insight pared

KNOWLEDGE SHARED

Outdoor bold

To access Roland's weblog and column archives

 

 

Tip o' the Day

I spotted the thunderhead when it first peeked its puny topknot above the western ridges. Nothing to be concerned about was my first thought. But after repeated glances over my shoulder as that tiny cloud swelled to block the sun and fill the sky, I commenced second-guessing my first impression.

Marc had the cloud in his sights, too. He'd twisted in the saddle to check the loads on his packhorse and saw the darkening mass as it was building. "We going to make it to camp first? he shouted over the head of his friend.

I held my hands out, palms up. A few minutes before and I would've said yes, but those thunderheads seemed to be taking on a life of their own, heading somewhere in a hurry. A few minutes later and the sun blinkered out like somebody'd thrown a celestial light switch.

The two boys and I were on our way into the wilderness to set up a hunting camp. It was late August, just before school started. We still had three miles to go to our destination. Then we had to unpack and unsaddle our horses and set up a tent before we could presume ourselves sheltered from the elements.

I glanced again at the sky, then glanced at the boy riding between my son and me. Marc was someting else, already a mountain veteran at thirteen. But his school chum, though a brilliant student, always seemed slow on the uptake to me. "One boy, all boy," I muttered. "Two boys, half a boy."

Above our heads the billowing, churning black mass spread from horizon to horizon. No way were we going to make it! Marc's friend looked around, startled. "What happened to the sun? he said. Then he peered at the sky for the first time. "Where'd them clouds come from?"

Just then the first hailstone fell. It was as large as a golf ball, clipping through scattered lodgepole pine branches twenty feet to the right. Another fell ahead of Marc, and another bounced off a pack carried by my second packhorse. "Head for the wolftrees!" I shouted to the boys.

Our trail snaked along a gentle slope of scattered pines. Up the hill, a half-dozen large, shrubby firs grew. Marc needed no encouragement, reining his little gelding for the shelter. The stones fell thicker and thicker. I reached the first shelter tree and leaped from the saddle, lashing my pony's halter rope to a stout limb. Two packhorses began bucking as the hailstones pounded them. "Ow!" came a cry from the trail.

I wheeled. Marc's friend still sat his horse where we'd left him. A hailstone struck him squarely atop the head. "Ow!" he cried again.

"Dammit, boy," I shouted. "Get off that horse and under a tree.

"Ow!" he cried, as he ran for my tree. "Ow!"

In only a few more minutes, the hail ended as suddenly as it began, turning to a drenching, mind-numbing rain that was more "Oh, shucks!" than Ow!"

Just a note to let you know that I enjoy your program * Dugan Coffee / Lakeview, OR

Since I work two jobs I rarely have a quiet moment, but that seems to be when the kids are getting ready for school and I am enjoying the morning's first cup of coffee. I hear your voice come on and it catches my attention. I love hearing your hunting and western life stories * Jan Davis / Gunnison, CO

We appreciate your program. Keep it up. It's entertaining, enjoyable and funny * Mike & Sharon Grove / Kalispell, MT

We really enjoy your little stories and information we hear over KXLE radio here in Ellensburg. We live on a ranch and with Mother Nature and her wild animals * Judy Golladay / Ellensburg, WA

Listen to you every morning. You are interesting * Geraldine Hansen / Corona, SD

I listen to you each morning and you start my day with a positive attitude * Bob Brotherton / Sheridan, Wy

I enjoy your radio show every morning and am sure my husband will enjoy your book. He might even let me look at it, too * Marcia Barker-Browning / Elko, NV

We enjoy your program on KDIO from Ortenville and hope you continue it for many years * Mary Kampmeier / Graceville, MN

I have appreciated your program for many months since my retirement and as I was sitting in front of my fireplace this morning listening to you tell of building a fire while guiding a group of hunters at five below, I stoked mine up a little more * Robert M. Waits / Helena, MT

THE WORST OBSCENITY

Like the guy said, "I don't know what's going to happen when the rising hemline meets the plunging neckline, but I want to be around when it happens!" He might have been analyzing string bikinis or a starlet's thong. Or she could be ogling his tight and scanty swim trunks, or his flat chest, or his pecs. Whatever. We're really talking about visual displays of largely undressed human bodies.

It's a phenomenon that has been with us, judging by their sculptures, since ancient Greece and Rome. Then there are the frescoes and oils of the Renaissance that demonstrate conclusively that 16th Century's Christian reformation and Europe's Renaissance weren't exactly running on parallel tracks. Today there's "porn" mixed up with what we call "art" mixed up in literature and the internet, ad infinitum.

We can, of course, spill much ink on just what is obscenity and what is art and, if so, we would no doubt butt heads to the same lack of conclusions as Socrates and Plato, Cicero and Plutonius, the Medici and the Pope. Yet that is exactly what I wish to do today: address what I deem monstrous obscenity.

No, I'm not going to get into how much muscle the lifeguard at a popular swimming beach should display, or how high above the knee ladies dresses should ascend. The obscenity I find most repellent is the proclivity of some among the wealthy to build three- or five- or nine-million-dollar second or third homes they sometimes use for only a couple of weeks each year. I'm sorry, but I find it repulsive to read a magazine piece on children in Africa dying of AIDS and view photos of innocent tykes who look as though they could be relics of Auschwitz or Treblinka, then pick up a real estate magazine from the affluent valley where I dwell and see how far the very rich of our time are obsessing with their wealth.

Here are the first few listings in a recent real estate magazine:

1, "Classic lakefront lodge with 525' of excellent beach. Adjoins State Forest . . . $14,900,000.

2. Avail. on either 20 or 40 timbered ac. this stunning home overlooks Whitefish Lake . . . $10,200,000/20 ac. $11,300,000/40 ac.

3. This stunning property commands 164' of prime shoreline complemented by one of the best private beaches . . . $8,900,000.

4. This "work of art" is located on 2.9 acres on a gently sloping private point surrounded by 560' of waterfront . . . $7,775,000.

5. Exquisite 5 bedroom, four bath residence located at the waters edge on beautiful Flathead Lake . . . $6,450,000.

Enough! You get the picture, The glossy real estate magazine contains well over 100 listings; each accompanied by carefully composed photographs of properties listed. Should one run a finger down the listings, he would come to Number 30. before anything is priced less than a million dollars ($995,000). I have the real estate magazine spread on my desk. Alongside it is a weekly news magazine open to a photo of a seven-year-old skeleton of a boy sitting on the edge of a bed in an African clinic. The boy was suffering from AIDS, tuberculosis and pneumonia. Glancing back and forth between magazines, I found it impossible to reconcile the differences between my horror of one and disgust of the other.

True, ostentation has always been with us; unless my recollection of high school history is flawed, both Persian Satraps and Oriental Emperors lapped up luxury, and in Rome the occasional Baccanalia came into vogue. Kings and knights errant constructed castle keeps to house their most precious possessions, including the occasional maiden in distress. But castles were primarily designed for defense and not for show; not at all like the castles pictured in my real estate magazine, with row after row of glass windows. No sally ports or portcullises in our moderns castles. No such thing as a defensive turret and no moats with drawbridges.

In this most recent analysis, it is with us and our kind that ostentation has been brought to the very gates of obscenity. And yet . . . .

Is there still a ray of hope? Might America be different? Andrew Carnegie was a wealthy industrialist who began poor, with little formal education. A Scottish immigrant, Carnegie became a titan in steel manufacture. Then he sold his steel company (1901) and until his death in 1919, devoted himself to philanthropy, donating over $350 million to various causes, including establishing upwards of 2,500 libraries across America -- most of which are still in service today. He also founded the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, the Carneigie Institution at Washington, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

I'm sure Andrew Carnegie was not the first to make a fortune, then dispense it trying to help others less fortunate develop the wherewithal for their own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. But he is by no means the last. In our own lifetimes, Bill and Melinda Gates (Microsoft), and Warren Buffett (investments) seem to be piloting their way through billions of dollars for philanthropy. Still, my eyes wander back to the real estate listings and the lavish homes pictured. A whole bunch of multi-million dollar homes, just in Flathead Valley! Do the Gateses and Buffett have such homes? Probably. So, I imagine, did Andrew Carnegie. But at some point in his life, the steel magnate satisfied his own greed-lust and began using his enormous financial resources to help others.

Who knows, perhaps someday a few others with the kind of resources that enable them to impress their neighbors with five-, ten-, and fifteen-million dollar second and third homes will see a picture of a starving waif in an African clinic and decide there are better places to put a modicum of their money.

 

 

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

Comments

Hunting and fishing shows are plentiful, and extreme sports ones are trendy, but there's no outdoors radio show that reaches the hearts and minds of outdoors America as Trails to Outdoor Adventure. To learn more

Click Here

 

Click Here

for detailed info about Roland's radio show and each of his books

Read Reviews

Read their first chapters

What are Roland Cheek's qualifications for doing an outdoors radio show? Roland bucked blizzards and avalanches by day and below-zero nights while searching out remote places in distant mountain valleys for the Valhallas he knew were there. But to reach those promised lands also meant rafting perilous whitewater rivers, fighting wildfires, enduring rain and floods, and sleet and winds.

Roland matched wit and grit and stamina and sweat with the best of a beautiful land, and the worst of a savage land. He won some and lost some; exactly the way it should be -- and always is -- during a life of real adventure. That's the life Roland shares via decades of newspaper columns, a popular nationwide radio program, hundreds of magazine articles, and a "baker's dozen" books of high adventure, belly-slapping comedy, and passing of secrets.