WildrLog

Bryan August 11th, 2008

See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America

Logan Ward, his wife Heather, and son Luther had had it. Living in New York City, jet setting around the world, hours in commuting time lost everyday, they weren’t living. They were merely existing. They chucked it all.

They uprooted their family from NYC and settled on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Typical spawlers you say? Not really. They’re growing all their own food. Did I mention neither of them has ever farmed before? Oh, and they’ve decided to shun all the advancements of the 20th century. No TV, no car, no tractor, no electricity, a phone only for safety. They assumed they’d be going it all alone, but they discovered that rural life then was heavily dependent on community. They found it near Swoope, Virgina.

WildrLog highly recommends this Bill Bryson-like look at 19th century country living through the eyes of Generation X. And it might just inspire you to plant a garden.

Tags: country living, rural living

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Bryan June 8th, 2008

Face to face with real death one does not think of the things that torment the bad people in the tracts, and fill the good people with bliss. I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.
-Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

Cherry-Garrard was part of the British expedition to study Antarctica in 1911-1913. He writes this in his memoir of the ordeal of being stuck in a hurricane-force blizzard in Antarctica in the middle of winter. Their tent had been blown away and thought they would never return.

Tags: adventure, death, exploration

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Bryan November 3rd, 2007

In 1990, Chris McCandless graduated from Emory University in Atlanta. He gave away the $24,000 in his savings account to a charity to fight hunger. He burned the last cash he had. And before anyone knew it (including his parents), he drove off to explore America. Not with a Carte Blache mind you; Chris voluntarily became a homeless drifter. And though he made friends along the way, he wouldn’t let any get close.

Chris certainly had his adventures, living off the land and sometimes off the good graces of others. He canoed the Colorado River to Mexico. He slept out under the stars. Chris had one final adventure up his sleeve… Alaska.

In April 1992, a truck driver dropped Chris off on the Stampede Trail in an area near Denali National Park. Chris walked several miles, forded the Teklanika River and some beaver ponds. That is until he found Fairbanks Bus 142, a bus left as a shelter for hunters along the Stampede Trail. Chris lived off the land, killing squirrel and other small game with his small-caliber rifle. He even killed a moose, but was unable to preserve it. He supplemented his diet by foraging. He tried to return, but the Teklanika River had swollen due to the glacial melt. So he returned to hunting and foraging around Fairbanks 142.

In September 1992, hunters arrived at Fairbanks 142 and found Chris dead of starvation in his sleeping bag. Into the Wild is Jon Kraukauer’s investigation into his life and death. Into the Wild was released as a feature length motion picture earlier this year. Adventure carries a certain romance for me, and the trailer drew me in. I missed the film, so I wanted to read the book.

I’m really stuck in rating this book. Krakauer’s description of his investigation and events is superb, thus I feel it deserved two thumbs way up. But I am torn rating the story. On the one hand, Chris reminds me of a friend I knew better years ago… not one to let anything get in the way of adventure. As I contemplate a thru-hike of the AT, I feel some kindred spirit with Chris. On the other hand, Chris created his little wild by not being informed. It cost him his life. He didn’t take in a map of the area that would have revealed the three cabins nearby that were fully stocked with food or the cable trolley across the Teklanika River downstream from the Stampede Trail. That flies in the face of my Boy Scout motto tendencies: Be Prepared.

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Bryan August 19th, 2007

I recently finished the first of John Muir’s wilderness books, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. John chronicles his life from his early days in Scotland to his move to Wisconsin to his college days at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Most of you know John Muir as the father of our national parks, the force behind the preservation of the Yosemite Valley in California, and founder of the Sierra Club. It is largely due to his wilderness activism that led me to begin reading his works.

John was a typical boy raised on a farm… lots of hard work and little time to play. But when he did have time to play, he really took advantage of it. Much of the book is about his time of the farm and the various animals, domestic and wild, he comes into contact with. He also reveals the difficulties of living with an extremely strict father.

Late one night, as John was tinkering with building machines from wood (he built alarm clocks and thermometers, among other things, from wood), he father shouted at him to go to bed. He added that if he must tinker, get up early before everyone else and do it. So, John did it… at 1:00am. This went on for several weeks before his father mentioned it, and being a man of integrity, allowed him to continue. It was his machines that took him to Madison to the state fair. He managed to teach school to raise enough money to attend the university.

The book requires a certain level of concentration to follow, but it well worth the read. I’m looking forward to reading another by this man so important in the heritage of wilderness preservation and care.

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Bryan May 9th, 2007

Obviously my interest in our wild places has increased in the last ten years or so.  Lately, I’ve become increasingly concerned about overdevelopment, conservation, and the environment.  I’ve always heard about Theodore Roosevelt and his great support for conservation, but I realized I knew very little about him or his conservation principles.

I’d also been told about the amazing author that is David McCullough.  When I found out he wrote a book on TR, I was all over it.  Mornings on Horseback covers the early life of Theodore Roosevelt II (the 26th President of the United States) until 1886.

I took into my reading a few preconceived notions about TR.  First, I knew he had suffered with asthma as a child, but to what extent, I did not know.  I also knew he was a Republican who was from New York and from an extremely wealthy family.  And I knew was one of the first to bring ideas of conservation to America’s consciousness.

While reading Mornings on Horseback, it would be easy to judge him by today’s standards as a number of people have.  "He was rich, so he much have been greedy and had everything handed to him on a silver platter"  or "he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth."

While certainly his wealth made his life easier, the world has its ways of evening things out.  TR’s fights with asthma were far more serious than I ever anticipated.  As TR’s family described them, they were far, far worse than my own bouts with childhood asthma.  His father (Theodore Roosevelt I) told him someone around 1870:

Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should.  …You must make your body….  It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.

His father, though he was very wealthy, was very involved in philanthropy, particularly for orphans and street children.  TR got his tireless work ethic from his father.

To suggest that TR never had hardships because he wealthy is simply irresponsible and inaccurate.  For an example, one only need look to February 1884.  On the 12th, TR’s wife of three years, Alice, gave birth to his first daughter.  On the 14th, at 3am, his mother died.  On the same day, February 14, 1884, at 2pm, Alice died as well.  Bright’s disease they said.  That day shook TR for years. 

Before modern Republicans ever coined the phrase "compassionate conservative," TR was one.  During his time in the New York state assembly, TR pushed through a bill that ended cigar-making in homes.  Not for health reasons mind you.  The practice of the day was for companies to hire immigrants to make cigars in company-sponsored housing.  When they didn’t produce what the company thought they should, they kicked them out on the street.

TR’s real breakout in politics occurred at the 1884 Republican National Convention in Chicago.  TR engineered an unsuccessful bid to nominate George Edmunds over James  Blaine.  And though he failed, the event burst him onto the stage of national politics.  After failed, he wrote to his older sister Bamie:

It may be that the voice of the people is the voice of God in fifty-one cases out of a hundred, but in the remaining forty-nine it is quite as likely to be the voice of the devil, or, what is still worse, the voice of a fool. 

–June 8, 1884.

Perhaps TR really broke out of his "rich man" mold during his time in the Badlands of North Dakota.  Sure, he was a gentleman rancher and expected hard work from those in his employ.  But he also worked hard.  During the spring cattle roundups, he even stood night watch and worked to end a nighttime stampede.

I’d had never read any David McCullough books before and I knew very little about Theodore Roosevelt.  I’m certainly no expert at either now, but this read was well worth the time and effort.  McCullough frequently quotes the family correspondence which by modern standards is incredibly thorough.  Apparently the Roosevelts considered letter writing to be quite important.

In my opinion, Mornings on Horseback is a must read!

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