Wilder

My friend, Wilder, left last week. He had told me that he might, but I didn't believe him. I had gone by his camp earlier in the morning and we had talked a long time over coffee. He was quite calm and we had a good time. We talked about the seasons, the animals, and the mountains. We had a good time, but Wilder's face was lined with sadness and worry and this morning something in his eyes told me this was the day.

I saw his backpack leaning up against a tree with his poles. He took his pack anytime he hiked. He always said "you don't have to be twenty miles from the trail head to need this." Normally the pack he carried on a day hike contained only food, water and basic survival gear and weighed less than twenty-five pounds. One look at this pack and I knew that it was packed for a long trek. It had a sleeping bag and had to weigh in at forty pounds minimum.

I didn't say anything to him and I didn't ask any questions. He knew that I noticed his pack. Any other time he would have been anxious to tell me where he was going. If he had wanted, he would have told me. I usually give him a bear hug when we part. At our age we never know if we'll see each other again. I gave him a particularly tight squeeze and he did the same.

I don't usually stop by Wilder's place in the late afternoon. You don't just stop by. It's one of those places you must be intentionally going to. I tried to come up with all sorts of reasons I was stopping by so late, but it didn't matter. Wilder was gone. His camp was, as usual, pristine - no animal attractants and no rewards left out. Wilder and his pack were gone.

As I slowly walked back to my car I wondered if I would ever see him again. No, I concluded, not likely.

What could ever drive a man to shun society, scoff at many pleasures and luxuries, and purposely disappear into the wilderness? For most people to encounter such a man would be unbearably perplexing. Such a man must be mad. Would you not agree? Look at what he is abandoning. He totally divested himself of everything that humanity had spent centuries obtaining and developing. How was he to survive? How can any person live apart from civilization. Just consider the definition of civilization - "the stage of human social development and organization which is considered most advanced ... the comfort and convenience of modern life, regarded as available only in towns and cities." Besides the question of survival how could anyone stand living outside of society? Human society is the greatest thing on the face of the earth.

One man. Well, at least one man of whom we know . . . the one man about whom this is written, doesn't believe that. When we would talk he would actually express shame at being a human.

For his entire life Wilder had worked in what is called, by Americans, a helping professions. He had been at other peoples' beckon call twenty-four hours a day for his entire work life. He confessed that he was very naive. Despite how well he knew the human animal, he attempted to find and expected the best from them. The extent of his disappointment was unfathomable. You see, Wilder was 99% Buddhist.

The Dalai Lama once said that Buddhism is 99% philosophy of life and 1% religion. If anything could describe Wilder it was the 99% of Buddhism that is philosophy of life. He knew religion well and had studied it for decades before concluding that religion is one of humanities biggest evils. Buddhism teaches that humans are, by nature, good. Wilder wanted to believe that in the worst way.

Wilder grew up post World War II. He grew up during the escalation of the cold war where they had regular atomic bomb drills hiding under their desks at school. Anybody, even a grade school student, knew that the stupid desk wasn't going to protect them from the blast of an atomic bomb. He also had to contend with Joe McCarthy and 'a communist in every closet.' What a crock! But Joe was a Senator According to Wilder, he was fubar. Wilder was at the point where he felt that human society was fubar.

Wilder also had to deal with Viet Nam, civil rights, and other issues from the 1960s. Like hundreds of thousands of other men his age Wilder had to participate in an absurd war in which he not only had no desire to participate but a war which he felt was totally unjustified. Wilder didn't like any war but that one was just the first of a string of wars based solely on a profit motive. No matter how much the politicians tried to convince the population that these wars were patriotic, Wilder wouldn't buy it. Politicians were and are killing young people for political power and wealth.

I don't really have time to tell you everything about Wilder's life. Apart from being one of the lucky ones, his life wasn't particularly noteworthy. It was Wilder who would point out how lucky he was. He had a good education - a PhD - and was able to earn more in a day or two than most people around him could earn in a week. However, he was still far enough down the chain of command and power that he only ever saw a fraction of that. He would tell me how he tried to be a good Buddhist and be optimistic but the ugly reality of humanity would always drag him down. When he left he had accepted life in a fatalistic way. Early on he was aware of the true nature of the homo sapiens but every time he tried to work and make a difference he was beaten down. Each time he was beaten down it took more and more effort to get up and do it again.

Some friends wanted me to guide them on a hike a few days after Wilder left. I took advantage of the situation to track Wilder. All the way up the mountain, after we passed his camp, I told them stories of his love for all nature and how he worked to keep his own species from destroying the world.

"All animals desire and are entitled to the same things - peace and freedom from pain". For Wilder this meant the ability to survive and raise young without fear. It didn't mean that if you were a deer you wouldn't end up dinner for a mountain lion. It did mean the ability to live life to its fullest without someone or something destroying your food sources and slaughtering your species.

"Humans have a unique ability to rationalize and abstract," Wilder would say. "but it seems that this unique gift was more Pandora's Box."

A few hours above Wilder's camp we came to a Y in the trail. Knowing the trail I figured that Wilder probably took to the high country, but I couldn't be certain. The other fork of the trail led even deeper into the wilderness. I looked around carefully. It had been dry since Wilder would have passed this way but dry can also make tracking difficult. As the others watched me with curiosity, I noticed small holes in the earth. Wilder never hiked without his poles. He had turned north-east. There was a back-country campsite some miles up. Wilder never camped in the back-country without the proper permits, but since he had now been gone several days, I figured that he wasn't worrying about protocol any more.

As we followed Wilder's marks I shared how he did follow rules. Wilder felt that good order was beneficial to the entire pack, herd, tribe or species. He would point out that if you studied the social structure of other animal species you would find good order. There were rules but the rules always provided for the survival of the species not the pleasure and/or benefit of a few.

Wilder was appalled and ashamed of the way humans treated one another as well as other species. He would point out how we devise rules most often for the benefit of a few. He would talk about the social structure of species like mountain goats and point out that despite how difficult their society appeared there was no cruelty for the sake of cruelty. There is a hierarchy based upon strength and power among other animal species, but the power struggles are so that the strongest bull gets to breed first or most often. The strongest and most powerful eat first and eat their fill but still do not hoard food and keep it from the others. Carnivorous species kill other animals for food, not for pleasure. One of Wilder's favorite stories is about the grizzly bear who was drinking from a lake. Three ducks sat on a log within easy reach. The bear was evidently full. He did not need to kill the duck so he didn't. Wilder didn't believe that is true of humans.

About five miles further up the trail we arrived at a back-country campsite. I was looking around for signs of Wilder when one of my hiking companions held up a zip-lock bag containing sheets of paper. "It's addressed to you," he said. "It was here under a rock."

My pulse raced as I removed three sheets of lined paper from the bag.

"My dearest Othel, I knew that you would not be able to resist following me. Good job on the tracking. Omahkap'si would be proud of you."

Omahkap'si is the Blackfeet word for wolf.

"I'm sure you know what I'm doing. At this point in time I have no intentions of returning. I'll either die of old age or because my skills are not sufficient to the task of survival. Either way I will be where I want to be.

"I know you understand how disenfranchised I feel in my own society and how ashamed I am of my species. We create deities in our own image to justify rape and slaughter. You know that I have tried to either physically be a part of efforts to repair the damage we've done and educate people about the consequences of our behavior, or supported those who are doing so. But I'm afraid that I have finally lost hope.

"The affairs of the world and our society in specific drive me to believe that there is no turning back. There is no way to sufficiently reduce our carbon footprint, to reduce our population enough that we stop destroying the life sources of other species. To repair what we have done to date would require sacrifice that most humans would be unwilling to make. I no longer have the physical or emotional strength to endure. I look at the politicians who now want to govern our nation and am aghast. One preaches hatred and his only skill is corporate rape. You know that he will sell our beloved wilderness to some oil company for the profits. Even our best choice thinks that the only species entitled to life is homo sapiens. Humans do not want to accept that the world would be better off without us. We are the most destructive invasive species ever known and soon you will not have to believe in some archaic religion to know the meaning of hell.

"But, dear friend, I am like the old warrior who must pass the gauntlet. I do not know how my idols like John Muir continued to fight until death. It is not dying for the cause that is so repugnant. It is seeing how so many politicians are anxious to give our natural treasures to their rich friends to exploit and leave useless to any animal species that is so repulsive. It is seeing people willing to let them do it because they say 'you won't have gasoline or air conditioning if we don't do this.' It is religion trying to justify the rape of Mother Nature by saying some deity they fabricated told them humans can do that because they're the most important animal. I can handle people calling me names and ridiculing me because I don't think humans are the most important thing in the universe. What I really find hard is that it seems that so few people really care. They don't believe that they could actually see their children and grandchildren die because of human destructiveness, and when we do win a small victory, or even a big one, realizing that it isn't enough.

"No, dear friend, I have run out of hope and strength. I need to get to spend some time before I die in the wilderness I have worked so hard to protect and to die in its peace. I would rather my body feed brother Kiaayo than separated from the earth by boxes of metal and concrete like some relic.

"One thing I ask. Tell my story. If it helps one young person realize their oneness with all living things, my life will not have been in vain."

I stood looking at the paper and the small group stood looking at me. My eyes filled with tears. I scanned the forest that surrounded me. Wilder might be miles away or he might be watching. I held Wilder's letter high in the air and blubbered like a baby.

On the way back to Wilder's camp where we spent the night I took the first step at fulfilling his last request of me . . . "tell my story".