The New Frontier - Excerpt From \"Way of the Wild Heart\"

All rights reserved to Wild at Heart. TNF does not own this content in any way and uses it for educational purposes only. We make no money on this link. We will remove this excerpt at the request of Wild at Heart and its representatives. For more information about Wild at Heart, go to their webpage.

Excerpt from Sam's Year

Now, the real launch of Samuel's quest lies farther back, late in the fall of his twelfth year. Like Patrick, it also takes place on a desolate mountain, with hunger and cold, though not alone, but very much under trial and in need of prayer. When one of my boys turns twelve, that is the year they can come with the men elk hunting. Not to hunt themselves yet-that is a privilege to be earned-but to tag along and "be with the men," eating with us, listening to the banter and the stories, following us step-for-step through the mountains in search of the elusive game, enduring the rigors of elk hunting. Up well before daybreak, hunt all day, home after dark to eat something hot and fall into bed utterly exhausted, only to feel as though you've just laid your head down when the alarm goes off again for another round, like a prizefighter called from his corner by the bell.

Harrington called this sort of invitation "the honor of entrée the men had offered me," and he comes to realize that though the men taught him to "kill rabbits pretty well," that "turned out to be the least of their hunting knowledge and the least of what I would learn from my years of hunting with the men.

The scene for the drama was an unnamed gulch on the southeastern slope of Quartz Dome, a smaller peak off the main ridge of the Rocky Mountains, in the Sawatch Range of central Colorado. We had suffered several days of relentless pursuit up and down miles of rugged terrain-"armed hiking" we started calling it as day after unsuccessful day passed by, then, in our mounting cynicism, we described ourselves as looking for Osama bin Laden in the mountains carrying a typewriter. This evening, we really wanted a break, an easier game plan, if you'll pardon the pun. We wanted to hunt downhill.

So our buddy Matt drove us up to the top of Quartz Dome by way of some old logging roads, and we made what seemed to be a simple plan. Sam and I would peel off the top of the dome heading east by southeast. Our friend Larry would be dropped off one ridge over, hunting a parallel but converging course, until we met at the crest of a small rise, the last plateau before the mountain plunges off into its steep descent into the valley below. Matt drew a rough map in the dirt, orienting us as best he could, with the added warning, "You don't want to get off to your left, or you'll be in a terrible gulch with so much fallen timber it's almost impossible to get through. A nasty place. Don't go down there."

The orientation would have worked beautifully had we set out from the spot Matt believed he had led us to. But as with so many best-laid plans in the woods (and in war, and love), we overestimated our position, started off too far north, and, like a classic Greek tragedy, headed directly and inescapably toward the one gulch we wanted to avoid. As he pulled away in his old smoking suburban, Matt had offered a final word of advice out the window: "The first half mile is the best hunting. After that-it gets pretty rough. If you guys get an elk down in there, we'll have to hire horses to get it out." A classic parting comment from a guy we've since learned underestimates the difficulty of just about anything because he can handle just about anything and assumes everyone else can, too. We've seen him carry maybe two hundred pounds of elk by himself up and over a ridge for which most hikers wouldn't even want a daypack as a burden. I wished that had been on my mind as I listened to him.

Indeed, the first half mile was beautiful-gently sloping folds and forest with plenty of elk sign everywhere. We hunted slowly, hoping to jump some game up high, and as we moved down we held to our course, south by southeast, looking for the last rise and our buddy Larry. After about forty minutes we came to a rise in the forest floor and as we ascended it, we had for a moment a beautiful view of the surrounding country. But two things troubled me-there was no sign of Larry, and I noticed that the sun had dipped below the horizon. We waited, squandering precious minutes of last light neither hunting nor descending. I took a closer look around, and realized that off to the south there was another rise, too far to reach now. Beyond that seemed to be a third crest; which was the appointed one? Where were we, really? I knew this: we were way off course.

At this point, the evening changed from casual downhill stroll to avoiding a survival scenario. This is how all those stories begin: "Everything was going fine, until . . ." Total darkness was about ten minutes away, we were utterly spent from days of physical abuse, not totally but mostly lost, and headed down into bad country without headlamps, without radios, without food, and with only a general sense of direction. We had water, but no matches, no shelter, light clothing, and it was going to be cold that night. I turned to Sam and said, "Samuel, things have changed. We are no longer hunting. We are not going to find Larry. We need to get off this mountain as fast as we can, without getting hurt. I'm going to be moving fast, son, and you need to stay right behind me." I looked into his eyes with assurance and sobriety. "Okay?" I could see the concern in his boyish eyes, but Sam simply said, "Okay."

For about thirty years now I've been in the mountains in one form or another-backpacking, mountaineering, hunting and fishing-and I've seen some tough country. This place was brutal-fallen timber everywhere, looking like a typhoon had blown through an old shipyard, huge Ponderosa logs too big to step over so you had to step up on them, then jump down the other side onto loose talus hidden by thick undergrowth. A broken leg just waiting to happen, the kind of debris you want to pick your way through slowly but I was moving just below a run. I aimed to cover as much of this as we possibly could, in the last twilight we had. Come dark, this was going to be a nightmare. Sam was right on my heels, step for step.

Matt figured about an hour for us to slowly walk off the mountain. It took more than four, pressing hard all the way. Several times I had to catch myself saying under my breath, "This is not good. This is not good." About the same time, Larry fell on his way down, rolled, smashed the scope on his rifle. And he was in the right gulch. We were in the gulch from hell. Matt was right about one thing-we got into elk. Twice. But at this point, we couldn't have cared less. There was no way a horse could get through that country. We'd have had to airlift the carcass out with a Bell helicopter.

For the last hour we could see a pair of headlights moving back and forth along county road 76, a thousand feet below. Matt, no doubt, and hopefully Larry, driving the road looking for us. When we first saw the lights, they seemed so far away, like a ship at sea, and we the marooned sailors. Exhausted, soaking with sweat and shivering from it, we nearly crawled the last mile down a shale-covered slope, our footing slipping out from under us every second step or so. We hit the road about 10:00 p.m. I wanted to kneel down and kiss the asphalt. I wanted to kill Matt.

On Samuel's fourteenth birthday we held a ceremony celebrating his year, and welcoming him into the fellowship of men. I began the evening with this story, and said, "Samuel played the man. He didn't let fear come in. He kept up a man's pace through wicked terrain in the dark, and he kept his spirits up as well. I am very impressed with this young man." I hadn't set out to make this a milestone in his passage; but that is the way of the masculine journey. These things come upon us. After all, our guide is the Holy Spirit, whom the early Celtic Christians like Patrick called the Wild Goose. They knew he could not be tamed. Ours is merely to trust and follow his haunting call, and he will take us on the adventure he has for us. "Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God" (Rom. 8:14 NIV). As Chesterton said, "An adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us. It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose." How we respond to that adventure shapes us into the men we become."