Tales from the Aisles
By Mickey Thomas
Phyllis Mains, Wilderness Hiker
Phyllis Mains is an accomplished musician and published composer with a passion for wilderness backpacking. Phyllis and her husband, Michael Mains, are retired and live on 80 acres west of Van Wert. Michael had a successful career teaching music before joining Xerox Company. Phyllis and Mike met while studying music at Oberlin College in Ohio. They earned their masters degrees at Syracuse University in New York.
Phyllis was a post-graduate student at Northwestern University. Mike and Phyllis began their professional teaching careers at Evansville University. While studying at Salzburg, Austria, Phyllis became addicted to hiking and climbing the Bavarian Alps. She has performed concerts in Europe and the United States. Phyllis has always had a passion for music, painting, drawing, science, nature and animals. She is a volunteer at Clarke County Animal Shelter.
Phyllis began backpack hiking as a young woman, often joined by her husband Mike. She has hiked and backpacked in the eastern Appalachian Mountains and Cascade Mountains of Washington, climbed Mount Rainer, hiked in southern Utah, California’s Death Valley, Big Bend Park in Texas, the Colorado and Canadian Rockies, Alaska’s Denali National Park, the Yukon and Northwest territories of Canada, Artic National Wildlife Refuge and trekked among the world’s highest mountains in the Himalayas. You name it, she’s done it.
Last summer, Phyllis journeyed by herself to a wilderness area 30 miles south of the Artic Ocean. She told me that while backpacking she came upon a mother grizzly bear and her twin cubs. Phyllis laid on the ground as if dead. The mother grizzly stood on her hind feet and pounded her chest and cried over and over woof, woof, woof, until the cubs ran to her. Luckily, the mother bear and cubs disappeared. As Phyllis began hiking in a different direction, a big red wolf ran in front of her. What a day!
In an article written for Alaska Wilderness League, Phyllis wrote, “At a wild lake, a bald eagle swooped down in front of me, snagged a fish and flew to its nest high on a tree. I observed a two-week-old moose calf struggling to swim a flooded area while its mother frantically watched. The baby safely made it to her side and was rewarded with a warm suckle of milk.”
Phyllis also wrote, “I watched a herd of Dall sheep high on the mountains that looked like tiny cotton balls running to and fro but nothing seemed to be chasing them. Ptarmigans still wearing their winter white, dotted the tundra. Piles of feathers reminded me predators were alive and well. Long-tail jaegers screeched at me if I trekked too close to their nest. The central caribou herd migrate this area, but I saw only a few. Climate change has brought more heavy thunderstorms from the Bering Sea. I experienced days of heavy rains, some sleet, and the worst insect infestations I’ve experienced in Alaska in 20 years. Most streams, only knee-high last year, were raging rivers and too dangerous for me to cross. With more mining and drilling proposed in the Alaska Arctic Wilderness we are in danger of losing the animals, pristine places to explore and a healthy environment for humans.”
Next week, Phyllis Mains will leave by herself, and drive a Tacoma extended-cab truck with new all-terrain tires (the tires are a Mother’s Day present) through northern British Columbia and the Yukon Territories to the village of Inuvik above the Artic Circle. She is busy dehydrating her food. To condition herself to carry her 55-pound pack, she climbs her home steps 32 times per day. She will have only a topography map and compass to guide her.
Mike and Phyllis Mains have two sons, Jeff and Tim. I asked Phyllis what her husband Mike thinks about her adventures? She smiled and said, “He doesn’t have a choice. It was a condition of our marriage.”
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