Alone in the Wilderness

Sitting by the little campfire in the fading light. The creek that I drink unfiltered water from is flowing nearby. Rocky Mountain silhouettes are all around me. This place feels old and familiar, like a good friend.

I have been coming to this place known as the Flathead Valley for some 27 years now.

This mountain range, and the Grizzly Bears that inhabit it, were the original forces that compelled me West, from my inner city home in Detroit so long ago. The beauty that was revealed to me in the wildest part of the Rockies changed my life’s trajectory. Before, I was an underground music promoter booking events at a collective arts space.

It was successful, but in an edgy, counter cultural, fringe sort of way.

Granted, the venue was a hole in the wall, super small, cramped, in one of the city’s most notorious neighbourhoods, but the shows were usually packed. The combined energy of the performers, the audience, and the collective who ran the space resulted in a very unique and potent upwelling of culture in the early / mid 90s. Somehow, even without internet, our broadcast was picked up by others from around the world. Bands, poets, painters, visual artists, and writers offered their work at our space, which was simply named The 404 (an abbreviation of the street address-404 Willis). A great deal of my energy went into 404 events and I saw myself remaining there for a long time, that is until these mountains came into view. Once I met them, there was no going back - at least not permanently.

The Rockies and the Grizzlies inhabiting them, were crucial to my own process of transformation and healing. My childhood was tough. I come from a single mother who bore seven children. We struggled. We were poor. For periods of time, I was even homeless in places like Los Angeles, Houston, and the Motor City with my mom and my brother. Given this, we experienced a great deal of adversity. I did my best to move forward despite it; I found ways to renegotiate the traumas and pull myself up, but some experiences are hard to shake. That is, until I discovered wilderness. It was the wholeness and peace I found in the Northern Rockies that became the primary medicine for me. Alone in the mountains, I was able to navigate back to an inner place that was never impacted by the trauma I incurred growing up in the bizarre reality of industrial civilization. I also learned, instinctually, that I could gather up those traumas, one by one like a twig bundle, and if I made an offering, the land was large enough and powerful enough to cleanse me of them.

And so here I am again, on another pilgrimage, 27 years later. I’m taking a much needed break from my position as harm reduction outreach coordinator in the rural opioid and methamphetamine crisis. There has been so much death and hardship in the community I serve (especially during the last three years), but particularly so in the last year and a half. The number of clients who have passed away due to fatal overdose is staggering. I’ve actually lost track of how many people I knew who passed away. It has gotten to the point where, when I see someone on the nod (that’s a slang phrase for the blissed out sleepy state one enters from a strong dose of an opioid like fentanyl), I have a slight anxiety attack and wonder if they are alive or dead. It goes without saying there is a cumulative impact to experiencing this kind of anxiety, day after day,

I know, I am repeating myself here.

I speak about overdose deaths in many of my articles. But it is a very big part of my world, one that I’m extremely close to for at least 32 hours a week. Sometimes it even enters my dreamscape. Two nights ago, I had a dream that I was driving a station wagon full of clients that had OD’d. One by one the wagon filled up with bodies. I didn’t know how to prevent it. I just kept driving.

That’s why I am here now, to literally expel, or exorcise (or exercise) some of the residual impacts that frontline work has had on me. I’m alone out here except for my dog, Flint, and the various life forms that inhabit this place. He and I biked in. We traveled about 120 kilometres, crossing over two mountain passes, me carrying everything we need for a four day bike camp.

We travel in the shadow of the Continental Divide. Its ancient rocky spine arches upwards, demarcating land from sky. Swainsons Thrushes are singing - the mid-summer’s melody makers - and Vireos flit about. Not too far from camp are the signatures of the various animal energies that passed by during the night: Deer, Elk, Moose, and Grizzly Bear - their tracks freshly imprinted into the mud. It makes me happy to know they exist in such relatively healthy numbers here in this valley. Each of them contributing their unique energy to the wholeness of this place, a wholeness which also envelopes and comforts me. All around are ambient sounds. The creek’s white noise rushing, the wind blowing and rustling the Cottonwood leaves, the sound of stillness. We came from this. Our physicality, our senses, our minds were all born from the the wild Earth. We developed to live in accordance with it. Journeying to these places helps me reconnect with an older, more primal way of knowing, one where both mind and body become tuned by the balancing principals of nature. Being out here always helps bring me back to center. Watching animals live their lives in relative health despite the impacts our species has had on them gives me hope that it is also possible for us. When it is time to go back to my other life I will be more fortified, but there will also be a question which nags at me - a question that asks: after having discovered this world of wild wholeness, and the sense of peace it brings to me, why do I ever choose to step away from it?