Mental Illness and the Call of the Wild
There are times when the world can feel brutally unfunny and dully predictable. But then someone like my former East Stroudsburg University student Jeff White comes along
He was someone seemingly equal to our world’s wild core, someone always ready to dash deeper into the woods, someone who could chase down every species of wildness except, perhaps, his own. Tragically, Jeff took his own life last month, at age 26.
I taught Jeff in my environmental literature class a few years ago at ESU [in eastern Pennsylvania], down the Delaware River from his Pike County home. Jeff arrived under strange circumstances: He wanted merely to sit in on class, unregistered, to follow along in our Norton nature-writing book while his brilliant sister, Allie, who’d told him to behave, took the class for credit.
Two closer siblings I’ve never seen. They shared red hair, scintillating intelligences, an outdoorsy athleticism and unforgettably goofy-sweet smiles.
Jeff wasn’t looking for grades — he was there for something bigger, I sensed. He adored nature, and he wanted to hear what the great American environmental scribes — Henry David Thoreau, John Audubon, Mary Austin, Rachel Carson — had to say.
It turned out that Jeff, a math major, had lots to say himself. A true polymath, he waded into class literary discussions about everything from Lewis and Clark to the edgy activism of Edward Abbey. Conspicuously, he had a special love for one of the progenitors of our national park system — the 19th century’s John Muir. An action man. A climber of mountains and scaler of trees. A doer.
Like Muir, Jeff had lots to do, too. Like many college students these days, Jeff was juggling about 15 things at once. Indeed, one reason he sat in on my class was that he and Allie commuted together. He was braving the kinds of challenges I see particularly among public higher education students (things like babies, little siblings who need to get to bus stops, low-paying jobs and how to pay for a $400 textbook). One thing I didn’t know was that Jeff was also braving bipolar disorder.
Every autumn in our class, we take a field trip to ESU’s nature reserve at Stony Acres, not far from Pennsylvania’s Blue Mountain Ridge; fittingly, Jeff came along that year. I remember feeling nervous. It was a big class, with almost 40 campers. There were hot dogs and s’mores and readings to organize. Jeff seemed a little wound up, sizzling with excitement and things to say, but it was almost too much. We had a Very Serious Agenda — look at stars, discuss pond ecology, meditate upon Thoreau. Jeff actually wanted … to enjoy things. I felt distracted by him, even a little annoyed.
At one point, an adorable herd of deer appeared in the meadow near camp, reducing everyone to sappy oohs and aahs. Not so, Jeff. Instead, he suddenly scampered after the whitetails, yelling something at them. I remember thinking, “What the hell is wrong with this kid?” I believe I glowered at him. Why would he want to wreck our picturesque postcard? But I also recall an unexpected jealousy — a shared, mischievous joy that’s hard to explain. The American Indians used to chase down moose and deer for food. Indeed, following a wild animal is just about the most natural, most “paleo” thing a human can do. There’s even a name for hunting this way — persistence.
Persistence. That’s something Jeff taught me, too. There was something about getting to witness that joyous red-haired boy, running toward his deer, into a forever forest, yelling not out of anger but out of an unfathomable desire to scream the wonder of life. This was a persistence hunting for meaning, for hope, in our sometimes confusing, cruel, Instagrammed world.
I don’t know what this vibrant genius encountered last month that proved so insurmountable that ending his own life seemed the way to move forward, but I know his loss is a massive tragedy we cannot forget.
In Pennsylvania, suicide rates have risen by almost 23 percent since 2006, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In many areas ashimmer with natural beauty — West Virginia, Maine and Montana — rates are far higher. In Jeff’s age group (15–34), the age of almost all my students, it’s the second-leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Let us hope we’ll find more ways to reach that next despairing young person on the edge of forever. Meanwhile, I will remember the one I loved, running into his trees, toward his mountains, toward a wilderness of the heart that never ends.
Bill Broun, who lives in Hellertown, is an associate professor of English at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. His debut novel, Night of the Animals, will be published this summer by Ecco/HarperCollins.
Originally published at www.mcall.com on March 19, 2016.
