In the dog days of this
August, the ashes of “gonzo” writer Hunter S. Thompson are to be
blasted out of a cannon from the top of a 150-foot tower, over the
beauty of his mountain home near Woody Creek, Colo.
Just
a few weeks ago, while I was working at the Black Canyon of the
Gunnison National Park, I chatted with an elderly man who told me
that the urn under his arm contained his wife’s ashes. He’d
just released a few of them along the rim of this deep and dramatic
canyon in western Colorado.
Families and friends have
released the ashes of someone they loved into beautiful places for
a long time. We know this at Black Canyon because there is a
visitor register over by the front door of the South Rim Visitor
Center. Visitors regularly sign in, logging their trip by date,
where they are from, and sometimes, they tell us a lot more. We
rangers actually do read the comments that visitors share with us,
so I’ve begun to notice when someone writes that they’ve set
free the ashes of a loved one into the air over the cliffs of the
canyon.
The first time I saw such words was one winter’s
day almost 10 years ago. The writer was a woman traveling from her
home in Florida to California, and she said that she’d
“released a few of my son’s ashes here.” At the time, her remarks
caught me up short.
Now, it’s clear that releasing a
loved one’s ashes in a beautiful place is no longer unusual. Once
people visit national parks, national forests and other wild lands,
these places become imbued over time with rich memories in
beautiful settings. Solace, hope and optimism all spring from
experiences such as waking up to a still and clear morning during a
hunting trip, watching a flash flood roaring through the canyon
country, or spotting a herd of elk in a meadow filled with ferns.
It isn’t surprising that these are the places where some of us want
— in a sense — to stay forever.
Practices
vary from place to place, but people may be surprised to learn that
scattering a handful of ashes is not necessarily prohibited on
public lands. Some heavily visited parks and monuments may bar this
activity, and some Native Americans have protested when remains are
left in parks dedicated to their ancient people. A permit might
also be expected for a memorial service. And because many agencies
and organizations have restrictions against placing permanent
monuments on the land, a growing alternative is to make a donation
in someone’s memory for a trail, bench or other feature that
would benefit coming generations.
As the West fills up
with people, many of the special and meaningful places that people
hold close to their hearts are being whittled away or squeezed out
altogether. Who would have thought, 100 years ago, that the
wilderness would receive the kind of reverence from us that it does
today? Our challenge is to keep these open spaces open for
generations still to come.
I came to know a minister from
England while he was on sabbatical in the United States, who said
he was captivated by the beauty of Colorado’s publicly owned
lands. He said that these grand Western landscapes of the
mountains, the canyons and open plains, had become meaningful to
him because these are the places where heaven and earth meet. To a
growing number of people, wilderness represents an eternity that
can be seen with one’s own eyes.
I don’t know where
else the older man went with his wife’s ashes, contained in
the cobalt blue urn with her picture on the side. I don’t know if
he released more of them along a river or into the wind, blowing
over a mountaintop. Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes will be sent
into eternity with a great deal more noise, but like this man’s
wife, they will endure in the freedom of our Western lands.
Paul Zaenger is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org).
He has been a ranger at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park,
near Montrose, Colo., since 1993. He has also worked at Death
Valley National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation
Area.
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