My Father’s wandering spirit

An essay of the life of James Warren “Boo” Buchanan

By his son James Patrick Buchanan

My father’s favorite saying was “Get up, get out there, and walk!”  My father was a man who loved adventure, travel, and had a wandering spirit.

My father was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota on October 02, 1924.  His family relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota soon after that.  Even as a child he loved being outdoors more than being indoors.  He loved exploring the outdoors, by walking or by bicycle.  As a teenager, he would walk or bicycle for miles across the Twin Cities and later Bemidji, but told his parents that he would just be traveling to a nearby park.  My father often rode the Twin Cities streetcar system to the end of the lines and back again, just for the thrill of the ride.

Throughout my father’s adult life, he was attracted to the adventure of travel, especially walking, and thus had many jobs that involve walking.

My father volunteered to be a rifleman / Private First Class (PFC) in the US Army infantry.  He served in the 86th Infantry “Blackhawk” Division, Company k, in the first platoon.  During a telephone interview with his army buddy Charles B. Chedsey, my father, like all soldiers in his company, got a nickname.  My father’s army nickname became “Boo” after an officer mispronounced my father’s last name during roll call.

Mr. Chedsey told me that “Boo, could not run very fast, even if he could shuffle along at a good pace.  However, having the ability to run was a requirement to be an infantryman.  Thus, our company commander put him back behind the lines with the kitchen truck.”

My father had told me that being reassigned to the kitchen truck was good for him and for me, as three days after being reassigned to the kitchen truck, his old platoon was ambushed by Germans and about half the soldiers were killed or wounded.  Mr. Chedsey said that his platoon started with 40 riflemen.  When the war ended, just 12 of the original group were still in uniform.

Mr. Chedsey described my father in these terms:  “Boo was a year older than most of the other soldiers.”  Mr. Chedsey remembers my father as being a very ethical G.I.  “Boo was one of the more intelligent soldiers in his platoon.”  Mr. Chedsey then said that “Boo was a moral soldier, unlike most of the younger rascals who went looking for trouble, he was not a drunkard.”  Mr. Chedsey said that most of the other soldiers in his platoon were smart alecks.

According to his first discharge papers, my father received a Good Conduct Medal.  Yet, my father told me that even during the war, he and his buddies would wander away from camp, explore nearby areas, and make friends with the local people, despite orders not to associate with German civilians.  My father was the leader of these sightseeing tours, even if his buddies sometimes complained that my dad would get them into trouble with their commanding officers.

The only thing that my father admits to looting was a pair of “almost new” Russian army pants that he found in someone’s abandoned home.  My father wore these Russian Army pants underneath his G.I. issue pants.  My father credited those Russian army pants for saving his life and therefore my life.  I would like to know how a pair of Russian army pants found their way to Western Germany.

Once during his walks, my father and his buddies found an abandoned German army Panzerfaust, similar to the American Bazooka.  So, they tested it out on a German wooden farm shed.  They blew up the shed and my father described the Panzerfaust as a “good shed shredder.”  They didn’t stay in the area long enough to find out how the famer felt about their “unauthorized weapons test.”

For about one week, my father also carried around an abandoned German Sturmgewehr 44, one of the world’s first assault rifles.  But, my father didn’t get into combat when he had it and surrendered it to the American military police.  My father was disappointed that he never got to fire that rifle.

Another story that my father told me was the time that he and his buddies were taking an “unauthorized walking tour” of a newly liberated village.  “Boo and his Boys” found a Victorian era warehouse beside a railroad spur.  Inside the warehouse they found a hidden munitions store for navel guns, some of which were fourteen-inch shells designed for battleship cannons.

One of his buddies had had explosives training, so he rigged one of the shells to explode after a few minutes.  My father and his buddies were several blocks away from the warehouse when the arsenal exploded; sending nearby villagers into the street, wondering what was going on.  Even one-half mile away, they still felt the concussions of the exploding shells.  That event discouraged my father and his buddies from taking more walking tours until the war ended.

One of my father’s best-loved memories while riding across France and Germany twice inside Army boxcars named "Forty and Eight" as they were designed to hold 40 men or 8 horses.  Boo spent his time looking out the window, watching the countryside and villages roll on by.  My father explained that as the European cities were heavily damaged from war, the American troop trains had to use roundabout routes to get from place to place.

After he was discharged in 1946, my father became a forest firefighter in the western states.  He then volunteered for the United States Tenth Air Force and was promoted to the rank of corporal.

After he completed his second tour of duty, his parents talked him out of a possible career as a professional soldier and to get a teaching degree.  Paid for with his G.I. Bill, he attended Bemidji State College and earned a B.S. degree.  This is where my father met my mother Delores Ann Burgard, who was a recent Korean War window with two young daughters.  In 1959, my father and mother graduated from college.  They relocated to Duluth, Minnesota where they both joined the public school system.  Over the next few years, my father then earned his Master’s Degree at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

After spending several years teaching high school geography and history, his wandering spirit realized that he just was not suited to teach “rowdy bastards”.  He then spent the rest of his working life as a postal worker, a job at a recycling station, as a land survey worker for the city of Duluth, and finally as a writer of recreation and tourism books.

My father’s wandering spirit got tired of working at one type of job after a few years and moved onto another type of job.  My father loved writing the most, as he spent the most amount of his working life writing his travel books.  My family didn’t make as much income as he could have had if he had stayed at one job, but my family did have his amazing stories.

In the early 1970’s, my father didn’t like having to hunt down walking and backpacking trails from several different national, state, and local agencies.  My father and his backpacking friends wanted one guidebook that had all the trail information he wanted in one place.  There was no such trail guidebook in print at that time.  Also, he complained that he didn't want to keep track of a pile of trail brochures that would be damaged or lost in his backpack.  My father realized that he and his friends needed a book that no one had yet written, so he decided to write his own book.

After discussing this problem with his family, my father decided that he would write trail guidebooks for the entire state of Minnesota, based on the then six geographic regions developed by the Explore Minnesota, the Minnesota state tourism office.  After the books were published, Explore Minnesota reduced their tourism regions to five, while renaming and redrawing these regions.

My father’s first outdoor book was The Minnesota Walk Book, Volume One, is about trails in Minnesota’s Arrowhead region and Isle Royale, first printed in 1974.  As my family lived in Duluth, my father first wrote about the trails that were closest to our home city.

This book’s forward was written by my father and the editorial staff of the Sweetwater Press, a now defunct Duluth-based book publisher. They wrote “The MINNESOTA WALK BOOK is the first in what we plan as a series of trail guides.  The series will grow as we go along.  Future volumes will cover other sections of Minnesota and the upper Midwest.  And this volume will be supplemented as more trails are developed or re-discovered in the Arrowhead Country.”  My father wrote his Minnesota books between 1974 and 1982; but for a number of reasons the planned books for other states never got beyond the planning stages.

This book’s introduction was written by noted outdoor writer Calvin Rutstrum on page eight and nine.  Mr. Rutstrum’s introduction begins with this quote, “Wandering through the country with a light pack is about the most interesting life imaginable and perhaps the healthiest.”

His last paragraph tells of his cooperation with my father.  “We’ve designed this book to be taken along on your backpacking trips and hikes to help you make the most of them.  It should be a personal book since each trail is a different experience to each hiker.  Log space has been provided for notes, sketches, photos – should you want to record your trips.  The idea is that ink on paper lasts longer than memory; at least in details.  In addition to notes, you may want to make sketches of campsites, fishing places, and other locations you might want to remember.”

After Sweetwater Press shut down, the other books were published by Nodin Press.  In addition, Calvin Rutstrum wrote the second introduction to his first outdoor travel book – The Minnesota Walk Book, Volume Two, first printed 1976, page 11.  “In 1956 while I was supervising the building of a trading post and canoe base at the end of the Gunflint trail, a young man with a hiker’s backpack approached me and asked for a job.  It was not a permanent job that he wanted, he told me, but a job that would earn enough money for him to explore the hiking trails on Isle Royale.  He was James Buchanan.

He had the mien and attire of a woodsman.  I had an ample crew, but this young man seemed so in tune with my own elemental approach to the wilderness, I could not deny him his needs.  I simply in one way or another, had to be a vicarious part of the Isle Royale trek.

Years passed before I saw Jim Buchanan again.  He stopped at my cabin en route to the exploration of some river trails.  He was writing books for the hiker.  Devoutly hiking his subject, he has become truly the veteran of wilderness backpacking lore.

This, his latest book on hiking, might be termed a compilation of trails to hike.  My wife referred to it as a hiker’s encyclopedia.

We have had some great trail breakers in our history.  Jim Buchanan, thus, carries on the tradition of such great men as John Muir.  After a long lifetime of wilderness travel by canoe, dogsled, packhorse, and backpacking, I must defer to backpacking as being the method that brings one closest to the real essence of nature, and loser perhaps to the core of happiness.

In Minnesota Walk Book, Volume Three, first printed 1977, page 13, Chuck Bloczynski wrote this about my father:  “With the advent of hiking and skiing as health components, the wish to trace the ‘moccasin trails’ has blossomed into an increased need for up-to-date trail information.  Jim Buchanan has been a skier /hiker all of his life and he has a keen knowledge and awareness of the many benefits of hiking and skiing in Arrowhead Country.  This book will be of great benefit to those who wish to explore, refresh, and inspire as you are exposed to the wonders that await you.”

“This veteran of backpacking lore who has been referred to as a ‘trail breaker’ lends his spirit in this edition to assist you, the explorer, to find the essence of nature, and therefore, a slice of the real meaning of happiness.”

“Happy hiking and skiing!”

In Minnesota Walk Book, Volume Four, first printed 1978, pages nine and ten, the forward was written by journalist Sylvia H. Lang who wrote, “It was a sunny September day in 1977 that I had the pleasure of interviewing (during a hike, of course) Jim Buchanan, for a St. Paul Pioneer Press feature article.”

“Having read with great interest his Minnesota Walk Book Volumes I and II, I was eager to meet the man who had this knack of making me get out of my chair, put on my hiking boots, and head down the nearest trail.”

“Like many people, before hiking with Buchanan I never would have believed that St. Paul and Minneapolis could be such a haven for the walker.  This pathfinding wizard discovered some exceedingly beautiful walking areas in the Twin Cities, and he invited me to find some of these with him for our interview.”

According to Nodin Press editor Norton Stillman, the Twin Cities volume always outsold all the other MN Walk Books combined.

Sometimes, my father’s fans would talk to him, or send him letters.  One couple told my father that his travel books were the most expensive books they ever bought.  They explained that after reading his book, they spend hundreds of dollars buying new camping gear for their backpacking trips.

My father loved nature and protested for the creation of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA).  I remember taking car trips, in summer and winter, with him to lobby for that area to become a protected wilderness area.  My father also wrote newspaper opinion page letters advocating building more rural and urban trails.

Our next door neighbor Kathy Reynolds wrote in an email that “Your father never wanted me to mow the (our) back yard for him.  He wanted to see what nature would build.  He would also offer the apples on his tree to neighbors every year.”

Walking was such a major part of my father’s life and identity that when old age deprived him of his ability to walk that hurt his ego deeply.  Needless to say that nursing home life and being dependent for mobility in a wheelchair didn’t agree with him.

My father died from heart failure on June 19^th, 2007.  During his funeral, my father’s ashes were spread over a patch of ground that is between the Willard Munger Trail and the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad.  It is a place where my father can be near a bicycling and walking trail and an active tourist and freight railroad.  My sister Susan told me that wherever my father’s a wandering spirit is now, that she is sure that he’s walking.

Before he died, I had told my father that when I become a successful writer that I’d take him on walking vacations where we would walk Washington’s National Mall to the top of Mount Fuji in Japan.  With a smile, my father told me that he’d make sure that I would keep that promise to him.  That is one promise I made to my father that I’ll now never be able to keep.

In addition to nonfiction, my father also wrote poems, the last one that he wrote weeks before his death is titled, Relationships.

RELATIONSHIPS

Ages pass, relationships last.

In the present time,

They are not worth a dime.

You and I

Our relationship is fine

As long as our hearts are in the right place

For all time.

We work together and play together

Side by side like brothers

Weaving our lives in symbiosis

Striving for a wet oasis

An ordinary person

Striving for higher relationships

Boyfriend, girlfriend, marriage, and children

Defined by a higher position.

-- By: James W. Buchanan