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# 2024-04-06 - My Wilderness: East To Katahdin by William O. Douglas
In 2012 i read My Wilderness: The Pacific West. In the summer of
2023, i found My Wilderness: East To Katahdin in a used book store
and bought it for a reasonable price. I finally got around to it
and i am glad i read this book! The author describes some epic
natural places where photos or words couldn't possibly do justice to
the real experience. I still find inspiration in his words.
I also appreciated his philosophical writing about cultivating
respect for our sacred Earth, and expanding our circle of care to
encompass all life in the universe, and very nearly in those words!
He makes excellent points about how severely dangerous stress is to
health, and how dearly we pay for this civilization, which is just
a flash in the pan in the geological time scale. He spends a fair
amount of time writing about the destructive tendencies of our
species. His diagnosis is that they are caused by anthro-centrism
AKA human supremacy. His solution is in education and being open
to a mystical-poetic unity.
> The life of which we are a part may be unitary in a sense that only
> poets have divined. If we took that view *only speculatively*, it
> would have a profound effect on our attitude toward conservation.
> We would have a new reverence for life. Our drive would be to
> preserve it, to stand against all forces of destruction.
# Chapter 1: Maroon Bells
The old man and I stood in silence for several minutes, listening to
this "aspen talk." There are no leaves that whisper like these. And
Colorado's aspen, growing as they do up to ninety feet in height, seem
to have a distinctive musical note when the winds set their leaves
trembling. The leafstalk is larger than the blade and flattened
contrary to the plane of the blade. It therefore acts as a pivot,
causing the leaf to flutter even in the slightest breeze. I had
passed through many aspen groves in my lifetime. But it took this
trip to Maroon Creek to make me appreciate their music.
The Maroon Bells are composed largely of sedimentary rocks. These
sedimentary rocks are about six thousand feet thick and rest on
granite. A part of the glory of the region is in the color of this
sandstone. It is virtually all maroon... Even some soils are
maroon... The two Maroon Bells, which stand southwest of Maroon Lake
and are reflected in it, are 14,000 feet and 14,126 feet high,
respectively. They have been severely weathered and worn, vast talus
slopes marking part of their decay. Today they look from the north
like two roughly-hewn bells, From whatever point of the compass they
are seen, they are like maroon pinnacles that make blue sky and
fleecy clouds seem unusually bright.
Aspen that form streaks on gold down colored cliffs make beauty of
the scale of sunsets and sunrises. These colored rocks transform
even the conifers. ... Against maroon, white, or tan cliffs, they
lose their somber quality and seem vibrant with life. It is,
however, on the wildflowers that these colored rocks have startling
effects.
Whenever I see a coyote at large, I have a compulsion to bring [them]
to my side. A whistle has always stopped [them] in the Maroon Bells
area. Up come [their] ears. There is cunning in [their] face; but
there is friendliness too--an indication that [they] might easily
become a satellite of [humanity].
One of the happiest afternoons I ever spent was in the high rolling
basin at the head of Conundrum Creek, just under Conundrum Pass
(13,050 feet). The low arctic or sky-land willow that possesses these
high basins were beginning to turn yellow, giving the entire bowl a
yellowish-brown tinge. Elk and deer signs were abundant. Under the
cliffs not far above me a ram grazed. I sat by one of the many small
streams that water the basin, watching life go by. There was a dwarf
birch (Betula glandulosa) by my side. A small bush of currants
(Ribes wolfis) showed a few black berries. Alpine club moss was
thick in spots. Nearby was a strand of a low, silky sagebrush
(Artemisia scopulocum). Pussytoes were no longer in bloom; but in
the thick mat that provided turf for this high, rolling basin were
several basal rosettes of the plant. A few dwarf fleabanes were
still flowering. A very minute cinequefoil showed a few yellow
flowers. Husks of the stonecrop (Sedum rhodanthum) were very thinly
scattered... The silky phacelia (Phacelia sericae) that earlier had
shown violet-blue was now dried and lusterless. Pods were forming on
low lupines. There were several plants of common wormwood in the sod.
I sat some minutes, lost in my thoughts of the beauty of the place,
when I heard a slight rustle near my feet. A water shrew who was
coal-black on top and silvery-white underneath came bustling up the
side of the creek and, seeing me, dived into a pool at my feet and
disappeared behind a large rock. A marmot whistled at my intrusion.
Then another friend appeared, the American dipper or water ouzel.
I had seen this bird over the years in the Cascades, even in the dead
of Winter, and heard [it] sing [its] heart out on cold mornings. I
had seen [it] flit in and out of waterfalls with the casualness with
which homo sapiens enters [their] apartment house. I had seen this
bird use [its] wings as fins and swim to the bottom of deep pools to
feed. But until this day I had never seen the dipper above 12,000
feet. Yet here [it] was, all courage and confidence. There were no
pools in this little creek deep enough for any of [its] dives. [It]
raced along [the creek], feeding as [it] went. Then [it] sat on an
outcropping of granite covered with star moss and sang a lusty song.
This little tributary of Conundrum Creek would soon freeze. But my
friend the dipper would stay the Winter somewhere on the main stream,
where waterfalls were abundant. No matter how severe the wintry
blasts on upper Conundrum Creek became, my friend the dipper would
hold [its] own and answer every blizzard with [its] own cheery song.
[It] has come to be my favorite bird for the optimism [it] exudes.
[The water ouzel was also John Muir's favorite bird.]
I have seen no high basins anywhere in the world that are more
majestic than those in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wild Area. In
contour and shape, in depth and sweep, they are reminiscent of many
in the Himalayas. Yet Himalayan basins north of the first ridges are
drier; they are often dust-blown.
Wind makes the tufted hair grass hum. Pine siskin appear and
nervously depart. There is no other noise. [A person] stands at the
heart of a wilderness that teams with life. ... Above these basins [a
person] faces eternity and the Creator of the Universe.
These moments on Colorado's high ridges quickly pass into hours.
Words and talk seem out of place. This is solitude where one loses
[themself] in the immensity... and grand harmony...
... my thoughts turned to [people] who have no humility because they
think the earth was made only for their use. Just as violence seems
to answer the needs of some, so does leveling a wilderness satisfy
others. These are destructive impulses in [humanity] ... Whatever
the causes, we have developed a tradition of destroying the
wilderness.
We have reached the point where only a few precious islands of
wilderness are left. If we behave in the future as we have in the
past, they will be depleted or nibbled at until they too are gone.
We need a restatement of national purpose. We need to bring our
educational programs a new ethic. [Humanity] is capable of care as
much as of destruction. Preservation of beauty, tenderness in
relation to other life, communication with nature--these too can be
awakened and given a powerful thrust. ... we can raise generations
who will learn that the earth itself is sacred.
# Chapter 2: Wind River Mountains
The trip by horseback to Upper Cook's Lake took perhaps four hours.
The trails were sodden from persistent rain; the creeks were in
flood; the lakes we passed seemed to be running over. The parade of
campers and [fishers] that moves through this treasure land in Summer
was past.
This trip we had the whole range to ourselves. A northeast wind was
bitter cold, and the rain it brought had a sting to it. Before we
made camp a steady rain, turning to snow, had set in. We pitched our
small tents, built a large fire, cooked sourdough bread in a heavy
Dutch oven, and went to bed early.
The golden trout of Wind River seemed more pretentious than any I had
ever known; and they ran to 2 and 2-1/2 pounds. Upper Cook's Lake is
probably their best habitat. Nature supplies it with a tiny
freshwater shrimp that is red and brown in color and about the size
of a pinhead. These small shrimp are apparently the golden trout's
secret. For in Upper Cook's Lake they have been known to run 17
pounds.
In the morning the water in a cup I had left by my bedroll in my
small Himalayan tent was frozen solid.
[A strong nylon tent design by Gerry in the 1950s through 1970s.
Gerry company
Vintage tents
]
"Would you say that the coyote has ever caused wild-life populations
to drop greatly?" Carroll inquired.
"Absolutely not," said Olaus. "The great regulator of wild-life
population is a food deficiency of one kind or another. Take our
mountain sheep as an example. Predators don't eliminate them.
Hunters take a few, not many. Real disaster hits those fine herds
when sheep [ranchers] turn grass meadows into dust bowls."
"What relation does poisoning the coyote have to the decline in
marten?" I asked.
"The poisoned bate dropped from planes killed everything that ate
meat--coyotes, bears, fox, marten," Olaus answered. "They were
mostly cleaned out of Wind River."
"More than that," said Carroll, "birds that eat carrion died when
they ate animals who had eaten the poisoned bait. That blasted poison
almost wiped out our camp robbers."
"Any coyotes left?" I asked Olaus.
"None in these mountains. They were all poisoned out."
By the time I left this majestic high country [in Wyoming], my heart
was heavy. [Humanity] was fast ruining it. Overgrazing was
despoiling alpine ridges and basins.
There have been and still are great conservationists in the Forest
Service. And they have written glorious chapters in the cause. But
they are not conspicuous in Wyoming.
One of our deepest conflicts is between the preservation of wild life
and the profits of a few [people]. The coyote with [its] wise,
doglike face and [its] haunting call, is gone. Fox, marten, and bear
have been sacrificed. Mountain sheep are doomed. Is there no place
left for any life except [homo sapiens] and [our] greed? Must we see
our wild animals only in zoos? Is there no place left for mountain
sheep and coyotes?
The life of which we are a part may be unitary in a sense that only
poets have divined. If we took that view *only speculatively*, it
would have a profound effect on our attitude toward conservation. We
wold have a new reverence for life. Our drive would be to preserve
it, to stand against all forces of destruction.
"Used to be lots of field mice here," Carroll said. "Field mice are
good for the farmer because they help keep the soil porous. Ground
squirrels help too. And mice and ground squirrels keep the badger
alive."
Stopping to emphasize his words, Carroll said, "Know what the federal
men did? Poisoned the mice and squirrels."
He stopped to let that sink in and then asked, "Know what happened?
The poison killed the blackbirds and the doves. Then what happened?
The grasshoppers came in and got to be a real danger because they had
no enemies. Know what the fed men did then?"
I shook my head, and Carroll added, "They used more spray to kill the
grasshoppers."
What did the Forest Service do? At a cost of $30,000 they used
planes to spray 10,000 acres of this choice upland with a chemical
designed to kill sage. I have seen many areas of our wilderness from
coast to coast ruined--some by fire, some by excessive cutting that
resulted in severe erosion, some by overgrazing. Never have I seen
such destruction purposely done.
"Is this the way to improve range?" I inquired.
"The worst possible way, I think," Olaus added. He went on to
explain how sagebrush holds moisture and gives shade to grass.
"Better grass with sagebrush than without sagebrush," he added.
"You haven't seen anything yet," Bill Isaacs said as we got back in
the jeep. And in half a mile I saw what he meant. ... at our feet
was willow, dead or dying, shriveled and killed by the spray.
"What will our friends the beavers do?" I asked.
"They die," said Bill Isaacs. "And the wonderful ponds they built
are soon destroyed."
"And the moose?" I asked.
"This is doomsday for the moose too," Olaus added. "Moose must have
these willows in Winter. Willow is their mainstay then.
[Homo sapiens] is crowding everything but [themselves] out of the
universe, I thought.
The official destruction committed in the sacred precincts of this
massive range would be called vandalism if others had done it. The
damage is vast, incredible, awful.
"Perhaps we should go to Pinedale next Friday," I told Carroll, "to
hear what the federal men say about these spraying projects."
We went. Forest Service men, officials of the BLM, and the County
Agent of the Department of Agriculture were present; and they spoke.
The federal men we heard were not dishonest; they were merely
spokesmen of interests that have Wyoming by the throat. They said
the removal of the sagebrush would increase grass, increase the water
content of the soil, and decrease erosion. But as they talked it was
plain they were not reciting facts. This was mere conjecture. Yes,
they had a pilot plant of a few acres that they had sprayed. But
what effect it would have over a period as short as five years no one
knew.
"What effect will it have on the willows?" someone asked.
"We think the willows will come back."
"When?"
"Perhaps a year, perhaps in five years."
"What will happen to the antelope, to sage grouse, to moose in the
meantime?"
No one knew. The only ounce of rational talk that night was supplied
by Carroll Noble.
"Maybe willows and other browse will come back in time. But so will
sagebrush. Then I suppose there will be another spraying program."
One federal agent reported that an elderly lady had asked him, "What
effect will this spray have on wildflowers?" This seemed to me to be
as relevant as Carroll's questions and Olaus's concern about the
antelope, the beavers, the sage grouse, and the moose. But when the
elderly lady's question about the wildflowers was reported, the
federal man laughed. And that laughter marked for me a new low in
American civilization.
The destruction invoked by the white man on the continent has been
appalling.
* * *
I sat next to a stranger [in the plane] who lives in Texas, and we
talked about fishing, hunting, hiking, and riding. He mentioned the
antelope in Texas.
"Do you hunt them?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Is it difficult hunting?"
"Oh, no. We go by jeep."
"You mean to tell me you chase antelope by jeep and shoot them on the
run?"
"Not on the run," he said. "Our country is fenced. Antelope never
jump a fence. We herd them by jeep into a fence corner and shoot
them at a distance of a few feet."
My heart sank.
* * *
As I listened to the experts talk, I kept remembering the paths, on
each side of these Wyoming fences--paths that run for miles on end,
paths pounded by hooves f antelope as they race frantically to find
an exit to their ancestral grazing grounds. These beaten paths are
more eloquent than all the apologias of the experts.
# Chapter 3: Virgin River
This low tree [Utah juniper] with its broken crown was of great
service to the [Native Americans]. Its bark supplied them with
thatch, cordage, baskets, sandals, nets, and bags. This tree also
furnished the favorite [fence] posts for the Mormons. Scrub oak was
mixed with the pine and juniper. Their acorns (which the Paiute...
roasted in ashes) are sweet to the taste.
The walls were so high and the canyon so narrow that darkness came
prematurely. At this point the sun reaches the floor of the canyon
less than an hour a day. By mid-afternoon it is too dark for color
photographs. A couple of hours before the sun goes down it is deep
dusk. It was then I saw the most startling scenes of the hike.
Looking up from midstream through a slit in the overhang of the two
canyon walls was like looking at a screen in a darkened theater.
As I slipped into my sleeping bag, the full length of civilization,
as we know it, seemed hardly a second in the sweep of geological
history unfolded in this painted canyon.
We saw today many springs bubbling from the base of the canyon walls.
Some had the smell of sulfur; but most had clear, sweet water. I
noticed that the water from these springs was warmer than that in the
river--probably because it was seepage from ponds that lay in warm
sunshine high above us.
A few miles from Zion Park the tops of the canyon walls were yellow
with aspen and red with oak. Now the sandstone cliffs were more on
the white or pink side. Now the canyon was opening up and flooded
with sunshine. There were hanging gardens almost without number on
these colored walls. Some cliffs that rose nearly two thousand feet
had a dozen or more setbacks or ledges. Ferns decorated many of
them, the maidenhair being conspicuous. Trees had taken hold there;
the moss hung over the edges; streamers of green vines hung down.
The brightly colored sandstone was bedecked with green garlands and
crowned with yellow aspen and red oak.
# Chapter 4: Baboquivari
Baboquivari is a granite shaft 7730 feet high that watches over the
United States-Mexican border southwest of Tucson, Arizona.
Here I drink deep of the solitude of the universe. There is no sound
except the soft music made by the wind blowing through the bunch
grass. Then I always remember John Muir, who wrote, "Music belongs
to all matter. There is not a silent, songless particle in the
Lord's creation."
And the kangaroo rat (a desert animal that can extract hydrogen and
oxygen from its food and with them make its own water)...
https://www.biotopics.co.uk/a2/kangaroorat.html
The saguaros are almost human in the gestures they make. In the dusk
or in the grayness before dawn a forest of them takes on a weird and
ghostly appearance. The trees with their arms thrown skyward, look
like dancers frozen in some weird pantomime.
Saguaro, in [a Native American language] means friend; and friend it
is to those people. It has beautiful white flowers (that are
nocturnal and have the sweet fragrance of a ripe melon) produce a
figlike fruit good to eat. Its seeds make up into a butter. Its
wood furnishes shelter and fuel.
The saguaro grows in a region where the rainfall may be as little as
five inches a year. Its habitat is a land of quick runoffs and
flash floods. So it quickly manufactures tiny roots during the
rains to catch the underground moisture, siphon the water into its
stalks, and store it there for use during long droughts. A mature
saguaro, weighing from six to ten tons, may take up as much as a ton
of water during a hard rain. Some saguaros have stored so much water
during a storm that they have burst. They store so much that they
can live and bear fruit for three years, even though there is no rain
at all.
Arizona has some poisonous snakes... [and 2 poisonous lizards]. Fear
of those reptiles kept many tourists away from the saguaro stands.
So the people who managed the Saguaro National Monument at one time
exterminated the reptiles. It was soon discovered, however, that the
young shoots of saguaro cactus were being destroyed by rodents. With
the reptiles out of the way, the kangaroo rats, ground squirrels,
prairie dogs, and other rodents multiplied so fast that the very
existence of the saguaros was threatened. Those who eliminate the
snakes disturb the delicate balance nature has provided...
But the mesquite, in spite of its great virtues, brings sad news as
well as good. The mesquite seed--which travels through cattle
dung--spreads fast. The seeds cannot compete on the range when the
sod is good. It can get a foothold only when the range is
overgrazed. That is to say, the range is broken down as an
ecological entity before the mesquite starts its migration. The
extent of the overgrazing in the southwest can be roughly measured by
the spread of the mesquite. Texas alone has lost thirty-seven
million acres to it and other low-grade brush.
Now the land at my feet suffers greatly from erosion. On windy days
when I have ridden in this desert I have actually seen the topsoil
moving. But once this land, though dry and barren looking, was rich
grazing land covered with thick grama grasses.
# Chapter 5: Quetico-Superior
Cities with industrial development are devoid of lichens, for
ozonated hydrocarbons kill them. They flourish only where the air is
pure.
Today Arrow Rock is famous for the pictographs painted there
centuries ago. The paintings evidently mark the site of an old camp
where the [Native Americans] could paint in leisure. Red paint was
used here, as it was in most of the pictographs we find in the
Pacific Northwest. The red paint was made by grinding iron ore and
mixing the powder with fish oil. A thin solution of resin from pine
or spruce trees was added to give the paint a varnish-like quality
and make it practically impervious to weather.
The paint on Arrow Rock is bright red to this day and gaily outlines
moose, caribou, and pelican. The pictographs also include red disks
apparently representing the moon. [seasons & the passage of time?]
And Sig told me, as we paddled slowly across the Robinson, of the
study Lowell Sumner made of beavers. When the beaver community is
young and newly established, there is food for everyone, homes for
all families, work opportunities unlimited. Young are stands of
willow, aspen, and birch to be flooded, dams to be erected. The
aggressive predators are at bay, for the dams and canals built into
the newly flooded areas of willow, aspen, poplar, and birch give good
protection. As Lowell Sumner states, "For beavers this is history's
Golden Age of self-expression, of freedom from want and fear." As
years pass and the population increases, the food supply per beaver
diminishes. Young beavers leave home in search of new frontiers, new
food supplies, new opportunities. Those that remain have to work
harder for their daily food, travel longer distances, get fewer
rewards. Diminishing supplies of willow, aspen, and birch mean that
existing dams cannot be repaired properly. The result is a lowering
of the water level and a furthering contraction of the supply line.
Malnutrition increases; as it is prolonged, fertility declines;
infant mortality reaches an all-time high. But the greatest killer
of all--more potent than malnutrition, disease, and predators--is
stress. When that reaches its peak, the beaver population drops at
once, vast numbers dying quickly.
Lowell Sumner has shown from post-mortems of beavers the damage that
stress has done--inflammation and ulceration of the digestive tract
and permanent metabolic derangements.
Researches of the beaver placed in new context for me the values of
the wilderness... they re-emphasized the price we pay for
civilization.
# Chapter 6: The Everglades
The Everglades are an exciting river of grass. They begin at Lake
Okeechobee in south-central Florida and extend south to the shores of
Florida Bay. They are about 100 miles long and 70 miles wide. Their
water comes mainly from rains.
This fresh water has been the great secret of the Everglades, ...
fresh water pouring south held back the salt water that always
threatened to invade the rivers that flow into the Gulf of Mexico
from Florida's lower west coast.
The balance between drought and wetness, between fresh water and
salt, was always delicate. The reservoir system that released the
water gradually was one secret of the maintenance of the Everglades
as a river of grass teeming with life. The rock underlying the
Everglades was the other secret.
[This oölithic limestone's] chief characteristic--important to the
ecology of the Everglades--is that it lies only a few feet above sea
level and has low rims on the east and west. This gives it the shape
of a spoon. The Everglades is, indeed, like fresh water in a spoon
that is pressed down into a sea of salt water. The margin between
fresh and salt is narrow. Once that low rim is broken, the salt
water comes in.
[Humanity] tampered dangerously with this delicate balance. Drainage
of the Everglades got under way about 1905. Later on, drainage
canals to the ocean were dug; and farmers started tilling the rich
peat land that had lain for centuries under the fresh waters of the
Everglades.
The Everglades were dying. Endless acres of saw grass became dry.
The great flights of birds went south, looking for water holes, and
found only brackish water. The rich peat land shrunk and oxidized
under the intense sun. As the canals took off the water, the peat
land shrank. The subsidence was so great that much of the land no
longer drained to the sea but to the lake.
[Hunters] invaded and the wild life was slaughtered. Fires swept
uncontrolled over vast areas. There was no water in the canals with
which to fight them. The Everglades--a river of grass and sweet
water--was burning; and with it was passing a botanical and
biological treasure.
The federal government moved in with comprehensive studies.
Reclaimed acres, it was recommended, should be reconverted to
swampland so that the water table would rise.
The Everglades National Park, embracing 1,228,000 acres of land and
water, was established in 1947, just in the nick of time--thanks
largely to Daniel B. Beard. The race was on to restore the balance
between fresh and salt water.
Cellars lined with concrete mark the homes of heroic people who
raised corn and tomatoes in this marly soil that water turns into
sticky gumbo. They did not understand how narrow the margin was
between salt water and fresh. They dug drainage canals to rid their
homesteads of swamps. That marked their defeat. For the salt water
came up the drainage canals, saturating the prairie.
When Audubon visited this area in 1832, his men found sweet water on
Cape Sable. But now there is no sweet water in the Flamingo area.
The limestone that underlies the marl carries none. Below the
limestone is nothing but sulfur water. Flamingo's water comes
twenty miles by pipeline...
# Chapter 7: The Smokies
Cades Cove, watered by Anthony Creek, is composed of several hundred
acres of cleared bottom land. It lies at 1,800 feet, completely
ringed by mountains, with a winding outlet via Abrams Creek to the
lakes of the Little Tennessee River. It was first settled in 1818.
At its peak it had a hundred families who lived in hearty isolation
from the world and were happily self-sufficient. They sent
practically nothing to the market, made their own clothes, and ground
their own corn. There were ruffled grouse, wild turkeys, and deer in
the woods for meat. Four churches were built: Primitive Baptist,
Missionary Baptist, Northern Methodist, and Southern Methodist.
The religion of these hollows is Protestant of a Fundamentalist
variety. "I am God-proud to see," "Our food ha'in't much, but reach
out and take your needs," "It's Goda'mighty in the hearts of folks
that makes friendship" ... Those know knew these people say their
speech was Elizabethan, many words and expressions coming right out
of Chaucer and Shakespeare.
They drew heavily on the forest for their medicines as well as their
food.
Some of the ridges in the Smokies, part of the Western part, have no
trees. They are the "balds" found on or near summits. Some slopes
that are covered with rhododendron, laurel, blueberry, and minniebush
(all of the heath family) are called "heath balds" by botanists and
"slicks" by the mountain people. The rhododendron or mountain laurel
is sometimes so thick that travel is almost impossible.
[I have experienced that. Their branches run along the ground
downhill to cover unmaintained trails. These are easy to trip or
slip on, especially when it rains. I can see why people would call
them slicks.]
One Fall, Harvey and I made a four-day hike along the ridge of the
eastern Smokies. We picked up the Appalachian Trail at Newfound Camp
and followed it to Mount Cammerer, where we dropped off the mountain
to the pleasant valley of Cosby.
It is here that I first saw the spruce-fir forests that thrive above
the 5000-foot level. This is the red spruce with four-cornered
needles that never lie flat. The fir is the aromatic southern basalm
with needles in a horizontal plane. These spruce-fir forests cast a
deep shade that is damp from the moisture which the tall trees
collect from the restless clouds. These forests are so dark that the
undergrowth of ferns is low. The forest floor is made up mostly of
deep moss, oxalis, and lichens spreading in great profusion.
While a hardwood forest has a luminous glow, the spruce-fir climax
forest shuts out most of the light. This is partly due to the dark
shadow of the foliage, partly due to the density of the needles and
boughs, partly to the way the upper branches interlock, making a
closely woven canopy which lets little sunlight through.
There is good wood for cooking wherever there is birch or beech.
These trees have a reputation for making good fires. The red spruce
is different. It has moisture pockets that sometimes explode with
such violence, they put out the fire.
# Chapter 8: C & O Canal
Out of Washington going west there is water in the canal for the
first 20 miles or so. This waterway, built by black powder, mules
with scoops, and men with picks and shovels, was finished in 1850.
President John Quincy Adams turned the first spade of dirt in
Georgetown (then Washington D.C.'s suburb) on July 4, 1828. This
canal was part of George Washington's dream. It connected
Cumberland, Missouri--about 180 miles to the west as the Potomac
flows--with Washington, D.C., and it brought mostly coal to tidewater
on the Potomac. The railroads soon followed, and the competition
became intense--too severe for the canal. But it continued to
operate until 1923, when stubborn economic facts intervened. The
barges--90 by 18 feet--pulled by mules have now disappeared. The
locks with gate beams made of oak still stand.
The canal has whitewashed stone lockhouses where the lock tenders
once lived.
There are times in the winter when the temperature drops to the 20s;
and if that happens for successive days the canal freezes and
Washington, D.C. turns out in great numbers for skating. Fires are
built; and families bring their lunch and make a day of it.
When I stopped, I could almost hear my heart beat. Yet I was less
than a dozen miles from the heart of Washington, D.C. My wilderness,
though small and confined, was real. I did not have to go far this
winter morning to reach this wilderness of solitude and quiet. Only
a few miles. That's what the cities need, I found myself saying. A
wilderness at their back door, where a [person] can go and once more
find harmony and peace in [their] inner being.
Of all the ferns [of the Potomac], one of the most intriguing is the
walking fern, which according to Cobb, A Field Guide to the Ferns
(1956), is of a genus that has only two species--one here and one in
northeastern Asia. When the finely pointed leaves of this fern touch
the ground, they sprout new plants. So they walk. On warm spring
days these walking ferns may spread several inches in a day.
As I sat on the bluff I heard a roar. Suddenly out of the east came
a white armada of seventy-five whistling swans to settle below me on
the water. When they landed, they held their own against the
current in perfect formation, shoulder to shoulder. As they swam
they talked incessantly to each other, in voices so loud they could
occasionally be heard above the roar of the river and the whine of
the wind. Soon they were off with a great clatter, heading north to
some distant nesting ground, as they had done long, long before
Americans started making history on this continent.
Recently, the arrival of Spring has been heralded by fewer and fewer
robins in the Washington, D.C., area. Where I once saw dozens, I now
see only a few. It is believed that the use of DDT spray in a vast
fire ant "eradication" program down south, sponsored by the
Department of Agriculture, has had an effect on the robin population.
It is in the Spring that one realizes that not all is well along the
Potomac. A half-century ago its water was clear for most of its
length. Today it is muddy the whole of the way. We work to perfect
plans to carry off the floodwaters, without realizing that the grass
we lost in high meadows from overgrazing, the bulldozing along creek
beds when we put in the highway, the marshlands drained for farms,
the failure to use contour plowing, the failure to provide proper
drainage and prompt seeding of lawns when housing projects are
constructed, and the reckless cutting of forests all combine to
destroy not only the beauty of the landscape but the hydraulic
functioning of the land as well.
The cities above Monocacy have sewage-disposal plants. But most of
them are inadequate for the volume. The result is that a lot of raw
sewage goes into the river. As a result, the river at times gives
off a heavy stench.
Moreover modern detergents are not affected by those treatment
plants. They emerge in its final product. One has only to wait on
one of the bridges over the Potomac in the Washington area when
dishwater is emptied into the sewers after the breakfast hours to see
the detergents. They make up huge cakes of foam that float down like
white airy skiffs.
Rivers are choice national assets reserved for all the people.
Industry that pours its refuse into rivers and other commercial
interests that use these water highways do not have monopoly rights.
People have broader interests than in moneymaking. Recreation,
health, and enjoyment of aesthetic values are part of [one's]
liberty. Rivers play an important role in keeping this idea of
liberty alive.
We cannot have health and live alone. We need the companionship of
people--yes. Yet we need to break away occasionally from that circle
and rejoin the community of the wilderness. The world is not made of
the stuff we glorify in our soft lives.
There is a basic ethic which we moderns, we urbanites, have violated.
This ethic is that one should not do harm to the great mysterious
Earth Mother out of whom we all sprang. There is danger to
[humanity], as well as to all members of the interlinked organic web
of which [humanity] is one part, when we threaten the natural balance
that has maintained life on this planet.
[Humanity's] task is to do more than share life with other people.
[Our] true destiny is in sharing life with all other living things in
the universe.
# Chapter 9: White Mountains
... the striped maple [is known locally as moosewood.]
G.M. Trevelyan has a line that fits the young [person's] mood.
> And to the young who have no pain, who have not yet kept watch on
> [their] mortality, nature is a joy responding to their own,
> haunting them like a passion.
All who have done back-packing in the mountains know that there is a
reward understandable only in terms of romance. Those are bright
moments that march with the [person] from [their] youth to old age.
All prostrate plants on top the Presidential Ridge face disaster in
Winter if the snow does not cover them. When they lay exposed, they
get frost bitten and desiccated. Most of the water escapes through
small openings in the undersurface of the leaves. Labrador tea has a
mat of hair over the undersurface of its leaves which helps slow up
the loss of water. The leaves of some plants have edges that are
rolled over to cover the undersurfaces.
Forestry schools, in their curricula, place their greatest weight on
the commercial aspects. The usual product of a forestry school is
known as a "saw log forester." There are exceptions. But the
emphasis in forestry education is underlined by the fact that about
three fourths of the graduates enter the lumber industry. Finally,
the wild areas and primitive areas established by the Forest Service
can be reclassified and opened to commercial projects by a decision
within the federal bureaucracy. What is classified as a wilderness
today can be logged tomorrow--if a few [people] in Washington, D.C.,
so decide.
The oncoming generation will inherit either wilderness or mountains
chewed up by machines, depending on the social philosophy and outlook
of a few [people] in the Forest Service. This is not right.
Beech bark was one of the earliest writing materials [humanity] used.
Our word "book" derives, indeed, from the Anglo-Saxon "beece," for
beech. Virgil put the tradition in these words:
> Or shall I rather the sad verse repeat
> Which on the beech's bark I lately writ?
# Chapter 10: Allagash
Once we came upon a moose feeding in a bogan. A bogan is a
slack-water cove in a bend of the river, sometimes lying behind an
island, sometimes fed by a brook. Moose seem to like bogans for
water plants.
We both stopped paddling, drifting in the current as we breathed
deeply. The delicate perfume of sweet grass saturated the air. The
sweet grass of the Allagash is Hierochloë odorata. Heiros is Greek
for sacred; chloë for grass. Sweet scented grass is strewn before
churches in Europe on saints' days. [Native Americans] used it in
weaving. We beached the canoe to walk in this grass that had a faint
vanilla odor. Yet when I pulled a handful of it to my nose, it
seemed no different in odor from any broad-leafed grass. It took an
acre of it or long stretches next to running water to fill the air
with its fragrance.
Sweet Grass
The lakes present special problems. Telos and Chamberlain have a
sweep of over eighteen miles. Big blows out of the northwest produce
waves that can be dangerous for canoes. ... he always likes to make
an early crossing of a lake in order to avoid winds with whitecaps
that can be dangerous to heavily loaded canoes.
The paddle rests on the right leg. The stroke is a quick, short one
that seems almost effortless. It's a stroke a [person] can keep up
all day long, hour after hour. The [person] who puts the paddle deep
in the water and pulls with all [their] might is good for a few
hours. But the guides of the Allagash can maintain their speed the
whole day.
Once we were running through rapids where the passage between two
rocks promised to be too narrow. As we got close, the Old Guide
shouted, "I'll turn it on its side!" That's exactly what happened.
Our canoe had over 600 pounds in it. But he put it on its side just
enough to clear the rocks in shallow water; and as quickly as he had
tipped it over, he tipped it up. It is what's known as "rolling her
through." That is work for the champion only.
The lazy beaver--the drone--is expelled from the family. [It] lives
the lonely life of a bank beaver. [It] collects branches and logs of
the riverbank above a house where [it] lives.
"[It's] too lazy to build a dam," the Old Guide said. "The bank
beaver does the minimum work necessary to live."
The beavers who built the dam across the Allagash were far from being
drones. They were experts indeed.
"I hate to take down their dam," the Old Guide said. "But we can use
2 inches more of water."
And so we tore a hole in it, creating in a half-hour a large sluiceway
through which the water poured.
"By morning the beavers will have repaired the dam," he added as our
canoe shot through the new passageway. And before 2 hours had
passed, I realized that, but for the water we had "borrowed" from the
beavers, we might not have floated this shallow stretch.
That night we talked about the water "borrowed" from the beavers. A
guide spoke up to say, "It should have come from the power company."
There is a feeling up and down the Allagash that the water diverted
at Telos to the Penobscot rightfully belongs to the Allagash. That
night there was emphatic talk in favor of the beavers and against
those who, by diverting Allagash water, rob the river of water
during the Fall.
We talked of this around a campfire until every star was out. The
Old Guide spoke up after a long silence.
"[People] think that nature was created just for them, for their
exploitation."
That is the key to explaining our destructive tendencies. Nature was
created for [people]--but not for [people] alone. It was created for
all living things. Only when [people] realize that will they have
the humility to restrain themselves and treat as sacred that which
God created.
The most frightening prospect for many is that the Allagash will
become a national park. This is a curious--yet understandable--fear.
The basic law creating the Park Service provided that it was "to
conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the
wild life" in those wilderness areas and "leave them unimpaired for
the enjoyment of future generations." Yet the Park Service has
become more and more devoted to roads and hotels--less and less to
true wilderness areas. The prospect of making the Allagash another
Yellowstone is sickening to those who know the wonders of this
wilderness waterway.
Finally the Old Guide asked, "Know what the Allagash means?"
Without waiting for my answer he said, "Allagash means 'hemlock
bark.' That bark was once used for tanning of leather."
Hemlocks, I thought. The great eastern hemlock with its tremendous
spread. We had seen very few on our canoe trip. They, like the
majestic white pine, had been sent to market.
"They'll all come back," the Old Guide said, "if we only give them
time."
They will, indeed, return. Two hundred, three hundred years from now
they will be on the Allagash to lift the hearts of new Americans, if
we will only prevent this wilderness from being destroyed.
# Chapter 11: Katahdin
Katahdin has low saddles, gentle slopes, and great basins that lie
under massive head walls. These walls of granite rise sheer. They
and the basins at their feet were gouged out by ancient glaciers.
Some head walls today are crumbling so much, they make vertical
ascents dangerous. And so the usual routes up follow the ridges
through stands of dwarf black spruce and over piles of granite rocks
gaily painted with lichens. Giant hands, it seems, rolled these
rocks from the top. They ground each other as they rolled and
finally came to groaning stops, settling into piles that make the
[person] who climbs over them seem no bigger than an ant. Single
rocks are sometimes as large as a cottage. Granite boulders as large
as pianos are common. I love their feel; I like the way in which
their lichens glisten when wet; I enjoy lying full length on them, my
face to the sky, watching clouds pass overhead.
There is poetry for me in the talus slopes of Katahdin.
The famous Knife Edge connects Pamola and Baxter Peak. It extends
over a mile along a narrow ridge where one can stand astride almost
vertical walls and look down 1500 feet. It's exhilarating on a clear
day when a great blow is coming out of the west. It is hazardous
when low clouds move in. Sometimes they are so dense that one crawls
the Knife Edge, let [one] loses [one's] footing.
I also like Lower South Branch Pond, which is north of Katahdin and
underneath a ridge famous to all [canoers] and known as the Traveler.
Jake Day--who is an artist by profession--and I stood on its smooth
pebble beach, watching the play of sunlight on the richly colored
hardwoods.
"How do you manage to wait for May to arrive?" I asked.
"Got a secret," Jake said. "Come with me."
We walked into the woods, where Jake found the stump of an ancient
white pine. Whittling away the damp outer layer of wood, he came to
a dry interior, where he cut many shavings. Holding these under my
nose, he said with a grin, "The smell of these shavings carries me
through the Winter."
This country is now a real sanctuary known as Baxter State Park.
Percival P. Baxter, former Governor of Maine, was the donor.
Beginning in the late twenties, he started to purchase with his own
money tracts of land around Katahdin, with a view to eventually
acquiring almost 200,000 acres as a state park. He reached his goal,
giving to Maine not only Katahdin but at least thirty other peaks and
dozens upon dozens of lakes as well. It took patience and a
quarter-century to clear title to all these parcels.
Lumbermen mutilated the Katahdin area. The primeval spruce forests I
saw in the twenties are gone. Gone also are the majestic groves of
white pine, the tree that made Maine known as the "Pine Tree State."
... the Baxter lands were given to the state with the understanding
that "said premises shall forever be used for State forest, public
park, and recreational purposes, shall forever be left in the natural
wild state, shall forever be kept as a sanctuary for wild beasts and
birds, that no roads or ways for motor vehicles shall hereafter ever
be constructed thereon or there in."
No cutting of trees. No killing of animals or birds. No roads.
This is the kind of wilderness for which [people] pray.
* * *
Size, however, never meant anything to a beaver. In Oregon along the
Willamette River I once found a cottonwood tree, nearly 3 feet thick,
felled by beaver.
Beaver populations travel the cycles of boom and bust when [humanity]
does not interfere.
At the foot of Katahdin in the valley of Wassataquoick there is a
heaven on earth that must be fought for, generation on end. It is
safe now, because the new growth has no commercial value. When a new
climax forest is reaching maturity some generations hence, greedy
[people] will want the trees. The characters in the play change; but
the story is the same throughout history--from the cruel destruction
of the Cedars of Lebanon in the Middle East to the leveling of the
white pines in America. Those who value the woods in terms of money
will always be pitted against those who love the wilderness for itself.
See also:
Of Men And Mountains by William O. Dougls
Go East Young Man by William O. Douglas
author: Douglas, William O.
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/William_O._Douglas
LOC: QH104 .D68
tags: book,non-fiction,outdoor
title: My Wilderness, East to Katahdin
# Tags
book
non-fiction
outdoor
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