Email this article

Walking It Off

A Veteran's Chronicle of War and Wilderness by Doug Peacock

By Chinle Miller

Found in: | Inside | Books |

"You don't visit the Grizzly Hilton for the salve of gentle nature, a relief from your real life at the office. Here, you live within the land with all its creatures; you engage with it. You have no choice in this realm but to enter the ancient flow of life. This is not the sort of place to compose a wilderness journal of self-reflection."

So writes Doug Peacock in his long-awaited new book, Walking it Off (Eastern Washington University Press). As the subtitle ("A Veteran's Chronicle of War and Wilderness") suggests, another wilderness journal of self-reflection this is not. This is true vintage Peacock, known for his book, Grizzly Years, as well as for being the prototype for Ed Abbey's Hayduke, the anarchistic ex-Vietnam vet in The Monkey Wrench Gang. This book may see some success because of Peacock's affiliation with Abbey (and indeed, the book sheds light on an Ed the rest of us never knew), but Peacock's writing stands on its own, and this is truly one of the most authentic and least self-serving works to come from a publishing house in many years.

I briefly met Peacock in 1993 in Aspen, where he presented a talk about his beloved grizzlies in conjunction with a book signing (the only signing I've ever been to). Grizzly Years is now a classic, not just on the bears, but on the inner journey. Peacock is a humble man, a fact illustrated during his talk.

He afterwards adeptly retreated (after a short obligatory book signing) to a nearby bar, inviting the audience to join him in a setting where he could be himself, an equal.

Peacock is also a humble and honest writer, and he tells it like it is or should be, pulling the reader into a realm of authentic understanding. Sometimes it's wrong to be politically correct, and what's politically correct often changes. Peacock can never be accused of being politically correct - he's a man of deep values that don't change with political regimes. His book is a montage of his life, of trying to exist in a world that sometimes has no values, of trying to deal with Vietnam-vet post-traumatic stress syndrome (which ended his marriage), of his time in refuge from it all in the wilderness, and of his friendship with Abbey.

Somehow, like real life, the many disparate places and times flow together into what can be described only as pure inspiration, for if the angry warrior Hayduke can make sense of it all (at least sometimes), maybe there's hope for the rest of us - and hope for wilderness. This is a book of great hope.

He writes, "During fall and winter of 1975, Ed [Abbey] was living in Moab. The Monkey Wrench Gang had been published earlier that year. Ed asked me if I wanted to take a hike up Mill Creek, which dumped right into Moab. We climbed up the slickrock using ancient steps pecked into the rocks to examine a panel of petroglyphs. .This had become a rough time in our friendship. And of course the publication of The Monkey Wrench Gang hung like a thin, wet horse blanket over the friendship. In one of our lowest moments, the legal staff of Lippincot & Co. had insisted Ed write a very embarrassing letter to me about how I should consider only the good characteristics of George Washington Hayduke a reflection of Peacock and not the bad parts - the usual unhygienic litigious disclaimer. I had the letter with me. In the heart of Desert Solitaire country, we struck a match and ritually vaporized it. We watched the wind carry off charred fragments, gathered by the laughing waters of Mill Creek. Neither of us ever mentioned this matter, nor the roots of George Washington Hayduke, to the other again."

On revisiting his beloved grizzly bear country in Montana: "I am never so alive as here, alone, watching waves of grizzlies wash across the ridge on which I stand, sweeping down into the opposite basin. The country feels dynamic, too: shimmering landscape vibrates mystery and danger. I should have lived this way all my life. We all should have."

(About Hayduke:) "Abbey probably did me a favor in creating a caricature of myself whose dim psyche I could penetrate when my own seemed off-limits; Ed painted the ex-Green Beret Hayduke, with precise brushstrokes, as caught in an emotional backwater, a backwater out of which I wanted to swim. The only thing worse than reading your own press was becoming someone else's fiction."

(And finally, while solo hiking in the Sonoran Desert:) "I am haunted by landscapes, the reoccurring images of places that drift through my dreams and startle my daydreaming. One of those is right here, the sacred desert. My camp is not far from the spot where the rattlesnake nailed me in the calf one warm winter night on one of my solo walks. No one knew I was out there except for Ed. I managed to hobble in on my own. Neither Ed nor I wanted to be rescued by the Feds out here. We would take our chances; either our friends would come looking or we would perish. Ed and I had that sort of understanding with each other. After all, it was in the wilderness that we were at our best."

Chinle Miller is a part-time archaeologist who wanders the wildlands of Colorado and Utah, eyeing civilization from a comfortable distance.