Chapter 12. Pan-American Highway (Yucatan to Alaska)

After a long Christmas vacation it seemed the circle I'd made needed only a slant through it to form the Greek letter "", for philos or love of the land. The Pan-American Highway would do, from Mexico to Alaska. But first in the spring there was a Canadian friend attending a convention in Washington, D.C. I set out to see her and the famous cherry trees. My sister took me as far as Thomasville, Georgia. Not a happy farewell; it was raining and she cried.

Camped on a dry hummock near Waycross at the edge of Okefenokee Swamp I somehow lost fifty dollars out of a watch pocket. This converted me to traveler's checks. In South Carolina a lift was offered in a pickup with a big black dog. The driver explained that he was a commercial river-fisherman, that panthers came right up to his camps but would draw back in fear of a dog.

Another day as night fell I found an atavistic bed up in a huge live oak where leaves had filled the crotch formed by branches themselves big as ordinary trees. No fire, a stretched tarp as windbreak completed my arboreal camp.

In North Carolina as Cape Hatteras neared I grew eager to see the wild horses missed two years before. A ride was offered by a family who sympathized with my desire. The guy said we'd see those horses come hell or high water. But we reached the ferry to leave Okracoke Island and somehow had missed them.

That was disappointing; he must have meant: come hell or high water or a stampede across the road. And to go backwards is ungodly. But I left their car to walk back a few miles. There were the wild horses finally, a quarter mile off the road, munching peacefully in the rain. They minded their equine business, needing neither loan nor safe deposit, their harness to earth more vital. No Wyoming mustang or Iceland pony could have so filled my heart.

A pedestrian's more deliberate plod also gives a chance to chat. The Okracokers, descendants of shipwrecked mariners, who speak somewhat like the people of Newfoundland, claim the U.S. government cheated them over land and horses when Cape Hatteras National Seashore was created. None of them seemed to be moon-cussers, and I was too polite to ask.

On into Virginia the rides must have come faster: all I remember is walking the Richmond highway where American armies fought each other, and finding my first beechnuts alongside. In the nation's capitol I was in time to see my friend but too early for cherry blooms. Perhaps we heard the organ in Washington Cathedral; it's always in season. Parting is the worst part of journeying; put it behind your mind.

The Pan-American highway was next, to start for me in Mexico's Territory of Quintana Roo. By train this time to Miami, I arrived a day late for Mexicana Airline's flight to Cozumel. But the plane was a day and half late so we got along fine, especially when they put me up in the plush airport motel to atone for inconvenience.

Cozumel, the island off Yucatan Peninsula where Cortez landed, is famous now for shells. Arriving there, I immediately broke a resolution to beware of Mexican water by accepting a flavored ice from a child. The mainland ferry boat had a choppy passage across to a chalk-white road where the honest tourists bearded a bus, whereas I began to put one foot in front of the other. It would he a long way to Alaska.

Noon camp was in a roadside quarry under a thatched shade, with water from a shallow well dug by the workmen. Then farm trucks began to offer short lifts. Some of them asked a small payment at ride's end, which I was glad to make as soon as I figured out what was wanted. One took me past the ruins of Uxmal because my Spanish wasn't equal to asking off. You could tell just from the rock fences seen by the road that these people were descendants of superb masons. Then came a long ride to Mèrida in the State of Yucatan, with a midnight stop for caldo, soup.

At dawn in the city I tried unsuccessfully for a better map, charta, mapa; one helpful soul took me high into a tower where he proudly unearthed a sea chart of the Gulf of Mexico. Away from Mèrida a captain of tax police offered a lift to an inspection station where I was to wait until his men got me onto one of the trucks they checked.

The nearby school let out and kids crowded around; we exchanged language lessons by pointing. Then with giggles the session became trilingual as they taught me a few words of Mayan. It trills, like birdsong. Chee'-king , ear.

At Campeche I met the rare American; we strolled about in the soft evening among people having their social hour on the city square. I told a young lady that the flower in her hair was pretty, in broken Italian as much as Spanish. But she understood, loosened the flower and gave me half. When I walked on, into the State of Tabasco, I saw men with knapsacks and long rifles. I was told that these hunters were the world's best shots; their single-loaders had to get meat the first time.

Once a commercial bus pulled over. Surprised, I asked, "Quanto , señor?" (How much?) He answered, "Nada." (Nothing.) His passengers, grinning from ear to ear, had put him up to it. Farther on, I needed to cash a traveler's check. In the town bank a toddling boy cried when he saw my beard, hiding his face in mother's skirt while his sisters laughed. I didn't feel much like a conquistador.

April was hot; in the interior, cattle were dying by the thousands. I tried to give up this journey in Vera Cruz, shaving off the beard, and walking up and down the gang planks of ships to look for a cool job out of Mexico. In two weeks I met many mates and captains and acquired an international taste in coffee, but got no job. One ship, a black Finn, was so cleanly beautiful Iād have worked on it for nothing.

In Vera Cruz I got sick, not on water hut on beer, the only safe drink in Mexico. Down with pubs, up with bakeries; their pastry did me nothing but good. On a trolley there was a Mexican prince of hippies with an uncontrollable monkey. He had an American friend who was afraid to go to Mexico City alone on the bus to pick up her children's welfare check. My maritime career wasn't flourishing; I agreed to protect her one-way from the fiends. As I gave up giving up, the heat wave broke.

In Mexico City's university suburb of Coyoacan I stayed with a high school English teacher, my bed in the rooftop laundry room, mizzenmast to cool clipper sheets. The teacher's quiet daughter also spoke English; her son hadn't learned. When I asked, rudely, why, she translated his answer back to me, "Because I'm a donkey."

This boy tried to teach me Spanish but I was slow, a donkey. All I remember is his pointing out Hoopitair in an astronomy book. But it was a lesson in patriotism to see his face light up at a museum portrait of heroic students standing off an invasion of North Americans under General Pershing.

From their house I once started downtown by bus to visit the famed Anthropological Museum. Speaking of it to girls on the bus I said it so poorly in Spanish that they laughed outright. This crushed me, since Mexicans are almost invariably very polite and well-mannered. With no more heart for museums I got off at the next stop. Mexico City was too big for my comfort, anyway; I left soon after.

A trucker gave a lift and spent an hour drilling me on how to hitchhike in Mexico: a shrill whistle accompanied by a sweeping circular motion of arm and hand meaning, I suppose, "Rev' it up and let's go." I couldn't explain to him that my not thumbing was principle instead of ignorance. If a man has room, of course he'll offer a walker a ride.

When the trucker turned off I walked on by moonlight, until something loomed ahead like a cloud. As I got closer it became a great tree much used by cows for shade. But not casual use. Somehow a vital bond had grown between them and the tree. They gave worshipful dung which it used to grow to heaven. In a Gothic direction pointed their bovine cathedral.

Everyone knows Mexico is infested with bandits. My brothers and sisters warned me, but I never saw any. I did have one encounter, not a Mexican, but an American, not a bandit, but a confidence man. He wore a shiny new Naval Captain's uniform and drove a shiny new Willys jeep.

Of course I trusted him; I trust a mosquito until it bites me. He dropped me at a bathhouse, which I sorely needed, after borrowing most of my Mexican money to buy new tires for his new jeep. By the time I was clean I knew I'd been cleaned. Spending the rest of my pesos in a wild taxi ride to one police station after another didn't help matters. That bird left me low (I had a little more in U.S. traveler's checks), but the rides started coming faster, and it was enough.

One hot day I met a blond-bearded horseman, John Popham, riding from Texas to Argentina. He asked me to share a camp; since he didn't need new horseshoes, I agreed. At a ranch his excellent Spanish and letters of recommendation from the Quarter Horse Association, which had furnished his mounts in sponsoring the ride, gained us shelter under a portico.

A supper was hospitably sent out; the rider and I swapped stories into the night until a shot was heard. He guessed bandits had taken out the guard and handed me one of the several guns he carried by permit of Mexico's president. We tensely waited, but sleep got us before the bandits; in the morning it turned out the guard had shot at a coyote. The sun was warm on our farewell, both glad to have met another journeyer, brother of the road.

In San Luis Potosi I spoke to a policeman, friend of the horseman. He arranged hotel accommodation for a few days in exchange for English lessons, for which he never showed up. While there I went to a poetry reading.

At the foot of the hard-faced woman
Crouches an ancient
Arranging her roses
While in the hall
A passionate young man
Recites Lorca
To an illiterate gringo
And two of the pueblo.
No bell sounds
But a sale is made.
The ancient counts her pesos.
The hand of the young man shakes.

The reader and another university student criticized their government (a presidential election was in progress) for harsh suppression of dissent. When I left in a cool evening one of them guided me out of town, saying, "If we walked alone in the night, bandits would shoot us. But Jesus Christ walks with you." "Haysoo Creest" is how he said it.

Next morning the policeman caught up on his motorcycle to say good-bye. After shaking hands, he flagged me a ride on a passing truck. I realized that the English lessons had been made up to prevent my embarrassment at accepting charity.

The Chihuahuan desert was hot and food prices doubled as I approached the border at Cuidad Juarez-El Paso. Amazed at the perfunctory customs inspection, I was later told that they knew who had dope because the sellers make a double profit by informing.

In the United States I headed for Gila Wilderness (first such area set aside, in the thirties by the Forest Service). The trail crossed its cool creek many times, making a delightful contrast with the desert roads behind. Under a shady rock dozed a rattler thick as my arm, first one seen on this trip.

In the Gila there were cliff dwellings to putter among, with their magnificent views and no grass to cut. But the Old Ones didn't stay; all lives have their rigor. One day at noon as I swung my pack off to rest, a black bear ran down the trail toward me. I half started for a tree, but when the bear saw me he ran even faster back in the other direction. If the third baseman and I chase him down, who will make the tag?

Out of the forest I walked through lands of the Zuni, who bake bread outside in hive-like ovens. On Sandia Mountain a spring blizzard came before I got up. At the summit, tram operators directed me to an abandoned tower with windows out, where blowing snow dampened my sleeping bag until the wind mercifully died. That was leaving the desert a little too far behind.

In Santa Fe the post office was closed for the weekend, leaving me without enough money for both food and lodging. I asked the police for a cell; they took me to Father George's Center, run by the counterculture. Instead of grace, Om was said, and I heard a brave Star Spangled Banner played on the violin, but most of my fellow hippies didn't seem happy. Perhaps it costs more than one expects to swim against the current.

Equipment makers in this mile-and-a-half-high city offered a sleeping bag made entirely of foam, in return for a test report. But I had to return it-too bulky for my climber's rucksack. When their vice president heard Iād be going into a part of Colorado's San Juan Mountains that he'd long wanted to visit, we agreed to meet at Taos and go together, with his secretary and six year old son.

North of Santa Fe in Pecos Wilderness I heard the elk's clear bugle, although it wasn't fall. High Truchas Peak went easy enough, once the obscure start of its way up was found. Descending, I wondered if the Taos Pueblo would give permission to hike around Blue Lake, won back from the U.S. in a unique court case that returned Indian land instead of paying for it. Better not even ask, since the lake is their sacred area.

From Taos I called the vice president; he came for me, and we headed for Durango by car. At a cafe enroute his secretary, who had a way with dogs, had her hand mangled by one while petting it. After it was stitched up by a doctor we went on to Durango where a narrow-gauge train left next morning for Silverton.

We got off the train near a footbridge over the Animas River, packing up to Chicago Basin which is close to three of Colorado's fourteen-thousand foot mountains. He climbed Windom with me before they returned to Santa Fe. Some Explorer Scouts accompanied me up Eolus, but Sunlight I climbed alone. At the top was a steep granite block which I quickly scrambled up before I could lose nerve. A grand peak, it was the last of Colorado's fifty-two big ones for me.

Around a campfire, his little boy listening wide-eyed, the vice president had told how he and another climber had been chased off a California peak once by a mountain lion. Not attacked, just snarled at enough so they got the message. A brave big cat, I thought. If he felt that way, why hadn't he, like Dante's lion, kept them from ascending in the first place?

After descent of Sunlight I walked on, alone again, to the mining town of Creede to buy groceries. Then back into the mountains I climbed.

On Hunchback Pass while napping I sensed something near, opening my eyes to see two curious mule deer looking me over. They bounded, but not in all-out panic; from a knoll heads and shoulders protruded as they gazed some more at the odd rock in a yellow parka.

Where Pole Creek meets Bear Creek to form the Rio Grande there was room for a camp on the pebble strewn spit of land between creeks. How would it be, I daydreamed, from this beginning to flow with the flyer's fluency through every meadow and canyon to its final union with the Gulf of Mexico?

In La Garita Wilderness I heard for the first time the eerie, chilling sound of big cats screaming, like a terrified woman but not having to stop for breath as she would. Nothing scares me outdoors, but this camp was nearly surrounded anyway by standing young trees and dead branches; why not finish fortifying it with more poles and brush, leaving only a fireplace in front?

After a sound sleep I broke camp and proceeded in the morning to get thoroughly lost, walking for miles in the classic circle back to a vantage point above what looked suspiciously like the valley of my last night's camp. One of the hardest things I've ever done was to make myself believe the compass and my eyes, give up for the day, and descend to the old camp. But the cougars were quiet this second night.

Next morning I found a way out, along a trail meeting the last of the gunslingers, with a big forty-four strapped to his waist. I had an impulse to quickdraw my ice axe against him but conquered it. Maybe the gun was his fortified camp.

Out on the road Chicanos gave me lifts to Denver where friends opened champagne for my fortieth birthday. Then my son joined me. They drove us to Rabbit Ears Pass near Steamboat Springs where we walked a long ridge into Mount Zirkel Wilderness.

There we found sheep, which are a mixed curse in the wilderness. They stink, but the Basque sheepherders are interesting to try to talk to. A little French, a little Spanish, and a lot of hands. Their coffee is rich with canned milk.

Out of the wilderness, on Wyoming roads enough rides were offered to get us to Lander where we took a cheap hotel room, flipping a coin to see who slept on the floor. Supplies were bought for two weeks of wild country to Dubois, but we weren't allowed to shoot pool since my son was too young to be in the bar.

With sixty and fifty pound loads we struggled along the trail into Popo Agie Primitive Area. It was a good time to be in the Wind River Range, no matter that the trout weren't taking our salmon eggs. My best fishing was ever in a sardine can. After debating whether high Warbonnet really looked like one (I was accused of romanticism), we climbed over a pass into Bridger Wilderness.

Here there were many lakes and many people, Sierra Clubbers disdaining the local horsemen, and packers in turn criticizing city groups as too large. We met wilderness riders who gave a big fish fry and sheltered us under canvas for the night They used salmon eggs too, but held the pole right.

Over high Indian Pass onto a glacier the way led. I was glad to find a route with only small crevasses down my son's first glacier. Below there was a labyrinth of fierce milky streams to get over, sometimes on logs jammed between their banks. Lower still, by large lakes, a man said his Scout Troop had lost one hundred and fifty candy bars to a bear.

In this wild country we spooked a great moose who crashed off into the forest. The first ever for my son, and he was furious with himself that some of the precious sight had been wasted fumbling for his camera. On leaving Glacier Primitive Area, ripe gooseberries were a treat. In civilized Dubois we rested at a motel and re-supplied for the next stretch through the Absaroka Range to Yellowstone.

In Stratified Primitive Area we couldn't find an expected petrified forest but, better, came onto a patient cow moose with calf. This time the camera found its subject. Between Stratified and the Absaroka I spotted a white chip that led to a clutter of petrified-wood fragments where Indians had fashioned arrowheads. There's one, see the nick that caused a craftsman to reject it. After a climb over the "Absorkies" we reached the headwaters of the Yellowstone, which we were to follow from this little brook to a full river.

At the lower end of big Yellowstone lake there were many elk, but we were glad to see no village bears. Then a fisherman warned us that in fact to here are deported the worst outlaws. In the upper end's Yellowstone Village we tried for the lodge, since a grizzly had been mauling among tents the night before.

But the lodge was too expensive, as well as filled up. A considerate ranger offered us his cabin if we could put up with two Englishmen already camped there. That was easy; after supper another ranger joined us to sing a ballad of the gruesome murder of man by man that had occurred not long before. At least bears don't collect fingers.

The English gave a lift next day out of bear danger to Livingston where the murderers were to be tried. There drunks saluted us on the streets saying, "lot's a luck hitchhiking, fellers." It was slow, but too soon the Yellowstone turned east and my son had to fly home for school. A county airport, a federal loss.

Back in the wild we had once ventured on mushrooms sautéed in butter, after being coached by other hikers on how to avoid poisonous ones. They were delicious, but then worry had set in. The anxious morning heard, "Eric, Eric! Well, old buddy, guess who ate edible mushrooms last night? You can doze some more, son, while I get water."

Going on alone, I expected to walk every step to Canada because of reaction to the murder, but the Montanans would have none of such paranoia. Many rides were still offered; I'd ask them, curious, if they weren't afraid? "Those nuts could have struck anywhere," they'd say, "had nothing to do with their being hitchhikers." And another time the cowboy grinned, "besides, there's a gun under the seat." I was grateful for their good sense and kindness.

Holland Lake was my autumn entry into the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Hoping for a hotel pine I walked too long in rain; the late camp would have been miserable but for a rotten birch whose pitchy bark enabled me to get a good blaze going. By the Flathead River's south fork, packers told me of an athletic doctor from Indianapolis who had outwalked their horses.

Along the Flathead I found hotel pines (usually big thick spruces) to shelter under, but the trail was churned by hooves into a sea of mud. At a ranger's cabin, while enjoying hearty sandwiches made from his leftover meatloaf, we talked of the need to keep out horses after heavy rains. Once a light snow fell.

A day's walk before trailhead a woebegone group of hunters came into sight, their horses blued with medicine for cuts received in a trailer accident coming to the wilderness. They'd had no luck in the hunt and cheerfully offered a ride on one of their unladens, a gentle beast named Brandy who was renowned for walking instead of running.

With blankets for saddle I carefully got on, enjoying my new remoteness from mud. For a quarter mile, that is, until Brandy aspired to race and pitched me off. Not in the mud, thank you. Then it was back to shank's mare, my familiar. Everyone but me knows the hunters were funning but I know best. Even afoot, I was only beaten out by an hour. Horses and backpack loaded, we trucked to town.

More towns, then the Canadian border. It was fortified by a requirement that vagabonds have 300 dollars in pocket; after much argument about the robbery hazard this posed I was allowed to enter. Seeking a campsite in British Columbia woods I met brothers from Philadelphia doing the same from their car. Before sleeping we were visited by two Kootenai Indians, drunk but holding it not too badly, about like a white man.

While we talked the firelight gleamed on the red braid of one brother's cap, once the resplendent head covering of a captain in the Dutch Salvation Army. He'd bought it, I'm sure, in some thrift shop. The sight proved irresistible to the bigger Indian, who talked trade for his black rodeo special which easily cost thirty dollars. The Philadelphian was overjoyed to get a real Indian's hat so it was done, and the braves vanished into the night.

Farther north I heard of fresh snow in Alberta, hence was persuaded by a rod and gun club president to follow British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. He also started me off with a lift to Creston, proud of apples. There his English wife was helping out a shorthanded neighbor; I also picked the crisp Spartans (McIntosh-Delicious cross) from dwarf trees. The orchardist was an ex-American who condemned the increasing artificiality of life below the border. Last straw for him, when he was a chain grocery manager, was ice cream so full of chemicals that it didn't collapse when melted.

Another apple picker had a brilliant blue glass eye to replace the one kicked out by a Calgary bartender. He said this bartender had taken several men's eyes when they were too drunk to help themselves. I worked a week before fear of bad weather sent me on. The hospitable red and gun man had fed me beaver, moose, and bear meat; now his wife baked a shoebox full of Cornish pasties for the road.

In the Okanagan Valley I began to hear of danger along the Alaska Highway, of men out of work cruising the road with just enough gas to get to the next station, who robbed and killed those they picked up, of three bodies found in the last spring thaw. I hoped these reports were exaggerated and concentrated my worry on the weather.

At Prince George I bought wool mittens with windproof shells, canvas overboots, and a long surplus ski-trooper's park. Near Williams Lake I stayed with homesteaders who'd been out hunting; a moose would just about fill the pickup, and to "catch" one would provision their winter. They played Credence Clearwater songs so much that I mistook the musical group for Canadian. I wondered where in British Columbia was Lodi where someone Oh Lord got stuck in again?

Above Dawson Creek the dirt road began, surprisingly more like an adobe-paved road than a gravel one. Big fir gave way to jack spruce and birch. Snowmobile racing was the sport; one young man could hardly wait for real winter. In Yukon Territory I saw a golden eagle on a post near the remains of moose killed and dressed by hunters; my camp was nearby in an abandoned shack. Another night I stayed with a construction crew; while the gasoline engine chugged to generate their electricity we talked of how little time there was before winter snows would chase them out.

In Whitehorse newly-marrieds invited me into their cabin; we carried water together from a creek. In winter they'd have to break ice for it. They begged me to carry a sign that they had lettered "ANCHORAGE" to let motorists know I would accept a lift.

In the morning through a half foot of new snow I walked out of Whitehorse, glad of the sign and glad to have the canvas overboots I'd bought earlier. A hunter of Dall sheep gave a ride part way. The snow thinned out in a dry region around Wines Junction. There, at a gas station, I saw the most shameful sight of all my travels, a notice "DONāT BOTHER TO ASK FOR WATER."

After a few short lifts and much walking, a little covered pickup stopped, and Bob Dunbar with his wife and tiny baby took me out of the Yukon onto the paved road through Alaska to Fairbanks. A helicopter pilot, he spoke of arguments he'd had with other pilots about accepting clients who wanted to shoot wolves from the air, and how even in his time the number of wolves sighted had dramatically declined.

I gave the pilot a paperback just finished, Mowat's "Never Cry Wolf", which tries to give the wolf a better press. I lost my spoon in their truck but if I'd lost the whole pack, it wouldn't have paid for their company. Later in the States I learned from a magazine article that Dunbar was known in the North for brave helicopter rescues of the stranded.

Fairbanks, end of the line from Yucatan, was a letdown. I met no one, and shivered in my hotel room writing postcards to the many who'd helped me on the eight-month trip. That done, head home!

Walking out of town I spoke with a longhair who remembered the good old days when hippies were welcome in Alaska, and with a black man who swore that at ten below it became illegal to pass up a hitchhiker. Such are the lies we tell to keep down our hash of truth.

A few miles out of the city I was offered a ride by a pretty girl and a burly Jew. His shop was in the university district, where he thought I'd have felt more at home. In a cafe where we stopped, a drunk berated the cashier. While I wondered, burly acted. He understood drunks, by the collar and heave-ho!

At a junction he asked me to go on with them to Anchorage, where I might be able to get a ferryboat back to Seattle. I went; the route was through McKinley Park, but I caught no glimpse of the mountain. In Anchorage the word was no ferry before Haines, which meant retracing a lot of Alaska Highway. The same friends took me part way, but at a cafe stop for coffee we heard a rumor of caribou on a frozen lake reachable by snowmobile track. Say good-bye then, and shoulder your pack.

I found the caribou in sociable groups out on the ice. No food in sight, maybe the lake was a refuge from predators. Starting back I encountered a young trapper on a snowmobile who suggested we go deeper in to find more. The back-jarring machine took us to big herds; when spooked they'd follow the leader even within a few yards of our path. Their gait was like a prance, good reindeer for Santa Claus.

Back on the road lifts were few; I'd have walked to Tok Junction save for a family of Jehovah's Witnesses. They didn't preach; we talked of the phenomenal growth of their sect, how many of them Hitler had killed, and if it was true as I'd read, that even their businessmen are honest.

After Tok I walked some more. Then, afraid of the grim night coming, I began to ask at homesteads for shelter. It was the third or fourth took me in, a bitter recluse who hated the neighbors for luring away his young wife to live in a tavern. After supper I got him to play the dusty-keyed piano; then I fell asleep in the cabin's drowsy warmth.

Next afternoon to my surprise a car pulled over: a marry laugh from Dunbar signaled the end of walking for me that winter. They'd sold the pickup and were headed home now to West Virginia for the winter. Happily I leaned back, but danger wasn't by. In the Yukon a thaw had glazed the snow covered road; soon Dunbar was deftly weaving the car from one slide to the next.

I didn't fully realize, however, what an incredible driver he was until we stopped once, got out to look at a tire, and couldn't stand without grabbing the door-it was that slippery! But he got us through to Whitehorse; there I took the narrow-gauge railway down to Haines where a boat called. Along the inland passage I saw the Sitka spruce at home and gazed into misty blue restful waters.

This was the last long walk in which I accepted rides.

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