Wolf Mountain Man

Wolf Mountain Man

By ZL



















1.

He lived there alone. He’d lived in the mountains for years now. Companionship was rare. He ate what he could glean from his surroundings, was an expert on wild foods, herbs, plants. He could hunt with hand-made weapons, but preferred options outside the realm of killing. Greens, roots, berries, nuts, acorns, fruit made up the majority of his diet. The absurdity of eating another species’ eggs, sucking at the teat of another species for milk were exposed in their morbid absurdity from his vantage-point away from grocery suppliers and factory farms, so he’d given up such sources of nutrition eons ago.

He wasn’t previously so alone. Even from within society’s jealous embrace, though, he’d begun to doubt the dogmas central to civilization. He’d begun, when his daughter was born, to reconsider many of the normal avenues to appearing to be a “good parent” and “provider”, to being a financial and externally-apparent “success”… He’d started reading the writings of Gandhi, then the late-life writings of Leo Tolstoy (which had profoundly influenced Gandhi, rather few know), as well as Thoreau, Emerson, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Scott and Helen Nearing—writers who zeroed-in on the practical ramifications of living conscientiously, of living in close contact with the Land, with Wilderness, with Wildness—of living directly in accordance with one’s principles, with the principle of doing no harm to the people and species and ecosystems surrounding us all. Modern-day writers, writers highly-informed as to the degree of harm done to the planet in the past century and a half of exponential human “progress”—William R. Catton’s seminal Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, Derrick Jensen’s unforgettable, gripping, devastating A Language Older Than Words, through his later writings including Endgame, Volume I and II, John Zerzan’s primitivist anarchist writing, Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael and several other books, Bill Mollison’s Permaculture and the concepts underlying it—these and many other writers had a great effect on Derek’s thinking when he hit his early thirties.

At that time, still functioning within the norms of society, he was a teacher in public high school. He taught music and English to students mildly interested in the subjects, somewhat interested in him—he’d been an actor as well, so he had a certain facility with the “performance” of being an engaging teacher. He lived and taught in inner-city Brooklyn then, had watched the planes hit the Towers from the windows of his classroom—his daughter had been conceived soon afterward—and the doubts about conventional societal goals began quickly to coagulate, to settle, to harden in the veins of his mind.

He’d needed to get out. Out of the city, away from conventional expectations, from dependency on the monolithic systems defining a city, not knowing where your food comes from, who’s growing it, how, not wanting to guess how many trees were felled to provide the year’s Sunday Times, Village Voice, toilet paper and printer paper (or how much pollution floats in the air to provide the plastics encasing nearly anything bought, to consume, play with, compute on, on and on…). He’d needed to get out.

Then the unthinkable occurred. An accident—his wife, his daughter, eight months old, in a gypsy cab hurtling through Brooklyn to a Mommy & Me session at the Tea Lounge. The driver had lived, barely. As well as the addict behind the wheel of the SUV that had plowed into the car.

And that was it. He’d spun off, quit the teaching job, never looked back.

As soon as the double-funeral was complete, he’d moved into the cabin in the Sierra Nevadas which had once been (still was, legally) a mining claim originated during the California Gold Rush. A community (if you could call it that) which was once a bustling mining town called Rich Bar, due to the preponderance of gold found on the shores of the Feather River just below where the railroad tracks now still run freight day and night. But, the gold being all-but-completely mined out, and nothing but true Wilderness all around, very few live there these days. Most who’ve lived there in the past century have, one by one, died-off, leaving relatives to use their defunct cabins as summer cottages, or try unsuccessfully to sell.

This was where Derek chose to stay, year-round, after the accident. He’d done maintenance on the family’s main cabin (formerly a railroad section-master’s cabin), and various odd-jobs and tutoring work for what far-flung neighbors he could reach and who needed such help, and he’d stayed in the upstairs loft-bedroom of the hexagonal cabin built by a former year-round lodger and maintenance provider his stepfather had known, on a sliver of property he also owned a bit up the railroad tracks from the main cabin.

Winter in the Sierras is cold and dark—especially in the location of the hexagonal cabin—called the “Hex” for obvious reasons—built in the crook of a ravine where the winter sun only shone for a smidgen of hours each frozen winter day. Plenty of firewood is everywhere, so plentiful one rarely needs to fell a tree to glean some—fallen trees and large branches abound all around—and the work of chopping wood and hiking through the snow-covered trails, following animal tracks, kept Derek active and warm and distracted each day, as he delved deep into mourning, studied reams of books on survival skills and indigenous building techniques and harvesting of wild foods and on and on. He read about Buddhism, Native American belief systems, Gnostic “mystical” Christianity which thrived and spread in the era before Catholicism became an official state religion under Constantine and the successive Popes. He continued to read what might be considered “environmental manifestos”, and became more and more convinced that modern-day lifestyles and normal wants and perceived needs of human beings were dangerously destructive to the stability of ecosystems planet-wide—even to the continued existence of the human species itself.

He had seen, understood, and pondered these things before, from within his “normal” life and existence—and he’d wished he’d had the principle, the intellectual and physical stamina, the persuasive talent, to move himself and his family into an entirely different mode of living.

Now his family had been wiped away from his life, from existence. The grieving knew no end, the memories haunted daily, no matter how different his life had become, no matter how many days, weeks, months passed. The seasons became warmer. Summer arrived, and his mother and stepfather, his sister and her husband and two children, arrived for a family vacation get-together. Derek joined them—even managed to laugh somewhat, unearthed glimpses of his former happy-go-lucky persona—enjoyed swimming and campfires and downed a few beers and some home-brewed wine… but he slept apart, at the Hex, and fell into a frightening silence (frightening to his alarmed, helpless relatives, especially the kids, who he could barely play with without tearing-up) at random intervals, frequently for over an hour at a time, right in front of them.

This had become the texture of his life. It was hard. Its primary, near-only emotions were intense, dark, deeply sad—or fiercely angry at a world of humans so self-obsessed and consumerist that they seemed to be eating whole what they seemed to assume was a limitless planet, a limitless “resource” to exploit and use, to deforest and pollute, however made them more comfortable in the moment. Convenience and appetite were the only concerns, it seemed, and appetite was constantly increased by an unlimited stream of glossy advertising and propaganda. The fuel of this endless feeding-cycle, what made the exponential increase in planet-eating possible over the past century-plus, was oil. So wars in the Middle East were inevitable, massive exploitation of oil-rich lands (and demonizing of their governments) in Africa, Central and South America—all of these things made sense to Derek on the face of them, even though he rarely “consumed” news now, away from the fray. Everything he heard confirmed what he knew, what he saw, what saddened him to his core about the human predicament. But his sadness over his own devastating loss always eclipsed this larger-scale grief, and highlighted the other emotion it stirred in him: anger.

It was largely the burning, all-consuming anger which caused him to seek a refuge in Buddhism, in Gandhi’s and Tolstoy’s and Thich Nhat Hahn’s writings on nonviolence, in the nature-worshipping and nature-appreciating aspects of so many indigenous religious worldviews. He felt so helpless in the midst of his rage, so paralyzed by sadness at his own and the planet’s plight, that Buddhist meditation and indigenous appreciation of the wilderness he now surrounded himself with, were the most positive and peace-giving activities he could reach for to survive, within.

As he embraced the nonviolent philosophies underlying, as he saw it, all religions, he also began to study martial arts, particularly Aikido and Tai Chi. He respected the aspects of these arts which emphasized, not attack and conquest, but the use of an opponent’s physical and attacking energy to thwart their own attempts at such conquest. He began to see in this practice the possibility of facing an opponent—whether an individual, a creature, a group, or even an entire corporation or industry—without harming or attempting to conquer or kill them, but neither backing down nor being defeated by their aggression or strength. He began to see that the greatest strength of all lies in being unconquerable, without attempting to conquer or eliminate a perceived enemy—but not to stand down, not to give in, not to stand back from your principles, nor be subdued by an opponents strategy or stealth.

He became extremely fit, with the combination of many-day-long excursions throughout the Sierras, working out by climbing, hiking, jogging up and down mountain passes, and practicing martial arts on his own, regularly, daily. Daily meditation kept him focused yet tranquil, and completely centered in mindfulness. His diet of wild foods, which he could identify everywhere he roamed, and was able collect during fall in quantities sufficient to last him easily until the following spring, kept him highly fortified with excellent nutrition. His hearing and vision improved, his reflexes grew sharp and intuitive. He seemed to be growing younger, he often noticed to himself.

Life wasn’t all bad—not at all.






2.

He lived there alone, still, years later.

His home base, the Sierra Nevadas—the Rich Bar Hex cabin on the Feather River was still a place to lay his head, close to his heart—though he roamed further, frequently, especially during the warmer months.

He’d hike deep into, and through, the mountains, months at a time. He’d come down somewhere, shower and trim his feral beard, then hitchhike to a mountain-system further south (Mexico, the Andes even), further north (Canada, Alaska)—then trek back up. Upstream, in the mountains, was where he felt whole, himself, comfortable in the silence he maintained near-always.

Books became less frequent companions. He kept crucial volumes, especially practical ones on wild foods and medicinal plants—but even such as these were rarely necessary, as he’d internalized their contents as they applied to his life, already. Other books, books for fun or facts or spiritual insight, he found less and less relevant. Like with the practical tomes, he’d absorbed what he found of value, and his life was about practicing the wisdom he’d gleaned, or simply enjoying the text of the wilderness around him, boundless, everywhere. Human words and writing weren’t needed to entertain himself, or verify any belief. Of course, he took absolutely no books on his treks—and only minimal supplies in his day-backpack.

He had no tent, or tarp. He’d stopped bringing them along years ago, as he’d learned so many quick, effective natural building techniques based on indigenous nomadic peoples’ ways, and combined his own insights and techniques learned from daily trial-and-error. In any mountainous environment, he could effect a rainproof shelter for himself, fully-camouflaged in most cases, in under a half an hour—significantly less if necessary.

He had no fear of wild animals. Bears were astonishing to him, among the closest friends he’d ever made. Mountain lions, coyotes and wolves presented the need for caution—but stealth was their primary weapon (and that’s saying a lot, considering their sharp teeth and claws, strength and speed, not to mention sense of smell), and Derek had learned enough about stealth himself that they had a run for their money out-wiling him. When he knew he was in their territory (and his instincts had become sharply-honed for this), he’d frequently create a sleeping spot for himself high in a tree, in a high cliff or ravine outcropping, smearing pine sap or some other nearby strong scent all over himself to mask his smell. When hiking, he’d know one was nearby stalking him—and he’d make an exciting game of it, hunting the predator, confusing it, sending it down false trails or surprising it in a wrestling embrace as it passed. Sometimes he’d make temporary friends with such a potential-foe; they made a good type of friend for his mode, as, like him, they were ultimately loners, wild, not interested in extended or lifelong attachments outside their pack or species.

He did, on the other hand, learn to fear and approach with caution whenever a human was in his vicinity. When he stumbled upon a logging operation, or a massive dam intentionally-clogging a wild stretch of river, he found it extremely difficult to keep his nonviolent ethos intact. He knew, especially in the era of the “War on Terror” (or whatever they found it politically-correct to call it in later years), that environmentalists who took any action whatsoever in a direct way to slow down the “progress” of planet-rape, “resource extraction”—ecosystem-destruction by whatever name—were labeled “eco-terrorists” and monitored closely by the Feds and Intelligence Services, the Forestry Service and corporate henchmen of many stripes. If a person merely participated in an environmental-activist protest, or signed-up for any number of such activist organizations online, that person was likely on a list, possibly watched, monitored, email and/or phone calls tapped, suspicion raised. The author of this book is probably now on such a list, if he wasn’t already. ; )

Derek certainly knew he was nothing resembling a terrorist. He certainly wouldn’t, and didn’t, harm anyone—virtually any creature, for that matter. He did, though, see that there was sometimes an opportunity, far from witnesses and what most Americans would consider the “security” of familiar suburbanity—to inhibit the destructive behaviors of individuals, small groups—and sometimes even of the large-scale operations which routinely did incalculable damage to the forests and mountains he roamed and loved, and which he alongside the animals sharing the mountains knew were, in fact, neighborhoods—ecosystems, areas which supported myriad life forms through their very uninterrupted existence.

When insensitive—frequently drunk, often armed—humans lumbered into an area of pristine forest, more often than not they committed random, vandalistic, senseless—if committed against fellow humans, it might even be considered insane—violence to the forest and mountains around them. Carving and spray-painting crude statements onto rocks, logs, the earth itself was the least of the violence and ugliness routinely perpetrated. Shooting randomly at small birds, animals, into streams, through underbrush, was another favorite, commonplace offense. Again—small in overall damage, but purposeless, crude, and wasteful—and made ugly shocking ear-splitting rackets which could be heard echoing for miles through the mountains. For Derek, this was a pet-peeve, to put it mildly.

It was against just such a small group of drunken hunters that Derek first conceived, and executed, a technique of inspiring fear to drive out the intruders. His beard at the time was already long and mangy, his clothing, hands and feet browned with earth. He filled in with mud the spaces on his face not covered with hair, used fresh mud to further muss and color and spaz his hair, until it was sticking straight out from his face and scalp in all directions, and the only break from the dark earthen brown color on his body were his bright piercing green eyes surrounded by their whites, and the pink of his open mouth. He accentuated this feature by purposely slicing a small slit into his lip, and letting the blood pulse into his mouth and drip in a trickle down to his chin.

When he appeared suddenly behind one of the hunters as he separated from the group to take a leak, Derek opened his mouth and eyes wide, growling like he’d heard the last wolf he’d encountered doing while playing with a fellow wolf-cub—a guttural-sounding growl which had sounded so playful and joyous when he’d seen them mock-fighting to the mock-death, but which clearly scared the beJesus out of the utterly ruffled hunter, especially when he witnessed the blood-red of Derek’s bloody open mouth, fumbled for his rifle, and in an instantaneous single gesture, Derek had forcibly removed the firearm, popped it open to remove the bullets, and thrown it far into the nearby thicket. The hunter relieved himself on the spot into his still-zipped jeans, attempted to scream but only managed a strangled gurgle, and Derek touched him firmly in a spot that, though not harming him in the least, rendered the fear-traumatized man unconscious.

There were three others. They had heard or sensed nothing of their companion’s travails, as they were lost in drunken banter and a contest to try to shoot a small boulder down from its perch atop the nearby ravine’s upper lip. An exceptionally stupid form of sport, as the boulder crouched precariously over a sheer drop, likely to the point of inevitability to land on the lower collection of rocks, aggregated during a previous season’s landslide, twenty feet further down, and restart the said landslide, directly toward the possibly brain-damaged hunters themselves.

Within moments, one of the morons succeeded. Sure enough, the boulder began its fall. Just as the three dumbfounded hunters braced themselves for the sound of its crash upon the landslid boulders below, Derek took his moment, and leapt into view just above and behind the men, howling at full throat, piercing, fierce, straight upward. The three little pigfaced men didn’t know where to look, what to fear more, where to move. Boulders crashed down the mountain directly toward them, and a howling wild man with a wide-open, blood-dripping mouth approached from behind. The genius (relatively speaking) of the trio saw an opening to their left, back the way they had come, and began running full-speed in that direction. The other two immediately followed suit, all three dropping their guns in the delirium and cacophony, running and screaming wildly, forgetting entirely their fourth compadre lying unconscious in the bushes nearby.

* * * *

When he awoke half an hour later, the lone non-gunman snapped bolt-upright, eyes wide, calling the names not even worth mentioning with an anxious fear bordering on instability. Derek, behind a nearby tree, needed only release another of the low guttural growls from his earlier encounter with this man, and the man flew on jello legs down the hunting trail behind his absent fellows. He fell frequently, looked back as nervously and frantic as the victim in a slasher horror film, and scrambled back to his feet just as quickly, whine-crying for his equally lily-livered companions as he ran and tumbled yet again—and so on until he was finally out of sight and sound.

Derek laughed to himself, barely. The case was too tragic, absurd, and far too common, to induce more than a token release of mirth.

But it planted a seed, an idea… a strategy for future encounters—even encounters which he engineered, and executed entirely on purpose, known in-advance.


















3.

Back in his home region, affecting his semi-civilized costume (beard trimmed reasonably, laundered t-shirt, plaid or denim button-up, jeans or carpenter’s dungarees), Derek stepped-up the frequency of his handyman work for a time. Just long enough to store up some funds for his idea. He spent a good deal of time at the local library, logging hours on its computer’s internet, determining locations up and down the Sierras and Cascades where timber operations were actively occurring. He’d determined to widen his scope beyond the limits of California, Oregon and Washington at some point, as he knew (and the knowledge pained him physically) that deforestation was occurring at far greater rates of permanent devastation in many other regions of the planet—but he’d originated in northern California, and determined to start his operations within the limits of his own threshold.

His research drew his attention to a protest (“terrorist”?) action planned in an old-growth redwood forest in Oregon, which was scheduled for cutting in a month. A handful of protesters were planning to take up residence, for as long as necessary, within the topmost branches of a few of the trees scheduled for termination.

A month—he’d have time to complete his purchases with the money he’d been saving up, and still be able to hike most of the distance from northern California to the Oregon forest in question. He decided to hitchhike the first leg, just to make sure he’d have plenty of time—he wanted to get to the location early anyway, as he knew the protesters, as well as several of the loggers, would, to scout out the specific area and location the drama was likely to unfold.

He had to purchase a slightly larger backpack than he usually carried, as he was bringing supplies, and some food for the portions of the journey when he was away from trusted sources of wild food.

* * * *

Once he arrived in the mountainous region which was his destination, a week early as planned, he spent the majority of that week testing his new equipment, practicing.

Using the newly-procured ninja tree-climbing claws and clawed boots, as well as the collapsible three-pronged grappling-hook with its thin, strong cord-rope, Derek got to work mastering the equipment. He climbed a redwood to its topmost branches—easy enough for him anyway, as he’d been free-hand climbing trees and cliffs in the mountains for years already, all of his muscles fluent and fluid in performance, silent yet swift—and he tried his first, outrageous self-test. Like spider-man, he flung the grappling hook high and wide, careening across the void between the treetop he occupied, and the next beside it, twenty feet away. The hook spanned across just the branch he’d intended, close to the trunk, spun round the branch and snapped into place—and he leapt, wildly, foolhardy, yet perfectly calm and focused, his body relaxed yet supple, held into place by a flexible pulley-system which could loosen or tighten his line at will—and he spun around the neighboring treetop’s girth one-half time, grasping a branch ten feet lower, spinning around it once, then slowly lowering himself to a comfortable squat on the branch just below.

He pressed a remote switch at his belt, and a signal caused the grappling-hook to retract its four talons. Another button pressed, and the cord was yanked and rapidly re-collected into a spring-loaded spool on his belt.

He had two of these grappling-hook units, so he could fling one ahead to his next destination while the other was re-spooling. The pulley-friction system allowed him to permit unspooling to whatever length he wanted, slowing quickly and without rope burn or other strain or pain, as he willed.

He flung the next grappling hook to a lower branch on a tree nearby (nearby still meaning almost twenty feet away, over a vertigo-inducing hundred-plus foot drop to the forest floor; Derek ignored the distance down, focused on the flight of the grappling hook). The hook spun with a brief whizzing hiss around just the branch he’d intended, snapped into a firm claw’s grip. His leap this time went fully left of the tree itself, as the branch span was getting wider lower down, and he needed to follow a course over ten feet wide of the tree’s trunk in order to avoid a collision with the needles and cones bristling at the edge of the tree’s outer perimeter. In order to land, he needed to slide, almost horizontal, between two layers of branches, brushing by a curtain of redwood needles until he was nestled amongst the tree’s interior branches, utterly obscured from view to any outside. He grasped a branch near enough to the trunk to be strong, far enough that it was supple and flexible; his body spun corkscrew-style and landed lengthwise atop the branch he’d grasped. He grabbed a neighboring branch for stability, but otherwise did not move, his body straight, in-line with the branch’s shape, only slightly larger—utterly invisible to anyone seeking his whereabouts, even if they were (unlikely) within the same tree or looking up from underneath. Two quick button-pushes at his belt, and the grappling hook again retracted, spun into the belt spool.

He continued to practice. Lower-down in the trees, the climbing claws allowed him to scamper easily and fluidly up, down, and around a tree’s trunk. Redwood bark has a soft give to it, yet a strength, which made claws particularly easy to use, and quick to master.

With a week to practice, the practice soon took on the distinct pallor of straight-up play. The more fluid, confident and certain Derek became in his motions and the accuracy of his intentions, the faster he could move through the trees, from tree to tree, reminding himself gleefully of precisely the sort of play he used to ogle for hours it seemed at the monkeys playing in the San Francisco Zoo when he was a kid. Having since learned many distasteful things about zoos generally, he still couldn’t shake the entrenched, vivid memories of the glee that shown within him, mesmerized, whenever watching the monkeys swinging, from branch to branch, quickly, playfully, fluidly, fully alive. Though he’d now wish for these animals freedom from their captivity, as a child he’d wanted nothing more, in all his childhood experiences and longings, than to be able to fly through the cages with those monkeys. He’d rather swing around with them in an environment like this, or their native tropical forests, now. He was living-out the joy of that childhood fantasy—and it was exactly as thrilling and fantastic as it had appeared when watching the monkeys.