There’s a story told in Jackson Hole, Wyo., about the late Mardy Murie, pioneering conservationist and grande dame of the wilderness movement. As a young bride she set off in 1924 on a honeymoon trip with her biologist husband, Olaus. The pair traveled 500 miles by dogsled through the Alaskan winter, studying caribou. It was the first of many such expeditions.
Seventy years later, in the adventure-obsessed community of Jackson Hole, Murie was speaking to a group of young admirers about her Alaskan journeys. Someone asked about what she wore in those ancient times of wool and fur and canvas, before the rise of modern synthetic fabrics.
“Do you wish you’d had some of the new clothing back then?”
Murie was taken aback. “Of course not,” she said. “We had clothing!”
Her answer wasn’t just about wool versus polypropylene, or for that matter, a magnetic compass versus a GPS. She was raising the issue of what’s really needed by a traveler, and with it, the question of why we go.
The things we carry: It’s an endless conversation among travelers. We want to keep it simple, but we want to have everything. We love the miniature, the lightweight, the multipurpose and the most efficient, but despite all the advances and innovations, nobody seems to have escaped the tyranny of stuff.
Modern stuff hasn’t lightened our loads. It just means we carry more.
Well, most of us do. Author and photographer Richard Menzies, in his book “Passing Through,” about the free spirits and transient residents of Nevada’s windy wide open, describes a hitchhiker. At first glance, “a squat, rectangular shape by the side of the road, scarcely taller than a sagebrush.”
He drove past, then went back for a closer look. “It was a man,” wrote Menzies, “a very short one. A man with no legs.”
His name was Stanley Gurcze. Despite his lack of feet, he had been on the road for 15 years, 49 weeks per year. He was not a desperate man running from a place of misery. He was 59 years old and loved being out, on the move, going nowhere in particular, but anywhere that pleased his fancy.
He had lost his legs below the knee as a child, and for a time had used prosthetic legs, but when the last one wore out, he never replaced it. It was easier to walk on his knees with a pair of short crutches.
Although Gurcze traveled lighter than most of us could imagine, he had one possession absolutely essential to a successful traveler. It has almost nothing to do with what we take with us, but it practically defines what we carry home — insights gained, lessons learned, even the motivation to set out on another excursion. The possession is an attitude, a selective way of seeing.
Some might call it selective memory. Time has a way of casting a warm nostalgic light on difficult events. We tend to forget the bad and recall the good.
But it’s more than just bad memory that makes for good travel.
Recently I had the opportunity to revisit the site of my first trout fishing trip with my father in southern Wisconsin. I was about 8 years old. A small creek flowed through a jungle of stinging nettles and high grass. My father went his own way while I got lost in vegetation over my head. I don’t recall so much as wetting a line, but at one point I burst through the shrubs at the edge of a pool to find a great blue heron standing regally like some avian King Croesus regarding the treasures in his secret vault. For long minutes, neither of us moved, until I backed away with a sense that I had witnessed something wonderful, and forbidden.
Headed home, we stopped for a root beer. Eyeing my nettle welts and mosquito bites, Dad said, “I guess you’re a real fisherman.” He was wrong. From a fishing point of view, the trip was a total bust.
But I hardly gave that a thought. I could still see that heron, mirrored in his sacred dark-flowing pool. It was the image of the heron that I took home. More than half a century later, the nettle stings mean nothing. The heron is still with me.
It didn’t matter that I lacked nettle-resistant, bug-proof clothing. I had the wide eyes of a child, and a selective way of seeing.
The Details
Mardy (Margaret E.) Murie, who died in 2003 at age 101, wrote her memoir in 1962: “Two in the Far North,” 2003 edition, Alaska Northwest Books, $16.95.
Richard Menzies’ adventures are more recent (2005): “Passing Through: An Existential Journey Across America’s Outback,” Stephens Press, $21.95.
