle and fur. At first, I pretended not to see it. Unconsciously, I made the decision to focus first on dropping my eighty-pound pack, which I tried to lift off of my shoulders as casually as possible. It wasn’t until I’d shed the pack that I gave the creature—fifteen yards away—all of my attention.

I instantly realized that I was unarmed. I’d left the shotgun back with the rest of the gear by the lake. I knew the canister of bear spray that dangled on my hip was useless because the wind—which was blowing so forcefully that it felt like it might dislodge my NPS ball cap and Frisbee it into the Noatak—would
cause the cayenne pepper spray to blow right back into my face and blind me.

I was standing in front of a grizzly bear. And I was completely defenseless.

Its size was flabbergasting. On four legs, its head came as high as my chest. It was ugly: mottled black and brown, with thick, round jaws, a long black muzzle, and two fuzzy semicircles for ears. An unflagging stream of wind combed over its hide, making its fur flutter with aurora-like irregularity. Its hair—millions of little joysticks—twisted up and down, left and right. It was as if the bear was choreographing the movement of each bristle.

It kept its head low to the ground. Its eyes…

Whitney suddenly broke through the alder thicket behind me. She paused, quickly discerning that the bear and I were locked in a staring match. The three of us stood perfectly still.

The eye of a grizzly bear. I’d seen this eye before. I’d seen it in the animals, the waters, the mountains. The wild green eye of nature is always spying, always staring, always watching, ready to lock on to yours when you’re ready for it. Look into it closely and in the eye’s reflection you might catch a glimpse of the objective you: that cultured creature of softness and sophistication or, if you’ve done well to fall far enough from civilization’s grace, the very brute, beastly nature of the wild eye itself. Up until this moment, I’d kept my gaze averted whenever I’d felt that eye fall upon me. But now I was left without an option.

I didn’t fear this bear. One doesn’t feel fear in such a situation. To call what I was feeling “fear” would do disrespect to what I felt. It was an adrenaline overload, a heightened state of being. Every square centimeter of me screamed with startled life. I was abuzz. Yet, at the same time, oddly composed.

The bear looked composed, too, almost indifferent, as if it had been there and done that a million times before. Yet I knew it must have been feeling something similar to what I was feeling. In a place as wild and remote as the Gates, bears and
humans rarely get the chance to interact. This was probably as new and earth shattering for it as it was for me.

It appeared as if it had no intention of fleeing. Why wasn’t it running away like the rest of the bears I’d seen up here? Why wasn’t I?

It sat down on its meaty haunches and rolled out its tongue like a child’s paper streamer. Its teeth were a horrid landscape of stone-gray spires set upon a ridge of slimy purple gums, jutting out of a bubbly white surf of saliva. It was leering at me from its side.

I didn’t want to die. I didn’t regret a thing, but I didn’t want to die.
Give me another day. Please! Just one more!

I’d walked many miles in the Brooks with this moment in mind. I felt as if this grizzly had been following me, watching me from the woods, waiting for the right time to hold our meeting. For years, the grizzly had lumbered through my dreams. I was never sure why. Maybe it was just plain old fear: knowing that if I walked around in the Brooks long enough I’d eventually have one such encounter. Yet it wasn’t simply fear. I revered the grizzly. I spoke of it in hushed tones if I spoke of it at all. Maybe it was because I’d wanted to be everything the grizzly was: wild, strong, free.

I’d wanted to have this experience for years, but only so I could go home and impress people with stories of my foray into the wild and pretend I was some sort of mountain man. But now, in front of this bear, I knew I’d have nothing to brag about. I didn’t feel courage or resolve. I only wanted to get away.

I’d come to consider the Brooks my new home, but in front of this grizzly, I knew I was only an outsider, an intruder, an imposter. This wasn’t my home. Not the way it was this grizzly’s home, at least. As far as I had come, I could see in its eyes that in my life I would never be as wild as it. Yet, after enough time in the wild, I’d feel, if just for a moment, the place begin to overtake me, like vines crawling up the walls of deserted buildings, weeds burgeoning in concrete cracks, whole forests reclaiming the ground that had been seized from them. These
were the moments when all the things that made me feel like a stranger, a visitor, a cheechako, would be forgotten as I became more at ease with the land, settling into it like a mammoth tusk buried in permafrost. The savage in me emerged, naked from the woods, full of unchecked lusts and dark desires. Conscious thought would be muted, giving way to deafening instinct. I’d tap into some terrifying source of energy.

I knew then what the heart of man can hold. I felt in me the potential for the best and worst of our nature. I was capable of murder and rape, cruelty and deceit, yet also firmness, assertiveness, courage, determination, vitality. In another lifetime, if I’d been born of the woods, I might have been made coarse and rough and wicked, having been educated in the wild world of amorality, of dog eat dog, of survival of the fittest. But I wasn’t this person and never would be. I felt the wild overtake me, but only for moments; my civilized side would always drag me back into the world of right and wrong, discipline and justice. I’d been too civilized to ever be as wild as this place. Yet having become acquainted with the wild man who dwelled inside me, I knew I’d carry him around with me for better or worse, for the rest of my life.

I remembered my training. I called out, “Hey, bear,” in respectful tones, slowly waved my arms over my head, and began walking sideways back into the bush, always keeping my face pointed toward the bear.

I saw in my mind what was going to happen. I’d feel the ground shake as it galloped toward me, its paws thudding through the tussocks. I’d look back at the last moment and see its jaws opened wide, its eyes rabid and bloodthirsty.

When we got back to where the rest of the gear was, I loaded the shotgun and waited for it. But it never came.

It let me live.

At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to leave the Brooks and never come back.

Hours later, we figured the bear had moved on, so Whitney and I hauled the rest of our stuff to the river, inflated the canoe, and began our faddle to the western boundary of the park.

We dipped black plastic paddles into the icy, clear Noatak beneath hundreds of huge, puffy cumulous clouds creeping over the tundra, a flotilla of galleons off to war that—when they crossed the sun’s path—flung shadows over mountain ridges with such force it seemed as if they might knock over oblivious hikers (if there were any out there).

Except for the sedge that swayed with the breeze atop the flat-topped bluffs next to the river, the arctic seemed as quiet and empty and lifeless as always. Most of the birds had migrated south, the fish had fled for warmer waters, and the mosquitoes had all died off because the nights had become too cold. But, as always, the arctic would remind me that life abounds: a trio of wolf pups belly flopping into the Noatak; a beer-bellied ground squirrel barking at us from the bank; a red fox staring at us intently, holding a dead vole in its mouth.

To keep our eyes out for sheep poachers, we walked along the hilltops near the Gates’ western boundary. Here, the mountains weren’t jagged and craggy like they are in other parts of the Brooks. Here, they were smoothly sculpted, round, rolling blobs of waving sedge, squishy moss, and frazzled lichen. We found a good hilltop from which we could look out for potential poachers. But we didn’t see any. All we spotted were caribou. Caribou in groups of two, then six, then twenty, then several hundred. Without realizing it, we’d parked ourselves in the middle of the herd’s southern migration.

We watched them for hours. Velvet antlers rose regally. Happy families followed one another in dignified processions, nibbling the tundra on the go. A young one, probably just a few months old, came within twenty feet of us, inspecting us with eyes as big and black as eight balls. When we startled a group of three, their tails shot up, a fleeing parade of adorable white asses. Caribou seem to almost defy gravity, trotting, prancing,
floating across the country, their hooves barely grazing the ground.

I was envious of the caribou. They spent their lives walking, roaming, eating, exploring. At different points of the year, they changed from solitary travelers to small family units to thousand-strong herds: perhaps the perfect blend of solitude, family, and community. Whitney, skeptical of my whimsies, reminded me of the wolves, the calf mortality rate, the -60°F winters, and the legions of bugs that try to eat the caribou alive, keeping them on the run for most of the summer. I didn’t think I’d care about any of that, though. Give me a full life over a long one. I’d give up my retirement years if I could hold up my antlers on mountains like these in my glorious youth.

I looked over the country. We’d reached the western edge of the Brooks. In the distance the hills leveled out to a flat tundra plain, and the Noatak was a canal of liquid gold, set afire by the setting sun, slithering off toward the horizon, lazily wrapping itself around the earth’s arc. I thought about how Eskimos and Indians had roamed over arctic valleys like the Noatak for thousands of years, yet there wasn’t the slightest sign of nature in disrepair.

I thought of climate change, the unemployment rate, the clusterfuck we call our world. But for just this moment, this day, this week, it was easy to forget about all that. Everything else may have gone to hell, but here in the Noatak Valley the caribou still migrate, the musk oxen still graze, and the grizzly still sits at the top of a healthy food chain. It was the sort of scene that would make one proud of being a member of the human species; we could have built roads and developed this place like anywhere else, but we chose the high-minded and rarely traveled route of restraint. If we can save the Noatak, what other wonders are we capable of?

It had been a week since the grizzly encounter. Whenever I had a particularly scary brush with a wolf or a moose or a bear
like I’d just had, I’d feel a need for civilization, for its walls and its security. Yet in time, strangely, it was the memories of these wild encounters that would draw me back to Alaska again and again.

When I thought about my hitchhikes, the voyageur trip, Duke—I was happy to have suffered; I was happy to have been miserable; I was happy to have been alone. And I knew I’d soon be happy to have been scared half to death by that bear. That’s because it was in those moments, when I was pushed to my limits, that I was afforded a glimpse of my true nature.

I learned such a glimpse cannot be gotten with half-hearted journeys and soft endeavors. Nor could I hope for such a glimpse merely by setting out to conquer some random geographic feature, like getting to the top of a mountain. Rather, I knew one must confront the very beasts and chasms that haunt our dreams, block our paths, and muffle the voice of the wild man howling in all of us, who calls for you to become
you
—the you who culture cannot shape, the you who is unalterable, uncivilizable, pure.
You.