The Man Who Quit Money (20 page)

This is really stupid,
he thought. He was hungry. He couldn’t
stand the thought of another berry. His mind wandered to his college anthropology courses. Humans aren’t supposed to live alone, he remembered. We’re social creatures. Anthropologists have compared us to animal societies. Humans are in some ways closer to wolves than they are to apes. Biologically we rely on social interactions. Take the hunt as just one example—working together to bring down an animal. That’s how the wolves coalesced as a pack. Suelo could see spawning salmon literally bubbling as they squirmed up the stream into the lake. Of course he had brought no rod or tackle. He tried halfheartedly to stab them with a stick but had no luck. He remembered reading somewhere about how the Inuit made pronged spears for catching fish. He looked dumbly at his pocketknife.
What I as a social creature really need,
he determined,
is for some Inuit to come along and teach me to spear fish.

As he wallowed in self-pity, a young guy who had set up camp not far away sauntered up.
“¿Hablas español?
”

“Sí,”
said Suelo reflexively, then reflected on the coincidence: a dozen miles from pavement, three thousand miles from a Latin country, and the first guy to talk to him spoke the one foreign language he knew?

The man smiled and continued in Spanish. “I’m out here trying to live off the land. And I want to learn to spearfish. Do you want to come spearfish with me?”

Suelo leaped up. His doubts evaporated. The experiment resumed! Things were unequivocally Happening For A Reason.

The two men sharpened their sticks and began stabbing at the thick flow of salmon. After some trial and error, they lashed their pocketknives to the points of the spears, and before long they were hauling fish to camp and roasting them over a fire. The meat wasn’t great—the salmon had gone to spawn and
their flesh was past prime—but it provided protein the men craved. They sat contentedly beside the fire.

Ander was a twenty-year-old Basque from the Andalusian mountains in Spain. Like Suelo, he’d traveled to Alaska with some raw ideas about testing himself against the land. The two got to talking about Nature and Chance. Ander dug it. They decided to travel together. Between them they had no groceries, save a bottle of cooking oil that Ander had brought, which proved handy for panfrying salmon when they got tired of roasting them over an open fire. With their newfound spearfishing talent, Ander’s expertise at foraging for wild mushrooms, and Suelo’s familiarity with berries, they ate well.

And they could not escape the sense that some unseen hand was guiding them. One night as they finished another dinner of salmon and mushrooms, they got to talking about the foods they missed. Ander yearned for paella and Christmas dinner, but said what he missed most of all was coffee: dark roasted Colombian, steeped in a glass press and blended with cream. Suelo praised Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing and gravy. And s’mores.

Ander didn’t know what a s’more was.

“You know, you roast a, how do you call it, marshmallow, on the campfire, press it between two graham crackers with a square of chocolate—”

“What is this—marshmallow?”

“It’s white, fluffy, chewy,” said Suelo. “Made of puffed sugar.”

“I do not know this thing.”

Suelo went on at length trying to explain a marshmallow. But it proved indescribable.

“Someday I’ll show you one,” he said. “Then you’ll understand.”

The men left their dishes by the lake as the rain poured. In the morning when Suelo went to wash them, he noticed a paper grocery sack. It was dry, meaning it hadn’t been left out all night. He was curious. He peeked inside and saw what looked like groceries. That was awfully strange. Had Ander been holding out all this time? He decided not to let it bother him. Back under his tarp, he watched Ander walk to the shore to retrieve his plates. Ander did the same thing: peeked into the bag, then flashed a dirty look Suelo’s way. All morning the men were standoffish. After all this talk about subsistence, one of them had apparently been hiding an entire sack of food in his pack. Finally Ander crawled out from under his tarp and said, “What’s with this bag?”

“I thought it was yours.”

“Well, I thought it was yours.”

They crept up on the bag to investigate. They looked around. The other campers had packed up and left at first light. They were the only ones left.

Ander reached into the bag and retrieved something. A bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans.

They looked at each other, shocked. They pulled out the rest of the contents. Sealed packages of exotic Indian food, Madras lentils and Punjab eggplant and spinach paneer. A jar of Thai curry paste and a can of coconut milk. And what was this spongy thing at the bottom? Suelo pulled it hesitantly.

A bag of marshmallows.

H
AVING STRIPPED LIFE
to its essentials, Suelo felt stronger, sharper, more resourceful than ever. Relinquishing control to Chance, he saw that the universe was providing. Or was it?

Suelo and Ander hiked out of the Resurrections and hitched toward Matanuska Glacier State Park, encountering staggering generosity along the way—people who not only gave them rides but took them into their homes for the night, cooked a hot meal. At the last outpost, they purchased a few basic provisions and then camped at the mouth of the glacier. The blue water poured from beneath the ice into a swift, frigid river. And then things started to go bad.

“Let’s cross the river and camp on the other side,” Suelo said.

The river was too deep and fast to wade across. As they explored upstream, they found that in the transition zone between glacier and river, shallow water poured over a series of ice ledges. The men had no crampons or climbing gear, nor any experience on glaciers, but they decided they could cross. They waded across a cold channel and climbed onto the slick glacier, their toes instantly numb as their boots filled with ice water. The glacier was smooth and undulating, with a series of rivulets and pools where the runoff swept across. They took long steps over the cold channels. But then they reached a wider rivulet. The crystal water was so clear that Suelo couldn’t tell how deep it was. Maybe two feet. Maybe six? The only choice was to jump. Suelo gathered his courage and with a few baby steps leaped across the gap, splatting on the ice on the other side but sliding chest-deep into the freezing pool. The cold water knocked the wind from his lungs. His clothes and backpack were soaked, adding another fifteen pounds to the load, and he clawed his way up and out onto the ice. Now Ander made the same jump, and was submerged over his head into the basin before Suelo pulled him out. Surging with adrenaline and panic, the men darted across the ice
field, both dunking a few more times, before scrambling up the banks to dry ground—wet, shivering, and scared.

They built a fire to warm themselves and dry their clothes, but as soon as the flames flickered, the clouds darkened and rain began to fall. Suelo didn’t see any chance of getting dry. They were too cold to cross the river back to where they started. He and Ander squatted over the fire as the raindrops spat on the branches. Both men understood that if they didn’t do something soon, they could freeze to death.

“I’ll go look around for shelter,” Ander said. He trudged into the woods while Suelo wrung out his wool sweater and held it over the flame. After a while Ander returned.

“I found a cabin!” he called. “And it’s open!”

The men packed their wet gear and jogged through the underbrush. Sure enough: a hunter’s cabin was tucked in the woods. Inside were stacks of split fir and a cast-iron stove. Still shivering, they balled up bits of paper and kindling and stuffed in a few logs. Before long, they were warming their hands over a roaring fire as the rain pounded on the roof.

The storm lasted three days. Suelo and Ander strung their soaked sleeping bags and wool pants from the rafters as they fed wood to the fire. It was sobering to realize that they would not have survived in the cold rain with their wet gear. They ate all their provisions, not bothering to forage or fish in the pouring rain. On the fourth morning, the rain eased up and a hint of dull sunlight emerged. They heard the unmistakable buzzing of a Cessna overhead. It circled closer and closer. Were they being rescued? The men bolted out the door and waved. The plane was so low they could hear the hollering of the pilot. It
sounded like cursing. And as the plane lifted a wing they heard it distinctly.

“Get the fuck out of there!” yelled the pilot. “Yeah, you! Get your ass out of my cabin!”

Then the pilot buzzed even lower and thrust some dark object out the window.

“He’s got a gun!” said Suelo.

The men scurried back in the cabin, slammed the door, and hit the floor. Suelo felt his chest pounding. The buzzing of the Cessna and the tirade continued for a while, but at last the plane lifted and quiet returned.

Their clothes were dry and the rain had ceased, so Suelo and Ander packed up. Finding pen and paper, Suelo wrote a long note of thanks to whoever owned the place, apologizing for trespassing but noting that the misdemeanor had saved their lives. The men shouldered their packs and hurried back to the river, hoping to cut their losses and get back to safety.

Sheets of summer rain had swept across the glacier for days now, melting tons of ancient ice, and the river had swollen seven feet. The clear swift channel was now a frothing torrent, gray and cloudy as it churned up silt. It had not only deepened but widened to nearly a quarter mile. Swimming was out of the question.

The men explored the bank until they found a cable stretched across the river. On the distant shore was a rowboat tethered to a cable. But they had no way to retrieve it. Nonetheless, the cable glimmering in the sun above the white water looked more promising than the river.

Suelo clasped his hands over the steel, and with his pack straining against his shoulders, hooked his heels and inched his
way along the cable. Ander followed. But after twenty feet, Suelo realized this was a terrible idea. The cold braids of steel dug into his palms, and the pain was unbearable. It took all his effort just to keep his grip. And then with a desperate yelp, Ander slipped off the cable, and the rebounding snap pried open Suelo’s fist. In a jumble of arms and legs, both men plunged into the rapids. Suelo held his breath as the icy water pulled him below, then popped up for a breath and swam back toward shore. Luckily they weren’t far. Both men crawled up the bank a hundred feet downstream from where they’d started. Ander was inconsolable.

“Eso es,”
he coughed, beginning to weep. “Our lives are over.”

Suelo was thirty-seven and Ander was twenty. For the first time in his life, Daniel felt his paternal instinct kick in.

“We’re going to be fine,” he lied. “It’s all part of the adventure.”

“I don’t want to die,” wailed the Basque.

“No matter what happens, it’s fun,” Suelo insisted.

Their chances of crossing the river alive were about fifty-fifty. If they both went for it, they might both die. But if Suelo went alone and died, at least then Ander would have Plan B. Whatever that was.

“Stay here and don’t worry,” Suelo said. “I’ll go get help.”

Luckily it was warm and sunny. He peeled off his wet clothes and emptied his pack. He discarded all cotton garments that would only soak up water and keep him cold. He dressed head to toe in wool: socks beneath his boots, pants, a sweater, a knit cap and gloves. Then he hiked upstream to where they had crossed four days before. He would stick to that strategy—crossing where water rushed between fins of ice. He waded across the first channel and climbed the glacier. This time
he encountered between ice fins not rivulets that could be leaped across, but deep, swirling trenches that had to be swum.

Here goes,
he thought, and plunged into chest-deep water, dog-paddled for his life, then dug his fingers into the ice and belly-flopped onto the slab. That wasn’t so bad. But the next swim was worse. The bathtubs gave way to swimming pools. Each time he clawed up the ice, he was sure he must be approaching the far bank, but each time when he stood for a view, the river seemed wider than ever. In the biggest pool yet, he groped up the ice, but it was too steep and slippery. He slid back in. The swirls held him under and he burst to the surface gasping for air. His backpack, filled with water, pulled him back below.

Your pack or your life,
he thought. And in an instant he slipped his shoulders from the straps and let the current take the pack. Free of the load, Suelo scratched his way onto the ice and lay there panting. Surely he must be almost across. But he wasn’t. He was less than halfway, perched on a block of ice in the middle of the river.

Gasping there on his knees, Suelo dropped his head to the ice and began bawling. The show of confidence he’d made for Ander was gone. He was cold and shivering and scared. Upstream, the glacier appeared as a living beast—a dragon—opening its jaws to consume him. He was going to die here.

But then something occurred to him as he lay there sobbing in a heap.
I have finally, literally, reached the point of having no possessions, no attachments, no relationships. I have nothing but the clothes on my back. I have hit bottom. It is just me and Nature. This is the point I’ve been trying to reach all along.
And with that realization, a burst of energy shot through his veins.
I am alive. All those years of wondering whether or not life was worth living, of
thinking God had condemned humans to living hell—that was nonsense. I want to live!
The desire was new and exotic, and filled him with power.

Suelo stood. He faced the ice dragon.

“Fuck you, glacier!” he called.

Abandoning his plan of pool-hopping across the ice, Suelo dove headfirst into the river and swam. The current swept him quickly downriver as he kicked his boots and crawled with numb hands. Suddenly, though, his mittened hand scraped rock. Then another rock. He opened his eyes and saw alder brush. He hoisted himself by a branch and wormed onto the shore, panting, weeping, overjoyed.