Debates With the Dearly Departed

Ok...so not exactly a short story, but a fictional piece none-the-less...in honor of John Muir's 177th birthday today, I'm sharing an assignment I wrote for class : "describe the difference between the conservation and preservation mentality towards timber management."  If you're not into trees, this will bore you to tears, so no shame in clicking the "close" window now...but if you're into trees, you might find this of mild interest.  And, any true "wall flower" imagines what it would be like to hang out and speak with those admired but long in-the-grave.

Moderator: Good morning listeners, and welcome to this installation of “Debates with the Dearly Departed.”  Today’s topic: Conservations vs. Preservation (with a focus on timber management).

Muir: Do you think we could refer to it as “management of forested trees” instead of automatically referring to trees as a commodity?

Pinchot: Seriously John?  We are getting this nitpicky already?

Moderator: Of course Mr. Muir. Scratch that listeners, you heard the man.  Anyways, shaken down to the most in-a-nut-shell summary, the definitional difference between conservation and preservation of forested trees, is the difference between using them sparingly to sustain into the future and keeping forested areas in an unaltered condition.

But, there is a greater nuance to the differences.  So, to help illustrate the details of the difference, we have today in the studio two men who are by legacy (if not by name) the Founding Father’s of each school of thought in natural resource management: Gifford Pinchot and JohnMuir. 

Welcome to the show gentlemen.  To start things off, let’s hear about your definitions of your schools of thought.  Mr. Pinchot, we will always start with you on each topic, including this one.

Pinchot:  Conservation means the wise use of natural resources for the lasting good of mankind.  The Forest Service mantra when it comes to the management of trees and all natural resources is that we should be intent on achieving “the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.”  This is the foundation of conservation.

Muir:  Preservation means the protection of nature in order to keep it in its natural condition.  This is not only important for the health of the American landscapes, forests most especially, but it essential to the health of the Spirit of Man.  Because each of us “needs beauty as well as bread, places to plan in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”  However, the issue is that, while “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches and a thousands tempests and floods…He cannot save them from fools.”  And we, as the race of mankind, or too often fools in how we use and peruse our natural resources, which is why developing a preservation mentality is key for the, as Mr. Gifford said, achievement of the “greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.”

Gifford: Low blow John…

Moderator: Let’s keep the heat down gentlemen; we’re only just beginning our discussion.  But now that we have the basic definitions, let’s talk about each school of thought in the context of a few sub topics.

First: the Multiple Use & Sustained Yield Actof 1960.  This Act, as you both know, mandates that national forests be “administered for outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes.”   Does this policy collaborate or clash with your conservation and preservation?

Pinchot:  For the most part this act is in step with the mentality of conservation.  By managing forests to meet the needs of all the uses listed in the Act, trees are made available for many uses for the good of the greatest number of people in the long run.  I’d also like to mention the ecosystem management approach, which exists in close collaboration with the purpose of this act.  What I mean here is that when timber management plans are made, they must take into consideration how human interaction with forested trees will affect not only the trees but also the ecosystem over all and consider each separate part of the ecosystem individually.

Muir: This is one point that Gifford and I mostly agree upon.  This act and taking an ecological management approach is in support of the mentality of preservation as well, although sometimes there is a danger of using either to justify the over exploitation of trees.  For example, I do believe that forests should be managed to allow for recreational use, because everyone needs to “break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods” to “wash your spirit clean.”   However, there is a danger of over-emphasizing one of the multiple uses (such as trail building and trail use for recreation) over another (like watershed maintenance).  All that is to say, we just have to ensure that all uses are kept in equal balance and that will ensure the preservation of our forest trees.

Moderator: Always good to start on a point of commonality.  Next, let’s talk about the Wilderness Act of 1964 and how that fits within both conservation and preservation.  As a reminder to our listeners, the Wilderness Act established protected areas of nature to be left unchanged and undeveloped.  These “wilderness areas” are within federal land boundaries, which means that both the National Park Service (championed by Mr. Muir) and the Forest Service (championed by Mr.Pinchot) are among the organizations that manages these areas.

Pinchot: To be honest, while the Wilderness Act doesn’t directly go against conservation, it does hinder and often lose sight of the foundational principle of conservation: achieving the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.  Using timber specifically as an example to illustrate what I mean here is that the act’s narrow-sighted focus on keeping land in a “primitive” condition often creates an obstacle in managing timber resources for the common good.  Wilderness areas border right up next to national forests, which are harvested for timber products.  This makes harvest plans more complicated at times, in order to avoid making any changes to the forests “next door”, if you will, and this includes prohibiting the building of roads, which is what enables harvest to be practical and possible.  On top of that, if wilderness areas are not permitted to be thinned and if that also entails suppressing wildfires, in order to keep the land looking “natural” for the general public, then the chance of massive wildfires is increased.  These massive wildfires do very little to promote the “greatest good.”  In short – the Wilderness Act does help conservation but it also hinders it.

Muir:  The Wilderness Act was a great piece of legislation for preservation, and I am a devout supporter.  This act ensures that there are portions of land, including forested land, that are set apart as natural and untouched by man.  This not only allows visitors to access to areas of land to experience true wilderness, to get the pioneer experience of wild land that is central experience to American identity, but it also preserves the land as a sort of time capsule that exhibits what the United States originally was before we “civilized” it.  Having wilderness areas allows us to keep record of what the land should be restored to if we should find, in future decades, that the ways in which we have changed surrounding areas of land was not for the “greatest good,” as Gifford puts it.

Moderator: What do you both think of the management plans of the Sequoia and Sierra National Forests?  Do they jive with preservation and conservation in your opinion?

Pinchot:  Both plans I believe are well developed to promote the conservation of forest and timber resources for the “long run.”  If memory serves me right, the Sierra National Forest management plan states that it aims to “provide a management program reflecting a mix of activities, (and) allow use and protection of forest resources.”  It also incorporates the plans of various wilderness areas within the national forest.  All that is to say, the management plan is in line with both the Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act and the ecological management approach, which are both cooperative with conservation.

Muir:  I mostly approve of the management plans and see them as collaborative with the ideals of preservation of those forests.  Especially because these management plans take into consideration the full ecological management perspective, which will better ensure the preservation of all forest resources, as far as is possible.  I think my main issue with the management plans is that they each incorporate timber harvest plans within them, which, definitionally, are not all that supportive of preserving the forest in its natural state.  Because, in order to harvest trees, changes the forest by cutting down trees and by the building of roads, etc. to move the trees to the mill.  However, I do especially think that the Sequoia National Forest’s implementation of the “National Forest System Planning Rule,” which mandates that any forest plan revision must be both grounded in science and be open to public input, is in support of preservation tactics.

Moderator: That is a perfect segue to my final discussion topic, what is the role of public opinion, emotions, and science in the implementation of conservation or preservation methods in forest management?

Pinchot: As far as conservation goes, I believe that both public opinion and science have important roles in the creation of forest management plans, but that constructing such plans based on emotional considerations should be limited.  I think that hearing the public opinion will allow natural resource managers to have a better sense of what the “greatest number” of people see as the “greatest good.” Then, finding the science to legitimize the public demands for the use and protection of these natural resources (especially trees) creates the foundation for wise conservation plans.   The problem with making management plans based on emotions is they are often misguided and only benefit a small amount of people in the long run.  The emotional objection to cutting down trees, for example, is blind to the need to use wood products in our everyday life, to meet basic demands to benefit the human population at large.  Such people who object to timber harvest often do not realize just how much they use wood products in their everyday lives.  Of course limitations must be placed on harvesting trees for human demands, and measures taken to ensure that forests are sustained into the future, but that is the perfect balance the conservation mentality creates.

Muir:  I think all three in perfect balance is what is needed for the preservation of forested trees.  Public opinion is essential, both to show politicians the emotional importance natural resources has to the public they serve, which will help guide them in making forest management plans, but also as a means to balance out the often cold and limited perspective of bare-bones science.  Science, however, is important because as Gifford mentioned already, management plans based too purely on emotion are dangerous, and I will add that they are dangerous to the preservation of trees.  For example, if emotion without science were used to make management plans, public desire to have fresh firewood for a family camping experience and in a family home would result in the harvesting of trees without limits, and could lead to completely deforesting certain areas.  On the other side of things, if science alone were used, say from the engineering perspective, then forested trees might be cut down without thorough thought to make room for a reservoir under the justification that scientific projections predict that the amount of water made available to the local population justifies the cutting down of so many trees.  The emotional input here, will balance out decisions made solely on science, which might otherwise rape the land of its wildness, and find an alternative solution instead.  Going into the crafting of forest management plans with a preservationist perspective will put an equal emphasis on including all three elements, and will lead to the wisest management plan in the end.

Moderator: Well gentlemen, that is all the time we have today.  Thank you for rolling over in your graves to make an appearance on the show today.  Tune in next week listeners when we speak with Henry David Thoreau and Theodore Roosevelet on what makes for a true “Wilderness Man.”

References

http://www.nps.gov/klgo/learn/education/classrooms/conservation-vs-preservation.htm

http://www.vpr.net/episode/32782/muir-vs-pinchot/

http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/people/Pinchot/Pinchot.aspx

http://www.fs.fed.us/greatestgood/

http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/west/musy.htm

http://www.foresthistory.org/ASPNET/policy/Wilderness/1964_Wilderness.aspx

http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/sequoia/landmanagement/planning/?cid=stelprdb5404227

http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5373730.pdf

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_muir.html

Quagmire

Henry had been in this place before.  Or had he just been there for a long time?  He couldn’t be sure. The place looked comfortably familiar, intimate to him like the contours of his hand. But at the same time, the place felt inhospitable, a place one could not quite settle into.

While he got his bearings, he shifted the weight of his pack from the inside to the outside of the shoulders by sliding the straps ever-so-slightly away from his neck.  His curved fingers rested there, jammed between the strapped fabric and his protruding collar bone.  He wondered how long he’d been standing there alone.

He had followed someone to this spot, hadn’t he? He must have because he couldn’t recall the way.  But there was no one around. There was hardly any sound actually, just a periodic whisper of a breeze.

His voice felt oddly out of use.  When he tried to speak a questioning, “hello?” to recall to life anyone who might be in the area, the sound was deflated, atrophied, and weak.  Somehow not his own.  No one answered.  He cleared his throat, and tried again, this time louder.  Still nothing.  Not even an echo of his own shout.

His pack was heavy, so he concluded he couldn’t have journeying long if his supplies were still in such ample stock.  Yet, his legs felt like they might give-way at any moment.  He determined he better get a move on, but wasn’t sure where to move on to.  And, the idea of shrugging off the weight, and sitting down for a while to rest, or even laying down to sleep was so alluring.  Impossibly tempting.  The waring choices of sitting or moving raged with equal ferocity inside him, and he ended up just standing as he had been instead.  The internal argument felt a bit of deja vu.

As he glanced around he marveled at how neutral everything was here.  The ground was the most non-notable sort of brown, barely a color but color enough to distinguish itself from nothingness. 

The atmosphere was neither hot nor cold, so he was perfectly comfortable in his pocket-adorned hiking shorts and breathable button up shirt, but could have also added another layer if he had a notion to.  Maybe he would later.  Or maybe he wouldn’t. 

It wasn’t dark, but it also wasn’t exactly bright either.  Somehow the amount of light was just enough to see, but not quite enough to reveal all that was around. 

There was not any noise but there was not silence, there was some sort of something there that was playing around his ear drums, he just didn’t seem to be able to define it to himself nor find the direction of its origin.  He couldn’t resolve if that should disturb him or not. 

The weight of his pack began to pull mercilessly on his neck, so he let his chin fall to his chest to stretch it out.  Looking down at his feet he realized that he was standing 3 inches deep in some sort of mud.  How had he not noticed that before?  It wasn’t entirely unpleasant to be so, he mused, and his socks didn’t feel sodden yet. 

Catching a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle of murky water on the surface of the mud, he saw, an old man. He was, he was? Old?!

He didn’t remember being old, but now that he mentioned it, he felt ancient, past due, too long exposed.  But, he didn’t remember aging, he seemed to have memory of youth, an age he could not articulate, but certainly not white haired or wrinkled or worn.

The illumination of his age felt like being shook awake.  But he had started this whole process of observation sometime before, so who or what had stirred him to life? Or, perhaps the better inquiry : what had submerged him into unconsciousness?

There was no answer to that at the moment, so he tried to get his bearings instead.  There were no footprints leading to his spot or away from his spot in the mud.  This seemed to suggest he might have been here for a while, and had been here alone for a while, because the murky puddles had sufficient time to swallow up all evidence of direction. 

As he looked far off, the horizon seemed empty of any notable features.  He couldn’t decide if that was a pleasant discovery or not.  He also couldn’t decide if the emptiness was void in fact or whether the features of the landscape were shrouded in a thick fog.  He squinted into the distance, but this did nothing to clarify his vision.

His shoes were some sort of canvas sneaker.  And, it seemed strange to him that he would be wearing shoes too large for him to fill.  Why would he put on shoes that didn’t fit properly? Feet shrink with age, perhaps that was it.  As he contemplated how he was going to get out of here  (wherever ‘here’ was) he realized that within a few steps the interior of the shoe would be waterlogged and blisters inescapable.  He would have to take them off.

But he couldn’t crouch down to untie the shoes with his pack still on.  But, to take off the pack would mean laying it in the mud and thus permitting the muck about him to despoil its contents.  He would need the contents for the journey.  Right? 

He couldn’t sit down anywhere with the pack still on because there was nothing but sludge around him.  And he realized that the mud was intensifying, growing in depth, and he was beginning to sink.

In sudden decisiveness that comes with a wave of panic, he let his pack fall to the ground.  The absence of the weight felt so impossibly good that he paused for a moment in wry appreciate before he remembered that he was sinking in a quagmire and needed to untie his shoes so he could move away from this spot.

No sooner had he gotten both feet out of the shoes, they were swallowed up by the bog, certainly unretrievable.  His pack was sinking fast too and he realized he was now up to his knees in the black sludge around. 

He began to walk, or rather slog, through the sea of softness around him.  The first steps were on the edge of futile.  He told himself to move and his legs tried but failed.  But after several repeated efforts he successfully advanced a fraction of a centimeter.  He rejoiced aloud.  There was nothing to do but simply keep trying to move in the same direction he’d recklessly chosen.  That direction was as good as any other, it was better than standing still.

An uncertain amount of time passed, and after reflecting on his past, first step he realized that the movements were getting easier.  He could move an inch or so now with each step, and the mud was only ankle high now.  He looked back at where he’d come, but he couldn’t see where his shoes and pack had sunk and when he looked down at his feet he realized that in the idleness he had become to sink once more.

But he paused for a hair-of-a-second longer to marvel at his reflection.  He was no longer white haired, but now salt and pepper.  And he had fewer wrinkles around his eyes.  He wanted a closer look because surely he couldn’t be aging in reverse?  But, he had to move on, he was beginning to sink at a rapid rate.

The first steps were nearly impossible when get began, as they were before.  But this time the progress to greater speed and ease seemed to happen more quickly.  One step in front of the other. One step. One step. One step.

That was all the thought of for hours, perhaps days.  And, without warning, he nearly stumbled and fell.  He was on solid ground.  Not only that, but there was a cautious carpet of grass beneath his bare feet now, a bright hue of green that proclaimed it as freshly sprouted. 

The past lesson of "pausing leads to sinking" kept him moving but he stared at the ground as he walked.  Amazed at the green, amazed at the treasure of solid ground.  Without deciding to, he realized he was following a stream.  When he hedge a glance ahead toward’s the streams direction, his heart nearly stopped at the joy of seeing what unfolded in front of him: a gently sloping valley, lush in pine trees, the stream leading into the grove.  And far beyond, but not discouragingly far, was a mountain peak.  How had he not seen it before back in the mud?  He had looked that way, hadn’t he?

Motion was somehow all that mattered, and the stream the only friend he needed, and the pine grove and peak beyond the only call he need respond to.  He caught his reflection in the stream as he walked alongside it, and he was. He was? Young?!  His hair was a ashen blond and not a wrinkle to be found around his eyes.  But, he had been old. Had he not been old?

He didn’t paused to ponder this.  He began to run towards the pine trees, to the mountain peak.  He seemed to have too much energy to contain.  He didn’t stop to contemplate what kind of threatening creatures might live in the forest.  He didn’t stop to worry about how he would summit the peak barefoot or how he would survive the night without a sleeping bag, without a pack of food.   He still did not remember where he’d come from, and he hardly knew where he was going.  But he was running to get there.

Bikes

10:30 pm on a Tuesday night. Miserable re-runs on the tele. A half eaten burger and long-gone-cold fries. Making a living.  Living?

The camp grew quiet quite some time ago.  Summer season is in full swing and all the bloody Lord of the Rings fans are making their mass exodus to Matamata.  Most funnel through this camp on the way.  There are not that many route alternatives in North Island to get anywhere, even to most popular of attractions.

Oliver has always had mixed feelings about summer (Kiwi summer that is, which is winter for all you Northern Hemisphere folks).  On the one hand, summer brings tourists, and tourists mean money.  On the other hand, summer brings tourists, and tourist mean young people.

Oliver isn’t old. But he’s not young either. So, he’s not anything. He’s not sure when he stopped being young. When does ‘old’ being?  The past two decades have felt like hardly anything at all. He has settled into a familiar numbness in the camouflage of routine that is inherent to all who run their own business in the tourism industry.  

“Tourism industry” over glamorizes it a bit I suppose.  Oliver runs a ‘holiday park’ on the North Island, a bit west of the famed ‘Hobbiton.’  When he was young, the shine and sheen of running your own business was the dream.  It was an exciting and lucrative prospect at the start.  Ever day was an adventure: new and interesting people from all over the world came through, trekking and camping from Auckland down to Wellington and on off to South Island. People his age. People with a bright sense of future, people on a high of uncertain tomorrows. His people.

Now caught somewhere between young and old, he didn’t feel like much a tribesmen anymore.  People came and went through his motor park, same as always, same as before, but, in a light too bright to avoid looking at, he could not help but see himself as an alien among the adventurous.

Earlier on that Tuesday night, Oliver is preparing the month’s deposit for the bank in the security office that doubles as a registration point for campers and triples as his own quarters.  The interior is splattered with postcards sent by campers who had stayed a night but continued on to Fiji, Australia, Thailand and beyond.  He has a small bookshelf filled with travel guides of various exotic locations, tabbed with neon post-it notes with notations for the trips he’s planned for the future.  He has a small pile of camping gear in the corner: forgotten possessions of those who ventured onward without double-checking their packs prior to departure.  Right behind the desk, Oliver has put a map up with pins of all the places he plans to go soon.  Soon.

A solo-traveling and pristinely-suntanned Californian wanders in to give his payslip for the night. He has all the golden glow of “fresh out of Uni” and the swagger of “I’m traveling alone and make new friends with ease.”  The Californian makes pleasant small talk, as Californians do, while Oliver processes his paperwork.

The Californian’s eyes glisten as he takes in the collection postcards and examines the titles of the travel books. And, all in a breath, he rattles out in excitement,  “Dude! Look at all these books!  Lonely Planet is the best, don’t you think? So! What is the wildest place you’ve trekked in? ”

“Um, well...I’ve done some hikes a few hours south of here that were rather memorable...and not without a decent challenge,” he says reflexively.

The Californian looks a little deflated. Glancing down at the pile of camping gear and back at Oliver expectantly.

“Yeah, but the better hikes are in South Island, right?”  

Oliver sputters, “Um, well yes...so I hear.  I, uh, haven’t made it there myself yet.”

An awkward silence filled the room. The Californian looks both surprised and sad, “You mean you’ve never been to South Island?  How long have you lived here man?”

“Well…always, actually,” Oliver replies painfully.

He begins to feel hot and with a sweaty palm he hands the Californian his change.  “Enjoy your stay at “Camp Just-off-the-Motorway,” he says with a tone of finality to end the conversation.

The Californian leaves, slumped in the disappointment of not making a friend with ease in this case.  Oliver stews in the thickening silence of his office.  He can’t get the Californian’s questions out of his head.  It was harmless, but it has shed a blinding light on his life.  He had never gone anywhere.

He spins around on his swivel chair and looks at all the postcards.  Pretty pictures of pretty places seen by others.  He looks at the worn bindings of the travel books, full of dog-eared pages of his thoughtful intentions for a “soon” that never came. The map’s pins have a noticeable layer of dust and long strands of spider’s webs - signs that the “want to see” locations have not been updated for quite sometime and that none of the pins have been removed for “having seen” either.  And - the pile of camping gear. As he pilfers through it he realizes he doesn’t know what half of the stuff is or what it would be used for.

He is undeniably no longer a tribesmen.

He never was one of the tribe.

Suddenly, it is too much.  Oliver, not normally a volatile man, stands up from his chair and rips all the postcards from the wall.  But, taking them down is not enough, he rips each into tiny pieces, destroying the glossy, non-representative image of each.  The books are next.  He flips through the pages, removing each post-it note, flinging them in the air like confetti, and the books land with periodic thuds on the floor.  The camping gear is gathered in a heap and tossed into a trash bag.  Finally that idiotic map.  He uproots it from the wall in one motion, tearing it in half, pins scattering across the room, a few pricking him spitefully as they went.

In the stillness following this massacre of dreams,  his office is transformed into a hollow, haunted grave.  All blank walls and swirling dust.  He can’t stomach it.  He grabs his keys and flees the scene of the crime for BurgerFuel.

10:30 pm on a Tuesday night. Miserable re-runs on the tele. A half eaten burger and long-gone-cold fries.

A small compact car pulls down the drive.  It idles near Oliver’s office, which has its door closed tight: he doesn’t want to talk to anymore guests to night.  The car continues on, stopping at the communal bathroom.  

Four silhouettes emerge, outlined by the bathrooms fluorescent glow and go inside.  Their cheerful sounds have a sickening, positive echo. They are high off of the travel trill.

They know nothing.

Oliver is up in a second, flashlight in hand, knocking his uneaten fries to floor to join the rest of the mess there.  He half runs out of his office towards the bathrooms.

He spots one of them.

“This ain’t for free mate,” he said furiously. (Waiting costs too much.)

It’s a girl.  Librarian glasses and hair piled up in a mess under a ball cap. A rat could be sleeping in such disarray.

“Get on your bikes and leave!” he almost screamed. (Please! Take me with you.)

The girl looks confused, they came in a car and don’t have any bikes.   

“What are you doing here?!” he demands, acidly at the girl. (Why have I stayed here?)

She is so taken aback by his anger that she stutters out the first thing that comes to mind, “we were...we were just using the bathroom, but…”

Before she could explain more, Oliver cuts her off.

“But, nothing.  Go on - get!” (Make me leave this place too.)

A boy emerges from the shadows to stand beside her, hand out in a gesture of supplication with the intent to calm.  He begins a polite apology, but Oliver is in no mood for polite. He is lost in a fever.

Oliver brings out his iPhone to snap a picture of their license. (All I ever do is look at images of a life I want).

He glares at the two as they call out to their travel mates and begin moving towards the car doors to leave.  

The girl looks back at him. Her eyes are wounds that he inflicted.  But there is pity there too.  Like she sympathizes with him or something. They become a challenge, a calling, a conviction that his anger is his own doing.

She doesn’t say anything, she just starts the car when the other three companions are in and drives slowly off into the night.

Oliver stood there listening to the sound of tire on gravel until there was no sound of anything at all.

He looks down at his phone with the image of the license plate and deletes it.

***

The next morning Oliver isn’t in his office. No note. No notice.  The floor is still a mess of shredded postcards, discarded books, and aggressive thumbtacks.

But the black trash bag with the camping gear is notably missing.  And one of the travel books too.

Wild Woods Wallace

Ankle deep in black mud, with blisters screaming on both heels, and too many mosquito bites to count.  No - this was not the Golden State of Claire’s dreams.

Claire fantasized about living in California for as long as she could remember. She loved her cosmopolitan life in Paris, but California was sunshine, miles of beaches, and year-round warm weather appropriate for tank tops, flip-flops, and jean cut offs. It had become her personal Shangri-la.

She decided to take the plunge and move to California for a year before she started her Uni-years, living with family friends. Despite her concentrated effort to savor every moment, the year sped by all too quickly just the same.  And she still had one last unchecked item on her “California bucket list.”

While living in the States, it had become increasingly evident that the marker of the true American experience was roughing it in the backwoods.  As a young nation, the United States didn’t have all the historic wealth that France did, but it did have mountains of natural beauty caged within the expansive national parks system.  Claire was desperate to finish up her Californian adventure with a backpacking trip.

As luck would have it, she had stumbled into a group of friends who ventured into the back-country yearly, and their trip that year was to take place a week before her departure back to France.  She eagerly accepted their invitation to come along.

She was not unacquainted with hiking.  She knew it required a certain sort of mental toughness, demanded a severing from hygiene standards for the week of no-bathrooms-to-be-had dirt trails.  It was an embrace of continuous discomfort, and she welcomed it. And she was in the proper physical stamina to spend all day on her feet with a pack, switchbacking to higher altitude.  So none of those challenges were the cause of the travesties she faced.

Good fortune died a sudden and brutal death about a mile into the first day of the trip.  That year had been an uncommonly rainy, which begot a route more closely resembling a bog from Dante’s Divine Comedy than an Ansel Adam paradise. Its obscurity, while ideal in the sense that few other hikers were about, resulted in a path that was at best difficult to follow, and more often impossible to find due to blankets of debris and fallen trees.

However, this muddy mire was not loathed by all: mosquitoes, apparently, find it to be Utopia and flock to it in plague-like hoards.

Claire quickly discovered that she was found to be most appetizing by these blood-sucking pests.   While everyone in her hiking group suffered from attacks of the winged assailants, Claire was bombarded relentlessly.  And, to add fuel to the flame of torture, she was semi allergic to mosquitoes, making each bite turn into a welt.

Since the trail was wet, and her hiking boots borrowed, Claire was additionally afflicted with blisters that grew in area to a degree most impressive and horrifying.  But when you are 12 miles into a looped trail in the back-country, there is simply no turning back: you must simply press on. 

Any single one of these circumstances would warrant constant verbal complains.  However, Claire kept a positive facade, and anyone looking at her would have thought she was spending a day at the Happiest Place on Earth rather than the most hopeless.

As she passed the hiking hours, Claire concluded that Americans, or at least this group of Americans, must surely be masochists.  As she limped along, she wondered in the quiet recesses of her thoughts whether she should have come on this trip at all.  She seemed to be suffering more than the others with the bites and blisters, and she couldn’t fight off her cognitive whispers that perhaps this was all a massive mistake.

When the group rolled into camp on the final evening, the circumstances were taking their toll on her.  She could not remember a time in her life she had felt this low, miserable, and exhausted.  Although surrounded by her friends, she felt unbearably lonely in the sense of helplessness grown stronger by days of constant discomfort and battles with biting bugs.  She desperately missed Paris.

She took a walk on her own toward the lake nearby, so as not to let the others see her impending breakdown, swatting the buzzing, winged demons from her ears as she shuffled off.  And it was then that she saw them.

Through the gallery of thinly-trunked pine trees, their needles filtering the honey-evening light, came a caravan of seven horsemen complete with boots, plaid shirts, Wrangle jeans, and cowboy hats.

Cowboys! 

They emerged out of the forest glen as if a mirage and Claire stood, star-struck. A true deer-in-the-headlights.

“Well, hello there little lady.  What do ya call yurself?”

Claire found herself tongue-tied. She was meeting real cowboys in the sap-smelling woods of the Californian Sierras. She was living out the Wild West.  She was Annie Oakley.

The man who had asked for her name was white-haired, with a whisky-rounded-belly and a wind-wrinkled face, tanned by long hours of riding in the sun. His hands were worn from a lifetime of hard work, and trail dust accented all this clothes.  He slipped off his mustang and seated himself on a camp chair as if it were a throne.  Surely this must be the king of the backwoods.

In a husky voice, full of weathered wisdom, and a twinkle in his eye, he continued his one-way conversation, “My name is W…W…W: Wild Woods Wallace.”

Claire suddenly realized she’d been standing speechless, jaw ajar for the fast few minutes.

“I’m...um...I’m Claire,” she managed at last.

“Well Claire, you travelin’ these parts alone? Or do you have yurself some friends?”

WWW invited Claire and her company to steaks and a jug of whisky passed around the the campfire.  She even got a lesson in square dancing as the a blanket of stars snuffed out the sun.

When she crawled into her sleeping bag that night, she did not notice her blisters, her increasing number of mosquito bites, or her sore muscles. She was simply in a glow of the unanticipated marvel of meeting cowboys in the mountains, miles away from urban comfort.  She fell asleep with the satisfied smirk of realizing that no one at home would ever believe her.

The following week, her bites finally grown smaller and the blisters nearly healed, she boarded a plane bound for home.  She was excited to return to Paris, anticipating the beginning of her university years, and looking forward to sharing her year abroad with her friends.  As the plane ascended and California grew small and then invisible below the clouds, Claire mused over the revelation that it took the worst of circumstances to bring her into the most memorable of experiences. 

Maybe Wild Woods Wallace had simply been her guardian angel in a cowboy disguise.

A Cold Hand to Hold

It is that kind of November morning that transforms individual breaths into a communal fog that continually and systematically replenishes itself.  At 7:15am, in a grey-skied Geneva, Switzerland, the train platform is flooded with patrons shifting their weight from foot to foot in a futile attempt to stay warm.  The pea-coated crowd looks down the track in eager anticipation for the train enroute for Lyon to arrive.  If it arrives.

Most of the bleary-eyed ticket holders attempted to leave Geneva the previous evening, but were denied due to an unanticipated train-employee strike that canceled locomotives for the day.  Several furrow-browed individuals hyperbolize on the personal inconvenience they experienced as a result, spinning a narrative akin to a Shakespearean tragedy.  But the train does arrive, to the convenience of all, and it's whistle hushes the complaints.

The crowd impatiently boards the train, filling every seat.  An older man with a full head of white, well-trimmed hair asks a slightly anxious looking girl if the seat next to her is taken.  She doesn't speak any French, but the man doesn't know that.  But, she nods in admission since the question is communicated clear enough through hand motions, and immediately returns her attention to a book held open on her lap.  The man takes his seat near the window as the train races from the station, as if in an attempt to make up for lost time.

The older gentleman notices her fingers and cheeks are flushed red, and comments instinctually on the observations.  She looks up from her half-read page in confusion and stammers in whispered English, "I'm sorry...I...I don't speak any French," shamed by her incompetence.

He doesn't speak much English, but he strains back through his cobwebbed memories in a desperate attempt to dust off some vocabulary from his grammar school lessons.  With gusto and a bit of chivalrous flair, he utters: "Hands...cold?"

She smiles at his obvious effort to communicate and nods.  They know there was nothing else to say in the absence of common language, so they simply settle into an agreed silence as the train clacks on the rails in the steady rhythm of kilometers passing by.

Later in the ride, the man looks over at the young girl again, and is unexpectantly swept into a bitter-sweet recollection of his own daughter.  She had once looked very much like this young woman seated next to him, but he had failed her as a single father.  His daughter had fallen into a bad way, due to the influence of friends and the absence of a mother's intuition, and had overdosed on some drug he couldn't remember the name of.  He enforced solitude sense then, as penance for outliving his progeny.

Suddenly the ache of melancholy floods him, and he doesn't see a stranger, he sees his daughter, innocent and healthy - and alive - seated beside him.  Reflexively, he reaches out to hold her hand, as if he could trap the memory of a better time in place between their palms.

The contrast of temperatures and textures - his warm, work-callused hand and her half-frozen, work-ignorant hand becomes a tangible thing.  The young girl starts and looks up confused, but the old man isn't looking at her.  He is lost in nostalgia, staring out the window, as individual tears danced down his emotion-worn face.

The girl at first thinks to pull her hand away from his gentle grasp, but then she sees his damp cheek, noting the glisten of a tear's wayward trail painted there, and she changes her mind.  She longs to say something sympathetic, but she doesn't speak any French.

Instead, she speaks in the only language they have in common: a simple holding of hands.  Even a cold hand can be warming in the attempt of wordless comfort.  So they remain just so, without a word, for the rest of the train ride.

The Lyon station sign glides past the window, and as the girl is sorry to get up, to break the enchantment of silent sympathy .  The man releases her hand at her first stirring, and their eyes meet in a brief farewell as she steps off the train, in France at last.

The train pulls away, carrying the old man on to a destination unknown to the girl.  She ponders on the trajectory of loneliness, which weaves you into the unknown lives of others without warning.  And in that moment, she discovers loneliness as the necessary condition to speak the deepest language of comfort, all without any words at all.

Then, quite suddenly, her hands are cold again.