Wildness and Balance

In 1906, a young Danish lad named Peter Freuchen arrived in Greenland.  Tired of city life, he had signed up to spend the winter alone in a remote meteorological research station, far from anyone — an experience he never forgot.  The plan was that a sled would come every month to deliver food, coal, mail, and other supplies.  Much to his dismay, the sleds never arrived, because wolves stopped them, and ate the sled dogs, every time.

Freuchen had seven dogs at his cabin and, one by one, the wolves ate them all.  This made it impossible for him to escape.  He soon used up his coal, and had to spend most of an arctic winter with no heat, including four months of endless darkness.  The wolves tormented him: “I have never been so frightened in my life.  After my last dog was killed there was nothing to warn me of their approach, and often I wakened to hear them pawing on the roof of my cabin.”

There were wolf tracks everywhere, and he frequently heard them moving around in the darkness.  “As the winter wore on, the unnatural fervor of my hatred for the wolves increased.  My food was running low, and the darkness and the cold and the constant discomfort set my nerves on edge.  I jumped at the slightest sound, and the moan of the wind peopled the dark corners with evil spirits.”  He didn’t see another person for six months.  This tale is from his book Arctic Adventure.

It’s an important story, because it reminds us of the days before humans eliminated most of our predators, before we came to dominate the land almost everywhere.  Freuchen was nothing more than walking meat, one mistake away from becoming a feast for hungry wolves.  This was the normal mode for almost all of human history — the natural world was far from safe.  In my lifetime, I’ve walked countless hundreds of miles alone in the woods, almost never feeling like meat.  Something vital is missing, in this world of seven-point-something billion humans, and growing.  We’ve lost our brakes.

Lions and tigers and bears keep us humble, and we have a huge need for humility — deflating our grand illusions, and bringing us down to actual size.  To our sacred predators, we look like a tasty lunch, not the almighty masters of the universe.  They force us to pay sharp attention to the land around us, fully tuned in to all of our senses.  They make us feel alive.  They help us remember our long lost wildness.  This is good. 

I once lived alone in a remote forest for nine years.  I spent far more time in the company of wild animals than with humans.  The gorgeous red foxes always impressed me.  During long, cold winters, when the snow was waist-deep, I would watch them chase snowshoe hares across the pond and through the bushes, yelping and shrieking.  They lived outdoors all the time, they satisfied their own needs, and they lived well — without clothes or tools or fire.  This was their ancient sacred home; this was exactly where they belonged.  They did not have the slightest interest in being my friend.

I spent much of my time indoors, close to the wood stove, bundled up in clothing from Asia, listening to an Asian radio, typing on an Asian computer, and eating store-bought food from faraway lands.  I could not survive a winter out in the snow.  I was not wild and free, but I had immense respect for my relatives who were — the deer, coyotes, owls, and weasels.  They were so lucky!  They had never forgotten who they were.

Before Europeans commenced full-scale genocide upon wolves, the forest was a place of genuine danger.  Grimm's Fairy Tales is a collection of stories from old Europe, and the word “wolf” appears 72 times in this book.  Wolves were a significant fact of life in those days — no one dared to wander around in the forest staring at a cell phone, oblivious to their surroundings.  A wolf swallowed Tom Thumb, and another killed the grandmother of Little Red Riding Hood.  Humankind was not yet the unchallenged master of the world, but each conflict in these tales was resolved by the death of the wolf. 

In his book Man-Eaters, Michael Bright cited a number of stories of wolves killing humans.  Wolf packs in Paris killed 40 in 1450.  British sources noted 624 humans killed by wolves in Banbirpur in 1878.  In Finland, 22 children were killed in 1880-1881.  In the 1960s, wolves in the Ural Mountains attacked 168 and devoured 11.  Wolf attacks in Kyrgyzstan in 1999 made people afraid to go outdoors.  Today, our conversations rarely include the word “wolf.” 

Going back to an earlier time, the wolves once enjoyed a great victory.  In the stories of heathen Europe, there was a pantheon of gods and goddesses.  Odin was the chief god, and his animal allies were two ravens and two wolves.  During the battle of Ragnarök, in which the human gods were defeated by the forces of nature, Odin was swallowed alive by the mighty wolf Fenris.  Modern school kids plead for mercy because “the dog ate my homework.”  For the old Norse folk, the issue was “the wolf ate my god.”

Many years later, Jesus warned his followers: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7:15).  We’ve been on the warpath against wolves ever since. 

Our wild ancestors saw wolves as sacred relatives, beings of great power.  Our domesticated ancestors, who were obsessed with having absolute control over nature, developed a pathological hatred of wolves that continues to this day.  A pack of wolves could exterminate your livestock or poultry overnight.  Battlefields always attracted crowds of ravens and wolves, who feasted on the fallen.  Wolves sometimes dug up fresh graves in the cemetery.  None of this was acceptable to domesticated humans.  There was no room for wolves in their worldview.  It’s time to reevaluate that worldview.

A note to readers.  After 14 months of writing weekly book reviews, it’s time to take a break.  The reviews will become the bulk of my second book.  Now it’s time to write some rants that will precede and follow the section of reviews — rants like the above rough draft.  Stay tuned.

Book of the Eskimos

Peter Freuchen (1886-1957) was a Dane who set up a trading post in Greenland in 1910.  He spent 50 years among the Inuit, and knew them when they still lived in their traditional Stone Age manner.  He married an Inuit woman and had two children.  Freuchen’s Book of the Eskimos describes how these people lived, and provides us with a window into a world far different from our own. (Today, the word “Eskimo” is rude.)

The Arctic was the last region to be settled by humans.  It’s an extremely cold region, with just two frost-free months, and the sun doesn’t shine for four months of the year.  What’s for breakfast?  Meat.  What’s for lunch?  Meat.  Dinner?  Guess what!  They lived almost entirely on animal foods from birds, fish, and mammals of the sea and tundra.  These foods were processed and preserved in a variety of different ways, many of which would gag outsiders.  Blubber was their fuel for heat, cooking, and light.

Survival in this harsh land demanded cooperation and sharing.  Meat was community property, and no one was denied access to it (although regular freeloaders were not warmly regarded).  Spoken discourse was typically indirect, non-confrontational, and comically self-effacing.  Functional communities had no use for those who suffered from grandiose egos or other anti-social perversions.

Despite their harsh life, the Inuit had a tremendous zeal for living.  Sexually, they enjoyed great freedom.  Wife swapping was common and perfectly acceptable.  Young people (even children) were free to fully explore the mysteries of tender pleasures.  Orgies, singing, and storytelling sweetened the monotony of long winter nights.  Freuchen writes that “they always enjoy life with an enviable intensity, and they believe themselves to be the happiest people on earth living in the most beautiful country there is.”

Anthropologists have shown us that nomadic foraging cultures had a number of advantages, compared to agricultural societies.  Foraging societies in warmer regions typically had a number of aspects in common.  Inuit society did not neatly fit into the same pattern of characteristics.

The common pattern is that nomadic foragers did not domesticate animals — they lived in a reality where all animals were wild, sacred relatives, teachers, and equals.  But the Inuit sled dogs were owned, controlled, and exploited (it was perfectly acceptable to copulate with a dog when she was in heat, as long as it was done outdoors, in the open).  These sled dogs were maybe 80% wild.  They would ravage the settlement and eat everything if allowed to run loose, so they were kept tied.  Their teeth were filed down to keep them from biting apart their tethers.  Sled dogs did not in any way resemble the neurotic, infantilized canines of modern suburbia.  They only responded to instructions from the dog whip.

The common pattern believes that women enjoyed their highest levels of respect and equality in nomadic foraging societies.  Abuse was one of agriculture’s many hideous offspring.  But in numerous passages, Freuchen describes husbands fiercely beating their troublesome wives bloody (“He beat her like a dog.”).  He wrote that “a woman is after all born to be the victim of men.”  But in another section, he mentioned that Inuit women had “perpetual smiles,” and noted that “they seem to have more natural grace, more zest for life than their white sisters.”

The common pattern celebrates the notion that nomadic foragers enjoyed an easy life with abundant leisure time.  They only “worked” one or two days a week.  In warmer regions, there was an abundance of food, and starvation was rare.  In Inuit country, life was far more challenging, and starvation was a major threat.  Sewing needles were vital survival tools.  If they broke or wore out, clothing could not be mended, and ripped britches could be a death sentence.  There are many reasons why the Arctic was the last region to be settled.

On the other hand, the Inuit did fit into the common pattern with regard to active population management, which was essential to their survival.  Infanticide was common and normal, and daughters were not as desirable as sons (future meat producers).  When hunting was bad, children were killed to spare the group from the misery of starvation.  One woman survived a spell of bad hunting by eating her husband and three children.  Folks who could no longer keep up with the hunting party were abandoned.  Those who were too old to contribute to the wellbeing of the community committed suicide, or asked their children to hang them or stab them — and these requests were honored without hysteria or drama, often during a party when everyone was in high spirits.

A number of aspects of Inuit life are shocking to many in consumer society.  But the reverse is also true.  The Inuit were dumbfounded by the astonishing foolishness of the Danes: “Alas, you are a child in this country, and a child in your thoughts.”  When greed-crazed Norwegians moved in and made a quick fortune by massacring the fur seals, Inuit communities starved.  Every way of life has plusses and minuses.  Unlike consumer society, the Inuit hunters lived sustainably for several thousand years — until they met the white folks.  Is there anything more precious than a sustainable way of life?

Freuchen had great respect for the Inuit, while at the same time believing that Danish society was more advanced.  At his trading post he provided guns, bullets, knives, traps, pots, matches, and other things that the Inuit had happily lived without for thousands of years.  It made him feel good that he was helping them modernize.

When hunters used bows and arrows to hunt for reindeer in flat wide open tundra with no place to hide, they sometimes had to lay motionless in the snow for two days, waiting for the prey to move within range, which didn’t always happen.  Guns allowed them to kill from far away, which led to more meat, which led to more Inuit.  Freuchen eventually came to realize that modernization was not a free lunch: “these favorable living conditions brought about an increase in the population that began to overtax the resources of the country.”  Whoops!

Modernization is what had driven Freuchen to Greenland in the first place.  When he had been attending med school in Copenhagen, a seriously injured man arrived, and none of the doctors thought he’d survive.  After six months of careful treatment, the man fully healed — an absolute miracle!  The staff proudly watched as the man walked out of the hospital, stepped off the curb, and immediately got killed by a car.  There were almost no cars in Copenhagen in 1905.  Freuchen’s mind snapped. 

Today, the modernized Inuit have guns, televisions, phones, nice wooden houses, and motor boats.  Snowmobiles have temporarily replaced the sled dogs.  What they’ve lost is a sustainable way of life, and a healthy traditional future for their grandchildren.  When the cheap energy is gone, it will be rough sledding.

Peter Freuchen, Book of the Eskimos, World Publishing Company, Cleveland, 1961.