Spirit Of The Wild

Frontier Partisan history is often dark. FP has been, at its core, a military history project, an exploration of frontier irregular warfare, which is by its nature a brutal, existential form of conflict. I remain committed to this study, and am currently immersed in illuminating how that brutal, irregular form of conflict shaped and drove the American Revolution.

But…

When you stack immersion in a dark history on top of unsettling and sinister current events, it can start to cast a pall and abrade the soul. And too tight a focus on conflict can actually distort the history; most folk on the frontiers most of the time were engaged in the work of everyday life.

Anyways…

I felt a need this week to shift my focus for a moment or two, and reconnect with some of the wonder and beauty to be found in life in the wild. I got in a good FP Biathlon workout on Wednesday, but I wanted to get some miles in on top of it. The wind kicked up hard in the afternoon, so I took my rambling indoors. I cuss my iPhone for the addictive portal into a madhouse that it is — but I sure do appreciate it when I climb on a treadmill or elliptical. I pushed the earbuds in, fired up a couple of most engaging videos, and the miles (literally) rolled away beneath my feet as my spirits lifted with images of hardy men in wild lands…

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The first video depicts a moose hunt in Yakutia — the coldest inhabited territory on Earth. Yakutia (aka Republic of Sakha) lies in the Russian Far East and Siberia. It’s an immense territory, the largest subnational entity in the world (sorry Texas). Many of its people make their living hunting, trapping and fishing.

The Yakut in this moose hunt are operating horseback and with dogs. They are most solicitous of the welfare of their ponies, and completely unsentimental about their dogs.

Their rifles appear to be some variant of a Tigr — civilianized versions of the Dragunov designated marksman rifle, featuring barrels with faster twist rates to stabilize heavier hunting bullets. They are noted as reliable in cold temperatures, an obviously important feature in Yakutia. The casual offhand shooting is remarkable.

There is something delightful about the meal-prep scenes — the earned meal lovingly and carefully prepared, with proper thanks given for the bounty.

It’s just a little hunting video, but it hit just right in the moment. I felt elevated by it, as I so often do by such depictions of life lived in touch with natural rhythms, respecting the spirit of the wild.

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At Craig Rullman’s most ardent insistence, I fired up Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants (NatGeo streaming through HULU).

In the highlands of Angola, conservation biologist Steve Boyes sets out on an epic journey to search for a mysterious, elusive herd of ghost elephants – creatures long believed to be a myth.

This being a Herzog film, it is beautiful, meditative — and about something other than the immediate quest depicted. The filmmaker told CNN:

“I was shaping the parallel, deeper, separate story about dreams, ghosts and the spirits of elephants.”

To say that it is compelling is trite. This is a must-watch piece of Frontier Partisans cinema. And the darkness of frontier conflict looms over it. National Geographic notes:

It’s no coincidence that Angolan elephants began to vanish while the country endured 41 years of nearly continuous war, first during the struggle for independence from Portugal that lasted from 1961 through 1974, then in an exceptionally brutal civil conflict from 1975 to 2002. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the fighters extensively used land mines that still pose a threat. Humans and wildlife alike fled the violence, running into Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia. The country’s southeastern region, where we were searching for the elephants, had been the stronghold of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi until his death in 2002. Savimbi’s resources unit also killed elephants for their ivory.

Herzog foregrounds Namibian KhoiSan master trackers Xui, Xui Dawid, and Kobus. This is as it should be, for these men are remarkable, their connection with their environment of a different order than what the rest of us can experience.

I found Steve Boyes a most compelling fellow. There is the kind of eccentric intensity about him that you’d expect from someone who spent years chasing something that might well be a chimera. National Geographic acknowledged this:

To the outside observer, it might have appeared that Boyes, with his unruly mop of graying hair, wild blue eyes, and trusty carved walking stick, was starting to tilt more Bigfoot seeker…

Of course, what presents itself as eccentric, driven — maybe crazy — is in fact quite profoundly… sane. I ran across this bit from Boyes, and it resonated:

Life’s a celebration, an overwhelming, implacable observance of wildness that modern society seeks to end. Civilizations, like us, have always gone extinct. Don’t be sensible, be wild…

The peculiar finality of facts makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable. The truth you seek isn’t fixed, it’s a dynamic lifelong activity, an unending pursuit, an approximation that we all participate in. Turn off the television, put down your phone, pick up a book to read it, turn on music to listen, write something about anything, go get lost in the woods to find yourself in nature. The magic of life is a quiet chuckle when you realize that it really didn’t matter, all you could ever do was your best.