Wilderness is always about story

Writing about the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act prompted me to look at ideas, lives, and especially stories

We were in the wilderness because my friend was there. He spending the summer as a Forest Service wilderness ranger, which gave him use of a crude cabin in a remote spot in northwestern Wyoming. He encouraged people to visit, and so we set out as a group. Steve and his son Matt, who both loved to fish. Dan and his mentor Fred, who both loved to pack horses into remote spots. Me and my buddy Chasmo, who both liked to write about nature and history.

            Chasmo wanted to celebrate a landmark birthday in the wilderness. As he later wrote, “There was peace and quiet, an endless series of stunning views, an outdoor laboratory of geology and forest ecology; there were cold nights and warm days; there was more air than I could ever hope to breathe.”

           I was there for the camaraderie, the landscape, the adventure. I’d been living in Montana for twelve years at that point; I could access wilderness benefits much closer to home. I’d seen vistas, breathed air, observed geology, shivered in my sleeping bag, and encountered wildlife—to me this trip was about a different place and great company.

            But to Chasmo it was more about the grizzly bears. “The presence of this bear looms over the wilderness like a temperamental old God: you know he can see you, and could destroy you in an instant, so you just hope he has other things to keep him busy.” But he wanted to see one. “The prospect terrified me and exhilarated me at the same time, the kind of complex emotion I imagine Moses had when he asked to see God face to face.”

            And Chasmo may have been the first one to see its poop. “I came across a pile of grizzly scat the size of a half-deflated basketball. It was still warm; he’d had huckleberries for breakfast.”

Wilderness backpackers (John Clayton photo)

This week I wrote about that scat, and the way it made all of us feel. The way it symbolized the wilderness, where grizzly bears—indeed natural forces in general—compel us to admit that we are not in control.

            I suspect that all of my companions on that trip would agree with that sentiment. Also with the point I used it to make: that on the 60^th anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act, this sentiment is the best reason to celebrate it.

            While drafting my op-ed, however, I went through a process of finding how to tell its story. At first, I tried to help readers understand wilderness by explaining ideas—law, philosophy, ethics. Then, I realized, to understand ideas, it helps to understand people’s lives. The article’s arguments finally clicked into place for me when I decided to focus on the Act’s author, Howard Zahniser.

            What, then, is Zahniser’s story? My editor and I discussed differing views. He’s often seen as bookish rather than outdoorsy, but as a dogged lobbyist who controlled the fate of the Wilderness Bill. To me, his story was more about being physically handicapped after a teenaged bone infection, and about seeing the various politicians and interest groups as temperamental old Gods in need of appeasement. In other words, I tried to tell his story differently, because I thought it would help us better understand wilderness.

            It's the stories that make us understand. The ideas and lives are way-stations on a journey to stories. During that whole wilderness trip, I was listening Chasmo’s stories of what it meant to him. And those stories changed what that wilderness meant to me. During the whole fight for the 1964 Wilderness Act, Zahniser was listening to stories of what wilderness meant to others. And those stories changed how he phrased what it meant to us all.

Discussion:

• My op-ed is here. Writers on the Range will distribute it to various news outlets through the week. Thanks to editor Betsy Marston for commissioning it.

• A great biography is Mark Harvey’s Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act.

• If some of you want to share your own wilderness stories, I feel privileged to provide the comments as a place to do that.