Chapter 20. Desert Crest Route (Mexico to Canada)

By a Pacific Crest Trail campfire my son and I had looked over a map showing national forests and wilderness areas. "See, there's another long strip of mostly public land, this one stretching from Arizona to Montana. Maybe there could be another Mexico to Canada hiking trail. We should walk it sometime to see."

Now after a long Christmas in North Carolina I headed west to try it, visiting on the way. In Texas I picked up the frame pack made for me in Idaho. In Oregon at his monastery I returned my son's Bergan rucksack, that had been borrowed for finishing the Appalachian Trail. As feared, his religious duties wouldn't let him join the hike. It was an afternoon in late February of 1976 when the bus dropped me in Nogales, Arizona, where I took a room for the night.

Next morning, to the teasing of custom officials, I put a foot over into Mexico, turned and set out walking north. With the aid of excellent maps given by Forest Service employees in Washington, D.C., I left the main road to follow an oak-shaded canyon. But by night its stream was well behind; I had to take water for camping from an old mine shaft. The fire's warmth was welcome as it cooked my supper.

There's a big peak, Wrightson, between the border and Tucson. Having seen only a little snow from the bus, I planned a route using its summit trails. On the lower slopes there were hunters seeking javelina; I caught glimpses of the elusive wild pig but no good look.

Up high there was more snow than expected, some of it steep. I began punching steps with the oak staff but had to give up after a while, too scary. Going around took a day and half of hard work. The proper walking stick for snowy mountains is an ice axe.

On the way around, one of my camps was by a secluded spring; I wanted to be farther off but couldn't find any other flat place. In the night something wild came to drink, letting out a half mew, half scream when it found me. I woke up terrified but heard no more, falling back to sleep eventually. Perhaps a cougar, although it didn't sound like the ones I'd heard in Colorado's La Garita Wilderness.

Down in the desert before Tucson light rain fell; a passing rancher assured me it would be soon over, no need to look for a barn. By evening there was an inch or two of snow, more falling. I scraped it away under mesquites, rigging the poncho-tarp taut and steep to shed as much as possible. Banking the sides with snow to prevent more blowing in gave a snug shelter; once the fire was going, with wet wood, and supper assured I was ready to grant the camp two stars. After a good sleep, only shaking off snow once, I saw the morning sun first create a dazzling canvas, then burn it.

By noon I reached a suburb transplanted into the desert, complete with related houses in a row and manicured lawns. That took some water; I wondered if bluegrass weren't better left in Kentucky. No store; a realtor gave me drinking water. As I left, there was a roadrunner running, my medicine bird. Did I expect him to speak? Wasn't it enough that his dream-shape had informed my life?

When the route crossed a main road at Vail, I roundtripped by bus to Tucson to resupply and spend a hotel night, clean. The city's architecture reminded me of Mexico, but I missed their pretty central squares.

Walking again from where I'd left off I came next to Saguaro National Monument. These massive cacti, more like branchless trees, are host to a little black bird with crested head and low sweet song, called phainopepla , or shining cloak. Knowing I'd have trouble walking across the whole area by dark, I asked at the monument office for permission to camp a few miles on, well away from their tourists. "No camping, no exceptions." At dusk I glimpsed again the shadowy javelina.

A long dirt road led over a desolate pass to the San Pedro River. It was mostly dry. Getting water from ranches I followed the river course to Hayden where the Gila River could be crossed on a bridge. The water was high and muddy, far cry from the tranquil brook forded so often when I hiked the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico's highland.

The last supply point before Superstition Wilderness was Superior, a mining town with an old-fashioned cheap hotel. At five dollars a night I rested two days, reading in the library how nearly impossible the U.S. Cavalry found it to overcome the durable Apache. Not really a horse Indian like the Sioux, these ragged warriors would ride an animal to death if need be, then walk on subsisting on its flesh.

Now I hiked into the Superstition Wilderness. It has a colorful history, full of desperados searching for the Lost Dutchman Mine and getting their heads cut off. I met four desperate backpackers myself, heavily armed even to cartridge belts slung over their shoulders like refugees from Castro's army. I was afraid to ask them if they'd found any gold. There is still danger in the Superstitions; one of those dudes could easily have blown off his toe.

Deeper in before I camped, a trail crew told of glimpsing a mountain lion. In the morning I hadn't gone far before noticing something under a bush. It was a rabbit with the front part chomped away, as if by giant jaws. The meat smelled fresh as supermarket, chilled from the night's cold; it looked perfect for a mulligan stew, so I scavenged like our remote ancestors.

But I left the lion some; I wanted to be reasonable about it. It's known they're shy of people, but does that include rabbit thieves? It was delicious in the mulligan stew that night, and I hadn't looked behind me on the trail more than a hundred times.

Over the Superstitions was the community of Roosevelt near the dam named the same, for our bully president who authorized it. I'd been told there was a store, but it was long closed. Some lodgekeepers took pity, hauling me a few miles the other way to a store, and waiting while supplies were bought.

Approaching the Mazatzal Mountains (Matta-zell) I respectfully passed a rattler. So it's warm enough for you to be out. Then I got lost, which was a portent. In the Mazatzal Wilderness itself, I saw White Rock Spring clearly marked on my map, but could find no trace on the ground.

Finally reaching a stock tank on an old jeep track I filled two gallon-canteens, filtering out as much mud as possible with a folded bandana. This water would be exchanged for good when opportunity arose, but it never did. For two camps across the Mazatzals I pretended the purification tablets had transmuted that stuff into coconut juice.

Off the dry hills there was good water; then I walked wrong-way south awhile to get to the motel and grocery at Strawberry. The owner and I talked about bureaucracy. How do you fire someone you didn't hire? Why, much of our law is really bureaucratic edict! Would you like to win a court case against the Internal Revenue, and have to pay up anyway? I didn't stress my own, patent pending, method of avoiding tax by avoiding income.

From Strawberry I walked along the Verde River, partly on trails, to Camp Verde, another resting place. After some wild country by Sycamore Canyon I reached a fishing resort where Grand Canyon National Park officials could be called to ask if the North Rim still had snow.

To my dismay, they said I couldn't walk across the canyon at all without a camping reservation gotten months in advance. I explained why a direct route was needed and that there was no way, leaving the Mexican border a month earlier, to predict exactly an arrival at the canyon in order to reserve a place, but it was no use. I could get over the dry Mazatzals, but the stone wall of Park Service officialdom would bar me from Grand Canyon.

This was no easy matter; there are only three routes over the awful chasm of the Colorado River, a long way west at Lake Meade, the Park trail up Bright Angel Creek, and a long way east at Lake Powell (the side canyon at Lee's Ferry is said to have unpredictable flashfloods when traversed from south to north). I decided to walk roads over the Painted Desert to Lake Powell, but knew that few hikers would follow me. The National Park Service had, in effect, just vetoed a border-to-border footpath through Arizona.

The revised route led through lovely Sedonia Canyon toward Flagstaff; the last day was long, uphill walking. I'd meant to camp but a foot of snow made that unattractive. Near the end, when after dark I was checking a roadside rest area for a dry berth, two Cadillac-loads of laughing, darkeyed beings swooped through.

I discreetly stared; they were very like students from India I'd known, but none of their women wore saris. I couldn't make out their speech, if indeed it was that and not elfin-song. Quickly come and quickly gone they were; in silent wonder I knew I'd seen perhaps the most truly nomadic people left on earth, the Rom, gypsies of road and wood.

"And when the gypsy had made the third nail, they put it in a bag. When the gypsy began to forge the fourth nail, one of the soldiers said: 'Thank you, gypsy. With these nails we will crucify Yeshua ben Miriam.' He had hardly finished speaking, when the trembling voice of the three blacksmiths who had been killed began to plead with the gypsy not to make the nails. Night was falling. The soldiers were so scared that they ran away before the gypsy had finished forging the last nail.

The gypsy, glad that he had put the forty pieces of copper in his pocket before he had started work, finished the fourth nail. Having finished the nail he waited for it to grow cold. He poured water upon the hot iron but the water sizzled off, and the iron remained as hot and red as it had been when held between the tongs in the fire. So he poured some more water upon it, but the nail was glowing as if the iron was a living bleeding body, and the blood was spurting fire. So he threw still more water on it. The water sizzled off, and the nail glowed and glowed. A wide stretch of the night-darkened desert was illuminated by the glow of that nail. Terrified, trembling, the gypsy packed his tent upon his donkey and fled. At midnight, between two high waves of sand, tired, harassed, the lone traveller pitched his tent again. But there, at his feet, was the glowing nail, although he had left it at the gates of Jerusalem.

And that nail always appears in the tents of the descendants of the man who forged the nails for the crucifixion of Yeshua ben Miriam. And when the nail appears, the gypsies run. It is why they move from one place to another. It is why Yeshua ben Miriam was crucified with only three nails, his two feet being drawn together and one nail piercing them. The fourth nail wanders about from one end of the earth to another."

(The foregoing is a transcription by Konrad Bercovici of a legend recited in the form of a litany around Macedonian gypsy campfires.)

This nineteen mile day ended in a Flagstaff hotel, where I rested and sewed. The zipper on my wind-parka had jammed an intolerable number of times; I ripped it out and put in a solid piece of cloth to form an anorak that ventilates at the neck only—and there by fullness, without a vertical slit. The sort of thing you couldn't give away in a store, but it works fine; if I get too hot, I rejoice and take it off. But no patent; in an old picture of Hudson Bay Eskimos I later saw many predecessors. (The new Eskimo buys his parka from Simpson-Sears, with zippers like everyone else.)

Walking again, through some of the Painted Desert I could follow an abandoned parallel road instead of pavement. Along the old road I met a band of sheep herded by three dogs. Not just tended; they were going somewhere, no sheepherder in sight. One of the dogs, black collie out of wolf, had a badly damaged eye gotten, I suppose, proving she was boss.

Fiercely protective of the sheep, barking and snarling they ran me off. A few miles on I took water from a pump out in the middle of a sandy wash. In the shade of the nearby bridge I lunched and was half asleep when the blah-h of sheep awoke me. Then Evil-eye was before me with her head cocked to one side, fairly dancing with impatience. "Up, up, stupid; we need water." So I got up and pumped for the damned sheep. When the sheep had lapped enough muddy water, the dogs ran me off again.

I wasn't done sheep-herding. Next day I helped a Navajo and his wife chase a woolie up hill down dry until it finally got clean away. We grinned and parted. Bad as trying to catch a pig! I think I'd harvest either with a rifle, but it'd drive up the price of pork and wool.

Near Page where a dam backs up the Colorado River to form Lake Powell, I was scouting a big rock for camping when a young Navajo rode around it. A sheepherder with his cousin, he cut a dashing figure on the pinto. I mentioned I'd stop soon if there was water; he took my gallon plastic jug and galloped off.

In a long while he returned, presenting the water with a rodeo flourish like prize money. I thanked him; he invited me to ride into town in his cousin's pickup and drink with them. I was tired but he wouldn't accept my refusal, certain that hippie hitchhikers were invented to be boozing buddies of Navajo braves. I turned to go; from the horse he grabbed my stick, although I had no intention of hitting him. We tussled briefly for it; I won and he went away mad. Next morning in Page I saw him, afoot, lost to all rodeo even in dream.

A journalist in Page got me a boat ride over Lake Powell, which even environmentalist David Brower admits is beautiful although he, and I, would have preferred Glen Canyon, now lost under blue water. From the tour boat a Navajo park ranger took me by patrol boat to Hole-in-the-Wall, an historic crossing point of the Mormons. I climbed steeply up, my pack heavy with enough supplies to reach Escalante in Utah.

In the desert I had met a man who used to work for Grand Canyon's superintendent, whom he thought a reasonable person. So I entered into a correspondence with him to try for a rule change that would allow someone walking from Mexico to get through the park. Just letting cancellations be taken advantage of by mail or phone, instead of in person as now, would have helped.

But I could never even get the superintendent to see that the present rules barred a thru-hiker. Finally I angrily asked him if he realized that the same thing, requiring a precise itinerary, was all that prevented me from hiking across Russia. Of course he denied any foreign intention, and that broke off the correspondence.

On top of Hole-in-the-Wall the land is arid; I began to wonder about water for camping. But the clouds took care of that; as I sheltered under a ledge, it rained briefly but hard. From torrents pouring off the sandstone cliffs it was easy to fill a jug. There was even wood half under the ledges. Home is a dry place.

Several days of dirt-road walking and good camps brought me to Escalante, where the front yards were brilliant with blooming dandelions. How could anyone want to kill that yellow? The townspeople were as friendly as their flowers were beautiful; I enjoyed a motel rest before going on.

Above Escalante the hills had snow yet to bust through, but otherwise the route went well, over barren moorland with only an occasional Mormon sheepherder camped in a clump of aspen. A lonesome life from Galilee to here; I wondered if long distance walking would prepare one to take the entrance exam.

In Emery a postmaster who moonlighted as a guide to big-cat hunters confirmed what I'd read about the rarity of cougar sightings. The claim was that not one person in ten thousand has ever had the luck, that even hunters almost never see one until their dogs have it treed. He said that in fact it sometimes took him a long time to spot one in the tree to point it out to a client.

Before Emery I had begun to find delicious wild asparagus on the many irrigation ditches. I nibbled it raw, rarely waiting till suppertime. But there was no hotel; a friendly librarian's parents put me up. The one-room library with its Zane Grey novels reminded me of the tiny library in Wilsonville, Alabama where, I am told, I read every book as a child.

At Scofield there was a store but the Post Office had been discontinued. I sent a card to the closest town to have my General Delivery mail forwarded, but it was a long time catching up. Usually however, mail service to G.D. Street is good; only the short holding period, ten or fourteen days, is a serious inconvenience. Sometimes one guesses wrong the arrival date at a town, then the mail may already have been returned to sender.

The wildest stretch on my route through Utah was Strawberry Ridge above the same-named Reservoir. Even this ridge had a wagon road that jeeps could manage, but a hitchhiker might have waited a year for his next ride. In Heber City I was glad to find another inexpensive western hotel. But in the next town of Morgan, trouble.

First there was an old man put into a rage by the sight of my walking stick, the gall of armed hippies barging into town as if they owned the place! It happened too quick for me to brace myself; I'm afraid my answer wasn't soft enough to turn away his wrath. Then the bank wouldn't cash a savings-account check just received at the post office. Since these weren't personal checks but bank drafts, there'd been no difficulty converting to traveler's checks in all the years walking (except once in El Paso, close to the Mexican border).

As then, I supposed the next town would be better and walked on. But this time in Huntsville I was again refused. No question of adequate identification, they just claimed that a bank draft was risky. Now I was getting desperate. There was no bus service to Logan, a city off my route where I might try again, and I hadn't nearly enough cash left to buy supplies for the next long stretch which would get me out of Utah. Were these suspicious bankers going to turn me into a hitchhiker after all, when I'd come so far on my own two feet?

Luckily, a lady overhearing my bitter polemic with the teller offered a ride to Logan where she was going anyway for groceries. That saved me; in Logan a bank readily cashed the check, hinting that the small towns wouldn't because I was a Gentile, which here means not Latter Day Saint. I'm not sure; the Mormons were generally kind and friendly toward me.

Back in Huntsville solvent, I applied for a room to one who sometimes rented them. She was full but recommended a neighbor who found space. He had a strange diet, boiled watermelon. Despite this unsouthern treatment of a gentle dish, we got along well.

The neighbor even took me to Salt Lake City to see the Temple grounds and statue of gulls that ate the grasshoppers to save pioneer crops. Birds have always appealed more to me as objects of statuary than generals. (In Ontario the town of Wawa—the word being onomatopoeic Ojibway for Canada goose—has a large statue of its patron saint).

From Huntsville there's a lot of country-road walking to the Hardware Ranch, thence to Bear Lake which is half in Idaho. On the way I met a buckskin clad mountain man headed for Hardware to a big rendezvous of likeminded enthusiasts for the fur trapping past. He lived more off the land than I do, shooting small game and deer with a wary eye out for wardens. Not much trouble with traffic he said, but one of their number had been restrained from riding his mount down the main street of Provo.

I didn't tell him the whole thing reminded me of the French King's court playing shepherd. Eccentrics should love one another. He seemed in good condition after the long ride, but his horse looked tired, although local ranchers had received them hospitably. I admired the fine leather on him, much of it hand-tooled.

Somewhere on this stretch before leaving Utah, I preached to the cows:

Bear Lake is big and very blue; after resupplying at the south end I walked the eastern side, to meet less traffic. There were fish frenziedly churning the water next to shore; in their mad dance some of them nearly got clubbed for a hiker's supper. Where they themselves after something delectably seasonal? At the north end is a hot spring with inexpensive pool and cabins. Neighbors shared their picnic supper; we talked into the night.

Next morning a primitive dirt road led along the edge of Bear Lake Wildlife Refuge. In the early light I saw a large, squat animal moving toward me in a fast waddle, and I froze to watch it. Blunt head with white band running down its back, my first badger would soon barrel over me if I didn't move.

When he saw me shift he didn't run but showed his teeth in a snarl, half-stepped back and waited. In a moment, deciding to give me the road, he nonetheless kept up his defiant gnashing while circling around on a bank. I was impressed; Wisconsin choose well its totem of pugnacity.

In Montpelier it was time to have new lug soles sewn onto my moccasin-boots. I've never had a glue job last, but it's hard to find a cobbler who'll risk his needles sewing through thick rubber. This man tried and, by going slow, lost no needles.

Like a kid in his new tennis shoes of summer I skipped out of town on more dirt roads toward Wayan, a sawmill community that was a crossroads for me since it marked the intersection of this route and the one taken east-west when walking from Atlantic to Pacific. On the way, an inviting jeep trail turned by stages into cross-country bushwacking. And the mosquitoes were the worst since Oregon's mountains in June. It was too hot to get in a sleeping bag right away; I slept in light wools with windpants, parka, and headnet to keep the little monsters at bay.

But this route had its reward. First I only heard a high sweet warble, unlike any other birdsong I knew. Then I saw their long graceful necks above the grass, and then almost a parade of sandhill cranes appeared as I walked by their winter range. I felt like tiptoeing through the tulips or at least begging their pardon. Upon regaining the dirt road I was glad not to be disturbing them anymore, but sorry to lose their company.

In Wayan I looked forward to seeing again the family met two years before, who had hot orange juice for breakfast because tea and coffee are forbidden. They remembered me; he ran the family sawmill now and surprised me by strongly opposing forest clear-cutting. He was sure that, in Idaho at least, clear-cut areas replenished much more slowly than selectively cut ones.

The kids remembered me too, but I think the horse had forgotten. The parents had news of Dave Kuntz who'd walked around the world—his homecoming celebration had been curtailed because of wild statements to reporters. I was sorry to hear it. Four and a half years is a long walk; he had seemed under a strain when I met him walking fast in Colorado.

North of Wayan I stopped at Grays Lake Wildlife Refuge to chat with naturalists about their plan to save the endangered whooping crane by brooding some of its eggs under sandhill crane mothers. They said it was working, although some whoopers don't return and some eggs are lost to the wise one, el coyote .

In ranch country there is much condemnation of wily. But at the risk of angering many, I have to salute the free dog who sings with me instead of barking at me, who in spite of our most persistent efforts to exterminate him has extended his range. We have shared many a western night, gray brother. Go in peace; the rifle will cut you down soon enough. It is said that the Jews, and we by inheritance, have dominion. But in my heaven, the coyote shall wear no collar.

Farther north I knocked at a farmhouse door, as invited to back at the Wayan store. A youngster with guitar said his dad was in the fields and mother still minding the store, but I should put the pack down and rest awhile; tonight they'd play some.

That evening after supper they collected their winds and brass, the drum and fife were found. Front yard for auditorium, they did play some; they made the welkin ring! Neighbors and I sat entranced, hearing a rock song about Alabama, other new music I didn't know, and old western favorites sung by the father—Mozart wouldn't have surprised me. I thought as I dropped off to sleep in their tour bus, now we don't have to be ashamed before the birds.

At Driggs I chatted with the proprietor of a backpacking shop; the western Tetons get a lot of climbers and skiers. I'd unknowingly missed an outdoor equipment workshop in Victor by taking a dirt road that bypassed it. Rivendell the shop was called. I had seen descriptions of their gear in catalogs, firstrate.

Going on I came to a college summer-camp, where students spoke of a recent bad flood; hardest hit were Mormon families and as usual, the church did an outstanding job of relief. The youngsters had invited me to have supper and spend the night, but their faculty advisors vetoed it; I walked on to find a camp under pines.

Before Island Park on an old pavement there was a brown cow-moose so big I thought at first she was a horse. She ambled off to the lily ponds; I sought a grocery on the outskirts to resupply for the long road over Red Rocks Pass into Montana. They sold sausage guaranteed for three days, but it grieved me sooner.

I had a camp, then climbed up the pass as clouds gathered. On top the storm broke as I became violently ill. Down below I found a deserted cabin with half a roof. Rigging the tarp kept the rain off me while I was sick, sick, sick.

In the morning I'd stopped heaving but was so weak I couldn't lift the pack—perhaps a fine day for banana fish but not suitable for walking. I slept most of the day and all night. Then I could keep tea and crackers down and walked on, shaken. Sick is what happens to others, not me.

Before Red Rocks Lake there was a guest ranch; he guided hunting parties into the back country, she could have made her living selling biscuits. It came as no surprise that they ran a town bakery in the off season. Their bunkhouse and good cooking made it imperative to rest a day and learn to eat again.

Farther along, the Red Rocks Wildlife Refuge office was guarded by a fierce dog; I got over an impulse to visit. Walking on I saw my first red fox in the wild, but none of the trumpeter swans for which the refuge was established. That was disappointing; I'd wanted to see the swans there ever since reading E. B. White's Trumpet of the Swan .

By abandoned ranches the road led over another pass to Blacktail Deer Creek. A dirt track along the creek was passable for cars but there were very few; over the next several days I heard more airplane than automobile engines.

Lower down, before starting breakfast with a fisherman and his wife I was thrilled to see, not trumpeters, but two large snow geese flying low toward Red Rocks Lake. Majestic white with black wing tips, will they no come back again? I would dream them over. Are dreams more vivid than memory because essence is brighter than photographic truth?

Still closer to Dillon, of four passing vehicles three offered rides. When I wouldn't they gave part of their lunches, telling how the ranches got started around there, and claiming I could too learn horses in order to work for them. Montana may not exist, according to the essayist Leslie Fiedler, but what a friendly mirage!

At Dillon my walking route intersected the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, 4,250 pedal miles. Near Western Montana College a penciled sign read "Bike—Inn"; I followed it to see if they ever spelled Bike with an "H". They did; I had a full rest day there and enjoyed meeting cyclists from all over the world who'd come to join in an across-the-continent ride celebrating our bicentennial.

There is an easy community between hikers and cyclists; both get tired as, and eat like, packhorses; both are harassed by cars, policemen, and domestic dogs. And both know the joy and satisfaction of traversing great tracts of country without an engine. And they share the nomad's uncertainty as to where he'll next lay his head to sleep.

But bikers like the sun better than I do; I bought a wider-brim hat from the town's pawn shop. Wonderful arrangement, commerce; the cowboy got his drink, and I am saved from heatstroke. An elemental brown, the hat took some shaping at the back not to bang into pack, and according to report looked like vintage 1929 Boy Scout, but as in many unlikely marriages, I grew fond.

Out of Dillon toward the Beaverhead National Forest a cyclist walked his bike awhile to talk with me about a possible hemispheric hike. He thought I'd have trouble in parts of South America where the guerrillas might want to hold me for ransom, and the authorities might, because of the backpack, shoot me for a guerrilla on sight. At any rate, in Missoula I should look up Greg and June Siple, who had biked the whole tremendous route from Alaska to Argentina.

Off the main road I walked by a small rockpile where an alert, graceful creature came out of his home to look me over. The curiosity was mutual; I hoped he was one of the rare black-footed ferrets, which are becoming extinct as we eradicate prairie dogs, their only prey. But he was too light; in the community of Polaris, deep in forest, where I stayed a night we decided from encyclopedia pictures that he must have been a prairie weasel. His dark eyes I remember best, staring without fear into mine.

In the store at Wise River I resupplied, meeting more cyclists. One of them glowed when I told the others what a wonderful place was Newfoundland, her home. She said she'd get the Memorial University to reconsider its disdain of my job application, at which I smiled.

From Wise River it was pavement to walk until a side road led into the Anaconda-Pintlar Wilderness. A tranquil change from the highway, although my route only cut across its edge, by Storm Lake. Coming out I heard shots, and met three men whose furtive behavior scared me until I realized they thought my brown hat meant ranger and a lecture. In fact I am willing to lecture anyone but try not to be harsh with those under arms.

After resupplying at a country store I walked a lonely jeep road to the mining town of Phillipsburg, taking a room in the hotel just in time to be invited to an inexpensive supper with the senior-citizens club. The meal and conversation were enjoyable, especially a talk with Merrill Riddick, who had lived such an exciting life in mining and aviation (he'd given flying lessons to young Franklin Roosevelt and met Churchill while the latter was still a naval officer) that in retirement he took on the challenge of politics.

Running for alderman may be more realistic, but Mr. Riddick ran for president. Using month or two-month bus tickets, he stormed the country campaigning for the puritan epic and magnetohydrodynamics. My enthusiasm for either of these planks was limited but I admired Mr. Riddick's idealistic tilting at the windmills of big politics.

Moreover I learned later that magnetohydrodynamics, besides being a respectable branch of physics, stands for a seriously considered scheme for direct conversion of coal to electricity. Maybe the world would be a better place if more of us ran for president.

Through Maxville to Drummond there was a railroad to follow instead of the highway. Then I walked another dirt road to Ovando, entry point for the Bob Marshall Wilderness. From here supplies were needed for two weeks, all the way through the Flathead National Forest to Martin City.

The grocer surprised me by asking if I really wanted to visit Missoula afterwards, since it was full of communists. I said I'd been around university people a lot and seen very few communists. Some vote Democratic, to be sure, and know old union songs, but that won't overthrow the government.

It was said we had a communist in the veteran's village where I lived as a student at the University of Chicago. I never met him, for he committed suicide. But I remember meeting in the street his little daughter who gravely insisted that she was an orange.

Before leaving Ovando, to help me carry the heavy load of groceries, I decided to rig a tumpline. For years I'd meant to try this ancient device for shifting pack weight to the head and neck, ever since using in a similar way an old military duffel bag for emergency pack on my first long walk. But I'd never found a leather band just right to fit on the forehead. Now I gave up on that, bought a hand towel from the motel, tied nylon parachute cord to each end, attached the other cord ends to frame bottom, and had myself a tumpline.

It helped right away, on the first slope even before neck muscles became accustomed to bearing some of the pack's weight. So I gladly joined the ranks of Sherpas and other primitive peoples who've carried loads by head for centuries. Now even heavy laden it was good to be back in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

There were few other visitors, mostly hunters who teased about my horseless condition as they invited me to camp and join them for supper. We talked of the uneasy alliance between hikers and horsemen (we mainly resent the damage they do to trails, especially in wet weather, while they understandably don't like to be excluded from desirable hunting areas). But it was agreed that everyone who values wild country must work together to prevent its being paved over or developed out of existence.

Some packers claimed that the U.S. Forest Service is as road-happy as the Corps of Engineers is dam-happy, that even extensive logging is not so detrimental to wildlife habitat if the new roads are closed off rather than improved. But they realized that local hunters, wanting easy access to game, exert an opposite political pressure. However, it seems that finally the least destructive users of a wild resource must be given priority if that resource is to continue to exist at all. Or population pressure will erase every last vestige of wildness.

The season had not been remarkable for berries, but in some damp ravines I found treasure, big black currants—dead ripe. I gorged myself like a bear for winter ahead. I saw none of the grizzlies for which the area is famous, but there was a magnificent elk with huge rack who arrogantly stared me down before bounding off. I hoped his regal manner wouldn't ruin him when the forest filled with hunters.

In Martin City a photo-journalist advised me to walk through Glacier National Park, saying that the rangers were reasonable there, that it was a hiker's park. But I was dubious; there'd been bad grizzly incidents, some park trails would be closed, and frankly, I expected about as much cooperation from the rangers as Bonnie and Clyde got from bankers.

That left a dirt road along Flathead River's north fork just west of the park as my best route. I resupplied and set off for Polebridge, hearing on the way that Willie, the notorious Giefer Creek grizzly, was in fact a gentleman burglar. No cabin could withstand him, but he'd never been known to attack a person.

Despite this reassurance one of my camps was scary. Deep in the night I was awakened by birds squawking at quite a distance. Then closer birds screamed alarm; closer and closer, whatever was scaring the birds came toward me. Half out of sleeping bag, gripping the big oak stick I waited, wondering if I should defend or escape into a tree. But nothing happened; I gradually fell back to sleep.

The town of Polebridge is the Polebridge Mercantile. Small in size, great in hospitality, it furnished supplies and encouragement for the last leg to Canada. On the way were the idyllic camps of parting, but too much grizzly sign! They leave a pile like an elephant; some of it still smoked.

The evidence was too close for me; let Saint George dare these silver-tipped dragons. There wasn't much traffic; a logger stopped to say I should meet the bear professor, Charles Jonkel, who directed University of Montana's Project Border Grizzly. As we talked, Professor Jonkel himself drove down the gravel, stopped and invited me to visit.

When I reached the side road to his cabin a day or two later, he happened to pass again to take me up. This time his errand had been grim, as outside consultant to a Glacier Park investigation of the killing of two campers by grizzlies. (The girls had camped carefully, heeded all precautions, but nonetheless were mauled to death and partly eaten.) At his cabin, the door was thick as a medieval castle's and studded with long spikes pointed outward to prevent a bear pushing in. Around his waist hung a heavy revolver; Dr. Jonkel respected grizzlies.

One of his students had baked spruce grouse in a slow oven, the tender result unlike my mulligan stews in which quick boiling makes it tough. We talked of bears and wolves and whether man can keep his dominion from becoming disaster. I asked him what one puzzle he'd like most to solve about bears? He answered, to know why the grizzly is so aggressive. Clearly it helps intimidate the black bear, but an intriguing speculation is that the aggressiveness may have evolved as a survival tool against man himself.

The professor laughed to hear that dandelion roots go into my mulligans; these and other starchy roots are prime grizzly fare. He said my oak staff might actually be a good defensive weapon against bears, describing how he'd once with a long antenna rod held off an aroused polar bear (cousin to the grizzly, both technically brown bears) until his colleague could get it again with a tranquilizer dart.

I should jab to keep him off, not try to club. Finally, he said never to walk through grizzly country in a strong wind; when the wind blows, stay put as in a storm for then he can't smell you as far, and to surprise him may be disastrous.

When asleep I dreamed of grizzlies, great brown shapes in and out of the dark nuzzling at Professor Jonkel's traps. By dream he got up to quiet them, with word not bullet, and I thought that good; no war should be all bitter.

The morning was thick fog; to ward off grizzlies I sang myself hoarse walking to the border. Caruso to the bears, who answered not, but I suppose if there'd been a critic among them, I'd have been eaten. The lonely customs official must have thought me taciturn as I waited for Polebridgers to come for me, since the walk was done.

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