The Wild Marsh

by Rick Bass

  Another aspect of Dene hunting etiquette was for the hunter to minimize or belittle his success. If, on returning to camp, he was questioned by his companions or by his family, he invariably professed complete failure, or at least very poor luck. After some time of such stalling, he told the women of the band, or the person to whom he intended giving the meat, that there was some insignificant amount cached in the forest. This disparaging nonchalance was always expressed, even though the hunter might have made the best catch of the season.

  Not only would such a tradition reinforce constantly the need to avoid, at all costs, hubris and the inevitable clumsiness that would follow such self-awareness, but it would also serve to prevent the closure of the hunt and to provide almost constantly the hunter with the tribe's gratitude and support; and to keep in place a system in which the hunter was encouraged to always keep hunting, never ending.

  And further in this spirit of avoiding arrogance at all costs was the practice of rewarding the observation skills of a group. "Game shot during the course of the day's traveling always belonged not to the person who brought it down, but to the one who first sighted it."

  Hunters who failed to abide by this etiquette were ridiculed by the tribe.

  This is kind of a cruddy thing to say—particularly since I'm mired as deep in technology as almost any of the other six billion of us—but I keep thinking about those out-of-state hunters that Travis and I saw, the pigs of the Kootenai.

  People—hunters—have always needed game. At what point in our culture, however, did technology supplant the once steadfast requirements that a hunter show utmost respect for his or her quarry?

  Yet again I find reason for the protection of our last roadless lands—these last crumbs and corners of the fabric of an American landscape in which respect for the animals and their habitat, whether one is a hunter or nonhunter, remains relatively uncompromised by the buzz of snowmobiles, motorcycles, cars, and trucks.

  I am not demonizing that technology: I have accepted it myself, am complicit in fossil fuel use. But I don't think such complicity prevents me from celebrating the notion that it's healthy to have as many wild places available to us as possible, places where we will always have the choice, the opportunity, of stepping away from that other, crowded, rushing, noisy world. And whether for only an afternoon, or for months at a time, no matter: places where it might even still be one of the necessary components of a culture.

  I mean for this to be a journal of the seasons in a slow, quiet place—a place blessed with the rarity of still possessing four distinct seasons. A place where—as once existed in the not-so-distant past—every inhabitant knows the identity and character of every other inhabitant, every other neighbor, for forty or fifty miles in any direction. I know that someday a place like this is liable to exist only as a myth or memory; and as such, I want to chronicle it, while it lives, and celebrate it. It is not my intent to return again and again in this book to the premise of the necessity of wilderness.

  But again and again, in considering the one, I find myself led inescapably to the other. It seems to me to be such an obvious solution of how to best protect the wild character of this place—those dark forests where we have not yet built roads, and where mystery still resides, emanating from those cores like steam from a river on a foggy morning. I can see nothing but the need for wilderness—as much as we're able to protect and nurture. The wilderness itself no longer reaches to the curve of any horizon, not in this country—but the need for it continues at least that far, anytime I pause to consider the question.

  Wilderness does not need to be a refutation of the twenty-first century, does not need necessarily to stand in glaring contrast to a time of disease and terror and crowding and confusion. It certainly has that ability. But I like to think of wilderness as complementing rather than opposing the new century; of wilderness enriching our culture. Wilderness is not a cost, or a burden, or even a silent moral judge witnessing the awkward movements of man. It can be those things, but above all it is its own thing, and the more of it we can protect and retain, the richer and more secure we become.

  Blessed with an elk early in the year, I have been able to afford the luxury of passing up bucks on the occasions that I am fortunate enough to see any, and I have to confess, it is halfway in my mind that I would like to wait until B.J. is with me before possibly being presented with the opportunity to see and perhaps even take an animal. It certainly does not work that way—the hunter never does all of the choosing, and is never capable of determining in advance on which date, if any, an animal might be taken—but still, it's in my mind that if it works out that way, it would sure be nice for B.J. to participate in a good backcountry hunt; and so I've been passing up shots in order to not yet kill the one deer allowed to me by permit each year. This makes me a little uneasy, with the season winding down, knowing that each little buck I see might very well be my last opportunity—only seven days left in the season, and then six, and then five.

  Our plan calls for B.J. to fly up from his home in Austin, Texas, to Spokane, arriving the night before Thanksgiving, and to then wait six hours in Spokane before catching a one a.m. Amtrak that will travel east to Libby, arriving about five-thirty Thanksgiving morning. I'll drive over the summit and pick him up, and since he can only stay two days, we'll leave straight from the train station, Thanksgiving morning, to go hunt.

  I pack our lunches the night before and gather gear for both of us, and clean the rifle, the bone saw, and the meat pack, should we be fortunate enough to take an animal. I go to bed excited and wake up at three-thirty the next morning and drive up and over the snowy summit, with my excitement building—perfect tracking weather—and sure enough, B.J. gets off the train, and it's great to see him.

  The trouble is, however, that he hasn't slept in thirty-six hours. His house in Texas flooded that week, and he's been working around the clock nonstop, moving stuff out, and ripping up old carpet, and so forth; and furthermore, once he arrived in Spokane, having six hours to kill last night, he went to a local watering hole for much of that six hours, so that when I pick him up, he's still a little green around the gills, and going straight from the flood/plane/bar/train continuum into a daybreak assault on a snowy mountain in near-blizzard conditions does not sound particularly relaxing to him, this Thanksgiving vacation day, or especially therapeutic for what ails him.

  In the train station, he stares blearily down at my hunting boots and tries to rally. He goes into the restroom and splashes water on his face, comes back out, looks out the dark window at the snowstorm, and tries to summon the desire for a dawn hunt. But it's not there, and I feel like a crazy person, a fanatic, for having even dreamed that it might be.

  It's just that I'm so anxious to get him into the winter backcountry, and we have so little time.

  "Do you think we could go out later this afternoon?" he asks.

  "Absolutely," I tell him. And driving back up and over the summit, driving through the night while he sleeps, finally sleeps, in the front seat, I know we've made the right choice, and I'm just thrilled that he's come all this way. There's nothing like having family home for Thanksgiving.

  I drop him off at the house at dawn, build a fire anew in the wood stove, and get his bed set up; and then, knowing that he'll probably sleep until at least noon, I head back into the woods, for now there are only four days left in the season, and the tracking snow will be perfect, with the movements of all animals today revealed inescapably. If I should be so fortunate to find and follow and catch up with and take an animal today, B.J. can come help me pack it out in the afternoon.

  There is an extraordinary fullness and sweetness to taking an animal on or around Thanksgiving, and I'm hoping that's how it will turn out this year. We have friends coming over for dinner, and I've told Elizabeth I'll help her cook, in the middle of the day—but in the meantime, the whole day stretches before me, and it's snowing steadily, perfect hunting weather, and I leave the house quietly, with ever
yone in it still asleep, and head up toward the high country, where the snow will be even deeper.

  For the last several years I've been fortunate enough to take a white-tailed deer, which we find delicious, particularly when hung and aged for about a week. This year I have been wanting a mule deer, and have spent a fair amount of time in the upper elevations where they are occasionally found. That's what I'm looking for, this morning, and I head into one of those last wild unprotected roadless areas.

  All of the nation's roadless areas in the national forests—our public lands—were briefly protected, earlier this year, for the space of a few weeks, until George Bush (the second one) took office. One of the first things he did, along with his chief of so-called justice, John Ashcroft, was to strip that protection away from the public roadless areas. (The Clinton-Gore administration had spent three years studying and then establishing that protection.) And as I move up the snowy trail in the dim dawn light, it's an uneasy feeling, knowing that although the physical character of the mountain is unchanged, the policy regarding the mountain's future, and that of others like it, has reversed completely, in the blink of an eye, even as the mountain lay sleeping beneath last winter's snow.

  Is this what it's like, I wonder, for all those warring countries under Communist control, lands of ceaseless revolution and injustice, where governments, philosophies, policies, and even the names of the countries themselves, change yearly?

  I'm daydreaming, walking through the early morning blue light, not really hunting, and as such, I'm surprised when, only halfway up the mountain, I spy a large mule deer back in the timber, watching

  I think it's a buck, but I can't be sure—the light is still dim and he's back in a tangle of brush, the leafless branches of which also look like antlers—and we watch each other across a distance of perhaps a hundred yards or more, and then he breaks into a trot and I see that it is a buck, and a very big one, and then he disappears into the dense forest and the rest of the herd follows him.

  I am not a careful hunter. Any animal I ever get is almost always by luck alone.

  I set off up the hill after the herd, following their new tracks. I follow them for the rest of the morning, up and down and all around the mountain. I spy the nervous herd twice more, including a smaller buck, but never again that big one—and then it is time for me to head back home and cook; and weary from all the tracking, I'm glad for the break.

  When I return, the house smells incredible. There's a fire going in the wood stove, beside which I can dry my wet boots and clothes, and there is the fragrance of pies and rolls baking, fresh coffee, citrus being zested for the evening recipe. Spiced tea and roasting garlic. The snow still slanting past all the windows. Music playing on the CD player, cooking music; and such domesticity helps ease me toward the necessary transition of the end of hunting season. Three and a half days left.

  Peel the potatoes, slice and seed the jalapenos, dice the onions—prep work, mostly, leaving the real cooking to Elizabeth, but I do mix up some pastry dough for the dessert and set it aside to rise—and then it's time to go back up onto the mountain again, and this time, B.J., who is feeling one hundred percent better, is able to accompany me.

  This is the pace I like, at this time of year—the cresting and the building. It makes no sense—the equinox has come and gone long ago, all harvest should pretty much be laid in, and any sane or balanced individual would be taking it easy, altering his or her rhythms to adjust to the foreclosure of both the days' light as well as the disintegrating year itself—but I love to keep pushing on, filling the shorter days with more energy and motion than it seems they should be able to hold. The glutton.

  It seems astounding to me that yesterday B.J. was mucking around, up to his ankles in Texas floodwaters, pulling carpet and stacking boxes and making calls to the landlord, and so on, and that since that time he has flown halfway across the country and then had a night out on the town, then taken a train through the snowy darkness, across the northern tips of three states, and ridden up and over the summit, and has napped at my house, and is now getting out of the truck, high in the silent mountains, with no traffic out anywhere, and that we are starting up the trail, hunting our way toward the wilderness. Or in what passes for wilderness, in this day and age. What should remain wilderness, now and forever more.

  We find fresh buck tracks less than five minutes into our walk. They are huge tracks, and I recognize them from the deer that I followed all morning. The last I had seen of him, he was on the back side of the mountain; and to find his tracks all the way down here, in so short a period of time—I've only been gone a few hours—is a little unsettling, as if, after I turned to leave earlier this morning, he followed me all the way back out, as if escorting me, as if being sure that I truly was leaving after having harassed him and his herd so much.

  As with the deer that Travis and I followed a few years before, this buck's tracks are so new and fresh that we cannot be more than a few minutes behind him. He must have been standing here in the forest and heard us drive up and get out; must have heard our truck doors opening and closing, must have heard our voices.

  His tracks turn around and head back up the mountain, disappearing into the dense forest; except that now he cannot disappear, not entirely, and we follow him, disappearing ourselves into that seemingly impenetrable forest, passing through snowy fronds of cedars and slipping sideways between the upright bars of lodgepoles, laboring up the hill, invisible now to the rest of the world, and as if having entered another world, the way a key enters the gears and tumblers of any one lock, and this is what I wanted B.J. to see. My Thanksgiving is already complete.

  We hurry along behind the deer, as silent in the new snow as ghosts. Maybe the buck thinks we will not find his tracks. Maybe he will think that we are not going to follow him—and never mind that I followed him hard for four hours already, earlier this morning. As long as he does not hear us or scent us, maybe he will not know that he is prey.

  He is not running, he is only walking, and for a while, we're excited, thinking we've got the drop on him, because he's passing through some fairly open areas—places where, if we were close enough behind him, I might be able to have a shot.

  The wind is breezing from south to north, from our left to our right, and so like casters or weavers, we try to follow his tracks and yet at the same time tack northerly, to help prevent him from slipping downwind of us. We can't assume that he's just going to keep climbing straight up; and so we keep drifting to the right of his fresh tracks, trying to get out ahead of him and look back into the wind, hoping to catch a glimpse of him standing stock-still in all that timber, watching us, even if only for a couple of seconds.

  That's all we need; and scanning the forest ahead for such a sight, and reading the crisp unblemished signs of his tracks—we can still be no more than two or three minutes behind him, if even that far—we are intensely alive.

  The fantasy we have of possibly sneaking up on him undetected, as if coming upon him while he is merely out for a stroll in the woods, this fine stormy day, lasts for about six minutes. He must have heard a stick snap, perhaps, or the thumping of our hearts, or felt the heat of our living bodies radiating through the falling snow.

  His trail soon veers directly into the gnarliest tangles of lodgepole blowdown and cedar thrash available to him—ridiculous obstacles of wind-sprung root wads, and the bristling dry spires and branches of trees long-ago dead. There are those who view our forests as but compartments of agriculture, and who believe that only a tidy, upright grove of young and quickly growing trees is of use to man and wildlife; but in trying to manage for such forests, or so-called forests, the agrarians would take away yet another of the mysteries or tools that has helped craft such rare but durable individuals as the spiny-antlered old deer that is leading us confidently on this game of cat and mouse, just a hundred yards ahead of us.

  We play his game anyway. He has led us already into a black hole of blowdown where the only way o
ut would be to turn around and go back down the mountain; and so we follow him, trying to be as quiet as we can, climbing over and under and through, but unavoidably snapping little twigs as we do so, and making little slithering leafy and brushy sounds—and yet even though we know now, beyond certainty, that he knows we're following him, we persist in the myth of the stalk, as if following some extraordinarily formal code of manners.

  We continue to whisper, as if our presence—our pursuit—is still a secret; and likewise, as if obeying that same strict and formal code, up ahead of us, the deer does not panic, does not break and run but instead continues to calmly thread us deeper and deeper into the matrix of the most difficult route available to him.

  Is it a waste of a sentence to say that I know we are not going to sneak up on him—that he is playing us like a yo-yo at the end of his string, even choosing the different melodies of stick-crunch and branch-snap to send us through, as if composing some kind of tune to be played on this mountainside xylophone of sticks?

  It's wonderful, anyway. I want B.J. to see the inner workings of this deer's mind, incontrovertibly. The deer is smarter than we are, and stronger, and more graceful. Of course we want it.

  What would it look like—perhaps seen from above, or a great distance—to see that huge deer threading his way silently over blowdown, and only fifty yards ahead of us now, but so completely in control of the situation that perhaps he is even stopping from time to time to look back and listen to our earnest but awkward pursuit?

  The deer calmly evaluating the mountain around him— knowing the mountain around him, knowing each crevice and gully as well as if it were his own body, or his own mind, magnified a million-fold.