Christopher Nyerges
Kayla Michael recently led a bird observation walk in the Pasadena area, and I followed along, realizing how little I understood the sounds and sights of the birds.
But the most amazing part was talking with Kayla afterwards, and learning her amazing story of how she lived on the land for so much of her adult life. I realized that she was the “real deal,” and she makes all the TV “survival experts” pale in comparison.
MEET KAYLA
Born in Denver, Colorado in 1956, Kayla Michael learned camping and fishing skills from her father, and loved it. In time, she backpacked all over the mountains of the west, by herself.
She knew what it took to backpack, and knew how to capture fish and small game, and her love of the outdoors compelled her to spend more and more time in the pristine wilderness.
She began with short backpacking trips of a week and a half in the San Juan Mountains and the Gore Range of the Colorado wilderness. She started going on longer and longer trips every year.
She calls 1978 to 1980 her “greenhorn years.”
When she turned 21 in 1978, she travelled around Colorado and Utah by herself for a full three months.
She did longer trips in 1979, mostly in Colorado and Utah, with one trip lasting 4 months.
In 1980, she went into the wilderness for a month and a half in Colorado.
She did her first 6 month long trip in 1981, spending most of the time in Wyoming.
“In 1981, my life changed when I began to go out six months, the first real year when I went out from Jackson, Yellowstone, and went into the wilderness for weeks, coming into town for resupply and then I’d go back out,” she says with a smile.
“At first, I carried a stove,” explains Michael, “and then I read about a person who never carried a stove. So I tried that, taking only nuts, jerky, granola bars, raisins, cheese, and other foods that didn’t need to be cooked.” She’d also carry macaroni and cheese which she could easily cook over fire. She explains that she would first go out with two weeks worth of food, and learned to stretch it out. Then it became normal to live off the land.
In her earlier years, she would carry along flower books and learn to identify wild flowers. Then she started to learn that certain plants could be eaten. She used “Plants for the Rocky Mountains,” and “Medicinal and Edible Plants of the Rockies,” and others. She learned to identify such wild edibles as spring beauty, bistort root, biscuit root, dandelion, and others, and she generally used the wild plants raw, without cooking. In the high mountains, she eats the little yampa tubers. Wild plants would supplement whatever foods she carried along. She also has learned to catch fish with a fishing line. “Someone gave me a compactable backpacking fishing rod, and I still have it to this day. I knew how to fly fish as a kid.” Occasionally, Michael has taken game on her journeys, such as grouse. What sort of weapons does she use?
“I get them with a stone or with a throwing stick. You get better as you practice. You hit some and you miss some,” she explained. “But I’m a pretty good aim, from practice.”
“I would work from fall to spring and then hike all over from spring to fall. In 2013, she first went to Alaska and other places along the way, living out of my backback,” she explains
“For many years of travelling in the West, I came to love the headwaters of Yellowstone, where I would spend all summer and just come back every few weeks to a month to get resupplied, and then go back into the wilderness,” she explained.
Kayla Michael’s routine was to go hiking and backpacking during the summers, and then work in the winter. Then she recalls a very good friend who bicycled everywhere, who had the same interests as Michael. “It got me to thinking and I eventually I got a bike of my own, though I was still doing more hiking than biking.”
She purchased a Haro bike in 2000, a 24 speed, old fashioned mountain pedal bike.
LIVING ON HER BIKE
“On my bike now, I usually carry food, but besides the food, there’s hardly anything in my backpack,” she explains, with her pack typically weighing about 30 lbs.
When she retired from her job in 2021, she began to bike everywhere. She began to travel north in the spring and summer, and go south in the fall and winter.
From her home in Jackson Hole, she has biked to St. George, wintered there, and then biked back to Jackson Hole.
She has bicycled all the way to Arizona, taking about 2 .5 months, a trip of well over a thousand miles. “I ended up at an RV park, where I wintered. I then went to the Winter Count gathering, and started going to other gatherings.”
In the mid 1990s, Michael obtained a copy of the Wilderness Way magazine and learned about the various primitive skills gatherings, such as Rabbit Stick every September in Idaho, originally started by Larry Dean Olsen (author of “Outdoor Survival Skills”). Her first gathering was 2002 at the Rabbit Stick Rendesvous in Idaho.
She was hooked and began to attend various primitive skills gatherings, such as Winter Count every February in Arizona. She would usually just attend, but sometimes taught about birds. Among her many other talents, Michael is an authority on bird identity and interpreting bird sounds. Sometimes at Rabbit Stick, she would assist Tom Cook who is a regular teaching about cooking ducks. “I have been bird-watching since in my teens. It’s a daily thing for me”.
Michael regards Jackson Hole, Wyoming as her home, where she would rent a room to have a place to store her things when she was on the road. But the man who she rented from was in his 90s and sold his house. “ So now I am houseless,” said Michael, “living on my bike.”
“The more I went into the wilderness, the more that became my life. I would work winters to have income, and then I camped all summer in deep back woods.”
And though she has hiked and bicycled thousands of miles, she does sometimes get rides from friends, and even takes Amtrak or buses on occasion.
Mention a year and she tells you what wilderness area she spent that year.
In 1981, she spent summer months in deep wilderness in Yellowstone and the Wind River Range in Wyoming.
In 1982, she spent time in Yellowstone and the Absaroka Range in Wyoming.
In 1983, she spent time in Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, and the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana.
In 1984, she was travelling again in Wyoming, and in late in summer went into the Washington Olympic peninsula.
In 1985, she travelled in Yelllowstone and the Bear Tooths in Montana.
In 1986, she travelled in Yellowstone and the North Absarokas of Wyoming.
She adds that her favorites area was the Thorofare of the headwaters of the Yellowstone River in Northwest Wyoming. “I lived there many a summer,” she explains. “The Thorofare is the furthest distance from a road you can get in the lower 48 states,” says Michael.
It’s quite a resume, and she has always kept journals – in fact, she has a box of her journals since her first year of hiking in 1978 that she hopes to turn into a book one day.
Michael describes many close bear encounters where she was very scared . “I was once charged once by a griz, came within 5 to 8 ft of me and I screamed bloody murder at him and he backed off. I’ve had encounters with griz (grizzly bears) and wolves, and have come to trust the griz more than people. Still, in the wilderness, Michael reports that she never had people problems. “You actually meet the best people in the wilderness.”
WILDERNESS IS A PARADISE
“In long term living in the wilderness,” she explains, “for a month at a time, or more, it becomes like paradise. There is no loneliness because life is everywhere.”
She says that planning for food has never been a problem for her. “I can pick up food here and there. In back country, I can usually find a store to get food for a month or so. Fo biking, you need to do more planning – food for a month is heavy, so I would cache my food.” She describes having bear-proof cases that she caches in secret spots where she does her wilderness travels.
Her essential gear is simple: knife, little Bic lighters for fire, a pot, never a stove. She cooks over the fire. Sleeping bag, change of clothes, and rope/twine for hanging food, a Leatherman tool and a good 8“ sheath knife. She carries a little first aid kit “but I have never used it much,” she explains.
As for her bike, “I really don’t have much of a repair kit, just a tire repair kit. I occasionally have a flat, so I fix it and carry on.” She carries a flip phone, spare toilet paper, a small towell, and she knows how to wash up by the creek.
“I don’t have a water purifier, since I have figured out where to drink from the streams,” she explains. Once she got giardia from bad water and she cured herself by eating yarrow leaves. “I was way back in the Teton National Forest, and couldn’t do much for a few days,” she says.
REACHING KAYLA
Don’t expect an immediate response, because she’s often in the field and on the trail, but she does have a phone and email, and even a web site.
Phone 307) 413-2978. Email is kmatjhwy@ yahoo.com, and the web site is www.reflectionsofthewild.zenfolio.com, where she goes by the name Lone Eagle Woman
