Back in the day when free range mountain men traveled the vast open spaces and deep into the tall snow covered mountains things were not always glamourous. In fact it was a far cry from glamourous despite what the movies show.
It was often beyond cold or blisteringly hot. It was unbelievably difficult to get around and often just plain dangerous. One had to be constantly aware on a level we virtually never experience today. To stay alive took an enormous amount of effort and if you were out on the trail the way you kept safe was to stay awake and as alert as if your life depended on it, because it did.
There was a certain amount of safety in being a part of a group as there were more eyes to keep watch and you could post a guard at night so you could get some rest. Maybe. Because as you know if you’ve ever spent a night in the wilderness with nothing more than a campfire to keep the terrors at bay, there are things that go bump in the night and do not have your best interests at heart.
You could be weary and tired beyond reckoning but you still had your job to do and you did it because you had no other choice. This was your life and even at the end of a long day you wouldn’t trade it for any other.
Everybody’s had it tough with this Covid-19 stuff. The Quarantine, the mask, which I’ve taken off for this shot at home, the social distancing that doesn’t seem to extend to red-tailed hawks by the way, they don’t have any problem just blowing right in and trying to snatch my butt off this rock. No 6′ distancing then. Where are the social distancing rangers when you need them, not here that’s for sure.
Let’s just talk about this quarantine, lock-down, self imposed isolation, whatever you want to call it. I know it affects everybody and nobody likes to be forced to do something they don’t want to even if it is for the greater good. But people have got houses, huge freaking houses, or apartments, or big fat wall tents to get locked down in for their isolation. What have I got, this big stupid rock that’s what. I said big stupid rock but I didn’t mean the rock was big, like in huge. No, it’s a small tiny little rock in the scheme of things. A phone booth of a house and that’s making it seem bigger than it is. I’m supposed to wash my paws, I don’t even have running water. I got to wait until it rains.
You can’t see it from where you are but across the way there, over a bit to the left, there’s a regular condo of burrows in a hillside and little caves and places to sit out in the sun and have grass tea and talk to each other that’s just filled with ground squirrels who had the good fortune to get locked down together. There’s even a ground squirrel cheerleading academy over there. Can I get there from here? Nooooo. Not for a couple of more weeks and that’s only if we don’t get a second wave because some yoyo won’t wear his mask, and if that red-tail quits building its nest over on the tree line.
So yeah, I’m getting fed up with this whole thing. I saw on the net that there is this heavy duty metal sort of a hazmat suit with a built in mask made just for ground squirrels that you can order. So just as soon as my stimulus check comes in I’m ordering one. Then I’m heading across the meadow to ground squirrel heaven. Don’t try and stop me, I’m serious. I’m going. I’ve had it with this rock. Stay tuned for further details.
There is an old phrase we hear every so often that says “The More things change, the more they stay the same.”
The idea being that in a situation where there appears to be a drastic change many of the underlying fundamentals are still the same.
In days long past a warrior would tie his favorite war pony to the front of his lodge as a sign of his original worth both monetarily and as a symbol of his value as a warrior. In our current time the same thing occurs but the form is different. The intent and perception remains the same.
Again in many ways the culture and tradition is preserved just presented in a new way bringing truth to the old adage, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Tyrone and Lambrè – Bighorn Sheep – Rocky Mountain National Park
What started out as a quiet leisurely lunch of mountain mahogany leaves soon turned into the beginnings of a serious altercation between the two Bighorn rams. Tyrone and Lambrè usually the best of friends, were standing quietly as they normally did slowly finishing their lunch when Tyrone said “Your horns are looking sort of puny” just low enough that Lambrè wasn’t sure he heard him correctly.
“What did you say ?” Lambrè asked, “I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I said, you’re looking kind of puny, horn-wise. What, are you hard of hearing besides ugly”.
Lambrè gave him a slow sideways glance, considering his answer before replying “What is your problem Tyrone? You been hitting the Gypsum weed again. You know that stuff makes you say stupid stuff.”
In the same quiet voice Tyrone said ” I’m just saying I think you’re looking puny and I don’t believe you got a set of juevos to come up against me in the rut here this fall.”
“Tyrone, what are you getting all chesty for that’s two and a half months or more from now. You mean we gotta do this for another couple of months?”
There it starts, the trash talk that leads up to the full on battle between two Bighorn rams every fall when the rut starts. For those of you unfamiliar with the Rut that’s when the rams begin fighting with each other to determine who gets to mate with the females in the herd. It is a battle unmatched by other species except the Elk and Buffalo who do the same thing, fighting to assume supremacy for mating rights, and it can be deadly, though it usually isn’t, just embarrassing for the loser.
Most people are only aware of the actual battles where the rams stand off facing each other then lunge forward driving their heavy horns into the other rams head, with the idea of stunning their opponents or making them turn tail and run away, and not the verbal sparring that goes on during the last weeks of summer while the rams attempt to psych out their opponents. When this event takes place the actual collision of the two animals meeting sounds like a gunshot and can be heard throughout the countryside. Rarely but not unheard of, sometimes an opponent is pushed over the side of a cliff or down a ravine breaking a leg or a neck and of course losing his mating rights along with his life.
The Rut is the most serious event in a Bighorn rams life and it is why everything is fair game as far as psyching out his opponent. Anything can be said and is, to gain that last little edge of advantage. Which is why we hear Tyrone saying to Lambrè just as quietly as before “Hey Lambrè, Yo Mama….” and we all know where that’s going. You may see a preview of the rut before it even starts.
Kids, they run around until they can hardly stand up, screeching and yowling depending on what kind of kids you have, banging into stuff, screeching some more because they got hurt, fighting with each other, running to tell that what’s his ears did this to me, screeching because you won’t beat him for it, leaving their toys everywhere, wanting something to eat, screeching because they don’t like what you give them, and generally depleting their parents patience and stiffening their resolve never to have kids again. Ever.
It ‘s burnout time. They’ve had it and you’ve had it. It’s time for that dreaded mid-afternoon nap. There’s more screeching and yowling because they’re not tired and don’t want a nap. But you know they do, just like you need that glass of wine to help you make it through another day with having four kids under the age of three. Yet there’s always that one hold out that has an ounce more stamina than the others that insists he doesn’t need a nap, but you hold firm and soon he’s nodding out like the others. Bliss at last. Maybe they’re not so bad after all.
The Journeyers carrying the Bull boat to the Arkansas river
One of the curses of river travel is portaging, or the art of unpacking the boat, then carrying the boat around unmanageable obstacles in the river, such as rapids, or log jams created by the last flood, to a place where you can put the boat back in the water again. Then going back to your last take-out point to retrieve your cargo and belongings and carry them to the new put-in place, repack the boat and set off again down stream towards your destination. If you’re lucky the next portage may be more than a half mile or so downstream. Sometimes it was less.
Unless you were on one of the big rivers, the mighty Mo, or the Mississippi, this was your fate, and your job. No long stretches of glamorous carefree floating, watching the tree line casually pass on by, or spending too much time watching the sandstone cliffs reaching for the sky while traveling through incredible red rock canyons, paddling just enough to maintain control of your vessel as you floated closer to your journeys end. That’s what you thought it would be like if you’d never traveled down one of the smaller rivers in the west. Prior travelers knew better.
This was not the fastest travel in the west. In fact given the amount of time you spent portaging, or laying out your gear on a rocky sand bar to dry after a collision with a submerged snag or some other hidden danger lying in wait to tear the bottom out of your boat, you probably could have put every thing on your back and humped it to where ever you were going quicker. If you had the strength that is. There’s a lot to reconsider if you think that it was a simple thing to simply go down to the river in boats and sail serenely to your destination. The West wasn’t always easy but it was always beautiful, exciting and adventuresome, the trials and tribulations of daily life not withstanding.
Any adventure worth its salt starts with a single defining moment. In this case it is the first bend in the river at the beginning of an unknown journey, an untested trip down the Arkansas river. The sun is shining, the river is calm, its surface showing the first indications of white water, not huge rapids but still a change from it placid meandering into a focused point of energy. A rapid movement of water where it will soon sluice between large rocks and over hidden snags, drop several feet in elevation with startling rapidity into shallows that can tear the bottom out of the boat, all unknowns that can alter the course of this journey in an instance. But all those possibilities lie ahead, after all the unknown, that which makes it into an adventure, are still to come, around the first bend in the river.
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