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alive to the wind, sky, and grass. Donning a Stetson hat and western-style coat, insisting on going without a necktie, Douglas looked like a frontier character. “Bill was a genius and a visionary,” Charles Reich, a law clerk to Justice Hugo Black, said. “He had the ability to take you to the top of the mountain and show you the entire vista of future issues, but then you would come down from the mountain, and lose sight of what you had seen. He never did.”17 Some critics tried to impeach Douglas because he wrote a controversial piece for the journal Evergreen (which published the work of rebels like Jack Kerouac and Terry Southern) or gave too many public speeches for compensation. But no matter how hard his opponents tried, they never did remove Douglas from the bench. Senator William Langer of North Dakota, late in life, came up to Douglas and wrapped an arm around him. “Douglas, they have thrown several buckets of shit over you,” Langer said. “But by God, none of it stuck. And I am proud.”18

II

Outdoors excursions, especially in the expansive North, are usually jolly when the weather cooperates and people share an interest in the ecosystem. The Sheenjek Expedition of 1956 was one of those trips on which people consider even cones of dried mud and cotton grass worth discussing. Hiking across the tundra was like walking on a sponge—it was hard to get into a rhythm because of ground squirrel holes or clumps of lichen. For once, in the roadless Arctic Range, afforestation was discussed instead of deforestation. Everybody was measuring everyone else’s depth of spirit—not the accoutrements of success. Justice Douglas had no higher rank than tin plate cleaner after supper. Regularly Douglas deferred to Schaller on talus slopes; to Krear on the grizzly’s hunting habits; to the Muries on caribou calving; and to Kessel on ring-billed gulls. There was never a pecking order when Douglas was in the wilderness. Also, to Douglas complaints were a tedious nuisance for everyone and undermined the serenity essential to endurance while camping. Decades of hiking had taught Douglas a basic lesson about the outdoors: be humble and do your proper chores. “I heard horrible stories of the mosquitoes of Alaska and went prepared with head nets,” Douglas recalled. “But I never used them. There are mosquitoes—many of them. Even after a frost—one of which we experienced—new crops of mosquitoes are born. They swarm up out of the marshland and tundra. They are not too bothersome when the wind blows.”19

Early on the expedition Mardy Murie, wanting to be gracious, said, “Justice Douglas, will you have some soup?” Furrow-browed, he glowered at Mardy, as if insulted, and said coldly, “Bill.” A little while later Mardy innocently said, in her cheeriest voice, “Justice Douglas, can I make you a cup of cocoa?” Clearly perturbed that she hadn’t gotten the message the first time, he gave her his blue gaze treatment and a single syllable: “Bill.” Some evenings Douglas would pour a little bourbon into his hot chocolate to help him stay warm.

Meals on the Sheenjek Expedition weren’t fancy, but the party ate like kings: caribou steaks, cheese rice, and corned beef, with blueberries, Fig Newtons, Jell-O, and angel food cake for dessert. Douglas was particularly interested in hiking to wherever ice presented itself. With field glasses he also scoured the Arctic landscape looking for the great bull caribou, which Bob Marshall had described. Up close—down on his hands and knees—Douglas examined lily plants, buffalo bush berries, and poppies. With field glasses he watched a fox eating blueberries. Douglas found bog cranberries—a tiny creeping plant with thin stems that threaded its way over sphagnum moss and was ideal for making jam. The fields shimmered in the fresh Arctic air. “What impressed me most,” Murie recalled in Two in the Far North, “was the far-ranging interest of this man of the law. What a divine thing curiosity is!”20

The Muries had timed the expedition perfectly until about the second or third week in June. The rivers in the Brooks Range were