Tag Archives: billy-goat

The Trackers

Posted on by
click for larger version

Back in the days before people had apps on their phones to find somebody you had to use a large portion of the gray matter between your ears to locate them. The less folks wanted to be found the more gray matter you had to use. There were times when all the gray matter you had was in use and it still wasn’t enough to find them. That’s when you called in The Trackers.

Trackers were guys that had extra gray matter in their heads dedicated solely to finding other guys or animals whether they wanted to be found or not. It’s unknown how they got this extra gray matter but they had it so just accept it and lets move along. There weren’t a lot of female Mountain men, but if there were it was pretty certain they’d be good trackers too, but history doesn’t relate much about them.

Tracking is the ability to use information gleaned from the surroundings, such as the imprint from the foot of the trackee, or a bent piece of grass, or a note found on the ground saying, “Hey I’m down here by that tree. Follow the stream until you get to that rock then bear left until you see me standing there holding my gun.” Although obvious sounding it was a form of tracking that was usually quite productive. If you could read that is.

Some trackers were like savants. They could look at a track and tell you what it belonged to. They would be able to tell you if it was ham, Ram, Billy goat, Baboon or Bear and how much it weighed, what it planned on doing when it got where it was going, what religious affiliation it had if any, whether it would be friendly when you found it, whether it planned on eating you if it got the chance, and a host of other things to numerous to mention. It was said that they could track an Eagle to its eyrie by the faint imprint of its shadow across the ground. These guys were good.

These abilities were all beneficial skills to have. These fellows lived in a time where if they accidentally stumbled into a pack of unfriendlies they could lose body parts and have a very bad day. So it was a pure survival skill to be able to see an unknown guys footprints and know which tribe they were from, whether or not they might enjoy your company, or if they carried big sharp knives. Well that last one was a given because everyone carried a big sharp knife. It was what they planned to do with it that was important.

The Trackers you see above both had the extra gray matter between their ears and weren’t afraid to use it. There was no physical indication of this extra lump of brain tissue in their outward appearance as it was just packed tight in there inside their heads with the rest of the gray matter and you just could tell they had it by how good they were at tracking. If you’ve ever tried to peel a grape you know how tight that grape is packed inside its skin. That’s the way the inside of the trackers heads were. Tight, packed full. As a team they had followed many a set of tracks and were comfortable with their ability to track a track until they found the maker. They had just come across a fresh set that they believed belonged to a friendly but deranged person and they were going to follow him and see what he was up to. This was often done because they didn’t have that much to do otherwise and it filled up the day.

Trackers played a very important part in the life of the early days of the West by discovering what’s what in the mountains and elsewhere. A lot of stuff would never been discovered without them and as such they were a proud breed, eager to show off their skills for fun or profit and make the West a better place. We salute them.

Hiding In Plain Sight

Posted on by

HidingMtEvans0587-0600

Mountain goats aren’t really known for being stealthy. They don’t have a lot of need to be. There aren’t that many predators up here at the top of the world at over 14,000′ to get them so they usually just hang out not caring very much about who sees them.

Yet Nature, who is in charge of animal protection here in this world, has chosen to give them life saving camouflage anyway. When you enlarge this image by clicking on it, and you know you should, you’ll see that even with them standing out in plain sight your eyes will drift right over them and you’ll often miss seeing them. This effect is even more pronounced when the herd is scattered out and the individuals take on the coloring and look of the boulder field they like to forage in.

Occasionally a coyote and on the rarest of occasions a mountain lion will find its way up here in the hopes of catching a lamb or a sick billy-goat but they’re usually so whacked out by the lack of oxygen up here that their efforts are half-hearted at best. Still the camouflage is there in case they need it.

This is Mt. Evans by the way, and it is 14,264′ up in the air. It is also one of the tallest of our national parks with all kinds of neat facts that you can read elsewhere about how cool it is. The road up here is not for the squeamish and will often involve some or all of the passengers in your vehicle crouching on the floor to avoid the sheer terror of the incredible drop offs just inches away from your tires. Drivers Pay Attention! Gravity is not your friend up here.

For those of you who are going to ask “Is that blue real?” the answer is no. It’s actually bluer than that. I had to tone it down in Photoshop from the real color because it is SO blue, and that is the famous Colorado blue you hear about, that my staffers walking by catching a glimpse of it on the monitor would be frozen in their tracks, stunned into immobility, so totally hypnotized by it blueness, that they would be paralyzed and fall over in what we call the Blue Coma. Since some of you may be viewing this on portable devices and doing things like walking or chewing gum I thought it best, in the interest of your safety, to bring it down into a more tolerable color.

Soon and that is in a couple of weeks, the ewes will start having their lambs and the tourists will start arriving to see them. The park opens later in the year than most other parks because this geography and weather up here are similar to arctic conditions. There’s tundra scattered around everywhere with arctic plants growing and biting winds and fast-moving storms that race in just to catch everyone unaware, so they, the people in charge of these places, want to give the inquisitive tourists every chance of making it up and back down alive. Plus the roads are mostly snowed shut until sometime in mid June. But life is an adventure and you’re alive or should be so jump in the old Celica and get on up to the top of the world. There’s views, and vistas, and far-reaching sights that will make you say “oh Wow” or even “Holy Moley” and you can see the Mountain goats hiding in plain sight. It’s worth it.