Magic of Wild Places

MAGIC OF WILD PLACES

by

BRUCE TAYLOR

Produced by ReAnimus Press

Other books by Bruce Taylor:

Kafka s Uncle and Other Strange Tales

Kafka s Uncle: The Unfortunate Sequel

Kafka s Uncle: The Ghastly Prequel

Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity

Mountains of the Night

© 2016, 2011 by Bruce Taylor. All rights reserved.

http://ReAnimus.com/authors/brucetaylor

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~

To Brian Herbert:

with gratitude for your friendship, support of my writing, and for many, many a long talk about—fathers.

~~~

Table of Contents

Introduction

Preface

The Infinitely Soft and Silent Snows of Compassion

It is the worst of madness to learn what has to be unlearned.

The Tragedy

Following the Journey of My Father's Magic of Wild Places: A baker's dozen!

August 2003: The Return

The Journey of My Father

So the story begins (no title, no date)

You Cannot Know What You Do Not Know

You Cannot Know What You Do Not Know: A Diversion

Diversion: The Struggle to Own That Which is Already There - but Disbelieved

And Along Came Clarion: That Which Made All That Was Covert - Overt

Synthesis

But About the Magic of Wild Places - You Know, Out There

Honoring the Power and Sureness of My Father's Use of Language

Two Weeks Up the Middle Fork: the Template of My Journeys into the Magic of Wild Places, In the Majesty of the World

Two Miles High: July 2000, Elevation 10,500 feet, Big Sandy Opening - Wind River Range, Wyoming

2002 and It's to the Sierra!

Beyond the Middle Fork - Taking Off Where My Father Left Off

August, 2005, Elevation 7400 feet, the North Cascades

Summer 2005: And It's All Downhill -

July 2005

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

August 2006, North Cascades National Park

And the dream? The dream.

Epilogue

Dedications

About the Author

This was life and despite its hardships and trials, there is something that penetrates one’s blood and makes him breathe deeply and say, ‘Boy, it’s great!’

—Clarence Mason Taylor, from a personal narrative about backpacking up the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Trail, circa 1936.

Introduction

by Brian Herbert

Bruce Taylor is my very close friend, and an extraordinary man with whom I have shared memorable backpacking and writing experiences over the years. He’s extremely self-effacing, uncommonly open, and does not make excuses, even though he has many things to say about the numerous impediments he has faced in his life. Because of his long-time career as a mental health therapist, he likes to analyze these situations in great detail, and in the process he has been able to lower barriers that previously blocked his way.

Bruce is a slender man who should not be able to accomplish what he does physically, climbing mountains that seem to go straight up into the sky. Years ago, when he was debilitated with food and environmental allergies which he had discovered played a part in his Type 1 Diabetes, he still found a way to stoke his body with energy, and up the slopes he would go like a mountain goat. I was always amazed by his strength and endurance whenever we went into the wilderness together in those days, carrying heavy backpacks. He did it with exacting science and sheer willpower.

We’ve shared some memorable hikes together in the beautiful Cascade mountain range of Washington State. On one trek into the spectacular Enchantment Lakes, we sat on a rocky perch and talked while watching the pastel colors of the sunset flow and shift before our eyes, followed by a wash of deep purple and sudden darkness. As we continued to talk, we saw the eerie glow of Seattle in the sky to the west, and a short while afterward a satellite passed overhead like a star orbiting the Earth—something we could never have seen if we’d remained at home.

Of course, a hike with Bruce Taylor is not just a hike, not just an opportunity to see beautiful, remote places. It’s an intellectual journey as well. We each have a wide range of interests and experiences, and never seem to run out of things to discuss. Philosophy, relationships, politics, ecology, religion, writing. We cover a wide range of subjects. Each hike is also a journey of friendship, of remembering where we’ve been and where we’re going in this life and on this planet.

Now we’re planning a very special hike, in search of the forest service lookout where my parents honeymooned in 1946. It’s on top of Kelly Butte in Stampede Pass, northeast of Tacoma. I’ve already tried to climb the mountain twice, but not with Bruce. The summit is not very high, only 5,400 feet, but on each try I found that the old trail was overgrown with spiny vegetation, and when I got around that I encountered slide areas with dangerous drop-offs and more brush. For me, at least going up from the north side, it seemed impassable. My altimeter said I got close to the summit on the second attempt, but still I had to turn back. Next time, I’ll try it from a different direction. Next time, I’ll take a U.S. Forest Service map along, as well as Bruce Taylor.

In his poignant book Magic of Wild Places, Bruce describes his own attempt to retrace the wilderness experiences of his father in the 1930s, following vivid descriptions that his father entered in a hiking journal. Bruce tells a touching story of reaching the same high perch where his father stood long ago, and discovering something new and unexpected in the process. That’s what hiking is all about, seeking significant destinations and learning through the journey. The difficult process of writing is like that as well.

Much of Bruce’s success as a writer can be attributed to the intriguing fact that he approaches particular issues from different angles and perspectives, both in his fiction and in his non-fiction. To get a complete picture of what he is saying and where he’s coming from, it is useful to read many things he has written, not just one. The issue of his challenging relationship with his father is one example. You will find elements of this in many of Bruce’s writings. It is a universal theme, after all, one with which millions of readers can identify as they seek to understand complex parents.

My own father, Frank Herbert, was a complicated man and very difficult to know in my childhood. I wrote of those experiences, and of my journey to understand him, in the biography Dreamer of Dune. Sometimes when I speak to audiences about the relationship I had with Dad, and our ultimate rapprochement, I see tears in their eyes. Many of them have experienced similar things, and some, unfortunately, never made up with a parent, or with some other family member who should have been close. It is particularly tragic if the estranged relative dies, and you are left wishing that you had done something differently, that you should have made an extra effort to reach the heart of that person.

Bruce’s father, Clarence Mason Taylor, was like my own in some respects. Both were avid outdoorsmen and talented writers. Yet Bruce’s father never went on to enjoy the critical success and acclaim of my father; instead he spent much of his life mired in misery over his failure to get published—as if a creative person was inside and needed to get out, wanting desperately to express himself but not finding the proper way to get published. It was very frustrating for Clarence Taylor, and for Bruce as well, growing up in that household. Any writing efforts that Bruce made were met by his father with derision or other forms of negativity. As Bruce once told me, his father did not give him access to his power as a writer. When Bruce became a published writer in college, it was no big deal to his father. The praises did not come, and this was hurtful. But Bruce is a forgiving person, as you will discover upon reading this book. Ultimately, Clarence Taylor actually did share his power as a writer with his son, because after his father’s death, Bruce found his hiking journal.

In the case of my own father, he was not very successful as a writer during my youth, and while he had a modest publishing history during that time, much of what Frank Herbert wrote was rejected as being out of the mainstream. When I was twelve years old, he had a net worth that was below zero, with so many creative failings that he was often in a rage, and I paid the price for it. In fact, it was not until I was in my early twenties and started a family of my own that he achieved tremendous success. Frank Herbert was a late bloomer, but he was persistent. Even facing more than twenty rejections from publishers for Dune, he pressed on, asserting that he knew it would be a success one day. Perhaps it was only that determination that separated Frank Herbert from Clarence Taylor, and from so many other talented writers who never became known.

It’s a fine and delicate line, the process of writing. An author needs to be sensitive to his surroundings in order to be able to write about them; he has to pick up details that others don’t notice and transfer them to the page so that they are interesting to readers. But that very sensitivity can be a vulnerability as well. When a piece is rejected, many writers are crushed. They take it as a personal rebuff and go inward. They don’t press on. I never knew Clarence Taylor, except through Bruce, but I believe he may have been unable to take rejections of his writing. Or, and even Bruce does not know this for sure, his father may never have sent his writing out for publication. Instead, he may have feared rejection, and that can be an even more damaging, depressing situation than actually pushing forward enough to get that first rejection, like a turtle sticking its head out of its shell. Whatever the situation was with his father, Bruce Taylor suffered immensely for it, but in Magic of Wild Places he still finds a way to write compassionately of this.

As in my relationship with my own father, Bruce’s story has a happy ending. In each case, we were able to bond with complex men when we were adults, and to enjoy rich and fulfilling connections with them. My own father was an extraordinary, loving human being, which I only learned after my childhood, when I observed his heroic efforts to keep our family together. I know Bruce is grateful to his enigmatic father as well, and it is to Bruce’s credit that he pressed on to make that relationship work—just as he has used determination to become an exceptional writer. Clarence Taylor inspired Bruce to not only become the creative person that he is today, but he also inspired his son to discover the astonishing beauty of the wilderness. It is about both of those things that Bruce Taylor writes so eloquently in Magic of Wild Places. This is an extraordinary, universal work of discovery.

—Brian Herbert

Seattle, Washington

March 12, 2008

Preface

In his introduction to my book, Kafka’s Uncle and Other Strange Tales, Brian Herbert wrote, Joseph Campbell once said that the quest for one’s father is a hero’s journey, and I know from personal experience that it can be an arduous, painful pursuit, but one that can lead to incredible enlightenment.

In another book, Mountains of the Night, I explore, in part, this theme, coming to grips with the impact of a badly dysfunctional family, coming from parents where love between my mother and father turned to profound bitterness and aching disappointment. And the message was clear: Love equals pain and disappointment. And because love was pain between them, and given the time in the culture in which their opinions and beliefs were formed, divorce—while always looming in the background, while never actualized—it might as well have been, for it was a de facto reality. Yet needs needed to be met and unconsciously, they turned to my brother and myself for needs they couldn’t meet with each other. In this sense, Carl Jung was so right when he stated, Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

And so I grew up identifying with the pain of my mother and my father, as their lives turned out. And probably the greater pain was the identification with my father—identification with grief, with disappointment, with anger and disgust, shame and guilt, and hatred for oneself.

His mother, abusive both physically and emotionally, had a crushing influence in those early years of how my father saw himself. Imagine waking up in the morning when you’re three or four, being whipped for something your brother did but for which he blamed you? Imagine witnessing your mother throwing a knife, stabbing your father in the cheek. Or watching your mother take an ax and chop the head off your brother’s puppy. Imagine unending verbal abuse. That was just some of what he said happened, but he always spoke as though he had never let go of it, the memories always right there; always reliving the memories, re-feeling the pain, the injustice and he was unable, it seemed, to let go of his victim role. What was truly happening with him was what I learned by working as a counselor at Harborview Medical Center on the inpatient psychiatric floor for some years—for so many people who came there had backgrounds not dissimilar to that of my father: abusive backgrounds that, if it happens early enough does so much damage to a child in that they come to believe they are the cause of their own abuse. Again, as Carl Jung theorized, a child introjects (or pulls into oneself, or, like