https://caspercollege.cvlcollections.org/files/original/58d148fec0c353e414771069391e55ae.pdf aed9bc57850d2557f0f944431bd05909 PDF Text Text CHAD HANSON Call the Wild by its Name I don't drink the way I did when I was young. It has been years since I drank un­ til I turned into a green giant. It's been even longer since I drank until I became an iguana man. But I am off to a good start. I'm feeling large and it's not even ten o'clock. The occasion is the fall fund-raiser for the Wyoming Wilderness So­ ciety. The group spent the last five years trying to pass a bill that would list Rock Creek, on the east slope of the Big Hom Range, as a "wilderness" protected by the government. Their efforts have not been a success and the cost of the endeav­ or saps their savings every year. The disposable income in my budget is usually enough to buy a medium pizza, but I do what I can at the Society's donation jar. I talk too much when I drink tequila. Sentences are shooting from my mouth like water through a fire hose. I've talked with everybody in a ten-foot radius, so my eyes start to wander toward a row of pictures of Rock Creek taped up near the entrance to the bar. There are satellite photos posted next to topo­ graphic maps. I've hiked all over the Big Homs, but I have not been to Rock Creek, so I study the images. One of the members of the Wilderness Society takes note of the man staring with his face pointed toward the wall. He wanders over and asks, "Do you have any questions?" I say, "Yes. 1 am a question mark. Do you like tequila?" He is sober—bless his heart—so I try to reign in the drunk talk. Even though I know the answer, I decide to make conversation by asking, "How's it going with the effort to make this place a wilderness?" He explains that they've faced setbacks in the struggle to protect the creek. He tells me that senators from both of the coasts and the Midwest pledged sup­ port for a bill that would create the Rock Creek Wilderness, but he adds, "The congressional delegation from Wyoming has been skeptical." Since I am drunk I cannot help myself. I say, "Fucking Republicans!" Then I realize that 1 spoke too candidly. He gives me the hand signal for, "Please. Mister. Not so loud." He tells me they have had good conversations with our senators and our representative. He says, "We're hopeful. They're plan­ ning to hold a series of meetings with ranchers and business people from the town of Buffalo. We believe they favor the wilderness designation. That might earn a vote or two." The Society's staff are earnest and professional. They work with whoever we happen to elect. They don't let politics or vendettas keep them from pursuing their objective—to save rivers and mountains. He asks, "Have you hiked into Rock Creek?" I say, "No." 48 [ The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �He points to the map and mentions a green valley and a series of rock cliffs, but I am not listening. I have reached the limit of my alcohol-shortened attention span. When I am sober. I'm a decent listener. When 1 am drunk—1 do the talking. He can sense I am distracted, so he says, "Anyway. You need to go up there. In the spring, after the snow-melt, check it out." I say, "Okay. Sounds good. I'll go." Tequila shots or not, I gave the man my word. In March, I begin to look for my copy of Hiking Wyoming's Cloud Peak Wilderness by Erik Molvar. Cloud Peak is the only wilderness in the Big Homs. By comparison, the Wind Rivers are home to three separate wilderness areas: Bridger, Fitzpatrick, and Popo Agie. The proposed Rock Creek Wilderness would lie adjacent to Cloud Peak, so Molvar includes a route along the South and Middle forks in his rendering of the area. The Hunter Trailhead serves as a starting point for travelers headed in four dif­ ferent directions. I choose trail #396, but I discover that the path is not marked or identified. I spend ten minutes poring over topographic lines and conclude that the trail I'm on is probably #396. It's a jeep road running up a slope, cov­ ered with lodge pole pines. A mile into the hike I meet a group of people riding ATVs. The lead rider shoots me a wave. Despite the noise I raise a hand, wave back, and manage a smile. By the lime the third rider passes, a cloud of dust fills the air. I pull my shin over my nose to protect my lungs from the dirt rising up from behind the machinery. The last two riders are not amused by my attempt to keep from hav­ ing to use my asthma inhaler. They scowl as if to say, "Yeah. Yeah. We're the bad guys. Big, bad, noisy four-wheelers, ruining the hike of a nature lover." We all know the narrative. Most of our public property is managed for "multiple use." That means the land is open to a mixture of activities: recreational, industrial, motorized, non-motorized, etc. Throughout Wyoming and the West, however, the doctrine of multiple use has been seen as a way to justify coal mining and drilling for oil or natural gas. Voices from the industry cry out, "Multiple use!" They claim that drilling and strip mining deserve the same level of acceptance as hiking or bird watching—a use is a use, right? Not exactly. Some uses prohibit others. In the West, this point has proven difficult to grasp. I will never understand, for example, why hunters, fly fishers, and other outdoor people vole for politi­ cians who they know to favor a single use for public land: petroleum drilling. A popular bumper sticker around the turn of the century said "Sportsmen for Bush." As a former oil company executive, George W. Bush set a clear preference for public land use: drill here, drill now, and drill as fast as possible. I always wondered what the Sportsmen for Bush tribe imagined as an ideal hunting trip. I figure they must have been hoping for a chance to prowl through oil derricks CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 49 �looking for lost elk, stunned and confused by the industrial development. Actu­ ally, I know better than that. Hunters avoid strip mines and drilling rigs, just like the deer and antelope. Despite the shortcomings of "multiple use" and the flaws in our land manage­ ment policies, I lumber on. The dust settles. The sound of the four-wheelers fades, and I cover three miles in silence. Then 1 enter an area that was burned eleven years ago. New trees took the place of the old. Today they stand fourteen feet tall. The young trees form a tight forest, lining both sides of the trail. Hiking through the pines reminds me that I'm not sure if I am on the right pathway. A sense of trepidation strikes. In the past I've taken hikes to nowhere. I used to have a theory about the North American landscape. I believed that when white people moved west and found beautiful places, they linked them to hell or the devil. I assumed they did so to keep people from worshipping the land as opposed to the man up in the sky. My beliefs were formed in sev­ enth grade. My family spent the day at the base of Devil's Tower on a summer vacation. My views were then confirmed on a trip to Hell's Gate in the Tonto National Forest. With rocks like these providing evidence to support my theory, I took off toward anyplace associated with the Prince of Darkness. For example, in Arizona there are five places called "Diablo Canyon." I've been to every one of them, and in each case I returned tired, scratched, dehydrated, and, for the most part, unimpressed. I start to call the trail I'm on "Diablo Path," but then I notice a sign marking a crossroad. Forest Service trail #477. The sign confirms that I am heading to Rock Creek. I hear the sound of water running over a streambed. As I walk, the whisper turns into a roar and then the trail splits to the left and right. My map says the path to the right follows the South Fork of the creek. The original plan included a hike down the South Fork to its confluence with the Middle Fork, but the volume is louder to the left, and I am tired, so I take the short route to the brook. After five minutes, the path crosses the stream and then runs up the side of a mountain. From my map I learn that the trail leads to Gem Lake, but 1 am not climbing a mountain, not even to prospect for a gem. The bank of the creek looks like a fine place to make camp. 1 take off my pack, shuck the boots off of my feet, and change into sandals. When I was young, I didn't think I would slow down until I retired. 1 had no idea what the decade of my forties held in store. A blister bums my right ankle. My left knee squeaks because the cartilage is thin, and the arches in my feet ache 50 I The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �to the rhythm of my stride. I find a flat rock on the shore. Then I sit and dangle my feet in the aeek. I feel weightless with the pack off of my back. For fifteen minutes, the water massages my tendons. The longest part of the journey is over, so I take a moment to look at my sur­ roundings. It's a disaster of a forest. This is not a well-groomed park. It's not a tourist attraction. Great trees lie prostrate on the ground, their roots tom up and thrust into the air. Stumps and broken logs cover the area and the boughs of ponderosa pines create a canopy over the land. They make the place feel dark, although it's still the afternoon. I walk downriver to the spot where the trail meets the creek. A row of logs jut out from the bank. Their ends have been sawed off and one of them holds onto a braided wire cable. The metal looks fifty years old. A bridge stood here, but now it's gone, and that makes me happy. Before the government will chris­ ten a place as a wilderness, it must be free from signs of human tampering. I'm exhausted. I need a boost of energy. I set my stove on a boulder. Then I boil waler and pour it through a portable coffee filter. Sometimes, when I drink coffee, I get too canied away. After a cup, I decide I'm going to lake the hike to the Middle Fork with my fly rod and a banana. After I make ii to the confluence, I plan to fish my way back upriver. The plan requires me to walk three miles of creek with a fly rod in my hand—not making casts? It doesn't take too long to figure out that the hike is not going to work like that. For the first ten minutes, I am not tempted. White­ water rushes down the creek bed, so it's hard to see where I could lay a bug on the surface. Then I reach a spot where hikers have to ford the stream. At the point where people cross, the creek pools up and runs slowly. A century of bustling feet pushed the rocks across the bottom, creating a pool where the cur­ rent can slow down. I find myself approaching still waler. I crouch and waddle toward the shore. Brook Trout. It looks like there are four trout. Maybe more trout? 1 don't know. They're ghosting around on the downstream side of the pool. They're holding in the current above the rocks that churn the stream into rapids. My first thought is to fire my fly onto the surface, but I can't. My fishing rod is made of fiberglass. I can't fire anything with this pole, even when my senses urge me to rush into ac­ tion. 7116 rod bends like a loosely coiled spring. Quick motions are impossible. Fiberglass rods have taught me a number of things. The most important lesson has to do with time. Nothing happens fast with fiberglass. Catching fish with this stick takes more patience than 1 usually possess. Back in the workaday world of our culture, I blast through life like everybody else. I throw myself at each week and then I struggle to clean my desk so I can start over on Monday. CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 5 J �Beside the stream I have to tell myself, "Calm down." I decide to hold my place three yards from shore. 1 imagine that two false casts will carry the fly upstream from the trout swimming closest to me in the water. Boing. Boing. The rod whisks line with gentle ease. My fly falls onto the surface and the trout peels away from the squadron. Then he bites the bug. I lift the rod at the right time, the line jumps up off of the pool, and I am bound to a brook trout. It only takes a minute to bring the fish to hand. He's seven inches long. I turn him sideways in the creek so I can slip the hook out of his mouth. That gives me a chance to see the fish's length in its entirety. Pink dots and blue circles cover his belly and shoulders. I am mesmerized by the shimmering life. Brook trout are not native to the Rockies. They were planted here by wellmeaning people, smitten by the colors holding my attention now. For some, the non-native status makes their presence seem unnatural. I understand the point, but my feelings are halfhearted. Despite the long eastern roots of his family tree, this fish was bom in Wyoming. He is as wild as the wind that shakes the branches of the pines. I slip him back into the pool. He doesn't pause. He races upstream into whitewater. I have to ford the creek another four more times before reaching the con­ fluence of the South and Middle Forks. I catch a brook trout at each one of the crossings. The trail splits at a fork where the two waters meet. One branch follows the Middle Fork into a canyon. The mouths of canyons always feel like invitations and this one calls to me in a familiar tone. I cannot answer. It's too late. I already ate my banana and I figure I am going to need the rest of my energy to make it back to camp. Then I hear my voice out loud, even though I am alone, "Maybe I'll take a look," I walk six paces up the Middle Fork and then across the water on the tops of two rocks that break the surface. On the far side of the creek, a game trail snakes up a short ridge. I hike the path, stepping through shrubbery, and find a field of lupines in full violet. The meadow reaches up a sleep bank to the left, climbs five hundred feet up a hillside, and then disappears around a bend. In front of me, the flowers climb up one more rise. The peak looms ten stories above. At the top, a rock formation suggests a lookout over the conflu­ ence of the South and Middle forks. The summit tempts me to continue. I take a moment to scan the slope. It appears that I could hike up to the peak. I set my fly rod on the ground and mark its place next to a tree, and then I start up the meadow. It occurs to me that I am not on a trail. I've been on a path since I started hiking. Now I am meandering over a field. 1 feel liberated, but constrained. Trails serve a purpose, but they act like mental cruise control. On a hiking trail, my mind is free to wander over all kinds of tenain—real or imagined. I conjure memories and mull over questions, most of them unrelated to the place I travel 52 [ The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �through. Walking through the foliage, I have to think about every step. The hill is steeper than I imagined. I switchback left and right to shrink the angle of the climb. My heart pounds in my chest. There is too much to see. I don't know where to concentrate; the endless trees, a rock outcropping, purple flowers at my feet? After twenty more minutes the choice becomes obvious. 1 step onto the summit. Then 1 turn and face the scene below. 1 find myself staring over the valley that cradles the two forks of the creek. The land tilts up at me in every direction. Treetops melt together to form a blan­ ket of green, arching up from the lowlands, reaching high onto the rock ledges that guard the valley's rim. In four places, spires of granite burst up through a wash of pine needles, announcing their victory in the battle against erosion. It's all too much. I have to sit. I drop onto the ground and cross my legs. I scan the view stretching before me to the north and south. The air is motion­ less. In Wyoming, the wind rarely ceases from blowing. When it does, the world slows down and time whispers to a standstill. I find myself in the midst of a pure moment. My mind is absorbed with the scenery in front of me. Not one stray idea. No words or phrases running through my consciousness. The moment lingers for ten minutes. Half an hour? I can't tell. When I come out of the trance my first thought has to do with mountain climbing. I'm a canyon rat. 1 have never been a mountaineer, but on top of this nameless ridge in the proposed new Rock Creek Wilderness, I think I understand why people spend so much time scratching their way to the tops of peaks. It's the beauty. The art historian Joseph Connors once said, "The beautiful is that which cannot be changed except for the worse." By his definition, the Rock Creek watershed is beautiful. I imagine some visitors might prefer a different kind of sight, rows of cabins or town houses, for example. Some might look upon these forests and see a tree farm or potential for a copper mine. From my standpoint, any such changes would constitute a moral transgression. I am aware that changing landscapes is what we do in our culture. I live in a neighborhood in the city. 1 spend my days shuffling through our built environ­ ment: homes, offices, and retail stores. The architecture of our communities is shaped by one force—economics—the maximum size built at the lowest price. Sometimes 1 ride my bicycle through rows of apartments, through trailer parks, and down sidewalks that line the fronts of mini malls. Artists do not waste canvases on malls, trailers, or apartments. They offer no promise, no mys­ tery, and nothing to explore with our eyes or feet. It is no accident that painters don't set up their easels beside suburban tract houses. I think about how we mortgaged our future to make these places possible. Now and then, we all rec­ ognize that we've become hostage to the soulless vinyl villages that we call our own hometowns. For that feeling, the only cure I know is untouched wilderness. A raven squawks at me from the forest below. He reminds me that I have to retrieve my fly rod and hike back to camp before sunset. 1 have to fight the urge CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 53 �to stay and stare some more. I do my best to bum the view into my memory. Then I turn to make the trek back down the hill. On the first step, my left knee shoots me a bolt of pain, as if to say, "No sir. Not downhill. Climbing up this ridge was bad enough." Sitting cross-legged at the summit gave my tendons time to grow stiff and rebellious. I resign myself to the idea that the trip back to camp will test my body. I'd like to stay and rest, but I cannot. I left my water in the pack, and the temperature is about to drop to thirty-eight degrees. I stagger downhill, telling myself that I'll feel better when I'm back on level ground. It starts to feel like my endless trips to remote places are numbered. People who oppose the creation of new wilderness areas do so for different rea­ sons. Some want to use the areas to generate profit. The argument is not subtle. The principle at work is greed. You would expect high-ranking people to dismiss this line of thought, but the greed-heads have a tight hold on the law-making process and the protections we afford to wilderness limit commercial endeavors. Some opponents of wilderness take a populist approach. They argue the wilderness designation limits public access to the land. Therefore, they claim, wilderness areas are undemocratic. Mechanized travel is not allowed. The only way to see a wilderness is on foot or on horseback. Opponents worry that those unfit to hike will be barred from driving their diesel pickups and thirty-two-foot travel trailers up the ridge that I just climbed. The opponents of wilderness hide behind the phrase "multiple use." They claim, "Some people walk. Some people drive. I'm okay. You're okay." I say, "Bullshit." As a management strategy, the multiple use idea breaks down when one use suppresses others. In the case of wilderness, there are few uses that don't infringe on the experience, and the wild places in the West are vanishing. Nations like ours were the first to make a distinction between wilderness and civilization. Historians suggest that is true because European societies spent much of their time setting themselves apart from nature. In contrast. Native American languages don't contain a word for wilderness. Generally speaking, in their minds, the world is just the world. They consider themselves part of the creation. "Shizen" is the term for nature in Japan. The translation is "self-thus." In other words, no artifice. Nothing contrived. The term is meant to describe the version of your self that is left when you are not acting—not playing the role of spouse, friend, parent, employee, or customer. For the Japanese, the process of finding one's self depends on the ability to strip away the norms and trappings of our social lives. Solitary travel through a wild place offers a chance to find out who you are. 54 [ The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON �In my academic life, I extol the virtues of community. I am not going back on all the things I've said and written in favor of creating and maintaining net­ works of people that live together and care about one another. Throughout his­ tory, however, even the most tightly knit communities made solitude and the experience of nature a routine or a rite of passage. Buddhists withdraw from daily life through meditation. Sufi mystics seek caves to commune with the di­ vine. American Indians embark on quests to search for personal visions. Even Jesus spent forty days in the desert to iron out the wrinkles in his attitude. We suffer if we do not protect the ability of those who are so inclined to seek a landscape that remains free from the workings of our culture. Without such places, we have no baseline against which to judge the age we live in or the human world we've created. In a collection of essays on the southern states, Andrew Lytle wrote, "Prophets do not come from cities, promising riches and store clothes. They have always come from the wilderness, stinking of goats and running with lice and telling of a different sort of treasure." I am sympathetic to those who advocate for public access to nature. I am a populist, myself. "I'd like to buy the world a Coke." The truth is I'd like to even things out in more important ways than that. As I hobble down the hillside between lupines, however, I realize that this place is best left as it is, without roads or ramps or handrails or convenience stores or parking lots with space for thirty-foot trailers. Looking down onto the slope that 1 struggled to climb, it occurs to me that monasteries are nearly always built in out-of-the-way places. They are purpose­ fully hard to reach. If we built them differently—if they had drive-up windows, for example—the wisdom they produced would not be worth a thing. I am aware that this is likely my last trip to the top of the ridge that afforded me a panoramic view. I'm not as strong as I was when I was young. It's going to take me a week to recover from the hiking and climbing. In a few more years, I won't have the mobility left in my knees to scale a ridge like the one that stands next to the two forks of Rock Creek. That is all right. Places like this should pose a challenge. If they were easy to access, people would access them and they would no longer offer their gift to humanity—the chance to step away from our norms, roles, and values so we can judge what we create against the standard of nature. I am glad the forks of Rock Creek are remote and inaccessible. I share the views of the Wyoming Wilderness Society; we ought to amend our laws in such a way as to guarantee that the place remains as it is, into the future, as far as we can legislate. If 1 never make it back again, that's fine. Maybe I will try. Maybe I'll die struggling to return to my perch at the top of the ridge. I would consider that an honest death, preferable to the plastic tubes and beeping techno-gadgets of our modern hospitals. When I return to camp, I drink the water left in my backpack. Then 1 pour a glass of cabernet. I go through all the steps that people go through when they hike— restocking water, cooking dinner, catching up in a notebook. The sun sinks in CHAD HANSON The Chariton Review | 55 �the west, but that doesn't matter. Light or dark. Either way there’s enough time. Instead of pitching the tent, 1 stake my ground doth to a flat slope along­ side a silver spruce. I lay a mat onto the cloth and then unfurl my sleeping bag. My tent is well-designed and comfortable. It's made with the best available ma­ terials, but I am not going to sleep beneath a barrier of nylon and aluminum. I don't want anything to come between me and the galaxy. 56 I The Chariton Review CHAD HANSON � Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Print Magazine Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Chad Hanson Journal Publications, CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01 WyCaC US. Casper College Archives and Special Collections. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CCA 04.ii.e.2025.01_ChadHansonPapers_16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Searchable PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <em>The Chariton Review</em> is published by Truman State University Press