Whittoons

The campground was total mayhem. Drunken revelry exceeded all expectations. And then some Paul Bunyan penis-envy rabble rousers started throwing double bladed axes at a nearby tree. We had entered some level of the Inferno without Virgil or Dad.

The accuracy of the “woodsmen” was deteriorating as they sucked down more beer. A smart thing to do would have been to run for cover…but our car was gone and the tents did not really offer much protection. So the best strategy seemed to be to track the flight of each deadly weapon and duck if necessary.

The train came to a screeching stop.  I was too comfortable in my warm bag to take a look outside, so I just settled in to wait it out.  Soon the crunching of gravel grew louder and I just knew my next nightmare was becoming a reality. A Bull was approaching, moving from car to car.  A flashlight beam sliced through the darkness.  I just tucked myself into my nylon and down cocoon, pulled the drawstring in around my nose and hoped to look like a heap of detritus.  The beam moved across the car.  I held my breath.  But the beam never settled on me.  The crunching gravel of his footsteps faded down the line.  

I exhaled slowly.  I was not going to be arrested on my first night riding the rails.  Being yanked off the railroad in St Paul/Minneapolis would have been ironic.  My great grandfather, Oliver Crosby, was fired by James J Hill (Great Northern Railway Railroad Baron) when he left his desk after hearing his wife had given birth.  When he returned, a note from Hill said, “No one leaves work without my permission. You are fired.”  Oliver Crosby went on to start a construction company. His cranes helped build railroads and helped with the Panama Canal construction.   

With daylight, I was able to watch life flashing before my eyes through the open car door.  Riding in passenger cars was always intriguing since I could peer out the windows into people’s lives in their backyards and even sometimes through their back door.  It is a vulnerable perspective where less is hidden. It is the casual view rather than the formal entry way with trim hedges and mowed lawn.   On a freight car, the drop-by visit is more intimate.  I could hear the dogs barking, and smell the leaves burning.   I startled a few kids, waving to them as they ran to their fences to see the train go by.

My Hot Shot came to a dead stop in Minot, North Dakota.  We were not moving so I checked in with a section worker at his shack in the yard.  While bringing me up to speed, he let me heat up my pork and beans can on his electric burner.  The Hot Shot was not going anywhere soon, so he advised me to jump on the nearby freight train with three cabooses.  There would be no harm in taking the last caboose since the engineers would not use it.

Too Cool!   I could ride in a Caboose!  I did not hesitate and climbed the steps to the rear door.  The space was palatial, complete with leather couch.  Once rolling I moved up into the viewing area.  Though previous tenants had scratched up the windows a bit, it was still a grand 360-degree vista.  Wheat fields undulated in waves with the passing wind. I could imagine the vast bison herds that used to roam this territory until the railroad brought hundreds of hunters to slaughter the beasts, starve out the Indians and permit settlement by the white intruders.   I munched on peanut butter and jam sandwiches and stared out onto the vast horizons.

Compared to the previous nights bed of hard wood planks, the leather couch was sublime.  I was sound asleep in no time. 

 The train stopped somewhere in the plains. All was quiet. Then the door opened.

Suzette was dumped back at home. The dog was not pleased. She was still manic and howled into the night. Dad got on the road, and headed back to the family.

Meanwhile all hell was breaking loose at the campground.

Thank god or vishnu or whomever for the 2×4 bouncing around the interior of the car. I jammed it between the door and the frame and waited to see if I was doomed or saved.   The next big jolt and the door stayed in position.  I waited through a few more rough rail sections to confirm I was safe and curled back up in my warm bag in the corner of the empty car.  It took a while to go back to sleep. The clickity-clack of the wheels, engine blasts and the RR crossing bells kept a percussive rhythm through the night. 

Blame it on William Golding and Joseph Conrad, but often during the more beleaguered days of my formal education, I drifted off into day dreams of tropical lands, vast oceans and thrilling adventure.  At the same age as the kids in the Lord of the Flies film, and having read the book as required at the all-boys Horace Mann Preparatory School in New York City, I was intrigued with the social dynamics of those thrust into isolation, severed from society and dependent on innovative survival strategies while developing adaptive cultural norms and …the thrill and fun of a great Adventure.  I recognized the light and dark side of my personality, and wondered if tested, I had it in me to be a Ralph in the face of adversity, holding a moral compass under pressure of the irrational world, or was there a fascist Jack lurking in me willing to meet chaos with irrational ferocity.  The chant of “Kill The Pig! Spill His Blood!  Bash Him In!” vied with “Kyrie Eleison” as a soundtrack to day dreams.

Another factor that stimulated wanderlust was the immensity and density of New York City, the place selected as our new home by my parents.  The hostile space gradually seemed to be wearing down my bearings, inhibiting my childhood drive to find wonder in the outdoors, a drive fed by early years living in Washington State.  A certain innocence was losing out to urban cynicism.

For my English assignment in High School, when we were to concentrate on the works of one author, I chose Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and other books by Joseph Conrad.   My teachers were probably wondering what was with this introverted, quiet, brown haired kid who explored the dark side.   Jungle fever, that was my excuse.  

At college, I had deliberately sought out a specialty that would offer the rare opportunity to participate in research projects in wild places. I signed up for projects that led me into the jungle studying monkeys in Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia and St Kitts.  Two studies placed me on an island with four guys and groups of rhesus macaques.  Though the 300-acre rugged island offered warm weather and forest full of gumbo limbo trees, this was not my island dream.  The Atomic Energy Commission had control of the space (we asked no questions as to why). The island had been used for target practice by the Air Force during some previous war and old bombs (perhaps duds but who wanted to find out) could be found scattered in the forest floor.  Once while trekking in the hills, I spotted a puff of smoke down at the valley mouth and assumed some monkey had become collateral damage.  Though isolated, with rare supply replenishments by the AEC ship, we humans only reverted to a few odd tribal patterns, but no one went completely bonkers.  Each participant found some reason to take a break off the island, to relieve the tensions from isolation.   I made a false start, getting sick right away and being flown by helicopter back to San Juan, along with three goat hunters whose skiff had sunk when they tried to help us move gear around the island.  The government suspected them of being Independistas and smuggling guns.  Once back on Desecheo, these guys shared their goat with us on the beach and after feasting on meat and fish around the fire, one drunk hunter put a gun to my head…in jest.   The laughs were nerve-wracking.

The monkeys themselves had been separated from their home troop, families split and taken off the island of Cayo Santiago and dropped onto Desecheo without provisions.  Forced to fend for themselves, they scavenged and survived.  One young male, NK, separated from the support of his alpha family (their family was divided in the experiment), attempted to restore the order and his position as a dominant male after having been relegated to the perimeter.  With each attempt to challenge, he was mobbed and finally injured severely.  Retreating to the shoreline, he bathed his wounds in the salt water, sitting in isolation with water up to his chest…and finally moving up off the sand to die in the shade, alone. 

His bones became sacred to our tribe, and when at one point the NK skull disappeared, accusations flew around our camp.   It was revealed later that a land crab at rolled the skull some distance from the final resting place.  The grave site was put back in order and we tried to persevere as objective observers, while each person measured how far we had drifted from sanity. 

During a second expedition, only a Navy helicopter ran supply runs. The astonished looks of the pilot on seeing the wild monkey men in ragged attire did indeed recall the final scene of Lord of the Flies.  

On St Kitts, I had my own bungalow which I shared with a co-worker/girl-friend, so my metal was not tested by tribulations…except perhaps for trepidations about performance anxiety, this being my first solid relationship.

On a dark, and stormy night and with a dead motor on a skiff, a Basseterre local and I drifted dangerously out towards open water. Since my shipmate had sighted Jack-0-Lanterns racing across the island’s hills, and since they were not to be trifled with in the dark, he declared that only with the moon showing could we safely row towards shore.  He was surprised that I did not know about these spooks.  I admitted that at least once a year Americans suspended their disbelief and got into the spirit of things.

 Unfortunately, our safe harbor was the location of the island voodoo cult. Turns out they were my nearest neighbors.  The resort owner that rented the cottage to me, a woman with brown leathered skin and sun- bleached blond hair, swore that this cult had put the hex on one of her builders, causing him to crawl into the sea until restrained and sent to the hospital.   I did not want any spells cast due to my cultural incompetence.   The voodoo folks spent the night huddled around a Coleman lantern (very Caravaggio in the central lighting effect), but I spent the night quietly some distance away (very Stephen King in effect) trying not to startle a soul.  Next morning, they escorted us to the dock and our skiff and, as if by magic, the engine started right up.

While on St Kitts, we had to battle the prevailing rave reviews of monkey meat, “Sweet Meat Mon!!”  The cravings tended to cut into, and cut down on, the subjects of a research study.   I sampled a delicious turtle stew and felt so full of remorse that I tried to raise some baby turtles, hatching them and releasing a few to make the trek into the sea. I failed at conch chowder.   The killing of the conch was a gruesome affair, the mollusk hung by a hook while the weight of the shell slowly forced the creature to loosen its grip.  Perhaps I did not have the stomach for a career traveling the globe sampling exotic foods. 

With a grant from the Smithsonian Institution, I spent some time on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal observing marmosets. Each dawn, the howlers roared from the canopy. Army ants moved in waves across the leaf litter. Tarantulas hung out in holes near our cabin. And research scientists strutted around with tremendous egos.

In the San Blas Islands, while visiting a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute station, I heard a conch shell blown with powerful bursts, its deep, resonating sound crossing the bay. Fishermen were still blowing into the shells for communication to each other.

When the Rockefeller and Marshall fund review panels failed to see my plans for exploring the Rwanda Mountains of the Moon would lead to positive world enlightenment, and the Peace Corps threatened to throw me into epidemic regions of Korea, I decided to head to the South Seas on my own, after graduation.

The shuddering of the train cars coming to a stop startled me from my sleep.  What the hell! This was a Hot Shot!  We weren’t supposed to be making stops. 

It had all started out so well. A weekend get-a-way with the family. Camping below Mt Baker in the National Forest. With our spot staked out, it was clear looking around the campground that other vacationers had the same good notion. It also became abundantly clear that many had brought full coolers of alcohol. Riotous displays of fireworks soon exploded and the bangs fractured the peaceful spot.

Suzette was not enjoying the patriotic celebration by the highly inebriated campers. Being a very sensitive yet loyal hound, she went into a hyper manic mode attempting to deal with the evident danger that we did not seem to be aware of.

Our Dad determined that the best recourse was to drive Suzette back home ( three hours round trip) while we settled in, and Mom made dinner on the Coleman stove.

As the rolling freight car jolted me awake, the door seemed to have moved.  On my next levitation as the train ran over another bad section of track, I realized the door was slowing closing with each jolt and if it continued on its trajectory, it would close me in for good.  

When I jumped aboard to ride the rails from the Chicago freight yard to the Northwest, I checked the door and it was stuck open.  This was becoming the nightmare scenario naysayers had warned me about.  “What if you get stuck inside and no one finds you for weeks…and by then you’re a goner!”  The railroad workers had given me a ride on a working rail yard engine to the train (advising me to stay on the side opposite the rail yard control tower to avoid management scrutiny).  They found me a Hot Shot bound for the Northwest that would shoot straight through to my destination in a matter of days.  They dropped me off and generously suggested I pick any freight car.  I checked several…this one was too dirty, that one might have an unknown occupant (though I did not stick my head in) and finally I found my suitable chariot, with one door closed and the other stuck open for a view.  I would have ventilation without vicious cross-winds chilling me to the bone. (This was October and there was frost on some cars.)

I tossed my Gerry Back Pack up and hoisted myself in.  The place was immaculate except for a few 2×4’s.   The back pack was a bit of a liability since it was brand new.  I had tried to age it considerably by rubbing mud onto the fabric before taking off on my expedition, but it was no hobo swag.   There was very little chance I would blend in with a hobo crowd. 

An acquaintance who had ridden the rails across Canada had warned me to avoid security personnel aka “Bulls”, yet the experience for him had been totally rewarding.  For the first leg of my global travels, this looked promising.  In Chicago I had stopped by the Burlington Northern headquarters and got a map of the railroad system just to get a sense of direction.  I was still uncertain where this trek was to take me but I knew I had to break from the “expected” course of a career that had been shaping my future.   Having spent those college break summers doing monkey research in the field (Puerto Rico, St Kitts, and Colombia), I was seen as having launched into a career path with gusto by others in the academic community.   I was digging myself a career track that seemed unlikely to be as creative as I had hoped – much as I enjoyed trekking through tropical forests.   I did not want to get stuck in a rut.

Reorienting my internal compass might take a real shake-up. Uprooting from all that was familiar and comfortable could land me in deep shit or shift my bearings enough to seek new purposes for my life.  The academic life, though successfully achieved by my father, was beginning to look a bit claustrophobic for me.  The Hobo life was probably not the choice preferred by my family.

I was as prepared as I thought necessary. Besides the sturdy pack, I had a Gerry mummy sleeping bag, a one-person tent, a mini-stove with cup and plate, flashlight, hunting knife (and fork plus spoon), jeans, socks, underwear, shirts, hiking boots, rain gear, down jacket, gloves, warm hat and sufficient food items to get me across the country (as long as it did not take more than three or four days.)  And toiletries to deal with ablutions on the road.   How to take a crap on a moving freight car was still a mystery to be solved.

THE DOOR WAS CLOSING. I now had to take some desperate action but what. 

“And when on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at the North Star and howled long and wolf like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at the North Star and howling down through the centuries and through him.”
[The Call of the Wild by Jack London]