The Quiet World_ Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960 - Douglas Brinkley [83]
Macnab and Vreeland, as noted above, were both members of the Camp Fire Club of America (CFCA), which had been started in 1897 by the zoologist Hornaday. The club’s name sounded rather bland (as if it were for aging Boy Scouts who wanted to toast marshmallows); but in truth, its elite membership consisted of approximately 100 physically fit survivalists and wilderness devotees. (Later, its membership increased to about 480, and many members came from the Westchester County area.) Deeply secretive about their club’s history—it was a kind of Skull and Bones for outdoors endurance—the members often climbed the highest peaks, went down category 4 or 5 white-water rapids in kayaks, and tested themselves against hurricanes, blizzards, avalanches, and torrential rains.57 In his book The Forest (1903), Stewart Edward White described the CFCA as brave men of “essential pluck and resourcefulness pitting themselves against the forces of nature.”58 Perseverance, toughness, ardor—every club member was a Theodore Roosevelt or a Charles Sheldon in the making.
It wasn’t until 1910 that the CFCA became an active group for the protection of wildlife habitats in America. Wisely, under the leadership of Ernest Thompson Seton, the club purchased two heavily wooded farms in Westchester County as a retreat—the total area was 161 acres.59 There were two lakes on the property. More land was added in 1917. The main lodge was built from local cedar logs. (Boy Scouts of America was founded on its porch.) No electricity was allowed, but gas lamps were permitted. Pistol shooting was encouraged on the range. Every spring the club had outdoor outings. To be a member, an applicant had to feel claustrophobic about big-city life—and pass twenty-one survival tests.60
One afternoon at the CFCA compound Macnab and Vreeland launched a plan to hike all around the Lake Clark–Iliamna area of southwestern Alaska; it would be, in their estimate, the next Mount McKinley (or Denali). There was a paucity of maps of the Lake Clark area in the 1910s. The whole mountainous area was a jumble of unnamed streams and lakes essential to Bristol Bay (the preeminent salmon fishery in the world) and Cook Inlet (the shipping route to Anchorage). What Macnab and Vreeland understood was that Lake Clark was the big-hearted country of Alaska. If that sounded like balderdash, consider this geographic fact: Lake Clark was the junction of Alaska’s three great mountain ranges: the Alaska Range (from the north), the Aleutian Range (from the south), and the region’s own Chigmit Mountains. There were two active volcanoes soaring over Cook Inlet—Iliamna (10,018 feet) and Redoubt (10,197 feet)—within the lands considered worthy of becoming a preserve. Going straight west, across a vast stretch of tundra, brought a traveler to Roosevelt’s Yukon Delta Federal Bird Reservation. “Glorious views of Kachemak Bay,” Muir had written of the area east of Lake Clark in his journal for 1899, “many glaciers; bright weather. Fine views of Iliamna, Redoubt, and other volcanoes, the former smoking and steaming distinctly at times; surrounded by sharp lower peaks and peaklets—the most beautiful, icy, and interesting of all the mountains of the Alaska Penin- sula.”61
Seeing the sky-piercing volcanoes around Lake Clark from the luxury of Harriman’s yacht, however, was far different from hiking near their lava base snapping photographs, as Macnab and Vreeland aimed to do. Traversing miles of moss and muskeg, with swarms of hard-biting flies as companions, and camping among the swamp willows and alders was no picnic. The Lake Clark plateau resembled the Arctic terrain, with caribou herds wandering the permafrost tundra. It was hard going for even a nature photographer like Vreeland (after whom a Canadian glacier had been named) and a crack marksman like Macnab (who was just back from