I was at Big Bend for two eight-month seasons, loving every moment of it, and would have been happy to return for a third season. But when I received a call from Denali National Park offering me a job for the following summer, there was no question where I would go next. I would go fulfill my first life goal!
My favorite activity as a seasonal naturalist in Denali National Park was leading Discovery Hikes. Discovery Hikes were half-day ranger-led hikes. I’d introduce people to the joy of cross-country hiking by taking them into areas I had never been and just roam in search of beauty and wonder. One day I lead an enthusiastic group of 10-15 hikers up through a steep, mountain meadow on the flank of Cathedral Mountain. I have never been up there; I don’t know what lies ahead. We get to the top to discover that “our top” is detached from the higher peaks of Cathedral. To get over to them, we will have to cross a hundred-foot long, one-foot wide ridge flanked with steep slopes of scree sliding a thousand feet down on either side.
Some slopes of rotten rock crumble into rock fragments faster than erosion can carry them away. If these fragments are an inch or two across, they are called scree. Scree can pile up and cover a mountain slope as steeply as it can, a steepness that is called the Angle of Repose. (Different materials have different angles of repose.) If the slope is less than that angle, more scree can pile up on top of it, creating a steeper slope with a steeper angle. If the scree becomes steeper than the angle of repose, it will slump to a lower angle. The angle of repose is a dynamic equilibrium balanced between building up and slumping down.
Link to image: https://matthewstokes.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/img_0673.jpg
Nothing grows on a scree slope because (a) snowmelt quickly sinks through the loose rocks too far below the reach of any roots and (b) the unstable slope slides slowly downslope over time, shredding any roots. So a scree slope appears bare, steep, and slide-prone – hostile. However, if we want to reach the true summit of Cathedral Mountain, we have to cross that ridge – so without hesitation I stride buoyantly out across the ridgeline. About halfway across, I look back to check on my group. They are all huddled back before the ridge; none dared step onto it. “Oh,” I call back, “you’re afraid of falling off, aren’t you?” They nod. Dharma Bums comes flooding back to mind.
My brother had left me a copy of Dharma Bums by Jack Keroauc during my senior year of high school. Most of the book was depressing urban drunkenness devoid of appeal. But in the midst of that, Japhy Ryder (an alias Kerouac uses for the poet Gary Snyder) takes Kerouac mountaineering in the Sierras. They camp the first night on a tucked-snug granite ledge overlooking the world.
“Up out of the orange glow of our fire you could see immense systems of uncountable stars, either as individual blazers, or in low Venus droppers, or vast Milky Ways incommensurate with human understanding, all cold, blue, silver, but our food and our fire was pink and goodies.”
Snyder brews tea and later, when the stars appear, pulls out a star map and they look at the stars.
“As I came back our orange fire casting its glow on the big rock, and Japhy kneeling and peering up at the sky, and all of it ten thousand feet above the gnashing world, was a picture of peace and good sense.”
Those words created a picture of an experience I wanted to have. I wanted to camp high in the mountains beneath the Milky Way and look up at the constellations in the mountain-dark sky and know them. Therefore, I needed to learn my constellations. So I went down to the library and checked out a star book. I took it outside at night and there were the brighter stars outlining the major constellations of that season. I looked forward to future seasons with their constellations to see and learn. In May, I took my first true love walking in the rhododendron gardens late one night after a movie and there I first saw Vega, brilliant, rising in the east.
I had always loved astronomy but it suddenly felt as accessible as the sky at night and the books on the public library shelf. I checked some out, started reading them, realized that I was reading college textbooks and that I was teaching myself; I didn’t need a teacher. That was a profound lesson: I can do much of this on my own.
At the end of my high school senior year, I registered for my freshman classes at college. English Literature and European History were required, but I could choose the other two, so I signed up for Calculus and German. A few weeks later, I realized my selection of classes was just continuing the same path one was supposed to follow through high school in order to get into college. But now I would be in college; I can make my own choice now. I didn’t really like German. Why should I keep taking it? “What are the choices I really have? What would I really want to learn about?” The moment I asked that, I knew one answer. Astronomy! The college had astronomy classes with real telescopes. I switched from German to astronomy.
My enthusiasm for astronomy powered me through the introductory astronomy class, and the next year I was the professor’s teaching assistant for that course. I gave planetarium shows and supervised the night-time observations with a couple of 8” telescopes. Four years later, when I applied to the National Park Service, I got hired partly because they were looking for someone who could give star talks within Big Bend’s dark, clear skies.
The day after the star map, Kerouac and Snyder hike upward and reach the final summit slope in the evening. They are clambering up the long final scree slope when fear of falling overcomes Kerouac. He stops and huddles against the mountain while Snyder continues on. Later, Kerouac hears Snyder’s wild yodeling from on top but continues hugging the mountain.
“Then suddenly everything was just like jazz: it happened in one insane second or so: I looked up and saw Japhy running down the mountain in huge twenty-foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running, then taking another long crazy yelling yodelaying sail down the sides of the world and in that flash I realized it’s impossible to fall off mountains you fool and with a yodel of my own I suddenly got up and began running down the mountain after him doing exactly the same huge leaps, the same fantastic runs and jumps, . . “
I remember this story as I look at my frightened group and realize I have the opportunity to be, for these people, what Snyder was for Kerouac. I joyously exclaim, “This is a scree slope. You can’t fall off a scree slope.” and I leap off the ridgetop as far as I can and land upright 10 yards farther down with the scree sliding a foot as it absorbs my impact. “It’s fun! It’s like a big sand dune!” I shout and they all begin jumping off, scrambling back up, leaping farther and farther, laughing and shouting in the ecstasy of the wilderness embraced. Then we casually ramble across that now totally-easy ridge, dump the scree out of our shoes, and continue to the summit above.
I feel myself within the presence of a delightful mystery. The exultancy of Kerouac’s story had led me to star maps, which led me into astronomy, which had helped me get hired into the National Park Service. I owed a lot to that story. And now I had been able to pass that exultancy on. I have no idea of what effect, if any, jumping off that ridge had on the life paths of those who were with me. But just the awareness of the possible disproportionate impact that resides, unforeseen, within each human interaction… We have the opportunity to relay gifts from the past into the future. This awareness forms the heart of Axe Handles, a wonderful poem by Gary Snyder. “How we go on.”