– Adventures Don’t Always End Well –

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Honestly, I was tired of the mountain man experience. Not ‘burned out’ like I was from my business life before Idaho, but tired of the hard work, discomfort, and social sacrifice that were an unavoidable part of being a modern-day hermit. During the 2020 winter expedition, I spent months alone in the frozen Frank Church Wilderness contemplating my options, trying to invent a different kind of adventure that would motivate me with a burst of new purpose in my life. After seven years self-isolated from society, I realized it was time to re-engage… but did not know how.

Of course, I had ideas. There were all kinds of ideas every minute, even when I tried to sleep. My life was a storyboard of exciting ideas executed in pursuit of a more interesting state of being. I daydreamed of retracing Lewis & Clark’s route through the Rockies alone on foot and made that dream come true. I imagined spending a winter alone like Jeremiah Johnson and the 2020 expedition was a real-life reflection of that idea. And for decades before that as a Marine, a traveler, a business man… I’d been imagining new lives and living them for as long as I remembered.

Making Big Plans

Halfway through the winter of 2020, I felt a need for change. Two feet of snow covered the Camas / Castle Creek confluence and it was colder than anyone could remember.

It was the second time I spent a winter living in The Frank like a trapper in the early 1800s; there was no reason to do it a third time. It was a gritty existence and I was in my mid-60s… grateful to have lived the life I imagined but looking for something more. Knowing the Idaho chapter was coming to a close, I spent the winter reflecting on those adventures and considering possible futures.

During those long nights, I worked on a book about Challis’ own Anderson family who pioneered backcountry recreation in The Frank. In previous years, I published a trilogy about my adventures in Idaho. I spent the summer of 2019 on the road selling books and sharing stories with people I met at gun shows, art festivals, and any place I could set up a sales table. I camped out between shows and sometimes made enough money to cover expenses for a hotel room. It was fun for the summer leading up to the expedition but ‘being a writer’ didn’t pay the bills.

Nevertheless, I had my laptop in camp and used a portable solar panel to keep it charged so I could work on “Humble Heroes”. When I wasn’t writing the book, I worked on plans to re-engage with the outside world. Imagining a different way to share my adventure stories, I came up with (what I thought was) a great idea. I produced a PowerPoint seminar that I could sell to old friends in the business world. If successful, I could use it as a foundation for building a new life.

Setting & Achieving Improbable Goals

Would technology companies be interested in my solo adventures in the wilderness? What value would my achievements have with civilized businessmen? Could I use my experience as a mountain man to build a new business career?

In February, I skied to the Castle Creek Ranch (a private place a few miles up the creek from the confluence). The owner was in McCall for the winter but told me where to find a key to the guest house and generator room. I sent emails to friends in the technology world and shared my ideas for a seminar series. They were excited to hear how my experiences in the wilderness would translate into a business message, and three of them agreed to hire me as a speaker in the Spring. I spent the last weeks in camp improving my plan to build a new life.

No Turning Back

In mid-March, my truck was still snowbound at the wilderness boundary, so I arranged for snowmobile transport to an extraction point on the other side of the pass where I could catch a ride with the postal contractor back to Challis. My gear was safe in camp until spring thaw; I intended to return for it and the truck after delivering my seminars in April.

Almost all my money was invested in the adventure: plane tickets, six weeks of Airbnb in New York, and a couple hundred copies of my books. Seminar earnings would pay for the round-trip trip back to Idaho to retrieve my things as well as finance the next set of seminars. Pretty much “all-in”, I hitched a ride to Salmon, hired a cab for the ride to Montana, and caught a flight to my new life in New York, New York on March 13, 2020.

Dead on Arrival

My new life lasted six days. I heard about the virus on the news in Missoula, but didn’t realize how big a deal it was until I arrived in New York. There were only a few people on my flight to JFK, and I was the one and only passenger on my first train ride in city… like an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’. Cursed by fate, I arrived in New York at exactly the same time as COVID-19. After seven years in isolation, I emerged to attend the grand opening of a pandemic.

People were overreacting to the threat… panicking and hoarding because the future was uncertain. On the third day, one of my friends called to cancel the seminar I was scheduled to deliver. The other two seminars cancelled the next day. The Airbnb host gave me two days to leave; non-negotiable (and I never received a refund).

The big city was going crazy and I was forced to retreat. I had to return to Idaho without my truck or a place to stay. My long-anticipated adventure was abruptly cancelled. Before it started, my new life was over.

What next? When you’ve spent months sifting through all possibilities for a new life, determined a direction, committed to a plan, and the plan blows up? What next after you decided “what next” and it failed? A bad beat, too… like betting everything on a winning poker hand and losing, except I bet my life. Not my actual life, but it felt like it at the time; I was stunned and disoriented.

Big Plans Fail

Everyone gets knocked down. It was not the first time for me; I moved to Idaho after a knockdown in Texas. One adventure leads to another and I’ve lived a wonderful life by that creed. But those inspiring truths are hard to remember when big plans fail big-time. I struggled to stay balanced.

Up almost all night at the airport hotel looking for the next flight to Montana, I wondered where I would live. Maybe I could retrace my way back to camp and stay until the roads thawed, because no one in Idaho wanted to see me in person before I did a proper quarantine. Maybe I’d quarantine in a hotel, then work my way back to camp. Then I could start sorting through the bigger problems… bigger questions about my future.

I got to the airport early for a flight that got delayed. My brain burned from the sleepless night and I struggled to fight off the blues.

Let It Settle

I couldn’t figure out why God ‘pulled the rug out from under me’. He knew what I was doing; we talked about it all winter. There was no one else to discuss my plans with… no one better to talk to about the next chapter of my life. So why did He wait until it was, in fact, too late to tell me I made the wrong decision?

Mostly it was emotion talking; it wasn’t a bad decision, just a twist of fate. I wanted a change in life and got one… just not what I anticipated. Life probably knew where it was taking me and, once recovered from the surprise, I needed to continue moving the right direction.

All I knew to do was let things settle; my thoughts and emotions, too. I didn’t try to force anything to happen, but waited to bottom out and watched the way things developed naturally. I managed my attitude. One step at a time, I began another start on a new life.

It sounds cliche’ to say it this way, but I was amazed by what happened next…

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(excerpts from “Lost and Found”… due for publication Winter 2024)