By Bill Gann

Explaining how an ingenious person lived alone in the wilderness is perhaps reason enough for having a Web site for Walt Bickel. In this century there are few
Americans still living an independent lifestyle like Bickel enjoyed. Most of usdepend on electronic gadgets and modern systems to operate. It’s interesting,valuable, and even historically significant to record for posterity the way a depression-era gold miner attended to life’s basics. Perhaps a reexamination of the last depression
might shed some light on present issues.

As I write this it’s late September of 2008, I’m compelled to consider current events. It seems we may be heading
into a historical period of economic turmoil much like Bickel survived by digging into the Mojave Desert hills.
Bickel’s survival methods might illuminate the path for those who follow his example. Unemployed and homeless Americans might in these times seriously look to the Mojave Desert for continued existence.

Walt Bickel became a gold miner as a result of the Great Depression. The conditions then were much like now.
When the stock market crashed in the late Twenties, unemployment soared in the Thirties, and gold value climbed. Men like Bickel suddenly found the only way to
make a living was to eke gold from wilderness dirt.
Frightening to consider that modern economic refugees
might repeat Bickel’s experience, but today would have to make allowances for how American has changed.

The conditions that sent Bickel to his remote cabin in the first place, followed three Republican presidents: Warren
Harding (1920-1923), Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933). The policies of these presidnts led America to what some call “The Great Republican Depression." It’s true enough that under conservative economic philosophy, markets
were allowed to operate without government
interference. From Regan to George W. Bush, Americans may have gleefully repeated the mistakes of Harding,
Coolidge, and Hoover. Events preceding the last depression were marked by taxes being slashed dramatically, monopolies forming, and the inequality of wealth and income reaching record levels. Alarmingly we
see similar conditions today.

Here in the 21st Century we hopefully will pull our once-shiny economy out of the ditch. Maybe a new president
will hammer out the dents and get our country on the road again, but I fear such change might take a long time. For those rugged individualists who may return to
the wilderness to survive digging gold, Bickel left us a treasure map to follow.

So let’s look closer at how Bickel did things. First consider that Bickel lived most of his life with little need
for modern conveniences. He had no plumbing, electricity, or related appliances. Talk about being off the
grid, when Bickel lived much of the grid we depend on wasn’t there. Still a simple bit of Bickel wisdom was that the secret to success was knowing the difference
between one’s wants and needs. He was an expert at tending to his needs, and anything he received after that
he said, "was jus pure gravy.” So it was our depression era miner carefully identified and tended to his needs
first.

He did have natural gas for cooking and refrigeration. His income came mostly from digging small amounts of placer gold from the hills around his cabin. I believe he
had a small pension from his World War II tour in the Army. Sadly, near the end of his life he was totally in the care of modern society. Indeed, one might make a case that the last few years of Bickel’s life, racked with Parkinson’s Disease, and closed up in a convalescent hospital, made him more a victim than a beneficiary of
modern advancements.

While there is still lots of open wilderness and left in America, it seems our society has slowly worked to
stamp out freedom like Bickel knew. Indeed, it was pressure from the Bureau of Land Management more than anything else that forced Bickel to leave the canyon.
Nonetheless, should a person wish to give a Bickel lifestyle a try here are useful descriptions of how Bickel
attended to the basics.

Old Walt seemed to consider survival needs in the order
of Shelter, water, and food. Shelter is first because a
hostile environment—hot, cold, wet or dry, can kill an
unprotected human in three hours. Yet it takes three
days to die of thirst, and three months to die of hunger.
Bickel built his cabin and staked his claim in 1927, just a
little before the stock market crash of 1929. As I recall,
he and his wife split up in the early Thirties and he
moved into the cabin fulltime in 1934. The cabin was a
tarpaper shack, but it served Bickel well for the next
several decades. He placed the cabin in the southern lee
of a high mesa with two natural washes to the east and
west so flash floods always missed his camp.

When I first met Walt the cabin was still tarpaper black. I
think Eric Janson helped cover the one-room structure
with silver painted roofing material around 1972. This
added reflection, insulation, and the addition of a shade
porch made the cabin more comfortable. Even so, Bickel
got along just fine for 40 years in a hot black box before
the reflective paint.

These days’ miners and wandering retired souls seem to
do quite well in trailers and motor homes. A visit to slab
city might give freedom seekers ideas. Clifford Trussell,
who I talk about in the story called “Clifford the Cowboy
Poet” was living in a 1961 Pontiac when I first met him. I
built a tipi many years back and dreamed of living in the
El Paso Mountains like a Native American. The tipi is long
gone and I found desert wind makes a tent less than
desirable.

C. B. Jones, who I talk about in “Last Chance Caveman,”
made a very comfortable home in an old mineshaft.
Indeed, Laura Ann, Walt’s daughter recalls that Burro
Schmidt didn’t always live in his cabin by the tunnel.
Laura Ann tells of her dad taking her to visit a glum and
depressed Schmidt who had finished the tunnel and
taken to living and sleeping in a dirt hole. Laura said the
dug out area was little more than lean-to over a hollow
bank that was just big enough for sleeping.

Creative folks might look to famous artist Andrea Zittel
who left New York for California to explore inexpensive
ways artists could live simply in the desert. Her Wagon
Stations are simple experimental housing pods a modern
desert dweller might find inspirational.

Indeed, Bickel’s simple cabin on a gold mining claim
might be a good deal more difficult to establish in
modern times. Assuming one can figure out suitable
shelter, modern backcountry dwellers would still find
resistance to simply squatting on public land. Last
Chance Canyon was far more remote in Bickel’s day so
modern troglodytes should seek seclusion.

Caretaker positions might allow some people to live in
the desert freely or even earn a small income as Jose and
Mark who watch the tunnel and Bickel Camp do. It’s also
interesting to note that these men (talked about on the
home page) have power generators, and use solar
powered electric motors for their gold machines. I
suppose in the event of very hard times, one would
imagine a wilderness dweller would simply have to be
more mobile and flexible than Bickel. Then, really chaotic
times might make public lands less patrolled and hence
more open.

After shelter, the next necessity a Bickel imitator needs
is a clean source of water. Bickel dug a well at his camp
that produced usable but poor tasting water. Mostly he
used this water for his shade trees. He located and
exploited local springs and especially maintained Mesa
Springs. His campsite near several washes put him near
many such springs. In Last Chance Canyon history Mesa
Springs, however, supplied sweet tasting water for both
the gold rush around 1890 and the depression era gold
rush that brought Bickel to the canyon.

No one actually tested Mesa Springs water including me
who once owned , the Owen’s Cabin and the gold claim
that neighbors Bickel Camp. When the water finally was
tested, it was said to contain poisonous trace elements.
It was recommended we not drink from a source that had
been used for hundreds or even thousands of years. A
modern water seeker should consider purification. Myself
four other men once lived for a month in the Amazon
using a Swedish pump water filter. Technology may on
our side this century, but the ground water is getting
more scarce and dirty.

Bickel had an elaborate rainwater collection and storage
system. He made rain gutters on both his shop and
cabin. A camper awning would serve the same function
today. It seldom rained in Last Chance but when it did
Bickel went to work. He had hand pumps that emptied
water from the collection barrels into other containers.

He kept all the glass that ever came into the canyon and
had an especially large collection of one-gallon wine
bottles. I must say many Bickel friends brought him their
empty bottles cleaned ready for storage use. A fair
number of us also brought unopened wine bottles and
gladly helped Walt empty them for vital storage. It was,
after all, our sacred and sacramental duty. Over the years
hundreds of bottles were collected and filled with water
in this way.

After Walt left the canyon his son Johnnie Bickel, who
was a very religious man, felt this vast bottle collection
made his father look like a wino. He brought a large
truck into the camp and filled a semi trailer to the brim
with glass that he took to be recycled. This was a tragic
loss on two fronts. Today people who visit Bickel Camp
can’t see a crucial part of how Bickel collected and
preserved water.

The second loss was historical. Bickel had another
mountain of glass bottles that he had erected over the
years. These were various medicine and condiment
bottles Bickel himself used as well older glass he had
collected from other abandoned mining camps. The
layers of this glass mountain were an archeological
wonder. I once saw a man visiting the camp look at this
bottle pile as his eyes grew to the size of canning jars.
He had spied a particular bottle near the bottom of the
pile and begged Walt to sell it to him for $20. “Hell yes,”
Bickel said. I noticed the bottle collector’s hands shook
as he gladly paid Bickel for the treasure.

Food in the wilderness seemed an easy thing for Bickel
to handle. He was able to feed all who came hungry and
never missed a meal himself in the years I knew him. I
understand that in his early years in the canyon he
hunted Jack Rabbits and raised Chickens. I also heard
stories of eating some of the last wild burros and big
horn sheep in the area. He didn’t have a garden but did
raise cottonwood trees for shade.

A Native American man was living in the canyon when
Walt first arrived in the El Pasos. The old Indian taught
Bickel the uses of many of the desert plants. Walt
collected Chia seeds that he put in some of the best
tasting pancakes and biscuits I’ve ever eaten. We
gathered and pickled Joshua blossoms and various other
roots in season. Up in the Sierras Walt would collect
gunnysacks full of Jerusalem Artichokes (also called Sun
chokes), a sunflower root that tasted like smoked
potatoes. He also loved to fish the Kern River and Lake
Isabella.

Walt scrambled eggs with wild mustard or desert candle
flowers. Although now endangered, we made meals of
Mariposa Lillie bulbs spiced with wild onions. We drank
what Walt called Squaw Tea which was really Ephedra
and now known as herbal ecstasy. I once helped Walt
collect a very small red berry that tasted exactly like
tomatoes, and from these he made a wonderful jam.

In fact, Bickel had a number of memorable recipes that I
hope his daughter will share for this page. His potato
salad was superb and he was known far and wide for his
carrot-raisin salad. But his highest culinary achievement
was barbequed ribs. The Creosote bush, which Walt also
used as cough medicine, made the best Mesquite-like
barbecue flavoring ever tasted. For this Walt would burn
only dead wood down to a hot ash and them cook. Ribs
he salted heavily, but cooking tended to dilute and
diminish the salt as the wood added spice.

Thinking of how Walt Bickel did things as he lived in the
desert is indeed a model to consider. This is especially
true if history is about to rewind as our financial
intuitions crash with our mortgages. Yep, Walt didn’t
pay rent, nor did he have a house payment. He didn’t
have a phone, water, trash, or electric bill. I don’t know if
he even bought car insurance. He had propane tanks
that kept his stove and refrigerator working, but in those
days natural gas was cheap. Gold dug from the hills was
pure un-taxed income. Bickel would always say as he
filled his pipe from a Prince Albert can he made “Jus
enough fer tabackie and beans.” Yet I always suspected
he did a lot better than he let on. I understand he was
able to pass on a bit of inheritance cash to his children
when it was all said and he was done. So that’s how
Bickel took care of the things he needed. Should a
modern depression again send us fleeing to the desert,
we can all tend to our basics in this fashion, and the rest
will be pure gravy.