Into the Wild

Alaska has always been one of the world’s last frontiers for adventurers.  For generations and for different reasons, men have hurled themselves at its wild interior, often paying the ultimate price for doing so.   One such man was a part time doctor and full time adventurer named Lukas Grobler.

I met Lukas in May 2009.  He visited our church on Easter Sunday and immediately turned heads – though mostly those of the women amongst us.  Lukas was a striking man with an imposing build.  To best describe him I steal verbatim from F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby":

“He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.  It faced – or seemed to face – the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey”

I’ve met tough and adventurous people in my time though none of them come close to Lukas.  He always went big and moreover, did things in style.  Before a brief spell in general surgery at one of Durban’s hospitals, he had completed an unsupported winter traverse of Southern Greenland with a Norwegian companion.  He was also an aspiring bow hunter and keen horseback rider.  Lukas was fastidious about food and baulked at anything that even remotely resembled a short cut in the kitchen.  I remember him once taking 24 hours to roast a leg of lamb and then forbidding his guests to bring any form of snack to dinner for fear of it spoiling their appetites.  Instead he laid on a perfectly grilled kudu loin which he sliced so thinly you could almost see the sunset through the pieces.  In short, he was a man who knew how to suck the marrow out of life.

But back to Alaska.  As far as I’ve been able to work out, Lukas and his Norwegian companion Olaf Schjoll had their sights set on an un-supported trek across the inhospitable northern part of the country.  The journey would start at the Canadian border and end 1600 kilometers away on the shores of the Bering Sea, a stone’s throw from the eastern tip of Siberia.  Between them lay the formidable Brooks Range, a 1000-mile mountain chain that, according to Wikipedia, has only been traversed by a handful of people.  Intending to live almost entirely off the land, the pair set off on June 21 equipped only with  as much food as they could carry, fishing tackle and Browning hunting rifle.  A photograph taken on June 20th shows Lucas in characteristic pose; standing astride the border separating Alaska and Canada, larger than life and looking like a modern day Grizzly Adams.

With the aid of a satellite device, Schjoll kept a meticulous blog in which he described the hills, rivers flora and fauna as well as the escalating hardships that came with the hostile terrain and inclement sub-Antarctic weather.  

On July 15th, he bemoaned the constant hunger and resulting loss of weight: 

“…we are starting to get terribly thin…we must have more food in one way or another!”

On July 17th, he described the mood between himself and Lukas as “sharp” remarking that they had argued on a number of issues.  

On July 20th, they discovered a ramshackle cabin and a modest stash of expired food.  The owner, it seems, had not been there since 2006.  Thanks to this small mercy they lived the good life for a few days, drawing from the cabin’s stash and augmenting it with trout caught in a nearby lake.  For a brief moment, a certain joy returned to the journey though Schjoll wrote, “I realize that the idea of self-sufficient trip has failed badly”.  

Two days later they celebrated Lukas’ birthday.

Friday July 27:  I stared at Schjoll's blog post in disbelief. 

“There is no easy way to say this: the expedition through the Brooks Range stopped yesterday, when Lukas Grobler died after a fall from a mountain cliff, into a river, Atigun Gorge”

A brief article on the Reuters newswire confirmed that the accident had occurred on Wednesday 25th July about 400 kilometres southeast of the town of Barrow and that Schjoll had used a satellite telephone to call for help.  It went on to say that the US Coast Guard found Lukas' body about a mile downstream from where he had fallen.

I hurried over to Lukas’ Facebook wall – already littered with condolences - more already than I was prepared to count.  The mood was (and still is at the time of this writing) one of complete sorrow and disbelief.  Someone had posted a picture of Rembrandt’s masterpiece “The Return of the Prodigal Son”.  The caption read: 

“As we mourn today, angels rejoice! Lukas Cornel Grobler is home with the Father!”

It was Lukas’ favourite Bible story and he spoke of it often during the brief time we knew him.  “Sometimes I’m the son – sometimes I’m the brother” – he would say.  He was an avid reader of anything written by C.S. Lewis - and perhaps because of this, someone had posted Brooke Fraser’s  hauntingly beautiful “C.S.  Lewis Song”:

If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy,

I can only conclude that I was not made for here…

For we, we are not long here

Our time is but a breath, so we better breathe it

Lucas isn't the first to succumb to the perils of the Alaskan Wilderness.  But it's hard to imagine that any of her victims influenced as many as he did in his short life.

Farewell Lukas.  You certainly made the most of the breath you had.  And though we only knew you a short time you left your mark. 

 Onwards!  Upwards!  Higher!

The Atigun Gorge where Lukas died