Yankees and Ayn Rand and Bears, Oh My!

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate and American Town (And Some Bears)

Tiny Grafton, New Hampshire, was carved from New England’s forested wilderness before the Revolution, by a cadre of committed tax-dodgers. Its character has changed little in the intervening 260 years. When a committee of Libertarians, jazzed on Internet forums and ideological fervor, went looking for an existing small town to colonize for their values, Grafton looked amenable. But the Libertarians failed to plan for Grafton’s encroaching wilderness.

Advance PR for Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s first book is somewhat misleading. It implies that Libertarians, unified by an ethic of complete hands-off government, remade Grafton in their image, then bungled it when New Hampshire’s swelling bear population invaded. This isn’t what happened in Hongoltz-Hetling’s actual telling. If you’re seeking ammunition to deploy against Libertarianism in online arguments, this book isn’t it. No, Hongoltz-Hetling has written something different altogether.

To start, the bears, mostly American black bears, didn’t follow the Libertarians into town. Hongoltz-Hetling describes the first attack, when a previously unexpected bear swooped into Jessica Soule’s lawn and gobbled two of her kittens, happening five years before the Libertarians arrived. New Hampshire’s dark, moody wilderness, once nearly obliterated, has been gradually returning for about seventy years, bringing bears, coyotes, and bobcats with it.

Second, the Libertarians less remade Grafton, which already was chronically tax-averse and had few public services, than exaggerated its already lawless tendencies. The Libertarians took a community, which had never been particularly large or prosperous, and colonized it with anti-government values, though they frequently didn’t agree what that meant. The result was chaotic, and for many, ended in tears.

Despite this, Hongoltz-Hetling, a Polk Award-winning freelance journalist, tells a remarkably complex and humane story of people whose ethics worked well on paper, but faced unanticipated obstacles in real life. He anchors most of his story on two transplants who experience Grafton through unique lenses. John Barbiarz basically invited the Libertarians into Grafton, then couldn’t control them. Jessica Soule and her cats lived in fortress-like solitude as bear encroachments increased.

Libertarians are a big-tent philosophy. Grafton attracted survivalists, revivalists, conservative anarcho-capitalists, centrist Christian utopians, and progressive hippies. They agree that government should generally leave individuals alone, but beyond that, they agree upon little. While some Libertarians attempted to create businesses, churches, and other community amenities for Grafton, others clung to the town’s margins, prepping for the Apocalypse, and foraging like… well, like bears.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Stoked with ethical fervor, Grafton’s Libertarians disrupted town business, did dangerous things intended to provoke confrontations with bureaucrats, and drained town coffers. As John Barbiarz describes it, they wanted the freedom of Libertarianism, without the concomitant responsibility. Though Libertarians believe the Free Market will fix everything, without repaired roads and basic public services, Grafton’s economy collapsed. The general store, Grafton’s last business, shuttered in 2018.

Meanwhile, the bears became increasingly fearless. Once edging toward extinction, New Hampshire’s forests, and the bears that occupy them, have resurged. But these aren’t like the bears Grafton’s colonists terrorized. Once afraid of humans, these bears have become brazen, wandering into town, preying on domesticated animals. Bears have adapted to human environments. They’ve apparently developed a taste for cats, not normally part of bears’ diets.

Though the Libertarians and bears apparently colonized Grafton separately, they formed a mutually reinforcing loop. Libertarians’ disdain for regulations caused them to sloppily handle trash, which bears loved to raid for cast-off food. Bears’ fearlessness around humans provided Libertarians justification for one of their favorite causes, open-carrying firearms for personal defense. The situation was compounded because some Libertarians shot bears, while others fed them.

Hongoltz-Hetling describes a community fraught with bitter competition: bears versus humans, old Graftonites versus colonists, and sectarian feuds among the Libertarians. Without a guiding philosophy, civic life in Grafton begins drifting. The town becomes too cash-strapped to fight fires, while New Hampshire becomes too broke to manage its spreading wilderness. Soon Grafton becomes the site of something nobody expected: New England’s first unprovoked bear attack in a century.

Though a journalist, Hongoltz-Hetling tells the story with a novelist’s aplomb. His descriptions of bear depredations have an almost Stephen King-like atmosphere, while his descriptions of political wrangling resemble John Grisham dramas. He cites statistics and creates a historical context where necessary, but throughout, the human narrative of Grafton’s unwinding takes center stage. We feel like we’re watching our hometown’s final days.

It would be easy to waste a story like this assigning blame. Though Hongoltz-Hetling clearly has his sympathies, he’d rather emphasize the human aspects. His story is terrifying, complex, and frequently heartbreaking, much like life.