A week on the Charley

[I sorely miss Alaska, so I thought I’d write about an old ranger patrol. This one took place in August of 2009.]

In December 1943, a B-24 Bomber with a four-man crew took off on a test flight from a military base in central Alaska. The plane—upon experiencing a mechanical failure—began a 300 mph nose-dive. Of the four crewmen on board, two would parachute out before the plane crashed. Of those two, only one would survive.

This patrol started out like any other: I was airsick, sweat-soaked, and scared for my life. I was sitting in the passenger seat of four-seated Cessna 180, flying low through the Yukon-Tanana Mountains in thick—almost black—forest fire smoke. It was so thick and gray that I couldn’t see anything outside. Not the ground, not the mountains, nothing. Just gray. I thought about speaking up to the pilot and suggesting we turn back, but he seemed almost serene, confident that the many instruments in front of him would safely navigate us to our landing site.

Normally, I patrolled the Gates of the Arctic National Park in the Brooks Range, but through a sort of “ranger exchange” program, I had the good fortune of spending a week on patrol in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. It was my second season as a ranger, and I was accompanied by Steve, a full time ranger who had almost 10 years of experience. Together, we’d float down the headwaters of the Charley River. This would be my last patrol as a ranger.

I spent the previous night in the town of Eagle, Alaska—where the ranger station is located. I rambled through the town, noting vintage “Palin for Governor” campaign signs, and staring in disbelief at the ruins caused by a flood that—four months before—left a fifth of the town homeless. On my walk to the airstrip, a bull moose with a droopy double chin eyed me obstinately as he masticated a mouth full of willow leaves.

When our pilot dropped us off in the preserve, we unloaded our gear, and I collected my bearings. Like a pair of squealing theater curtains, the smoke rapidly dissipated, revealing a scene that was characteristically Alaskan: green mounds of sedge grass dappled with yellow, blue, and purple flowers, all swaying gently in a light breeze. The hills were round and bulbous, sculpted into smooth rolling green blobs.

We scanned the area for human trash and then carried all our gear to the Charley—which we’d float on for the next five days. We observed that the river’s channel was awfully narrow (sometimes no wider than 15 feet), and no more than ankle-deep in other places. We were prepared, though. We had with us “packrafts”—an invention that ranks up there, in my mind, with the wheel, printing press, and rice krispie square.

The packraft is an inflatable tube—weighing only seven pounds (with the oar)—that can be inflated or deflated on backpacking trips, allowing hikers to cross lakes and rivers that they wouldn’t be able to cross otherwise.

At first, it was slow going. The packrafts would careen over if the weight of our gear wasn’t evenly distributed. But we got the hang of it quick enough. Early on, we slipped through a pool of boiling rapids, and ice water splashed all over bodies and packs. But our gear, luckily, was kept safe in dry bags, and the multi-colored airtight water suits we wore kept our underclothes perfectly dry.

We weren’t the first rangers to patrol the Charley this season. A couple months back, a ranger and a volunteer, zipping through rapids, capsized their canoe, causing one of them to be marooned on a mid-river rock for hours.

I heard multiple variations of the story, but they all ended the same way: The ranger called in for a helicopter rescue pickup. This—you must understand—is a ranger’s worst nightmare, as there’s no greater blow to a ranger’s pride than having to call in for help because of clumsy outdoorsmanship.

But there would be no disasters on this trip—I promised myself—which was a promise I made before all my patrols. While I do enjoy boyish thrills like solo mountain climbs and howling wolfishly from sheer cliffs, I was all business in my uniform, never taking unnecessary risks on the job. Plus, with Steve—a model ranger—as a partner, I knew we’d be fine.

Always sharply dressed and smoothly shaved, Steve made me feel slovenly. I loathed shaving in the field, and refused to adhere to the park’s no-beard policy. I also wore my own pair of stained hiking pants because the ranger uniform they gave me was so stiff I thought it was a safety hazard when I had to leap from boulder to boulder.

We set up camp on a gravel bar, where we could hear the river gurgle at all hours of the night. We walked up a bluff and looked down at the Charley—it slithered all the way to the horizon like a snake wrapped around the circumference of the earth. Before inspecting a game trail littered with wolf scat, we headed down for the night.

Lieutenant Leon Crane and Master Sergeant Richard Pompeo jumped out of the plane that December afternoon. In Crane’s own words: “I was in a hell of a fix. On the minus side, (1), I didn’t know where I was…. (2) The men at Ladd Field didn’t know where I was… (3) Our B-24 carried a heavy load of gasoline. I’d seen such B-24’s, heavy with gas, go up in flame. I knew the chance of any emergency equipment, such as food, guns, sleeping bags, being left in the plane was pretty slight. (4) I had no food. There might be animal life around, but I had no weapons. (5) I had no gloves and I had no sleeping bag… Temperatures have dropped to 40 and sometimes 50 below at night”

Crane would spend nine days next to a fire he built, wrapped in his parachute. He dreamt of steaks and milkshakes and lamb chops. Coming upon a few squirrels in a tree, he made a spear, slingshot, and a bow and arrows, but nothing worked. If he didn’t do something quick, Crane would starve to death.

I woke up feeling nauseous and with a throbbing headache, making me instantly regret the large meal I cooked for myself the night before: a fantastic concoction of cheddar cheese, summer sausage, corkscrew pasta, spaghetti seasoning, and a generous dollop of peanut butter. I remember feeling like I was overeating at the time, but that didn’t stop me.

I did my best to pretend I was alright, but I could no longer keep up with Steve. We stopped at every gravel bank to search for garbage or old fire pits that we liked to disassemble in hopes of maintaining the country’s pristine character. I was slow to get out of my raft, and I dragged my feet on the gravel.

Because there are no roads, trails, or facilities within the Yukon-Charley, it was unlikely that we’d come across any people, let alone signs of their visit. Apart from an old French-made fold-up chair that I regretted finding (because I now had to carry it with me the rest of the way) we might as well have been explorers on another planet.

The river was still incredibly shallow. And many times an hour we had to get out and drag our packrafts along the river bottom. Steve hit some shallow water, so I paddled ahead in the main channel. As I wound around a river bend, I spotted, in front of me, a black wolf prancing across the shallow water like a shadow without a source, its dark oily body blending into the backdrop of a dark stand of spruce trees. Clamped in its mouth was a thick, but short, bone with white and red streaks. It was walking toward me unknowingly: it didn’t see me because it didn’t expect me. I was something so foreign to it that I—despite my multi-colored water suit—might have looked like a shadow, too. As it ambled toward me, the Charley’s current was pushing me toward it. I looked for the bear spray I’d strapped to the outside of my dry bag, but when I realized I didn’t have time to reach it, I began waving my oar above my head, and casually, though loudly, yelled out, “Hey wolf!” He took a few more curious steps closer to me, but in an instant, he turned around and trotted into the woods where I wouldn’t see him again.

I looked back at Steve who gave me thumbs up. We paddled for a few more hours and set up camp on another gravel bar.

Crane, starving, took off in search of something, anything. It was a death march and he knew it: there was no way he’d come upon help in the middle of Alaska in winter. But much to his disbelief, he stumbled upon an abandoned cabin. Inside, he found bags of dried milk, cocoa powder, and raisins. He stayed there for the night, crammed some raisins into his mouth in the morning, and took off again down the frozen river. The weather became unexpectedly cold that day—around -50 degrees he estimated—and when he began losing feeling in his hands and feet, he decided to turn back to the cabin. When he got there, he slept for two straight days. He’d spend the next couple weeks eating voraciously (after finding more food in the cabin), sleeping 18 hours a day, and letting his frostbitten hands and feet heal. To complement his diet of rice, beans, and pancakes, he began hunting squirrels and ptarmigans with a .22 he found.

I was feeling much better the next morning: my strength was revived and my appetite had returned. The paddling was easy. Too easy. We didn’t have far to go, and the river became so swift that we didn’t have to paddle except to keep our packrafts aimed in the right direction. I felt my arm muscles begin to tingle—a signal that indicates to me that I haven’t been using them enough.

I wondered what I was doing out here—a thought that graced my mind on many of my patrols. We’d yet to see one group of people, and the garbage we picked up was negligible. I was overeating and under-exerting myself.

I admired the scenery, had brushes with wild animals, and was on an excursion that would have cost any other traveler thousands of dollars to put together. The Park Service had helped me get rid of my student debt, and now it was paying me enough money to fund the rest of my graduate education. I had every reason to be thankful for my wonderful job—and I was thankful—but I couldn’t help but feel a little pointless.

I love the Park Service. I think the national parks are—as the Park Service proudly calls itself—“America’s best idea.” And of course it’s necessary to have rangers in order to keep the bad guys out of parks. But I, personally, never came across any of the bad guys. I never nailed someone for illegally harvesting a moose, or throwing trash in a river. Sure, I served as a “presence” who would inhibit the bad guys from coming in, but that was a concept too abstract to satisfy me. Really, I felt like I was getting paid to have fun.

A job, of course, can and ought to be fun, but when you don’t feel like you’re making a useful product, providing a helpful service, or growing in some way, shape, or form, your work begins to feel less like work and more like a vacation that’s lasted too long. I was passionate about the parks, but my job didn’t give a chance to use that passion in a meaningful way.

I think the best kind of work is work that’s dynamic—the sort that continually makes you learn and grow and invent and adapt. It should be an art. Our work should fit us like a well-worn pair of clothes. It should be a natural extension of ourselves, uniquely shaped to be in harmony with the contours of our peculiar human qualities. We feel most useful and more prideful about our work when we are able to perform a task more efficiently and effectively than most anyone else. We feel best about our work when we know that we were made to do this.

I think that—for every individual—there’s a right way to travel, a right way to work, a right way to live. You know you’re doing it the right way when it feels right. Throughout my two seasons as a ranger, it never felt right. I always felt that I should have been working somewhere else. I felt that the best of myself wasn’t being used here; that I could be more useful; that I could play a bigger role elsewhere. Doing what—I wasn’t sure—but I was sure my place wasn’t here.

Crane, after he was fully revived, took off again, this time dragging a sled with over 130 pounds of food and gear. He heard wolves howling at night, was beaten down by a strange and incredibly powerful gust of wind called a williwaw, and, on two occassions, he fell through the ice and had to dry out all his clothes by fires he built. After more than 80 days since the plane crash, he came across a toboggan trail that led to a miner’s cabin who still resided in the country. All this time, he never knew what river he walked along until the miner told him he was on the Charley. The miner mushed him to an airstrip, and when he returned to his military base, he was swamped by his fellow soldiers, all amazed to see him alive.

I wanted to find Pompeo.

We were near the crash site of the B-24 that few people have seen except from the vantage point of a plane. While Crane made it back okay, the other guy who jumped out of the plane—Pompeo—never turned up. I knew it would be nearly impossible to find his body, but I was going to try.

Steve and I had finished our paddle down the river. We reached a gravel airstrip, next to a historic cabin, where our plane, tomorrow, would take us back to town. We strapped on light day-packs around our waist, and began our march through dense forest, over fields of tussocks, and up grassy hills. I had trouble keeping up, but only because I couldn’t stop myself from gorging the millions of blueberries at my feet.

I kept my eyes out for Pompeo. Maybe I’d find his bones in a copse of spruce trees, or in a shallow pond, I thought.

Several hours later, we arrived at the crash site. While the wings were somewhat intact, everything else was crumpled and warped, hardly giving us the impression that this was once a sophisticated and ingeniously engineered piece of technology. Beneath the body of the plane were heaps of metal detritus that made it look as if the plane released its bowels in its dying moments.

I thought of what it would be like to fall from the sky in a steel trap like this, knowing the whole time you’re going to die. Did they even have the chance to think? Did they know they were about to die? Or was conscious thought absent in their adrenaline-addled minds?

We took pictures, and walked up to a large mountain lake we’d heard about. We both stripped down to boxers and took a dip in some of the coldest water I’d ever set foot in. It was my last night as a ranger—fun, as always—but I dozed to sleep without the warmth of knowing I’d lived a day well spent.

That night, Steve heard a voice. In the middle of the night it called out, ghoulishly, “Hello, hello.” Frantically, Steve got out of his sleeping bag and tent, but saw no one outside. There was something about the voice that haunted him; he was so rattled he got on the satellite phone and called his father to make sure he was still alive.

Odds are that was his imagination, or the babblings of the Charley—though for a moment I thought, “Pompeo?”

***

Historic cabin about which I know nothing.

We found the book Alaskan Mail Order Bride by the bedside in the above cabin. I was getting a little bored with the reading material that I’d brought, so both Steve and I took turns reading it. It was, admittedly, a page-turner that I couldn’t possibly put down. A couple excerpts:

“His courage in standing his ground before the bear, gave her a new appreciation of his manliness.”

“Maggie’s red curls glowed, bright against her white pillow in the soft lamp light as Blaine penetrated her for the third time this evening.”

My ranger partner.

Taking a dip.

Spruce forest. At some point long ago there was a cabin, or a cabin-like structure here. The trees you see are unusually thick for the latitude.

A forget what this animal is called. A marmot, maybe? It barked at us for a while.

An irreligious education

I’ve been told that I’m going to hell more times than I can remember.

It’s actually been quite a while since someone has reminded me of my fiery destination, but I thought of the common refrain — which I’d heard so many times in my youth — when I visited a church last week to attend David’s holiday choir recital.

In truth, I’ve only gone to church a handful of times. I was raised by a mom who’s a non-practicing Catholic, and a dad — an uncomplicated Scotsman — who sees no reason to believe in a higher power without sufficient proof.

While religion was more or less absent from the Ilgunas household, I was surrounded by religion. The Western New York town I grew up in was a melting pot of Italians, Germans, and Polish, and almost all of my schoolmates were Lutherans and Catholics, with a few Baptists sprinkled in.

The first time I was told that I was going to hell was as a young boy when a couple of Lutheran schoolmates condemned me for how I spent my Sundays. I was confused by their disapproval. I loved my Sundays: I’d sleep in till 11 a.m.; my mom would make me and my brother waffles; and I’d idle the day away watching football or playing hockey. Not once did I think I was missing out on anything.

But when I was in the third grade, my mother — who was second-guessing her carefree approach to my religious education — sent me to a Bible camp for the summer. I remember having a fairly good time, though my bunk’s counselor kept asking me if I wanted to talk about my “bed-wetting” problem after I’d left a pair of wet swimming trunks to dry on the mattress.

Each night there’d be a service, and the pastor would tell us all about heaven and hell. We were given a fairly cartoonish characterization of the afterlife: he said we’d either spend eternity with our loved ones in heaven, or have our asses habitually branded by Satan in hell. He told us that we were going to hell if we didn’t accept Jesus into our hearts.

The pastor gave those of us who hadn’t accepted Jesus the opportunity to do so at the end of each service. The few who could be counted as heathens — myself included — were encouraged to leave their pews and endure the long, lonely walk up the aisle and onto the stage as everyone looked on. I remember thinking that I was probably the only one in the whole church who didn’t have Jesus in his heart. I wanted so much to be on that stage! Though, at the same time, I was terrified of getting up in front of everyone. On the final night of camp, another boy in my bunk — also destined for hell — asked me if I wanted to join him on the stage at our final evening service the next day.

We both nervously got up and walked up the aisle. One of the counselors met us and made us kneel down. Together we recited a passage from the Bible. And that was that. Jesus was in my heart.

I came home fervent and wild-eyed. I prayed each night, read a special “kid’s Bible,” and warned my unresponsive father about his soul’s destiny. But now that I was no longer isolated at Bible camp, I was subjected to a new kind of brainwashing: a constant stream of secular TV and hours of mind-numbing video games. I quickly forgot about Jesus, kicking him out of my heart, locking the door, turning off the lights, and rejoining my father on the couch on Sundays.

I always had friends, but I was a solitary child from a young age, coveting the time I had to myself. Between my solitary nature and my parents’ “neglect,” I was able to develop some of my own beliefs in the absence of formal religious guidance. It wasn’t long before I became skeptical about the beliefs my schoolmates had thoughtlessly adopted.

While many look down on parents who don’t provide their children with proper religious training, I couldn’t have asked for a better upbringing. I had no choice but to craft my own morality, which I based not on some dusty set of rules, but on personal observation and reflection.

Still, whenever I openly criticized religion in front of my mother, she’d castigate me and warn me that, because of my beliefs, I’ll never be able to find a “nice Christian girl.” At first, this worried me a great deal. It seemed like all the girls in my high school were religious. What was a non-Christian girl even like? I feared I’d have to one-day settle for some freak with a blue Mohawk, a face full of jingling piercings, and no discernible sexuality.

But it was just the opposite. I was quiet and sweet-hearted, and it seemed like the only girls I liked and who liked me were the diehard Christians. My first two girlfriends were very religious.

The first — a kind and gentle soul — was known to quote Biblical passages in moments of intimacy to remind herself of her vow of chastity. The second was a hardcore Baptist. I was aware of her zeal before we made our relationship official, and while our differences gave me pause for thought, I figured it would be close-minded of me to not get involved with someone solely because of her religious affiliation.

She carried in her purse a heavy, full-size Bible that affected the way she walked. We were sitting on a bench at Niawanda Park on a sunny spring day, looking over the mighty Niagara River.

“Do you see how wide this river is?” she said. “If the width of this river is eternity, this is how long of it you spend on earth.” She said this while holding her thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

“You don’t want to spend eternity in hell, do you?”

I was 19 and smitten despite our differences. We rarely brought up religion — as we knew it was a contentious subject that threatened the relationship — but occasionally she couldn’t help herself. Late one night, we were sitting in my ’87 Dodge Aries in a McDonald’s parking lot drinking chocolate milkshakes. The scene was characteristically American: fast food, a car, a panting male, and a female oblivious to the intensity of her boyfriend’s raging desires.

While I was hoping to move past the first base plate I’d been bolted to for months, she had other things in mind. She began describing Christ’s crucifixion in vivid detail, bursting into tears halfway through. I tried to console her, but she held up her Bible, announcing that me and my earthly pleasures were “obstructing her walk with God.”

“You just don’t how it feels to have Jesus inside of you,” she muttered hopelessly. It was true: I didn’t know what it felt like to have a man inside me, and I wanted to keep it that way. But Jesus, from what I knew, was a pretty cool guy, and a human being as good as any to model your life after. But for a country obsessed with Jesus — perhaps the most famous ascetic in history — I found it awfully strange with how many Christians there were, yet so few ascetics. In fact, these Jesus worshippers — with houses full of junk and hellfire on their breaths — seemed awfully un-Jesus-like. The paradox baffled me.

So began a period in which I despised Christianity, and all organized religions, really. Not only was religion restraining my sexual progress at the height of my virility, but it began to look more and more foolish. All this talk of heaven, hell, and some grandfatherly Caucasian in the sky just seemed so ridiculous.

In college, I thought more about religion and had engaging discussions with classmates. Those who still counted themselves as practitioners held far more enlightened beliefs than what I was previously exposed to. They interpreted religious texts figuratively; they respected other people’s beliefs; and they were focused more on the social benefits of a church, and less the superstitions and crazy rituals.

But when you’re surrounded by people like this, it’s easy to forget about how deluded the rest of the world is. You forget that 40% of America believes Jesus will return by 2050 and that 50% believe in angels; you forget that people believe that the world was built for man and man alone.

Religion, I thought, could go to hell.

When I moved to Coldfoot after college, my best friend Josh and I — to entertain ourselves and others — created, what we thought was, the first ever “Debaptism.” Josh and I were both baptized as babies, and we each looked with disdain at the ritual since it was carried out with neither our awareness nor consent. So we figured we could right a wrong with a ridiculous ceremony.

I spent three days planning out the ceremony and writing the script in the style of the King James Bible. I would be the Debaptiser, and Josh was to be the debaptised.

We slipped invitations under everyone’s door, decorated my room with every candle we could find, and played a CD of chanting monks as everyone got comfortable on my two twin beds that served as pews.

The ceremony was held at night, and for that whole day I didn’t let anyone see me so as to create an air of solemnity around the ceremony and mystery around the Debaptizer.

Unbeknownst to the congregation, I was standing alone in a vacant room across the hall, draped underneath a white bed sheet that functioned as a shawl. Much to my surprise, everyone who received an invitation showed up, all wearing the nicest outfits they could put together. I could hear their babble through the paper-thin, wood-paneled walls. I paced across the room, reciting my lines.

In the room where the debaptism was to be held, Josh stood in the center, surrounded by everyone else. He wore a dress shirt and tie, and held a candle (signifying nothing, really) as he awaited his purification.

One of the young women who I delegated as a “holy attendant” came rushing into my cell, warning me that the crowd — of a dozen or so — was beginning to get antsy.

“We need to start this!” she exclaimed. “They’re ready for you.”

“Good,” I said, stoically, staring straight ahead. “Thence I shall wait another five minutes.”

She gave me a confused look, and scurried back to the room to make sure everything was in order. The truth was, I was starting to get nervous. I thought it was ridiculous that I was letting myself get all worked up about an absurd ritual that I had created. But there were a lot of different religious backgrounds represented in our audience — a couple of Catholics, a Mormon, a Muslim, an atheist, as well a new-age mystic — and I certainly didn’t want to offend any of them. But it was no time for second-guessing. I had to go in.

The music and lights were abruptly turned off. I walked in with slow, powerful strides.

The room was dark and candlelit. The audience, I could tell, wasn’t sure whether to take me seriously or laugh. My holy attendant stood behind me and removed one white bed sheet, only to reveal another white bed sheet beneath. Josh was standing in the middle of the room trying to suppress a grin. My face, under my hood, was turned to the ground. Slowly, gravely, I lifted my eyes to meet Josh’s. My attendant, at this point, hit the play button on the CD, changing it to my grandiose Last of the Mohicans soundtrack.

“We gather here today,” I beamed loudly, “to renounce the forced corruption of thy childhood, beginning with thy compulsory participation in a religious sacrament, when thou wert too young to refute. (Gimme a break—I wrote this a long time ago.)

“We shall call this ritual, ‘Debaptism,’ and I welcometh thee, my son, today, here where thou hath chosen to ceremoniously discard, what was so unrighteously forced upon thee.

“From thy womb thou wert anointed in water called holy, forced into a cult superstitious in character, and branded as Christian—all against thy will and knowledge. Theretofore — confined in a fortress of antiquated concepts, captive in a dungeon where enlightenment wert disallowed from coloring thy pallor — thou wert shackled in the blinding darkness of religion.

“Baptized thou wert to walk in clouds that did not exist, told to be one with a god who was not there, and forced to continueth the very traditions that clash with basic tenets of logic, reason and nature.

“However… through education, observation, and reason, thou hath awoken to the realization that the only pearly gates thy deceased form shall pass through are those of a cemetery.

“Today I shall release thou from my lingering burden that thou hath shoulderethed for ages. Thou art here today to celebrateth a new beginning.

“Now… I shall striketh the lord from thee…”

At this point I blew out the candle in Josh’s hands. What followed was a bizarre series of rituals: more candles lit and candles blown out; Josh was forced to go down on all fours; I even slapped him across his face at one point. Finally, I poured some water over his head (that I’d obtained from the bathroom sink) to ceremonially cleanse him of his original baptism.

I told him that he’s been “purified,” and, to close the ceremony, I read this Buddhist quote:

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

The audience erupted in applause that echoed through the halls. Josh was given gifts, Mormon and Muslim came together, and we all got thoroughly soused on whiskey and Miller High Life. The Debaptism was a stunning success.

***

As I listened to David and the choir sing, I looked over the audience and felt a twinge of envy. Everyone knows each other in this room, I thought. They show up every week and shake hands. Someone will ask someone else how so and so is doing after their surgery. One family will invite another over for dinner. It reminded me of my distance from my family, and the neighborhood of man that I’ve done without all these years. I looked at some of the pretty girls singing on the stage and fantasized about what it would be like to settle down with one of them and embrace a more conventional version of the simple life.

There are of course many good things about religion: the sense of community it fosters, the sense of charity and compassion it often encourages, or the comfort it gives to the bereaved and those on their death beds. And of course I don’t really think that religion should go to hell. Anyone with a set of beliefs and morals is religious in their own way, even if those beliefs don’t align with those of a major sect.

However, the sort of religion most in our country practice seems destructive. Not only is Christianity wreaking havoc on our planet (there is a stark correlation between religiousness and climate change denial), but it smothers the individual soul. When we blindly accept the dictates of a religion, we are inhibited from living according to our own peculiar natures, from following the choreography of our consciences, and from seeking our own versions of success and happiness.

On a personal level, believing in heaven or hell or in a god or gods is pretty inconsequential. But when a whole society is deluded, the consequences can be huge. Not only does religion encourage conformity, but complacency, too: We trust hypocritical religious leaders and politicians; we place our faith in flagrantly mendacious news outlets; we don’t take our president seriously because we think he’s a terrorist. (Do I think religion is the sole factor in the crazy and destructive things our country believes in? No, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s the biggest factor.)

This, unfortunately, is how religion works in the real world.

If religion has the tendency to fashion us into conformists and prepare us to be deceived, then heresy encourages individuation and helps us defend ourselves from lies. Heresy, though, can be alienating and unsettling.

Many prefer religion because it provides us with prepackaged principles and a well-worn path. Questions don’t need to be asked, mysteries don’t need to be solved, and as long as we say our prayers, read our Bibles, deny gays equal rights, multiply, spread, and subdue the earth, we get to go to heaven.

But without the path that a religion provides, one must blaze his own. And there is, I feel, no better way to spend one’s youth than doing just that.

My return to Acorn Abbey

Because I don’t have to be on campus for the final project, I decided to move back in with David at his home called Acorn Abbey, situated in the hills and forests of Stokes County, North Carolina. From here, I’ll write my final project free of all distractions.

Stokes County—I will confidently and boldly say—is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The county, home to few humans, is densely populated with every conceivable shade and style of green: On a drive up and down a winding country road, one is sure to come across, at every turn, lush, tree-topped hills blooming like broccoli heads; or bucolic farm country, complete with crisply shaven lawns, cozy hamlets, rows of squat tobacco and stands of erect corn; or impenetrably-thick, howlingly-wild forests so leafy and lush it’s easy to forget the Sonocos and strip malls that dominated the landscape I inhabited before.

On gently-sloped fields, wind makes sandy-colored waves of wheat flail as if something were tickling the ground beneath them. If it were a different century, such might be a fitting scene for a trio of mounted and marooned native warriors to “whoop” after wide-eyed buffalo. The soil here is “clay red”—soil so dark and rich that it sometimes takes on a purple hue, as if the ground had been anointed with the blood from some ancient genocide.

Now that it’s winter, the green’s gone, and the growing season’s over with. But as any farmhand knows, there’s always work no matter the month. I have the great fortune to resume work as David’s groundskeeper, for which I will receive room and board.

The arrangement is mutually beneficial: David no longer has to do the outdoors work he loathes, and I get both the pleasures of manual labor and a setting that’ll improve my writing and benefit my productivity. And of course a couple of hermits finally have like-minded companions.

Because I intend to stay here all next semester, my vandwelling days are winding down. (Though I must make several trips to campus, so surely I have yet to sleep my last night in the Econoline.) Don’t get me wrong—I love the van, and I will miss many aspects of vandwelling. Yet I must admit that I’ve already begun enjoying some of the upgrades of conventional living. No longer must I swaddle myself with every piece of clothing imaginable to stay warm in a frozen van—because I now have a warm bed every night.

And no longer must I eat out of the same unwashed cereal bowl every morning with powdered milk (that tends to turn my feces a pale, ghostly green)—because I now enjoy David's elegantly prepared meals—often made with vegetables from our garden. Below, we are about to eat chili, green peppers, sauerkraut, homemade bread, and vegan sausages. The day before, we had beet soup, turnips, and sweet potatoes—all of which I planted in August.

David makes his own sauerkraut with locally grown cabbage. It ferments in these two German-made crocks. (You can also see his cat Lily behind one of them. She, upon my return—I’m unhappy to report—gave me a reception best described as “cool.”)

What must I do for all these luxuries? My first project was to remove all the pines from his acre of developed land—a project I accepted begrudgingly since it was difficult for me—a self-avowed treehugger -- to justify cutting down a tree for mere aesthetic reasons.

I’ve openly accused David of being a tree-racist since he has prejudices against certain species. When I casually mention the pine, he becomes uncommonly vulgar, even ogreish. He’ll begin to imagine the pines propagating, multiplying, taking over (!) his property, casting his home under a perennial shadow with their sharp, needle-like quills. They’ll pop up in his garden, destroy his lawn, and crash through his second-story windows when pretending to be swayed by the wind.

It’s then when he begins to seethe; he’ll take on a rigid, territorial disposition and cast slurs at my bushy, spiky-haired friends, as if they were a swarm of gypsies he’d caught squatting on his land and sifting through his garbage. His revulsion is so palpable that I begin to—through my alliance with the pine—feel threatened as well.

Personally, I find most any tree, pines included, quite pretty, especially when they add color to bleak winter vistas—but David can’t stand to look at them, calling them “weeds.” Hardwoods, on the other hand—like the beech, the poplar and the maple—are “noble,” he says.

I chopped away anyway since—I justified—some hardwoods would take their place in due time. And also because there may be nothing more fun than chopping down a tree. Here I am taking out a Locust tree to make room for a Persimmon tree so that it may grow and flourish—the latter of which bears fruit that’s replete with medicinal goodies.

I’m also in charge of the chickens, but they’re fairly self-sufficient; I only have to make sure that they’re fed, and that their coop gets locked up at night. The three of them, in total, produce about two eggs a day. Here’s Ruth, who looks like she’s put on some weight since summer.

None of our scrap food goes to waste. Here, the chickens are eating our leftover grits.

On the left is Chastity, and in the middle, Patience. I never knew that chickens have such distinct personalities—I figured they’d all be wired the same way. Not so with our chickens—each has a distinct character of her own.

This all sounds like a ton of work, but I’d say, on average, I’m only outside working for an hour or two a day. The rest, I spend on my scholarly pursuits inside, often in front of the fire reading, which is, for me, a pleasure almost without equal. Here I am reading Walter Harding’s biography on Thoreau, which is superb. (Robert Richardson’s bio of Thoreau—Life of the Mind—is equally good.)

Despite my aversion for accumulating a mess of things, I have some strange hoarding tendencies. One of which is my need to always have an absurd amount of books at my disposal. From the Duke library, I picked up lots of Emerson and Thoreau, three books by Thorstein Veblen, as well as a good mix of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and travel books of course. While my multi-disciplined coursework has been enlightening, I have been looking forward to going back to books that are more in accord with my particular interests.

I don’t want to say I’m done with vandwelling; I will, after all, need to spend some time on campus next semester, but my experiment is most certainly winding down. And now that I’ve finished my coursework, I enter a new phase of my “intellectual journey.”

And so begins my next endeavor, which is, like my last, overly-ambitious and certain to fail. Starting tomorrow, I will begin my final project, which I’ve decided will be a full length book. It’ll be like any good travel book, I hope: it’ll be a tale of a journey both without and within; it’ll be half about living in a van and staying out of debt, and half about traveling across the continent and getting out of debt—a journey that, more than anything, made me a vandweller “in spirit.” Somehow I hope to tie the two together in coherent fashion. If I deem it worth a damn, then maybe I’ll try to publish it.

So I suppose this blog will change in theme somewhat. It’ll be less about vandwelling and more about sustainable living, mixed in with lamentations about my anxieties as a wannabe writer, as well as some old adventures I’ve been itching to put to page. I hope you’ll come along.

[For other stories of Acorn Abbey, you can find them in my “Other Travels” section.]