Heeding the call of the wild
As Flathead Wildlife’s Jim Vashro introduced the presenter for the group’s gathering last month in a meeting room on North Meridian Road, a low rumble rose from the back of the room.
Attendees looked about inquiringly; was it passing traffic or an appliance on the fritz? Then it became too loud to ignore, and then too big as a five-foot didgeridoo poked into view followed by Mandela van Eeden, blowing into it as she swung it over our heads. The deep rubbery sound vibrated the room.
Born in the U.S. but raised on a private nature reserve in South Africa, van Eeden — whose parents named her after former President Nelson Mandela — stands nearly 6 feet tall and commands a room, never mind the aboriginal instrument. She has lived and worked in 25 countries.
With a sheathed knife at her waist, wide-brimmed hat and green henley, she fit in with the crowd focused on wildlife (a resource that members of Flathead Wildlife considers publicly owned), and preservation of access to hunting and fishing opportunities while maintaining Montana's wildlife legacy. That morning Vashro had taken her ice fishing as a welcome to the Flathead.
Van Eeden sketched her life, including conservation of black rhinos and elephants (“there’s really good work happening in Africa”) and founding The Trail Less Traveled podcast in Missoula, then arrived at her elevator speech: “I plant seeds of curiosity about music and travel.”
The stage was set for a virtual run of the Alsek River alongside some of the highest coastal mountains in the world.
“It’s true expedition rafting,” Van Eeden said. “I feel like all my guiding prepared me for Alaska.”
Guiding on Africa’s Zambezi River, van Eeden said it was common to flip rafts daily — “You’ve got to get in pretty quick because of the crocodiles.” But there could be no flipping on the Alsek as that ran counter to her goals: “Keep people alive, keep people warm.”
Over the 12-day 160-mile expedition she navigated glacial whitewater, braided channels, grizzlies thick as “squirrels on campus” and calving icebergs that sound like thunderstorms. She showed footage of why “you give icebergs as much space as you possibly can.” They can create a tsunami and suck in a boat, even an 18-footer that weighs 2,500 pounds.
Awe and hardship go hand in hand but experts like van Eeden make it look easy, including a helicopter portage. Here I felt my killjoy qualms bubble up over travel to ever farther reaches seeking the undiscovered, which can become well trod in no time. There are many who decry climate change whose lifestyles are carbon dependent, mine included.
Still, it's crucial to get out and look around. “People who spend time outside are most likely” to take an interest in, and protect, wilderness and wildlife, van Eeden said. Everything is connected. She said, “Sand from Africa fertilizes the Amazon.”
Afterward I asked how her parents met. Her mother, a fourth generation Montanan from Valier worked as a flight attendant and her dad had left his country because of apartheid and was working as a nanny in San Francisco. Soon after, a baby emerged, raring to find the wild.
Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at mdavis@dailyinterlake.com.