“Crossing the Threshold” with Tom Fleischner

The heart of my new book Astonished By Beauty: A Field Guide to the Practice of Paying Attention consists of two main sections. The first, “A Geography of Astonishment”—from which this excerpt is drawn—is a series of brief stories of encounters with specific landscapes—portraits of interwoven inner and outer perceptions of places-as-teachers, ranging from the Alaskan Arctic southward through the Pacific Northwest, the Desert Southwest, and ultimately to the Amazon. All places that have, on a fundamental level, become me. These stories, while hopefully engaging in their own right, offer examples of the types of perspectives and insights that can be gained from the practice of natural history.

The second section, “Elements of the Practice,” considers both the practicalities and the spirit of how and why we practice natural history. It is, in essence, a field guide to connection: how to look, see, and let yourself feel about landscapes and their inhabitants.

— Tom Fleischner

Two weeks into a summer-long field exploration of Alaska and the Canadian northwest, we approach summer solstice in the far north. Despite the twenty-four-hour daylight, the sky darkens this afternoon. As our field course group—ten hardy students, a teaching assistant, and I—prepare to hike into the immense montane valley of this heaving glacial river, a major storm approaches. As we exit our van at the base of these enormous mountains—whose summits are four thousand feet higher than anything in the lower 48—the first drizzle appears, dampening our backpacks. We already knew this area had one of the densest grizzly bear populations in the world and were prepared for that danger. We stay in groups of six or larger whenever possible, making noise before rounding blind corners, and to be cautious, I carry a cannister of pepper spray on my side. But this new threat—cold rain and wind, exactly the recipe for hypothermia, was unexpected. When I visited here two years earlier with a different group of students it was sunny and warm enough for short sleeves each day.

We leave the road-end behind, following the trail into dense spruce forest. Five miles ahead is our intended camp, where we plan to base ourselves for the next four days of natural history exploration. Within the first hour, the drizzle shifts into full-on hard rain. When we leave the relative protection of the forest as our route crosses a glacial outwash plain, the wind rakes through us, like sharp fingertips through our wet clothes. At another opening, the trail braids and we lose the route. A couple students step onto what appears to be solid ground but sink thigh-deep into a near-frozen bog. We pull them up and out, but they’re now drenched. The temperature is dropping, and none of us are dry. The group’s mood, typically upbeat, becomes noticeably subdued.

I notice that one young woman, usually laughing and tending others, has become silent as a stone. This—a sure warning sign of hypothermia—is really troubling. My teaching assistant and I start scanning for possible campsites, as it has become critical to get warm and dry and out of the biting wind. The spruce forest offers no camping prospects, but we eventually find a plausible opening in the broken woodland on the mountain’s shoulder. One thing, at least, we won’t have to worry about here, north of sixty degrees latitude, is darkness falling, but at the back of all our minds is the awareness of our vulnerability—cold, wet, and in the heart of grizzly country. We scramble into action, setting up tents, and shooing the coldest, quietest group members inside, with a companion to help them get soaking clothes off, and dry attire on. I encourage them to get inside sleeping bags and snuggle together. One student does jumping jacks to warm up and, betrayed by her stiff muscles, slips and twists her ankle badly; she needs to be supported into her tent.

After everyone has settled into their tents, I do the same myself. Within an hour or so, I begin to hear the reassuring soft mumble of conversations and laughter. I know we need to get food inside all these bodies to stoke internal heat, but it would be foolhardy to allow food inside tents in bear country. A couple of us clamber out of our dry cocoons and fight the wind to set up a tarp that is barely large enough for us all to cram under. We crank up several camp stoves, start heating water for tea and noodles, and we all reconvene. I’m immensely relieved to see each face, most smiling, all safe.

Rejuvenated by food and good company, we all retreat back to our tents, weary from the long day’s exertions. After a few hours of fitful sleep beneath the never-dark sky, I awake in the yet-quiet camp and unzip my tent door. Our tents and the slopes above us are white, dusted by fresh snow while we slumbered. Low-angle golden light begins to emerge between the breaking cloud cover. And just then, I see it: a large grizzly, its fur colored like chocolate and caramel, moves steadily across the slope right above our camp and, after a couple never-ending minutes, disappears behind the next ridge.

The summer snow, the bear, and our vulnerability. The pulsing throb of the massive glacial river just out of sight, the tang-like chill off the edge of the ice. In this tingling moment I cross the threshold, back into the Pleistocene.

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash