a weblog sharing info on outdoor skills and campfire musing by a guy who spends a bunch of time in pursuit of both
CULTURE
WHERE -
TALES ARE TOLD OF
Welcome to Roland Cheek's Weblog
Roland is a gifted writer with a knack for clarifying reality. Looking forward to more of his wisdom
- Carl Hanner e-mail
There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of civilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little in order to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences; this is compromise. He who stands unyielding and immovable upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on.
To access Roland's weblog and column archives
Tip o' the Day
"How could someone do this," my friend asked.
I shook my head. I always struggle when confronted with conclusive evidence there are jerks among us. My friend's wife exhibited more eloquence by calling the unknown creeps, "booger-eating poop stains." Her passion surfaced when we discovered someone had ripped a log from a deteriorating Missouri Breaks homestead cabin to use for campfire wood.
The cabin itself was about ten-by-twenty, with low ceiling and a shallow-pitch sod roof. There were no remaining doors or windows. The remnants of a barn thrust against a flat sky a hundred yards to the east. Two collapsed dugouts, or root cellars beckoned from across a tiny grass-filled draw to the west.
More precisely, the abandoned homestead squatted on a bench some hundred yards back from the broad and muddy Missouri at a place called Greasewood Bottom. The bench is a hundred miles from our launch site a Fort Benton and fifty from our take-out boat ramp at Kipp's Park. The night before, we'd camped just upstream. Our friends spotted the ramshackle homestead while on an evening hike. So, shortly after our morning launch, and with their direction, we put into shore to explore what was certain to be a historic site. Then we dound the ripped-out, half-burned log.
I walked a short distance in the deep grass and found the fat-bodied remains of two fish. Their heads had been removed, but the entrails were still in place. What was left was at least 16-inches long. The big encircling red and black side dots said "char" to me: brook trout or dolly varden. I muttered a curse. Colleen was right; somewhere ahead of us floated "booger-eating poop stains."
You reckon such people even thought of the hours, days, weeks, months and years that men and women similar to them put into that homestead? Those settlers harbored end-of-the-rainbow dreams, too, just like you and me. They smiled with a good planting and laughed with plentiful harvests, slapped at mosquitoes whiile rolling an evening smoke, cured the river-bottom mud and shed tears during floods and fires and hail and drought. They worked hard and played but little. And their legacy of dreams and work and disappointments live on in the crumbling remains of that isolated homestead.
A time will come when its last evidence will melt away, returning to the soil from whence it came. But until then, our own lives can be enriched by contemplating their passage.
It is that opportunity for contemplation that thoughtless people steal. If each passing individual burned cabin lags from dilapidated homesteads--and left rotting fish for others to bury--soon nothing would be left. Then we could all revel in showing our kids faded photographs and brag about how good it was "back in the old days."
I have just finished The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou. Wow! It was wonderful! I was transported from my stateroom aboard a destroyer to the wilderness I roamed as a teenager. Your tales were well told, enlightening and dead on the money. The open ocean on a calm clear night is beautiful, but I'll never hear the hoarse bellow of a rutting bull. Driving a warship from the bridge into heavy seas and tailing green water is exhulting, but not nearly as much as stumbling across grizzly tracks that haven't begun to fill in. Thank you for sharing with me. My dad sent me the Thursday Great Falls Tribune, no matter where I am in the world for the last 13 years. I have always enjoyed your writing, but this book was special.
WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET
I'm just naturally Skeptical of people who pretend they have few (or no) bad habits. I figure, I skin out close to average and, according to those who know me best, it is said I possess an abundance of undesirable--even distastefull--traits.
For analysis prposes, I once asked spouse and friends for a short list of my bad habits. They decided what I asked was impossible to accomplish. They claimed that breaking down my multitude of faults for brevity's sake was impossible. "Choosing only one? How could I limit all your bad habits to just one?"
"But," I wailed, "I'm only asking for the one you believe to be my worst."
"Yours are all `worst'."
Only my wife has tried to help. She's made it her life work to first point out, then modify, my most pernicious habits.
* There was a time, long, long ago, when I bellied to an occasional bar in order to discuss weighty matters of state with wise men of all ages. Nowadays I'm limited to a cocktail before dinner and a closet aperitif when television signs off for the night.
* It was 45 years ago when I was a Marlboro man. Then I went to a single woodshed cigar, and dassn't inhale, even in so long ago. Now I only stare wistfully at a Havana in a smokeshop window.
* There was a time, too, when I enjoyed a risque glance at the turn of a pretty ankle. But Jane put an abrupt stop to that by limiting fraternal access to anything but church socials and political rallies. In addition she screens the kinds of television I'm permitted to watch and limits books to a 1902 Sears and Roebuck catalogue. Her best laid plans have gone agley, however, since I discovered foundation garments on page 983.
* I once spent all my spare time hunting and fishing. But of recent I've discovered hiking, horseback riding, and photography, not to mention an entire range of less well known outdoors pursuits: rock hounding, fossil looking, wildflower identification, etc., etc., etc.
That's why I've learned to be skeptical of anyone portraying an image of excessive virtue. The best folks I know fly no flags of righteousness feel no compulsion to broadcast their moral rectitude.
Scratch pretention and hypocrisy lies beneath.
Scratch me and a modicum of the real world lies beneath. I believe in owning sufficient bad habits to blend with the crowd. But though I may not be a card carrying member of the moral majority, neither do I belong to the immoral minority.
As a consequence, there'll be no New Year's resolutions for me. I'm comfortable in my habits and cannot envision embracing pretention or hypocrisy in order to blend with elements I find undesirable from the outset.
Jane, however, if she holds true to pattern, will be devising strategies to eliminate a few of more distasteful tendencies. And I'm content to let her work alone at my betterment . . . along with modest assistance from a few of our closest friends.
I'm convinced I'm better off for having given up cigarettes, and for limiting my consumption of demon rum to mere moderate dosages. In addition, I've always been put off by salacious magazines and never embraced "adult" movies. It's better, too, to temper the urge to spend all one's time hunting and fishing with much broader-based outdoors adventure. Besides, I AM taking her with me when I go. So what's the rub?
Actually there is none. It's moderation--that's the watchword. You see, it's okay to have modest bad habits. It makes us human. In my case, it makes me an ordinary guy. Because I'm ordinary, I'm also happy. And truth be known, so is my wife.
What's that dear? You've listed a few "improvements" you'd like me to work on during the coming year? I'm sorry, dear, the floor show is on and the band is too loud--I can't hear you!
I see. You've placed the list in Sears and Roebuck catalogue? It's between pages 983 and 984?
Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:
www.rolandcheek.com
Recent Weblogs
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
There's a bunch of specific info about Roland's books, columns, radio programs and archives. By clicking on the button to the left, one can see Roland's synopsis of each book, read reviews, and even access the first chapter of each of his titles. With Roland's books, there's no reason to buy a "pig in a poke."
for detailed info about each of Roland's books
Read Reviews
Read their first chapters
For interested educators, this weblog is especially applicable for use in history, science, and environmental classes, as well as for journalism students.
Roland, of course, visits schools. For more information on his program alternatives, go to:
NEXT WEEK:
LEAVING OUR KIDS ENOUGH
www.campfireculture.com
source links for additional info
to send this weblog to a friend
to tell Roland what you think of his Campfire Culture weblog
to visit Roland's newspaper columns and weblog archives
Just finished Dance On the Wild Side. It is a wonderful!!! book. Was unable to put it down until I finished it. Want a harcover Bob Marshall book
In the wonderful, descriptive way Cheek aficionados have come to expect, he brings the bears and other wilderness denizens to life in the reader's imagination. The book is not a documentary. Neither is it a novel. Cheek has simply filled in the blanks with plausible storylines. The animals and events he describes arise from knowledge gained during a life in the mountains observing nature in general, but with concentration on elk and bears.
- Rural Montana
A friend recently loaned me a book to read, saying, "You and this man have a lot in common, and I think you will enjoy this book very much." I told her that I was already reading two books, and that it might be quite a while before I could get yours back to her. That evening I picked up your book My Best Work is Done at the Office, and I was reading it until 2:00 in the morning. I haven't touched my other books since! I just finished this and am about to start Chocolate Legs. My other books can wait. - H. Robert Krear / Estes Park, CO
- Frank Morgan / Willamina, OR
Roland's best selling book, in its 5th printing
- Louis L'Amour in Bendigo Shafter
