In Closing

The adventure of a lifetime isn't supposed to mean a lifetime of one, never-ending adventure. There has to be a beginning, middle, and an end. Or else the adventure and the life merge into an indistinguishable blob that is neither life nor an adventure. 

The road takes a toll on one's heart and body. The soul may ripen with age, but the skin wrinkles, the hair turns white, the beard grizzles, the organs shrivel and decay. I remember being able to type accurately and furiously as the library was closing and the librarian was kicking me and the other homeless men into the streets of Santa Monica, typing with the words firing from my fingers, with the passion and the fearlessness of a man in search of a voice, a man who may have found the voice he was searching for, but was pushing the limits. Now I have to spell check the word 'Milk'.

Speaking of Beginnings, Middles, and Ends... I will recollect my three ghosts of travel, the moments, (one could call them eras since I'm talking about a decade of time). The beginning of the Man in The Van was not the first post, nor the tenth, because I think those were attempts to discover my blogging persona. The beginning was when I morphed into the honest, unaffected asshole one sees today. That was probably on the sands of Mexico, La Paz...summer of 2009. The van's timing cover gasket blew out and required a full dis-assembly of the front of the engine in the parking space I had just rented at a house. It was embarrassing that the second day I met that family I was neck deep in grease, but such is life. I had to fix that gasket twice because there are two layers of gaskets and the deepest one was the one that failed. (Hey, 10 years later it's never needed adjustment.) The Mexican journey was always one that could collapse at any second. I planned to spend one year in Mexico, travel towards Guatemala and abandon the van when it failed me. But I felt comfortable in La Paz up until the insane summer heat arrived and, from apathy and malaise, I did not get on the ferry to mainland Mexico. The heat drove me quite mad until I only dreamt of northern climate, the coolness of trees. Also, I had planned badly for the trip as my bank card expired and I didn't have access to any money. So I drove north without ever grasping how the persona of the blog had been adopted without my being aware. I wasn't acting anymore. Life in the van had become my life, it was not a phase anymore. I had faced mechanical challenges in desperate times in harsh conditions and I had been forced to embrace the challenge, and the process shed my previous persona that treated the van as a separate, 8 cylinder, character-rich conveyance. By the time I drove north from La Paz, the van was a part of me and that marked the beginning of the journey. Our fates had become inseparable.

Wolf Quest Part XV: Closing Thoughts

The wolf quest about was an experiment, like most of my decisions. I prefer to be surprised from one day to the next and culturally I’m disloyal. I don’t see what other people see in society. I see chaos leading toward the destruction of everything I built. The prospect of living long enough to see everything I participated in either destroyed or underwater can only be ignored for so long. But it’s inevitable so unless I’m really amused by an activity or challenged or entertained, then it’s all academic, history in the making. Human development is too messy for me, too haphazard, chaotic, too much error and too little trial. I recognize that there is no pause button, but there is also no immediate demand for recklessness. That can be avoided, but the tradition is to leap before we look, and the science suggest that has doomed the planet. So, it all comes back to the debate about what can be salvaged from an self-destructive society? Can anything be salvaged? Why? Why salvage anything, any custom or technology? Destroyers of Planets are rare phenomenon so we all need to pay close attention to what is happening around us so if future genetics retain our memories then there’s a chance humanity will develop a collective fear, and that fear will be strong enough not to test.

Wolf Quest Part XIV: South to the Wolf

Way up on the northern tip of New Foundland

For all the trouble the Transmission gave me after it lost 2nd gear in Quebec the reckoning would arrive after the trip ended. 2nd gear actually isn't used much and unlike a manual transmission that falls apart all at once after a gradual slide, a 3 speed C4 uses one gear at a time and with 2nd gear completely gone because the transmission band that clamps down on the drum had lost all friction material, with enough pressure, third gear will be fine. Yes, the batteries and exhaust fell apart but everything else miraculously needed no maintenance. Fate would not cooperate with providing a ship to Ellesmere Island, but many other problems could've caused delays or even cancellation of this trip. Now I've read a great deal more about the obstacles overcome for other Econoline owners so I know that without a doubt the van can go on and on. My personal suspicion is that only gas prices will cause the retirement of this van. Anything can be fixed. Furthermore, within a week I can personally rebuild any one vehicle component. I'm almost looking forward to the day I replace all the differential bearings. It's the one realm I haven't investigated too closely. An 9 inch rear differential. It's pretty complicated but every part is available and there's even a dvd repair video to show you how to rebuild it. The only things that worried me were the backlash settings and the crush washers but I know the people to ask. There's an art to rebuilding differentials, and a shop would probably charge $400+, but I hope I get to tackle it on my own terms like the transmission project back in Tejas.

Wolf Quest Part XIII: Sanctuary

The drive from Happy Valley to the coast of Labrador was uneventful. The fact I picked up the two hitchhikers made me feel responsible for at least getting them to some spot near civilization from which they could get rides south and that spot was the turn off for Mary’s Harbour. My history of hitchhiking leaves a soft spot for travelers on the side of the road and once they get in the vehicle I have to accept some sacrifices. The two young men were starved for rock n roll and for some reason Kiss was making a Canadian Tour with a stop in central New Foundland. “Good evening, New Foundland! Are you ready to Rock?” and like twenty people clap their hands and think, “I thought this had something to do with kissing.” I had spent about a week in Happy Valley trying to find a sponsor to take me north to Ellesmere Island and that week demonstrated the utter bleakness of that area. If Levelland, Texas is a Baptist amusement park where a tractor is considered a ride then Happy Valley, Labrador is…I don’t know…it’s an Army base. I think there is a high school. I didn’t see any source of amusement other than my van. In the summer the mosquitoes make any outdoor activity miserable. I saw a few ATVs running around but with gas at around $7 a gallon, who can afford to ride an ATV? So the winter is the only time people enjoy outside activities. And those probably involve ski-mobiles, skis, snowshoes. There is one park/playground, but who would be eaten by mosquitoes to play on a swing? My point is that if you spend more than a few days in Happy Valley in the summer then you have exhausted all the amusement opportunities so hitchhiking around 1000 miles, across the St. Lawrence Strait to the middle of New Foundland for a music concert of has-been lips-stick rock stars prancing around with battle axe guitars starts to sound reasonable.

Wolf Quest Part XII

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Wolf Quest Part XI

Where was I? Muskrat Falls. Yes, I jumped ahead a little to the diversionary hike to Muskrat Falls. Those falls are between Churchill Falls and Goose Bay, and the reason I skipped ahead is because I was driving on a single dirt road and there is almost nothing to see since it is flat, and mosquitoes are voracious and it's raining, and the van has only three speeds: slow, faster, and highway speed....oh, that reminds me. I lost a speed in Fermont, Quebec on the day after I went on that night hike over the Hematite mine.

Wolf Quest Part X: Muskrat Falls

This video isn't really in complete chronological order, so my future biographers will have to keep that in mind. Muskrat Falls is East of Churchill Falls, which is East of Labrador City, but they are all West of Goose Bay and far south of Ellesmere Island. It's simply a video of some footage on my wolf quest using James Taylor recording without permission, but is it really needed when the man does a cover version of a public domain American folk song? I could record this song too, but he's got a better voice. 

Wolf Quest: Part IX

Welcome to the Big Land. Wet, but notice the flags. this was a weather system that acted like it wasn't ever going to leave.

You might wonder why the top window is open in the turtle top. That's because the exhaust had broken in half at the muffler and fumes were pouring through the holes in the floor and up into the driving compartment. So I was ventilating the van to avoid passing out on my last bit of driving North through Quebec into Labrador on my quest to Ellesmere Island to raise awareness about Arctic Wolves.

The picture is proof I made it at least to Labrador with the dead battery and the broken exhaust. I thought I was doing pretty good but the wolf, the object of the whole trip, was far from my thoughts.  I passed a tailing pond that was bright red but research tells me it was rust being washed out of the rock. It's all on the video no one will ever see.

Arctic Wolf Related Media

There's an Arctic wolf at 3:30.

I count about 5 distinct shots of an American Flag, which is noteworthy not only because it is really trite jingoism, but it's also misleading since the Alaskan Arctic isn't being contested and the Arctic that has "potential for development" is not America. But by imposing the flag on digital landscapes they are suggesting Ellesmere Island is America. It's not. It's Canadian. But with multi-national corporations in political power like Exxonmobile and Chevron, flags are interchangeable. For all I know some of these video shots are of Antarctica.

In the 2009 movie Avatar a group called "The Resources Development Administration" is what is on the planet Pandora searching for a rare metal called unobtanium. The year is 2154 and I forget how it's explained that in a mere 150 years we either locate a nearby planet named Pandora (how did we miss it?), or develop interstellar travel...all in the aim of finding resources since Earth has been depleted. I think if you left on the fastest rocket ship available at this very moment you would not arrive at the nearest solar system for 19,000 years. So that would be the year 21,015. Good luck booking a round trip ticket for something like that. This raises the same kind of question raise by the recent movie Interstellar, namely, if humans can develop civilizations in space then why is Earth needed? Also, if a self-supporting environment can be manufactured then why does it have to float around in space? Why not leave it on Earth? Maybe the cartoon sequel to Avatar will answer these questions. The movie did nothing for me because I'm not 13 year old anymore and cartoons are only cool when I eat LSD at the same time. The $400 million price tag on the movie also made me sick when it was attached to a movie that 'raises environmental awareness'. That's just phony bullshit propaganda. Avatar absolutely is a generic 'moral transformation' story reused a dozen times. Avatar was different because it's mostly animation or animatronics or advanced rotoscoping and also live action. I would recommend Watership Down (1978) or Silent Running (1972) if you want to raise your awareness about anything.

Avatar was also released as I was starving to death in Laconia. I had to sneak in through an open emergency exit door in order to watch it in an empty theater during a blizzard. I wanted to see what counted for an "environmental awareness movie" in 2009 and of course it horrified me. The fact I was at that very moment hung up on my own environmental quest to see the Arctic Wolf, a quest that I believed was a stronger and more original concept with compelling sub-plots...but had a promotion budget of $0, really irked me. Cameron gets $400 million to fill the pockets of computer geeks sitting behind animation computers in the Superfund site known as San Jose...and he's calling himself an eco-activist. I'm trying to physically visit the Arctic wolf to save the future of humanity while wearing recycled pants and I'm called a lunatic. Really depressing scenario. I felt like Travis in Taxi Driver (1976) at the porn theater.

If I just had $1000 I could've left Laconia and driven a snowmobile to Labrador.


Well, this Arctic Potential Report is something that 'The Resources Development Administration' would produce. Gleaming faces with comforting sounds and misappropriated wildlife images. American flags. Gross.

And of course the nail in my neck is the image of the Arctic Wolf, the object of my quest in 2009-2012, being used casually like the animal was happy to assist in propaganda designed for the destruction of its homeland.

This is an unavoidable development. The Arctic has been exploited for 100 years and with the complete loss of Summer ice sheet in a few years the onslaught will commence. California got 8% of the average snowpack this past winter. The wolf in this video will be gunned down, seals slaughtered. All for oil to serve 8 Billion meat puppets and their pets.

Wolf Quest Part VIII: Why Wolves?

I left off in Part VI once I managed to get the van started again near Mont Groulx and instead of wisely turning around and driving south, I pushed all my chips into the middle and headed north on the only road in all of northern Quebec, Route 389. Labrador City lay like a gleaming emerald on the horizon and maybe if I could sort out all the problems with the van then I could continue the quest further north to Ellesmere Island where I would see the Arctic wolf with my own eyes. But this is a good chance to explore why wolves became the goal of my quest.

Recall that it was on Puta Lobo in Baja California that I had a vision about a trans-continental journey during the dark economic recession caused by land hungry financial consultants. Puta Lobo probably is dedicated to a coyote, not a wolf, as Puta Coyote doesn't have the same ring to it. But coyotes, not wolves, are what live in the desert. I thought, if I've never visited Labrador, the only political boundary in North America that I've yet to visit, then I should have a good reason. And the wolf quest started to take shape. But it actually started earlier than that.

Wolf Quest: Part VII - Short Fuse

Beards are popular in the future

So, the last chapter ended with my learning the van had a dead battery near the Manicougan Reservoir in North Eastern Quebec. And upon further investigation, the battery wasn't simply dead, as in discharged, I opened the caps and realized I'd neglected to refill them in my preparations in New England. The electrolyte level was low. Furthermore, because the level was low I could visibly see inside the battery and could tell a battery cell wall had broken. It looked like a row of dominoes tumbling in one direction but not all of them had fallen over. So the battery was finished. If this had happened on the Alaskan Highway I could expect someone to come along to help me, but on 389 N in Quebec there's hardly any traffic. The road itself is not very dangerous, not remotely as dangerous as the roads in Guatemala, but the distance was so far, like traveling from Boston to Miami on a dirt road, and gas cost around $7 a gallon so I didn't see much traffic.

Wolf Quest: Part VI

I left something out of the explanation for my time traveler-themed wolf quest. Because the future is so apocalyptic and immersed in chaos (although they are paradoxically still able to build a time machine) that all the research that this future janitor did on the year 2011, the year he was being sent back to, was so mixed up with the truth...this janitor thought that fashions of 2011 were identical to fashion of 1970...so this would explain why Oggy is wearing plaid bell bottom pants and a peasant shirt and a paisley cravat.

Paisley Cravat and pinstripe pants, your average fashion for 2011 Ellesmere Island

But, I just want to mention that now in case I forget later on...the entire time I was on this quest my plan was to stay in 1970s costume and if anyone asked me why I'm wearing plaid bell bottom pants I would say that I'd been sent back in time to search for the wolf, and I thought this is what people were wearing because research material in the future is totally garbled due to the climate apocalypse. That's also why I'm driving a 1969 van, because I was trying to fit in.

Wolf Quest Part V: Surviving

I recently watched the economic meltdown documentary Inside Job (2010)...and my initial reaction is of course horror and loathing hate for "Financial Engineers", but I can not come to the same conclusions as the filmmakers. The financial institution should not be regulated, in my opinion. Caveat Emptor is Latin for "BUYER BEWARE" and that should be on every dollar. The greatest irony that the filmmakers did not point out is that the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement system who lost their entire investment by betting on the bubble of Collaterized Debt Obligation...well, Mississippi is a Republican dominated state who voted for the king of deregulation Reagan and the bumbling Bush Twins. So, the diseased chickens came home to roost when the Republican led financial institution started to feed on their own. See, how can I have sympathy for someone who didn't recognize Reagan as an utter phony, voted for him, watched as he deregulated Wall Street, RE-ELECTED THE FASCIST SON OF A BITCH, then invested in all the super shady manufactured fantasies that Reagan and Bush constructed to enrich their friends? I can not have sympathy for someone who tried to increase their wealth through the most crooked means, on the advice of wealthy people they elected and re-elected, who then stabbed them in the back. CAVEAT EMPTOR, motherfuckers. Until people are starving in the street, clubbed to death by police batons while national guard eats apple pie in bleachers set up to allow easy viewing of the slaughter of civilians then there will be no change. Mississippi Public Employees want to get clever and invest in solar radiation growing magic mushrooms on Mars? Fuck them. They got what they deserve. The bottom line is: There are no 'healthy options' on a fast food menu.

Wolf Quest Part IV

 I haven't been writing my Wolf Quest story and it's fading into my senile mental folder so I'm going to try again.

When I left you last I was leaving the West Coast...and I posted an ad trying to trade everything I owned in the van, thus abandoning the van, for a functioning motorcycle. I even tried to steal the motorcycle my buddy Jon had in The Bay Area but it had many troubles and it wouldn't even make it over the Sierras let alone go all the way to Baffin Island.

Composing The Wolf Polka

Fortunately, no one offered me anything for my van. All my tools. All my shit was included in the deal and no one wanted to take the plunge. So that forced me to do some hard thinking because economically I could not get from San Francisco to Labrador paying all the gas when it costs something like $2 to drive a mile and there were approximately 6000 miles between me and Labrador so that would be $12,000 in fuel alone not including food and wolf related propaganda. All van maintenance had to be postponed. This was really desperate because gas cost around $4.00 at this time and the van was getting about 6MPG. So you do the math. I tried to get rid of the van, I really did, but it was impossible. Like renting a washed up Haitian Hooker. So all I could do is drive East and hope for the best.

Wolf Quest Part III

Slightly Better Map

I hate to spoil the story but this map kind of implies I never arrived at the destination of Ellesmere Island, I did not save or even see an Arctic wolf in the wild, and furthermore, I was trying to scribble a route across North America to the Arctic and ended up in Central America. So you might ask what went wrong...and that's the main point of my tale which I will begin again now.

A quest like this is only accomplished with allies, surprise help when I least expected it and while I did have a few scenarios like that I have to admit that it was mostly the opposite, mostly at the critical stages obstacles increased and allies all fled for the hills. Instead of picking up speed with the wind at my back it was more like patching a leaky boat from the moment I hit the water. And every leak I patched was replaced by ten more leaks. And instead of meeting allies who united with my quest to save the wolf I met men who wanted to freebase cocaine in dirty basements, crippled diabetic clowns, dying indigents. I found work in an aluminum factory and was fired two days before Christmas. Christmas Eve did not end with me magically meeting a wildlife biologist at a bar and making love in front of a fireplace. No. Instead, I slept on the street in the van in 0 degree weather. The battery died. I got a parking ticket. The tires all wore down to the metal radial and no one magically appeared to replace them. Instead, I went to NTB Tires and put two new tires on. The old tires disintegrated a day later, the rear wheel bearings seized...and the shitty alignment I bought actually destroyed the two new tires...so I was worse off than before. As soon as I reached the point of no return my battery fell apart, the exhaust system fell apart and the transmission broke. I could go on, but you get the idea. A quest of this magnitude requires a perfect alignment of events to assist me in my goal and I actually had a perfect alignment of events to absolutely prevent me from reaching my goal. I received support, but it was in pursuit of a different goal. One of the critical steps is getting into Canada and I was barred entry into Canada by the border police. That's a pretty serious setback and shortly after that I was stranded in a northern Maine snowbank.

Part Wolf - Part Oggy

This epic beard took a few years to grow so I don't want to give the impression that I left Mexico with a huge beard. No.

Oggy in a Mexican DIY garage

I left Mexico and drove north believing that there was no way I would cross the entire continent without either changing my mind or else convincing at least a handful of people of the importance of my quest. Let me remind you, the climate has destabilized and epic changes are in the future that will be catastrophic for everyone. I believe Mankind will get what he deserves and I have no sympathy for him, but the wolf is totally innocent and I felt something had to be done to raise awareness. So, armed with this argument, I suspected I could not drive the entire distance of North America talking about imperiled Arctic Wolves without gathering a team...and I believed a team could reach Ellesmere Island. And if I failed to assemble a team, or even one other person, then the wolf would not be saved by myself alone and I should resign myself to a world without wolves. Or I could be totally wrong about everything and this quest was merely a projection of my fear and self-loathing. One of these latter scenarios proved to be the reality. The plight of the wolves was not gripping enough for anyone I met.

But what are the details. Of course no one reading this is moved by the plight of the wolf so your only interest will be in the human element, the psychology behind the quest, the obstacles, the pain, the depression, the people involved. If I did not meet one person who was interested in joining me then what kinds of people did I meet?

The year was 2009 and the economy had imploded, mostly because it is a global Ponzi scheme, but specifically because the housing market is exactly as corrupt as everyone suspected, built on a cancerous tumor of manufactured promises and baffling chicanery such as mortgages becoming intangible commodities that are traded amongst nations in an effort to launder exploding debt from metastasized military expenditures. It's ludicrous, everyone knows it, but it's the current paradigm so people go along with it. From 2004-2008 I was living in a decaying house near Venice that was valued at $1.25 Million dollars, purchased for $875,000 a few months before I moved in, and worth $275,000 about 5 years earlier. I went to a  seminar in El Segundo, "How to Buy A House With No Money". I'm not joking. In 2006 I was offered a mortgage on a house worth $650,000 in Venice and I was an unemployed screenwriter...with a car I couldn't drive due to expired registration. 

I said, "I don't know if I can afford that kind of mortgage. What are the payments? $6000 a month?"
The seminar speaker oozed evil and he slicked back his greasy hair and his teeth were so artificially white that I was blinded when he spoke, "No, no, we'll make a plan that you can afford. Don't worry Oggy. This is the perfect time to buy a house."

In 2006 this same line of bullshit was being swallowed all over California and Florida and honestly, it's not dumb. California law prohibits banks from suing home owners if they default on their mortgage and the foreclosed house sells for less than they owed. Maybe Florida has the same prohibition. Some states don't have this prohibition so you might want to do some research before abandoning your mortgage. So, at worst you will simply pay rent, trash a house, and move out when it suits you. Treat all the mortgage payments like wasted rent. My rent was somewhere in the neighborhood of $2500/month, and I had to collect every penny every month to send to the owner, so I could conceivably "buy" a $650,000 house and SAVE MONEY, which explains why so many people did just that. Do I need to explain further to justify my claim that the whole housing market is diseased?

This backstory is important because I was planning to cross the United States in a 1969 Ford Econoline van during a economic depression in the first year of a new President's term. Banks and investment cartels had been revealed to own everything under the sun. All the dirtbags who expected to die before their scam was exposed ended up being invited to the Washington to sort the mess out. The pirates were in charge of the royal jewels and there was nothing anyone could do because decades of counter-insurgency programs had succeeded in creating a castrated citizenry who would call for the blood of anyone caught cheating in sports but would shrug and change the channel when those responsible for bankrupting entire states are given luxury hotel rooms during their time in Washington. Are they in Washington because of grand jury indictments? No, far from it, they are in charge of the show, they have politicians by the balls. These scumbags got caught but could not be punished, they kept their jobs, kept their salaries and America got fucked. People's priorities aren't messed up, but their self-trust has been completely eroded by government propaganda and corporate lies up the ass. So, the default action is to do nothing.

Oggy in his San Francisco plumage, Probably drunk...recruiting warriors for the wolf quest. Who wouldn't follow this guy to Baffin Island?

That's the political climate I was reentering and it occurred to me that this was a historic journey, like wandering the West during 1933 Dust Bowl. It also occurred to me that I was one of the legions of destitute gypsies since I had no money or job but that has always allowed me to blend in. People on the street don't necessarily like me, but they don't distrust me. They open up to me and I listen. I hear the stories of the men on the ground and whether they believe these stories will be remembered or not I think the human tendency to share oral history is still strong. The computer illiterate generation will soon all be dead and my kind of observation will be less important because digital confessions will replace the campfire story. Perhaps the destitute have chosen a life that satisfies a primal need to smell smoke, to recount families lost and trails walked on. Or maybe the destitute have no other way of being remembered so they tell their story to everyone and hope that one of them will send it to the future.

Thus, early on in the quest I saw a parallel quest concerning the status of Americans. I can't say that my research was exhaustive, but it was honest and the lack of concern Americans had with the wolf was compensated by the concern Americans have for their integrity. In that respect, my quest became America's story so I will respect that.

No mention of wolves.

Here are links to the installments of the Wolf Quest

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX

Part X

Part XI

Part XII

Part XIII

Part XIV

Part XV

 

Wolf Quest Part II

Almost can't fit both locations on one screen

Ellesmere Island is so far north that the compass almost goes in circles. The only people who have seen Ellesmere Island are soviet submarine captains and arctic explorers. But that's where Arctic wolves live. While Antarctica is a continent drifting so far south that the snow and ice covering the land never thaws, Ellesmere Island is the last land mass before entering a vast sea of ice in the north. This ice would influence my quest because research proves it is shrinking at an increasing speed and what was once only traverse-able by dog sled has recently become open to ships. Minimum ice mass is now half of what it was in 1984. The Arctic Ocean will be free of ice during Summer in the future but the exact details are debated. I predict 2040 but long before that ships and oil developers will flock north to seize resources and they will populate Ellesmere Island as the closest land base to their resources, ports will be constructed, docks will appear, pipelines, Denny's, WalMart, all of it will find a place on Ellesmere Island and the wolves will be eradicated or relocated. The wolf is the one land species who has adapted to every climate so he will survive, but it irked me that this innocent wolf, quietly killing a musk ox or two on the far reaches of the planet would soon come under siege and would be killed. This irked me and irks me still but in 2009 I thought I would devote some time to the wolf's plight. No, that's not accurate because the wolf's plight had not yet begun. The ice still exists, the shipping lanes are still being debated, the land is still uninhabited. The wolf's plight is theoretical at this point so I was trying to stay ahead of the curve. I determined it could take a decade to reach Ellesmere Island so if I didn't start soon then I might miss the opportunity to recruit the army of wolf defenders in time to do any good.

The first step to traveling to Ellesmere Island was getting out of Mexico so I bought a spare tire, pointed the van north and drove at 45 mph. If I go further into detail than that then I'll never finish the tale because I will have to explain a whole series of events and introduce people who are not relevant to the wolf quest. So, I will leave my activities in Mexico unexplained and simply say that I wept as I irreversibly burned bridges by beginning my quest to save the Arctic wolf. There's a lesson here...that a quest begins when one quest ends. Maybe this isn't true in every case but it was true in mine. The wolf quest was incompatible with my goals in Mexico and something had to be abandoned. I decided the wolf was a priority. The single lane road threading up the Baja Peninsula is long and remote and vast and dangerous but I had a basic plan in my head involving a visit to my bank in Los Angeles to clear up a financial technicality, then drive to...I looked at a map....a Canadian province called Labrador...then get a boat to Baffin Island and onward to Ellesmere Island. It was a 4 step plan with lots of room for improvisation. After the tears had dried I was excited, a quest renews an old man's heart, it forgives all past failures. A quest gives a man purpose and from that moment on if anyone asked me what I was doing I said, "I'm going to Ellesmere Island to save the Arctic Wolf." And after a quizzical frown I would then begin to answer the questions that followed, questions that I was learning the answers to as I went along.

I had dreams of landscape like this alive with wolves.

Here are links to the installments of the Wolf Quest

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX

Part X

Part XI

Part XII

Part XIII

Part XIV

Part XV

Wolfman Cometh Part 1: Oggy Has A Vision

Editor's Note: This is the first installment of the Wolf Quest. The links for the other 14 installments are at the bottom of this page and on the bottom of the page of all the other installments.

I can look back and laugh now, the baggy pants, back pain, broken muffler, broken batteries, broken transmission...the video footage I have is a mockery of all documentaries. The real beginning of this twisted tale of confusion and wasted youth begins around the time of the Industrial Revolution...but I need to skip some of that and jump right to the part when I had a vision as I succumbed to the 127 degree heat in my van in Mexico, heat that melted plastic, heat that boiled water, and I crawled outside into the sand and rolled into the Sea of Cortez to cool off. I had a vision of wolves and how hot they must be and how hot they would become as their habitat heated up. They might initially enjoy the warmer weather but the men would soon arrive with their development plans and the wolf would be considered a pest, dangerous to progress...and it would be eliminated. Well, the wolf is resilient having survived all attempt to eradicate it like the American Bison but Baffin and Ellesmere Island are the end of the road. The inhabitants of those islands took thousands of years to develop. The first wolf probably walked onto Ellesmere Island across an icy path in pre-history and developed a balance of population and habits over generations. All that could be destroyed in a solid year of hunting. It would be like landing on The Galapagos Islands with a bazooka and killing everything in your path. The freezing winters and the hordes of mosquitoes are all that protects Ellesmere Island. Once the climate allowed development the Arctic wolf would not adapt, it would become extinct at least on that ancestral home of Baffin Island. And as my head fell beneath the warm water, surrounded by excrement pumped into the Sea by the oblivious Mexican hotels, I decided I could do something about it. I could go to Ellesmere Island and defend the wolf when men came with guns. I would get there first and establish a defense system. I knew that the only hope of salvation would be boots on the ground and a fight to the death. I could cross the country and recruit an army of Wolf Warriors to defend Ellesmere Island. All the evidence predicts a showdown in the Arctic for new territory, new resources and the wolf would not survive unless someone was there to defend him. I decided that someone would be me.

the wolf's best hope?

 How does one travel from the tip of Baja California to Ellesmere Island? This question was not foremost in my mind. I am bound by my imagination alone. If I wanted to play golf on the moon, I believe I could do so. So, the physical details, I knew, were the least of my problems. I woke up in the Yukon Territory once and I had camped under an electric fence, that immediately shocked me. I camped during a violent storm in a grassy area near a narrow road and was woken up by a tree full of howling monkeys and giraffes that were behind the fence of the Rapid City, South Dakota Safari park. I tried to bicycle to San Francisco from Boston...and ended up in Fairbanks, Alaska. When I sleep in the van with the curtains closed I have no idea what I'm going to see when I open the curtains up. It's like a surprise present that determines my future every morning. If I want to go to Ellesmere Island then the question isn't "Who will let me," but rather, "Who will stop me?"

Wolf Point, Mexico

All quests have a beginning and an end. A quest will tell a lot about a person, reveal much in the manner of character and fortitude and cowardice. He will stand naked before himself on a quest and stare his fate square in the eyes. All will be revealed. This is perhaps the function of a quest, to strip the vanity and fringe accessories away until all that is left is the quest. A quest exposes the heart of the pilgrim...to himself and to others. He may try to disguise himself but eventually the quest will expose all. What makes a man into a pilgrim? Thoreau already wrote the best answer, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." But what Thoreau leaves out is the implied dissatisfaction with the traditional that first gets a pilgrim thinking. Thoreau's discontentment is the initial mover, not his idealism. The pilgrim is dissatisfied with the shallow life, the nibbles at the leg bone of society, the thread count exasperation. His imagination is not satisfied with fiction. When a man finds society beneath him then he invents a goal that is worthy of his self-image, something worth striving for. Along the way he purges the dissatisfaction and determines that frustration, failure and even death are preferable.

planting trees in Quebec

I have 7 hours of video footage of this journey, plus many photos...and there is a story here no one but I can write.

Here are links to the installments of the Wolf Quest

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX

Part X

Part XI

Part XII

Part XIII

Part XIV

Part XV 

 

I Tried

Wolves had been absent from Yellowstone National Park for more than 70 years when they were reintroduced in the 1990s – and their return had some surprising benefits.

This reminds me of my need to edit that footage into a ten minute video and write a summary of my attempt to avert climate apocalypse.

Jamboree

"If you could see me now.
The one who said that he would rather roam
the one who said he'd rather be alone
if you could only see me now."

I always get myself on stage with a guitar in hand and the faces of the audience dimly lit and my mind goes completely blank. What key is that song in? How do I form a D chord? It's not stage fright as much as lack of practice. When you go 15 months between performances, there isn't much chance to get used to being thrust from a freezing van in a strange town, dirty clothes, looming transmission problems, no job, no money, starving, onto a stage of Dick's Jamboree with Leroy and the Boys as a backup band and lots of white haired Canadian heads in front of you. Baffled expressions. They've never seen a man with this much hair wearing a cowboy hat.

"Good evening," I say. "My name is Oggy."
polite applause
"Thank you."
deadly silence.

I want the experience and yet I am surprised every time the applause stops and everyone expects me to perform. They have no idea and nor do they care that my very presence on the stage has been an insane performance. No, they want an encore and that's when my mind goes blank. I know songs? What are the lyrics? The chords? Christ, why am on this stage with a guitar? Do these people know I live in a 1969 van with a woodstove? Do they care I'm trying to save the arctic wolf?

That's when Merle Haggard comes to the rescue. All you need to know to get off an running is one chord. D. And one line: "We don't smoke Marijuana in Muskogee..."
That's my do or die "emergency song". And by the end of that line the audience was mine and I remembered what the hell I was doing. After the set I was signing autographs. "I absolutely loved your voice." which wasn't hard to believe after listening to the performers I followed who had Loretta Lynn and Charley Pride turning over in their graves.

I again cursed the lack of film crew that would enable me to really put on the Oggy show with bellbottoms and wolf slide show. I even wrote an alternate version of "Bangladesh" by George Harrison that would be perfect as a spoof song for these jamborees.
"Arctic wolf. arctic wolf
the climate is changing and his world will go poof
we're killing him for no reason our crime is a sin
don't let apple and hannah montana win!"

But no, I have to stick with real songs and have everyone shake my hand. The point is to get thrown out of the jamboree. That's what makes good drama but none of if would be on camera since I've asked a person politely to hold the camera for me and it's the first thing that would get dropped when I call everyone a wolf killer.
It's hopeless and I'm going to work at Jiffy Lube.
"How may I help you? Oil change? We've got a special on transmission flushes this week...synthetic oil? No problem."
I'll post those videos and watch my readership drop to zero. We get what we deserve.

20/20 Vision

Kirby hit the throttle and launched the speedboat over a small wave. The sea had risen during the night along with the blindness in my right eye. So I jumped on the speedboat that was taking a broken washer and refrigerator and the fuel drums to the mainland.
"He there come up on the left side of us, b'y" said Kirby in reference to a whale, "and done us a great bit of harm..."
The rest I could not understand as the pain in my eye was paralyzing and I was gripping the frame of the boat to keep my balance when the flat bottomed boat slammed into the foamy valleys.
"I reckon someone put a bullet in him," said Kirby another time in reference to a polar bear.
"And they cut his paws off?" I said because I'd seen grisly pictures of someone with a hatchet chopping at the remains of the polar bear.
"No, his hed."
"His head?"
"Yes, b'y. Took he head."

This is a frontier region where you throw garbage into the ocean or burn it and polar bears get shot and beheaded. I am blinded and my hair is too long. The wind lashes my face and the salt spray enters my swollen eye and makes my head throb. There is no sunlight but the gray glimmer coming from the clouds is enough to make it feel like a pitchfork is penetrating my face. We hit another wave and my knees buckled like one of those $9 folding card tables they sell at Big Lots.
I lost my hat on Great Caribou Island and in my blindness almost lost my mind. The arctic fox and kits were nowhere to be seen. Some of those kits will not survive the winter and they don't know it.
My time is up at Battle Harbour but the blindness is going to delay my escape. It is always this way when things are going well but I'm not deterred and my contentment is unaffected by my blindness. We take our sight for granted but when it is gone then we are like blind babies crawling and bawling. My time here has rejuvenated my spirit with the simple process of addressing only concerns that I have power over. The economy and weather and hemorrhoidal tissue that I left behind in California are beyond my control. Even my blindness is beyond my control. There are only miles to go before I sleep.

Do I resent the mechanized slavery that advances on my brother the wolf? Yes, I do and in my small way I will derail a few treads from that tank but the army will probably win. This is my small war like a Sioux Indian standing alone against the Calvary. It's pointless but what is the alternative? Allow the Steve Jobs' of the world to enslave the wolf? Watch the propaganda machine brainwash my brothers? The Pharaohs of the world always invent the excuses to enslave the people and even invent the vocabulary that allows the service workers to clean toilets for rich assholes. This is a joke to me, that a craftsman would stoop to build a staircase for Kenneth Lay. HAHAHAHA. Or clean windows for the loathsome Lou Pai. Oh, the magician did pull a rabbit out of your ass if you think his money is the equivalent of your skill. No, someone else will be teaching guitar to the looters of the world. Not this nigger minstrel. I have my own songs to sing for my own people in the smoke rooms and steerage sheds of the steamers of the world. I know what it took to learn the guitar. So, tell me where you got your money. Then I might pick a note depending on your ethics.