A Wild Twinge

Golden Hour, Rattlesnake Creek | Rattlesnake Creek takes flight from its headwaters in the Rattlesnake Wilderness.

I am rereading Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm for what has to be the 4th, 5th or 10th time. The book, chronicling the author’s experience manning a remote wilderness outpost in Idaho for seven months in the 1980s, is nourishment for the wild soul. Each passage is a dispatch from a recent, yet bygone era. Alone on the edge of the largest Wilderness complex in the lower-48, Pete monitors a fish hatchery that requires no more than a daily 5-minute inspection. The rest of the day is his. Pete’s only line to the outside world is a phone ten miles down the snowed in road at a ranger station. Otherwise, he is well and truly alone. Wild.

Reading about Pete’s mountain exploits this morning, I felt something shift in me: a wild twinge. The last time I felt this was in the North Hills of Missoula this spring watching coyote pups play in golden light. Total freedom. Since then, my nagging IT band has minimized my movements and I’ve slipped back into the bad habit of endless media consumption. I am a sucker for political theater, YouTube drama and reality TV dating shows. If Pete is offering nourishment for the wild soul, the modern media environment is offering candy for the domesticated spirit. One offers freedom of movement and thought, the other, certain complacency. Oftentimes when I get stuck here, it feels like this is it, the end, watching TV until my number is called. The opposite of liberation.

And so I sit this morning, reinvigorated in spite of my relatively limited range. App blockers and screen time limiters are in my future. I’m inspired to go sit by Rattlesnake Creek in Greenough Park and listen the water rattle the rocks. There, I know, I’ll find Truth. That is, I’ll find something timeless, unbound by man. Thanks Pete.

Ondwards and upwards.