The Last Word On Nothing

One October morning in 2013, I walked into the Canmore offices of an organization called the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y, to speak with its reluctant leader. I was at the outset of my career in journalism, fresh out of graduate school and loose on the land in the Northern Rockies. With my then-girlfriend (now wife), Elise, I was spending two months traveling the length of Y2Y, perhaps the world’s longest wildlife corridor and certainly its most famous. Y2Y was both an abstract concept and an environmental nonprofit, the latter run by a biologist and adventurer named Karsten Heuer, who years earlier had hiked the length of the corridor I was now driving. Heuer was already something of a legend in the conservation world, and I was eager to speak with hm — and, truth be told, a bit cowed to meet a man whose epic journeys on foot made my own exploring feel so shallow and motorized.

If I expected some swashbuckler, Heuer was, well, not that. He was sandy-haired, bespectacled, of unremarkable height and build. He struck me as thoughtful and self-deprecating, much more interested in, say, ruminating on conservation philosophy than recounting his own exploits. I liked him a lot; I have the impression that most people did. Most of all I was struck by how ill-suited he seemed to his role at the time, as the public and office-bound face of an organization, and how much happier he’d be tromping around the woods. I didn’t brilliantly deduce this; he told me as much. Later, in a feature about Y2Y for Orion Magazine in which Heuer featured prominently, I wrote the following:

Heuer is a scruffily bearded man with a square, sturdy frame that looks well suited to a backpack. When I met him at Y2Y’s headquarters in Canmore, Alberta, he still seemed surprised he’d taken the job. He and his wife, the filmmaker Leanne Allison, had long maintained a half-feral lifestyle: They’d migrated alongside caribou above the Arctic Circle in 2003; in 2007, they rambled three thousand miles with their two-year-old son in homage to the writer Farley Mowat. But their peregrinations were now on hiatus, backburnered by fundraising and strategic planning from a second-story office above a bank and a Starbucks.

“I just got back from three days of meetings in East Glacier,” Heuer said as we sat down. He wore a rumpled plaid shirt; his voice was husky with a lingering cold. “One of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, amazing weather, and we were hunkered down in a basement with no windows. My every molecule was yearning to be outside.” Sometimes, when he travels for conferences, he brings a tent. As we talked, he sketched maps of watersheds on scrap paper, almost unconsciously, as though the Rockies had infiltrated the recesses of his brain.

Though Heuer was then only forty-two, he had applied for the job in deference to his own mortality: as he put it, “How was I going to make as much change as possible happen before I die?”

In the years after my Y2Y story was published, I saw Heuer occasionally, at conservation conferences and the like. He was unfailingly cheerful and gracious, and I was always pleased to see him. Eventually I learned that he’d left Y2Y to lead bison reintroduction in Banff National Park, a job that, in its emphasis on fieldwork and time spent outdoors, struck me as an appropriate use of his talents and passions. I was glad he’d found his niche. 

This summer, years after I’d last corresponded with Heuer, I stumbled upon an article in the Narwhal about his next and final chapter. In 2021, Heuer had fallen out of a tree, breaking his back and collapsing his lungs; rescuers had found him unconscious and near death. Though Heuer survived the accident, he’d subsequently been diagnosed with multiple system atrophy, a fast-acting neurological disease that had robbed him of his vitality and would soon take his life. Rather than waiting for death to arrive, wrote the reporter, Drew Anderson, Heuer had “scheduled an assisted death for the fall, leaving on his own terms.” Wrote Anderson:

It’s not known if the neurological condition was triggered by his accident in the woods, but lying there in the aftermath of the fall shifted Heuer’s relationship to his own mortality. When he finally received his diagnosis, there was an earned wisdom that gave him a measure of peace. 

“I was really close to the precipice already, staring at it,” he says. “And I was like, ‘This is okay.’ ”

After reading Anderson’s story, I reread what I’d written about Heuer, more than a decade earlier. I was struck afresh by his awareness of his own mortality, way back in 2013, and his desire to “make as much change as possible” before he died. I opened my email and wrote Heuer a quick note, part of which read as follows: 

“On that count” — i.e., making as much change as possible — “you succeeded spectacularly. You don’t need me to tell you this, but you changed our world for the better in countless ways, and all people who care about wildlife and wild places owe you their gratitude… just wanted to express my appreciation for your many years of hard work on behalf of our planet, and to wish you all the best on your journey.”

I mentioned, too, that I’d spent much of my own career writing about wildlife migrations and corridors, a professional emphasis that owed no small debt to him: “I’ve spent years now talking to your fellow travelers within the world of large-landscape conservation, so many of whom were inspired by Y2Y and the movement you helped to galvanize. Certainly my own life would have been very different without Y2Y, and for that I thank you.”

I didn’t expect a reply; surely he was inundated with messages and love. But he answered a day later, thanking me for the note. He also added this: “The reminder of that quote is timely; death has been in the rear view mirror for some time!” A few months later, on November 5, he passed away, surrounded by friends and family, aided by Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program.

In truth, I’m the last person who should be memorializing Heuer; though I admired him greatly, I can’t say that I had the pleasure of knowing him well. Yet I’m compelled to commemorate his life — both because he’s integral to my own journey, and because he seemed to confront death with grace and equanimity (or at least that was the impression he succeeded in giving to the world; only his family knows what was in his heart). It’s easy to imagine that he faced death with such serenity precisely because he’d lived such an epic life: he’d walked Y2Y, brought bison back to Banff, followed the migration of the Porcupine caribou herd on foot with his wife, Leanne, and son, Zev. He’d spent his days outdoors and advocated tirelessly for the preservation of all that is good and living and wild; he’d changed how the world practices conservation by focusing its attention on habitat connectivity and corridors. He squeezed several lifetimes of experience into 56 years, left a legacy anyone would be proud of. And I’ll always be impressed by his self-awareness — how he rose to the directorship of a major conservation group, then stepped aside because he recognized that office work and cocktail parties didn’t nourish his soul. May we all display such clarity of mind and purpose, and greet death with such courage and cheer.

So long, Karsten, and thanks for everything. 

Photo: Zoofanatic, Wikimedia Commons