The Middle of Nowhere

I’ve always had an affinity for unusual and remote places. My travel plans often center around these precepts.

As far as “nowhere” being a destination, sometimes it is planned, other times it’s just something that happens to me. One of my reasons to intentionally end up in nowhere land is that for years people have been telling me to “get lost”. Just trying to oblige. Not that I don’t give it my best.

For instance when I hike, I frequently leave the maps and compass behind in camp. This is to lighten my packing load. Next I take a 20+ mile round trip hike from camp. My favorite area for wilderness hikes is central Idaho. I call it “The Big Mean Green.” If you look at a highway atlas of the lower 48 states, you will see that it is the largest area of National Forest without a highway running through it. A National Forest will show up on the map as a green blotch. One of these green blotches is an area officially named the Wilderness of No Return. Its previous official name was Hell’s Half Acre Mountain Wilderness Area. It is the largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states. It is more than twice the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. I usually approach it from the Montana side via a mountain pass called Nez Perce Pass.

Lewis and Clark were here in 1805. They thought the terrain so difficult that they took a couple hundred miles detour to get around it. When I called the National Forest Service about any advisories for the area, I was told, “Yeah, the cougars are bothering the hunters.” On my last trip to the Big Mean Green I was awoken one early morning by a deer running through my camp. It was followed a few seconds later by an equally fleet footed wolf. I guess most people would rather be awakened by an alarm clock. This is my favorite place to go hiking and I go solo.

An example of unintentionally ending up in the middle of nowhere is when I volunteered for duty in the First Gulf War. I was in the Army National Guard at the time but when my unit was not activated I volunteered for duty. At first the official response was thanks but no thanks.

So I made lots of phone calls, wrote letters, even went down to HQ and sat in the hall just outside the door of the commander’s office. Finally someone must have gotten tired of me hanging around because headquarters activated me, twice! The first deployment sent me to the regular Army NBC NCO academy for five months. I graduated with honors. The second deployment took me to Saudi Arabia, I served in a number of places in the Gulf, but my main area of operations was a part of the Arabian Desert known as the “Empty Quarter.” It is a place bigger than Texas and so inhospitable that even Bedouins with their camel caravans avoid the area. This place makes western Kansas look like the Garden of Eden. Still I ended up living a very active lifestyle here, ending up with enough stories to fill a couple chapters in a book. Like the day I was hitchhiking miles from the nearest road and still got a ride. It looked like a scene from Lawrence of Arabia.

With all mental health jokes aside, there is my state of mind. I like the cleansing feeling that comes with spending time alone sitting underneath a tree. For this and to write, I frequently go to our family place in the Ozarks. It is at the very end of a dirt road that feeds off a little used two-lane byway. This is where I spent my New Years. When friends come out to visit me their usual response is, “Wow, this is the middle of nowhere.” At that point I take my friend out the back door and point to a ridgeline in the distance. At this moment I inform them that the ridge is the “middle of nowhere.” Then I tell them how to respond to their friends when they say, "Wow, you were in the 'middle of nowhere.'" The response is, “No, but I could see it from there.”

As always, check out my website: www.theghosttownhunter.com

Next time I’ll give you a sneak preview of this Spring/Summer/Fall book tour and road trip.