Rewilding

words :: Jon Turk illustration :: Lani Imre

Flaco pecked his way out of his egg and stepped out into the incubator as a newborn Eurasian eagle-owl. Over time, he grew, fledged and lived in the Central Park Zoo in New York City. His home was a cage the size of a bus stop, complete with fake rocks, a few branches and a painted mural on the back wall depicting his natural habitat: the wild steppe of Central Asia, where his ancestors flew free and swooped down from the sky to catch mice and gophers.

After 12 years in the zoo, an ecoterrorist cut a hole in Flaco’s cage and, for the first time in his life, he stepped out into the wide-open world, a free bird at last. He spread his wings and soared into the trees above. Zookeepers feared he wouldn’t have the skills or musculature to hunt, but he fooled them all and soon he was feasting on the abundant rats and mice in the woodlands of Central Park. The zookeepers felt he would be safer in the zoo (or at least they felt he was an economic asset), so they tried to capture him—but Flaco intuited their motives and escaped all their traps.

This is the summer Freewheelin’ issue, with articles about biking, hiking, paddling and trail running. And yet, at a fundamental level, all these stories are about rewilding— stepping out of our cages and soaring into the figurative trees above.

We can rewild ourselves for an afternoon in the park, a long weekend in Tofino, a month in the Yukon or a lifetime exploring the desert. I vividly recall the day, in 1971, when I stuffed my newly earned PhD diploma into the glovebox of a 1964 Ford Fairlane, lashed a canoe on top and headed north, into Canada’s great Arctic wilderness.

Rewilding is a process, not a singular event. Paddling down the broad Mackenzie River, at first I found myself bored by the endless repetition of the action.

Boring. Time. Just paddling, stroke after stroke. Essentially doing nothing. Bad people go to jail where they are forced to do nothing. Rich people pay big bucks to go to meditation retreats where they learn to do nothing. I paddled a canoe and swatted mosquitos and did not much else until, after about three weeks, the rewilding crept along the edges of the boredom until doing nothing became euphoric.

Gradually, over the course of a lifetime, I have become so busy doing nothing most days that I don’t have time to do anything else.

Also, paddling a canoe isn’t actually “doing nothing.” It’s being aware of the currents, keeping track of navigation, watching the sunrise, noticing a moose grazing along the riverbanks. Paddling is staying alive in the wilderness.

Three decades after that original canoe trip, I spent several years in an Indigenous Koryak village in Kamchatka, far eastern Siberia. There I learned that the fundamental process of civilization has stolen much of the innate wildness from us—irreversibly and forever. Likely, everyone who reads this magazine has grown up going to school in an enclosed, squarewalled classroom, sitting behind a desk, learning our three R’s. And none of us will be able to attain the wildness of Moolynaut, the old shaman who was born in a skin tent and spent her childhood watching the reindeer—but we can journey in that direction.

Flaco the owl never flew past the skyscrapers of New York City to seek solace in the extensive forests and farmlands that lay beyond. Unfortunately, his urban diet included rats that had eaten rat poison, and the accumulated poison eventually caused Flaco to become disoriented. He flew into a building, crashed and died.

Bad people go to jail where they are forced to do nothing. Rich people pay big bucks to go to meditation retreats where they learn to do nothing.

I don’t intend to tell some moralistic fable about the evils of civilization. I’m just reporting the facts, as any journalist is required to do. But I also know that, while Flaco was alive, many urban city dwellers in New York pilgrimaged into Central Park with binoculars, seeking a glimpse of him perched in the trees or flying free through the foliage. The observers rewilding a bit themselves.

So as we embark on the summer vacation season, let’s remember Flaco and focus on rewilding rather than seeking miles, speed accomplishments or danger for danger’s sake. And, if it’s in any way possible, maybe extend that trip longer and deeper than you originally planned. Because the wilderness speaks slowly, and we need time to listen.