Dreaming of wild places
01/03/13 05:37
In my home state, Montana, most people refer to three adjacent wilderness areas, Scapegoat, Great Bear and Bob Marshall as simply, “the Bob.” It is about a million and a half acres of rugged peaks and forest that can be accessed on foot or horseback. Montanans can argue long and loud about wilderness designation, the management practices of the Forest Service. They can argue about the politics of land use and the role of the federal government. They are not of one mind on a wide variety of topics. The northwest corner of the state is not what one might call a hotbed of liberal politics. But the people in Montana agree that the Bob is a magnificent piece of ground. It is an incredible place for recreation. The 40 mile, 1,000 foot high Chinese Wall is magnificent. The Bob is filled with waterfalls, lakes, and dense forests of larch and spruce and Douglas fir. It is the best region in the lower 48 to view grizzly bears and prime country for moose, elk, black bear, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, wolverines, mountain lions, bobcats and wolves. If you like to look up, bald eagles, osprey, pelicans and trumpeter swans split the air with their wings.
Montanans disagree about a lot of things, but they all know that the Bob is a treasure.
I think that the fact that the place is known simply as “the Bob” is a great tribute to Robert Marshall. Bob Marshall wasn’t a formal guy. Knowing him was being on a first name basis with him. The bob is no place for suits and fancy clothing. Although it receives its share of visitors who are outfitted at Cabellas or Bass Pro Shops and who have matched outfits from Lands End or L.L. Bean, it is really more of a place for the duct tape and jeans crowd and no matter how people look when they head into the area, they all look about the same when they come down from the high country. You no longer care about their clothing. Neither do they. The glow on their faces tells the story of people who have witnessed grandeur.
I’m reading some of Bob Marshall’s writing this week. For some time know I have been harboring fantasies of a trip to Alaska. It is likely a retirement venture, but it doesn’t hurt to plan. Every couple of years or so I pour over the Milepost and plan all sorts of side trips and adventures that would take more time and money than I possess. And I’ve read most of the classics by Margaret Murie and John McPhee. I’ve discovered Seth Kantner and, of course I read Arctic Village by Bob Marshall. This week I’ve been reading Alaska Wilderness, a collection of escerpts from Bob’s journals pulled together and published by his brother George after his death.
Bob died young. He might have died from one of the many dangers of wilderness trekking hundreds of miles from other humans, but he didn’t. He died while riding a train from Washington, D.C. to New York City. His heart stopped. He was only 38 years old. As far as anyone knew he was at the peak of physical fitness.
He left behind the legacy of the Wilderness Society, an organization founded by many different lovers of wild places than now has more than 300,000 members and is dedicated to protecting wilderness and fostering a land ethic. At one point in the early years of organizing the society, it received an anonymous donation of $1,000. That was big money in those days and the gift probably kept the organization from going under. Although the gift was supposed to be anonymous, everyone knew it came from Bob.
Bob came off as an ordinary guy. Of course he wasn’t really all that ordinary. He had an exceptional intellect. He earned a PhD from Harvard. He was raised in New York City, but he had an exceptional love of the outdoors. His father, the son of Jewish immigrants, was a noted constitutional lawyer and human rights activist. When his father died, Bob became independently wealthy. But he never behaved like a rich kid in the wild places. Bob was willing to shoulder his pack and slog through the mud and water and endure the wind and rain and mosquitos that are a part of going to the wild places. He became a friend of the Alaskan natives and the prospectors and trappers that lived in the remote places and had a reputation for being hard to get along with. He worked for the forest service and served as chief of forestry in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Later he became head of recreation management for the U.S. Forest Service.
But my, oh, my! did the man cram a lot of adventures into his short life! He went to Alaska again and again. He hiked the Adirondack trail. And he explored wild places in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and other places as well. He didn’t ever get around to getting married, but he was beloved by all who knew him. His brother George became the curator of his writings and added many eloquent phrases to Bob’s works as he published them. George describes their joint adventures in the Adirondacks as a time when they “entered a world of freedom and informality, of living plants and spaces, of fresh greens and exhilarating blues, of giant, slender pines and delicate pink twinflowers, of deer and mosquitoes, of fishing and guide boats and tramps through the woods.”
It takes a special kind of person to remember to mention the mosquitoes when writing about freedom, but I know what he means. I don’t want to live in a world that is so sanitized that I never experience discomfort or even annoying insects. I know that the experience of beauty is often accompanied by hard work and occasionally short rations and unpredictable weather and dirt and bugs.
And these days, when I need to keep my nose to the grindstone and Alaska is only a dream for one who isn’t, like Bob, independently wealthy, I have the joy of reading the words of a man who not only walked into the wilderness, but who also wrote so eloquently that I can experience his trips while sitting in my chair in my study.
This life is too short for all of the adventures one can imagine. I, for one, am grateful for the books that extend my range and expand my world.