42End-of-Season Reflections

We have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among “the children of this world,” in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.

—Walter Pater

Remnants of autumn are quickly fading from view. A few snow showers already came and went and another may visit later this week. After several weeks on the road I can appreciate the comfort of the large office chair, the welcoming heat radiating from the fireplace, and the serenity that settled over the town after the bustle of tourist season. Most businesses are already closed for the winter; the large cottonwoods are bare and a few shriveled frozen tomatoes still cling to overgrown brown stalks in the garden. The winter sun hangs low in the southern sky; heavy jackets and a snow shovel wait by the back door. This is a time to unwind, to reflect, and to readjust to indoor life.

Although it is already quite chilly, the weather has so far been warmer than usual for this time of year, and backcountry routes that would normally be closed by now are still accessible. To ease the transition, I decided to spend a night on the high flanks of a volcanic plateau not too far from my home. It is a place that has become intimately familiar to me over the years—a vast progression of austere, wind-beaten, and sparsely vegetated hills and canyons where few people ever venture.

At about 9,000 feet in elevation and a temperature below freezing, I set up camp among a few hardy and tortured-looking pinyon pines and watched as every needle and blade of grass ignited with the light of the low afternoon sun for a few blissful minutes. After the sun had set, a layer of purple and lavender—the Earth’s shadow, also known as the Belt of Venus—hung above the horizon. I lit a small fire, zipped up my thick jacket, and smiled without meaning to as I took my first deep breath of cold, dry alpine air tinged with the familiar perfume of pine smoke. A couple of hours later darkness set, countless stars dotted the clear sky, and it got colder still. I unwrapped the sandwich I prepared before leaving home, opened a bottle of hearty smoked porter beer that I brought back from California, sank into my camp chair wrapped in my winter sleeping bag, and just sat there, thinking about the events of the previous weeks, listening to the quiet crackle of the fire and watching the haunting dance of the orange flames.

This is living. This, right now, is the important part that I will someday recall yearningly—this visceral experience and not a theoretical “someday, when . . .” It took risks and work and luck to get here, to embrace an existence more rewarding than any I have known before. For all the trials in the years behind me, I now get to be the one thinking deep thoughts in the blissful peace that only wilderness can offer, sitting by a campfire on a perfectly dark night on this silent and icy plateau before it disappears under the snows. A shooting star streaks across the inky heaven, a distant owl hoots, and I get to be the only human being to witness it, to participate in this singular moment in the history of this rare, remote, and fascinating ecosystem on what for most people would be an ordinary Thursday night.

I love these remote places, their moods, and their stories, more of which are revealed to me with every visit. Life adapted to these extremes of geography and weather in remarkable ways and some of them are still, relatively speaking, unaffected by human industry. Below me, at the bottom of a steep cliff and almost out of earshot, a dark stream cuts between ice-encrusted banks lined with birch and cedar trees that are invisible from anywhere beyond the steep rim of the canyon they inhabit. A few small rock flakes glisten in the light of the flames among the basalt boulders—paltry evidence of the former presence of ancient humans, members of a culture long extinct. It is obvious to me that although modern life is in many ways easier, safer, and more prosperous than theirs was, in some aspects their ways were more rewarding, more colorful and fragrant, quieter, and richer in mystery. They were people who did not know what lies beyond the mountains and oceans (if they even knew of those), let alone the nature of celestial bodies. I wish I knew what their myths were, what stories they told around their own fires, what games they played, what small pleasures they reveled in, what their language and music sounded like. Still, I am delighted in the knowledge that I get to share a small part of their experience from across the expanses of time.

I get to live a life that for most of my past I could not even imagine was possible. Between a relentless drive to keep moving (toward some things and away from others), a willingness to accept some risks for the hope of rewards I knew were worthy even if I could not always imagine how, and a degree of good fortune, my journey brought me here, tonight. I chuckle as my train of thought comes to a stop and I decide to reach for my tablet computer to read an electronic book, and I chuckle again at the still-alien realization that I now need to bring reading glasses on such trips. Bundled in several layers, I feel comfortable and warm. No other human will intrude here; not even the sound of an improbable car engine will carry this far from the lonesome rural road some 20 miles away and out of sight.

To live this life required not only figuring out the logistics, but also adopting an attitude less dependent on possessions, creature comforts, social interactions, and commercial media. It may not be for everyone, but I do not miss those things. I may be an oddity but I am more content at times like this than when enclosed by walls. Certainly, the risks are greater, but so are the rewards, and after a while it becomes obvious that this is not a coincidence—there is a clear cause and effect relationship between the two. To settle for a more common lifestyle in the name of ease just doesn’t seem worth the sacrifices. Certainly, such a life may be more comfortable, but it will also be void of some of the most profound experiences I may have within the blink of time given to me to be a conscious living being on this planet—experiences so elevated exactly because they are exceedingly difficult to reconcile into a life that is both possible and sustainable.

There is only now, and now is perfect. Later there will be the memory of perfection: not an empty, superlative-laden, wishful platitude, but a visceral memory of what this experience was like—the sensations, the scents, the sounds and silences, the immense, beautiful, and humbling poetry of it all. To live this life may be a small accomplishment, all things considered, but it is one I am proud of, and it is more than I could ever have hoped or planned for in my younger years. I am far from perfect, but in these moments I feel redeemed, and that is as close to perfection as any of us can hope to get.

I think of all the random choices I made along the way, often with unforeseen consequences; I remember times of bliss and turmoil, times when I hit the skids and when life could have taken far worse turns, leading to far worse fates, and I am deeply grateful.

I determined, deliberately, knowingly, and after much contemplation and questioning, that this is the best way I can spend my life—the greatest gift I will ever be given. It took a long time to muster the courage to live this way—decades in which I kept on going by inertia, pretending to fit, often on the cusp of giving up, and yet resisting the temptation to settle for a more mundane existence. In times such as this, when I am in wild places, awed and enraptured, I am vindicated, and I am free.

Tomorrow I will return to the house, to Sarah and to the animals, and to my office in the old shed built from logs cut decades ago not twenty miles from here, to a different kind of perfection.

Winter is coming.