I was born with wild genes. I don`t recall any single thing that started me on that path. But I do remember when I was a girl and I went to Camp Fire Girls camp one summer. We had Indian names and we learned to canoe. It was the first time I realized other people wanted to do the same things I wanted to do and that it was taught to kids. It was never like some bolt of lightning; I just always felt happier outdoors. I hated school and hated being carted off to the ballet. That was my mother`s definition of a lady; but when she carted me off to the ballet, I threw up. When I went to camp, I was happy.
The summer I moved to my wilderness cabin I had just decided to get divorced and my dad had just died, so that made it all the more traumatic. I remember being so scared and feeling so very much alone. I thought, ”I`ll be all alone back in the woods, and there could be rapists or burglars or other bad people out there.” But I thought I would find solace in the woods, and that was the right instinct. Within two or three weeks I had lost all the fear and I felt safer there than anywhere else in the world.
I do not consider where I live or my lifestyle lonely. It just isn`t. I`m so busy trying to make a living and championing environmental concerns that I don`t really have the time to even think about being alone or whether I`m lonely.
You can be more lonely in a city with crowds of people who don`t know you and where so many strangers have that selfish take-care-of-yourse lf-first attitude. People get mugged and murdered and raped, and nobody lifts a finger. Of course, loneliness is a human condition, and everyone gets that way from time to time–even if you`re married. I was more lonely when I was married, without time together or mutual interests, than I ever felt in the woods. When you do feel lonely, often you can get more solace in a place like the woods or the mountains or the sea, anywhere in nature, because you can always reach out and there are other living things there. They don`t reach out and cuddle you, but they`re there to enjoy and appreciate–a larger community you fit into where you`re not the kingpin or at the top of the pack. That`s a healthy feeling and not at all like ”being alone.”
I have this little saying hanging over my desk at the cabin. I tacked my name in front of it so it says, ”Anne LaBastille–You can handle anything.” One of the things I had to learn at the cabin was that there wasn`t anyone around there to help me. I had to do most things, the everyday things, myself. And I had to develop a frame of mind that said when something goes wrong, I have to fix it and can`t be a baby and go find someone else to do it for me. I do worry–what if I get hurt and just bleed to death? I work with a chainsaw and I could cut my femoral artery and be dead in less time than it takes to get to a telephone or a boat or a neighbor. You just become very, very careful.
When I was in Miami settling my mother`s estate, one afternoon I was on U.S. 1 trying to get to a hardware store across a busy intersection, several lanes wide, at rush hour, and I was going against the oncoming traffic. It was like a river of tension–people would have run over an elephant if they thought they could get there any faster–and I was in a panic. I mean, I could be just as dead just as fast right there in the middle of Miami, and there`d be no one to pick up the pieces. Death comes in many ways and many forms. If we sit back and worry about what might happen, it`s no way to pass your life. Maybe I was a forerunner in the women`s movement, but I didn`t know it at the time. I`ve never been much of a joiner. But I`m very glad there is a women`s movement today to provide the encouragement to women to go out and do things we have every right to do.
One reason I was able to get into this profession and go as far as I did was Cornell University. They actually had all these courses in cutting trees, forestry, wildlife census, those kinds of things, and I took them. I was always the only woman in the classes, but there wasn`t any discrimination–in fact, the men bent over backward to help me. Some women`s liberationists would say that was patronizing, but it was a new phenomenon to them. They wanted to see me do well, and everything they did was in good taste.
It changed after I learned all those skills and became competent and said, ”I know all these things and I want a job.” Nobody wanted to actually put his money down. I wrote the fish and game departments in 48 states. Of all of them, the only one that replied was Wyoming, and they said they didn`t hire women but they could offer me a volunteer job as a wildlife technician analyzing data.
Since I moved to my cabins, I`ve been surprised by two things.
One is I`m always amazed at how much I love the out-of-doors. I always knew I did, but now that I`ve come to live there and write about it, it`s like I can never get enough of it. I collect ecosystems like some people go to special museums in the world to see work by a particular artist or like some people go to shopping malls. If I have to go to a city for my work, maybe to see a publisher, I`ll make a point of going to see whatever wildlife areas are in the vicinity, and it makes the whole trip worthwhile.
People say, ”Do you still live there?” They think by now I`ve sold the cabin and bought a condo, but you know, no matter how many times I come and go, or how many years pass by, there`s always something new–a new otter shows up or something. Nature is forever surprising.It`s sustaining and healthy and beautiful. I have an on-going love affair with wilderness and wildlife.
The second big surprise, and one of the most amazing things in my personal development that happened as a result of all this, was when I suddenly learned how to open my mouth–I mean speak in public.
My mother raised me to be a ”very nice young lady.” That meant being a meek and mild-mannered little girl, and I think for a lot of women that holds over into adult life. I used to get sick to my stomach before I had to give a lecture.
About five years ago I had a breakthrough. At a professional meeting something happened that I felt morally bound to reply to, and when I spoke up, it was well-accepted by the audience–they applauded–and it was like something snapped in my head. Suddenly I felt, ”Gee, it`s all right,” and I haven`t been afraid since. Now I enjoy my lecturing and do better at it–with humor and emotion and a natural sense of myself. That was a tremendous leap forward in self-confidence and that was one of my biggest, nicest changes.
I get a lot of correspondence–it goes along with this business of writing. I used to answer everybody, but I can`t anymore. Now I only answer when it`s a young person writing with questions about how to get involved in the environment. I can`t say how strongly I care about young people; they`re the only hope for the future of conservation. They come to my lectures, and I try to tell them everything I can.
I know when I was younger I needed someone to look up to, a role model, and there was no one. If there`s a way I can do that for kids nowadays, then I`ll do my best. In my will, I`ve set aside money to be used for needy women who want to pursue work in conservation. I had such a hard time pursuing my own career. If someone had given me some support instead of telling me to go be a librarian or a schoolteacher, it would have meant a lot to me.
Other letters I try to answer are those, say, from a woman getting divorced or having a hard time who just needs to network with someone. There are a lot of lonely people out there–lonely and confused. It`s unfortunate it has to be strangers they turn to and it takes away from my time for my work, but again, everyone needs someone, and it makes a good chain, helping people. People sometimes say, ”Okay, so I can go off to the woods and get recharged, and I come back ready to fight for it, but what can I really do?” I want to make it very clear to people that there are many things in the environment they can champion as individuals and make a difference. Maybe it`s through volunteer citizen groups or some other very local community project. But everything counts. My little cabin is really only a symbol for what I`m trying to say. All people can do something in their own back yards.
