Ch. 22
The Modern Guru
As Wilderness Prophet

"Now ask the beasts, and they shall teach thee;

and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee."

Job


     
hen a nation's in  trouble, as we are  now, there is a crying need for a Voice Crying in the Wilderness. This Voice should be you - the Wilderness Prophet.

      Now you don't actually have to live in the wilderness permanently. But to qualify as a genuine wilderness Prophet, you have to have lived in the Wilderness for an extended time, at least a week or so.

      You'll have to plan and execute your Wilderness Trip extra carefully, to get something especially unique from it, because lots of people in the last fifty years have dropped out and spent a year or so on a hog farm in Arkansas, a Turkish prison, or a commune in California. They pride themselves as having "Gotten In Touch With Nature," as they delusively put it. They wax eloquent over breaking away from the rat-race, Saving the Planet, gaining Serenity, and Getting in Touch with Now. They bore you to tears about the spiritual mysteries of organic gardening, vegetarianism, and smoking Vitamin C.

      So you should do all those things, but in a way that puts you one-up on the other wilderness freaks. For example, almost any coward can float down the Colorado River on a raft. But you - so you tell your followers (whether true or false) - floated down the formidable Current River in Missouri while standing upright in your canoe.

      Early on in my Adventure as a Guru, I could see that the Wilderness Prophet gambit was going to be Big. So, as usual, I burnt my bridges behind me and proceeded to swim away from shore.

      I was, at the time, working as an auto mechanic in a Penny's garage in a suburb of Kansas City. My career had passed through an interesting array of jobs from railroad section gang worker in Oklahoma to dog dissector in a medical laboratory in Connecticut to an apartment manager in California.

      I knew my shop foreman wasn't particularly happy with my work, no matter how unruffled I acted when a customer screamed about my putting his muffler on backward. I had been reading a book on Theosophy and thinking that perhaps the guru field might be my next karmic detour. So as I ate a donut in my car during lunch, I decided to take the plunge, leave Behind the security of my present job, and Turn My Back on the World.

      Fortunately, that same day the world turned its back on me - in the form of a pink slip from my shop foreman. I realized intuitively that Someone Up There was making sure I kept my new resolve.

      Thus began my Wilderness Prophet Adventure. For several months I tried to find another job - with no success. Then one day, as I was reading Robinson Crusoe and shuffling through my last few food stamps, it came to me: I didn't really have to work. I had a rifle, a couple boxes of shells, a pair of hiking boots, a change of clothes, an old portmanteau picture of my grandmother, and a box of Milk Duds.

      I repaired to the Current River in the Missouri Ozarks - my Wilderness. Now this spot is one of the most beautiful the Great Spirit ever planned as a National Riverways Park. Rather than bore you with my own love-affair with the clear, fast river, I'll merely gloss over how I put my Wilderness Prophet bit together.

      I hit the river at the height of the tourist, float-trip season. Walking from the highway bus stop, I found a beautiful spot where a little side stream ran into the Current, away from the clangorous beer-drinking sightseers. But after several days, I ran out of grub, so I hired on as a worker for a guy who rented canoes and ran a grocery store and gas pump.

      Old Joe Yocum is one of the finest friends I ever had, one of the Salt of the Earth people, as I call them; that small band who meet you with a friendly outstretched hand, who amble peacefully and serenely through life falling headlong into good luck.

      I stayed with him for six months, taking the newly-bedecked tourists up river and picking them up down river, their paraphernalia and their spirits considerably dampened.

      But, when the shekels got to jingling too loudly in my coveralls, I told old Joe I had to go back to the Wilderness. He understood. He'd have liked to have lived on the river himself, but he had a wife and seventeen kids. The few weekends we camped together on the Current, I sensed his love of the Out-of-Doors - and his terror at returning home.

      I realized I was wasting my time in idle sentimentality and even beginning to have a taste for a normal existence. But the Truth of my Life-Adventure soon broke over me again: I was destined to be a Cultural Gadfly. I was glad there were so few agreeable people like Joe, as it saved me from the temptation of liking them. So back to the river I went, in the old weather-beaten canoe Joe gave me as a parting gift.

      "How can I do this bit so that when I return to Civilization people will be sufficiently Impressed?", I asked myself. Well, there is in our racial consciousness a deep-rooted respect for the Hunter, the Loner, the Builder, the Man of Nature, the Man Who Talks to Animals. I decided to try for all those. It turned out I was a lousy hunter. Every morning the squirrels would wake me up, barking gayly in the old chestnut tree down creek. By the time I pulled my clothes on, crawled out of the tent, found my rifle, and got to the tree, no squirrel to be seen.

      So I decided to be a vegetarian. You'd never believe how many bad-tasting plants there are in the Missouri Ozarks. A steady diet of May Apples or Dandelion Greens is a bummer. Joe had turned me on to sassafras tea, which served as my staple through many rough weeks.

      Fortunately I had some money, so I hitch-hiked back to Joe's Sta and Gro for some vittles. Loaded down with a can of lard, some beans, salt, a side of smoked bacon, and a month's supply of Milk Duds, I trudged back to my camp site. Now I could laugh at the squirrels.

      I think it was having that food that transformed my whole Experience. Suddenly the wild turkey up on the hill no longer seemed to be guffawing. The bobwhites began singing to me and I discovered the Magic of wild blackberries and miner's lettuce.

      So I started trying for the last of the tricks - talking with animals. I talked to turtles, ants, crawdads, a possum late one night, and a herd of cows that roamed through my camp one morning early. None of them spoke back. Not even a nod of the head.

      But then it happened.

      Since coming to the river I had listened for the Whippoorwill every dusk about 7:14 PM. Whip-Poor-Will it sang in the distance, its haunting vibrato echoing through the woods.

      I had given up on the idea of talking with animals - another folk phantasy, I said to myself. But one evening as I sat in front of my fire, brewing some sassafras tea from fresh roots I'd dug that afternoon, a Whippoorwill came and talked to me.

     Now I know that sounds crazy. And if you don't believe it, you can quit reading right here, I don't care. But it did talk to me. It flew onto an old dead tree no farther than ten yards away. It first warbled its usual refrain, but now it was so close I could hear the marvelous throbbing tremolo with which he begins his song.

      The bird, his silent grey eyes looking intently at me, spoke in a voice filled with the echoes of the hills: "You're really mixed up, aren't you?"

      "Whatta you mean?" I started to argue, then realized I was talking to a bird.

      "Did you say something to me?"

      "You're confused aren't you?"

      Who was I to argue with a bird. "I guess so," I said.

      "Do you know why you came to the woods?" the Whippoorwill asked.

      "So I could bill myself as a Wilderness Prophet." No bird was going to confuse me.

      "You came to learn about life, about yourself."

      "Yea," I said sarcastically, "so what have I learned?"

      "You've learned you can't manipulate Life. That you have to adjust yourself to it."

      Well that sounded okay.

      "Blessings," the Whippoorwill said, and flew away slowly, glancing back at me.

      Okay, so you don't believe it. Neither do I entirely any more. But it happened anyway.

      It was the Sign, to me, that I should return to Civilization, for I now had an Authentic Experience to mark me as a True Wilderness Prophet.

      Now, from such a Super-Normal Experience, what did I learn that I've been able to use in my Guru practice? First, remember that if no one was with you in the wilderness, then your story can perhaps be embellished a bit, as the occasion demands. For example, I move in several directions with my Wilderness Prophet bit, deriving such Teachings as these:

      1. The Building Theme:


      2. The Nature Theme: