Authentic Wilderness

Authentic Wilderness recounts five turbulent months in the life of its author, John Gubbins. In March, 1996, faced with the foreclosure of his Wisconsin home, the author traveled to Seattle to find work as a commercial fisherman. He hired on the Neptune, a processing boat, which plied the treacherous waters of the Bering Sea, working the herring season in Norton Sound and the salmon season in Bristol Bay. Authentic Wilderness is not a nostalgic return to the past. Aboard the Neptune,...
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Authentic Wilderness recounts five turbulent months in the life of its author, John Gubbins. In March, 1996, faced with the foreclosure of his Wisconsin home, the author traveled to Seattle to find work as a commercial fisherman. He hired on the Neptune, a processing boat, which plied the treacherous waters of the Bering Sea, working the herring season in Norton Sound and the salmon season in Bristol Bay. Authentic Wilderness is not a nostalgic return to the past. Aboard the Neptune, the personal failures which forced Gubbins out on the Bering dogged him. A deep sense of loneliness, an all embracing sense of death, mind numbing work, the shifting sexual passions of the crew disciplined the author and liberated his mind. Introspection led him to see himself as one more false than true, and he yearned to face the future authentically. His Neptune contract was up in late July, and he formed a plan to camp in the Alaskan wilderness, a world, he believed, more true than false, an authentic base from which to pursue his own enlightenment. His plans were nearly thwarted when the fishing company operating the Neptune refused to give the crew their plane tickets for the trip home. Feelings ran high. Risking incarceration, Gubbins with some of the crew mutinied. The mutiny succeeded and in the experience he came face-to-face with his individual moment. Flying up the Nushagak River, Gubbins gets off in the remote Yupik community of Koliganek. From there he boats deeper into the wild to a gravel bar where he camps alone. He catches salmon, one of which he keeps for food. Before the author set up camp, a grizzly bear frequented the gravel bar leaving behind convincing evidence of its power. Living alone in a world more true than false, the author meditates about his past and the grizzly bear and in time receives his own personal enlightenment.