Reamde

Not long after this little orientation session came to an end, the bus pulled in, and Jake climbed off in the middle of a long stream of senior citizens, ethnic minorities, people too young to drive, and hard-luck cases. Feeling very much the odd woman out despite the Forthrast brothers’ efforts to make her feel welcome, Olivia strolled down the street with them to a bookstore that Jake wanted to visit. Given the fact that Jake believed a lot of crazy stuff, Olivia found it intriguing that the top item on his list was to visit a bookstore. If nothing else, it served as an icebreaker. She had no idea how such a man might react to her as a nonwhite female, but he was quite cordial, even easy to talk to, and went out of his way to describe himself as a “wingnut” and a “wack job,” apparently thinking that this would help put Olivia—or “Laura,” as she was still calling herself—at ease. It was clear that he had been brought thoroughly up to speed on the latest news regarding Zula, and how “Laura” fit into the picture. He had been thinking about it during the bus ride and come up with any number of questions and theories, most of which seemed like the products of an acute and active mind. He was, Olivia realized, at least as intelligent as Richard, and possibly more so.

“Why do you live out there, the way you do?” she finally asked him.

By this point she was sitting across the table from him in the bookstore’s coffee shop. Jake had immediately found the book he wanted: a manual on organic farming. Richard and John had wandered off into other parts of the bookstore, aimlessly browsing, and there was no telling when they’d be back. She had bought Jake a cup of coffee, and he had returned to making self-deprecating jests about his lifestyle, which Olivia was now starting to find a little boring—dancing around the unmentionable. Better to just ask him flat out. As a stranger in a strange land, she reckoned she could get away with it.

“I guess I started with Emerson’s essay ‘On Self-Reliance’ and just followed the trail from there,” he said. “‘Behold the boasted world has come to nothing … Let me begin anew. Let me teach the finite to know its master. ‘I’d already been having thoughts along those lines when Patricia died …Dodge might have told you about that?”

She shook her head. “But I did see something about it…”

“In his Wikipedia entry, sure. Anyway, at the time I had nothing else going for me, and so I decided to spend a summer trying to build a life around that.”

“Emersonian self-reliance, you mean.”

“Yeah. The summer turned into a year, and during that year I met Elizabeth, and after that, well, the die was pretty much cast. Dodge had this property in northern Idaho, which he had acquired years before, during a phase of his life that I believe is also covered pretty well in the Wikipedia article.”

Olivia smiled at the polite evasion, and Jake seemed to draw confidence from her reaction. Olivia said, “As I understand it, this was the southern terminus of his … route. Or whatever you want to call it. Just a few miles south of the Canadian border. But within reach of the U.S. highway network.”

“Exactly. But it also just happens to be one of the most beautiful places you can imagine: the head of a little valley, just where the land gets flat enough to build on and cultivate, but only a few minutes’ walk from mountains full of wildlife and waterfalls, huckleberries and wildflowers.”

“You make it sound marvelous.”

“When I got off the bus in Bourne’s Ford—which is the closest town—an old man told me ‘Welcome to God’s country.’ I thought it was kind of hokey, but once I had found my way up the valley to Dodge’s property, well, then I understood. At first Elizabeth and I were just living in a backpacking tent. I wrote to Dodge and asked him if he wouldn’t mind my trying to improve the place a little, and so we began to build, and things just happened.”

“But where does the whole Chris­tian right-wing thing enter into it? What’s that about?”

Jake’s blissful expression became somewhat guarded. “When we had children, religion came back into our lives, as it does for many people, and Elizabeth has been my pathfinder as far as that is concerned. For me it’s about being part of a community that is not based just on geographical proximity or money, but on spiritual values. There are no cathedrals in the mountains. You create your own church just as you hunt or grow your own food, split your own firewood. And just like those things, it might seem simple and rude to people who live in places with cathedrals and schools of theology.”

“What about the politics?”