The book Learning To Talk Bear is the best book I have ever read and prepared me for my first grizzly sighting / email from Susan Bearer

* * *

insight pared

KNOWLEDGE SHARED

outdoor bold

 

To acess Roland's weblog and column archives

 

 

Tip o' the Day

Ever out in the big lonesome and discovered your watch quit God knows how many hours ago and you need to know how much time left until sundown? Line one hand between sun and horizon (arm outstretched, fingers together at right angle to the arm); each finger is approximately 15 minutes.

How about direction when you're without a compass and it's a dank, overcast day? Forget that old wives' tale about moss growing heavier on the north side of trees. Moss grows slowly in the high country at our latitude and you don't have time to wait for it to grow. Try this instead:

Spread a white cloth (handkerchief, T-shirt, longhandle underwear (if it's still white) flat upon the ground. Hold a slender stick vertically, moving it around the perimeter of the cloth. A suggestion of a shadow can be determined when the stick is between sun and cloth, even when the sun cannot be otherwise located. Now point the hour-hand of your watch at the sun. Halway betweeen the hour hand and 12 0'clock is due south. (Note: use standard time. Note: those with digital watches will have to fake it.)

What happens when you've discovered south and how much time until sundown, but still don't know which direction to camp, nor how long it'll take to get there?

"Stop early enough to gather firewood for the night," survival books say, and it's good advice. Most of 'em don't tell you how much to gather, however. So lay in more than you'll need . . . then double the supply. Having slept out many nights using chaps for pajamas, backed against a rock wall or boulder to reflect heat, drowsily fighting sparks from my new wool coat, I qualify as an expert. And I say night is always darkest just before dawn. It's also coldest. Ironically, it's also when you'll fun out of fire if you shorted your wood supply the night before.

Of course if a man straddles a good horse there's no logical reason to gather a big supply of firewood and spend the night in the fearsome lonesome unless he wishes to do so. Give a veteran horse his head and you'll eat supper in camp. Confuse him and you might wind up as hungr as an Ethopian famine survivor.

I once followed my pony down a perilous trail in an inky night. I did so by tying the halter rope to his bridle reins, then walking behind with one hand loose-holding the rope and the other holding his tail. I figured to let both go if he disappeared into the chasm below. He never even stumbled.

In fact, if anything, he seemed put out that I never crawled into the saddle and let him hurry home.

I am sitting here with tears pouring down my cheeks in great appreciation for what you have written about my father in law. I am the mother of "his" triplet grandchildren . . . It is hard for me to explain what a BIG loss it has been because it is hard to explain to people what a great person he truly was / email from Jennifer West

* * *

MARCH THE HUNGER MOON

March was the "Hunger Moon" to the Indians. It was a time of hardship and want, not only for themselves but for most of the creatures sharing the land with them.

Yet March also brings the first stirrings of spring. Accumulated winter snows melt in the low country and spring breakup of ground frost inevitably occurs. The first buttercups peep forth toward the end of the month to be followed soon after by spring beauties, shooting stars, and a host of other wildflowers. Soon buds will be forming on the willow and serviceberry, and greening grasses will burst forth. It's ironic that the hungriest time for Indians came amid such promise.

But so it was. In that pre-white man era, before the advent of horse or gun, the Hunger Moon meant the ragged end of a long winter. By the time of the Hunger Moon, their scant provisions had long since been consumed -- the smoked buffalo rib strips and carefully pounded pemmican saturated with rendered fat and flavored by dried berries.

By then, foraging game animals had been driven far from the snowbound encampment and were themselves gaunt and stringy and never enough to feed the village. Even the surplus dogs had disappeared into stew pots, while the canine survivors were little more than wild, unapproachable scarecrows.

The bitter cold and deep snows of December, January and February had so taken their toll that hunters lacked either the strength or the will to ferret out small bands of wintering wildlife. Nor did they have the reserves to enable them to make a "surround" if they did indeed locate buffalo on the move, or the stamina to drive the animals to a "jump." It was then that outer layers of tree bark were peeled to reach the softer cambium layer -- not especially gourmet dining, but life sustaining.

By March, theirs was a subsistence of snared rabbits or beaver or other small game. They ate carrion. Lucky was the hunter who frightened a mountain lion from a fresh-killed deer, or a pack of wolves from a hamstrung buffalo calf.

There's irony that Indians faced down the depths of winter only to stare into the unblinking eyes of an unrelenting Hunger Moon at the same time as the first rays of spring's salvation slanted over the distant skyline.

But so it still is with most big-game wildlife in our part of the world. The critical time for elk and deer is when? March. Always March. That's when their last reserves are expended; when the easy-to-reach forage is gone. They've laughed at a howling gale in November, shrugged off the bitter cold of December, struggled against the blizzards of January, and barely survived a last reckoning af all three in February. If only March lives up to its promise of renewal they'll make it.

But if it doesn't . . . if more cold and more snow and more wind comes in March. . . . Well, it's March when the critters die huddled in the deep-packed snow of narrow canyon bottoms, unable and unwilling to beat their way back up a south-facing hillside to life-sustaining, browse-plant nourishment found there.

That's why Indians name March the Hunger Moon.

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

These days, considerable ink is being spilled over the fact that China is shouldering its way to becoming a powerhouse producer of goods to compete with products from America. It's not enough that we're inundated with with cheap sneakers from South Korea, designer jeans from Taiwan, teakwood baubles from Thailand, efficient autos from Japan, investment portfolios from Singapore, gemstones from Sri Lanka, computer programmers from Bangladesh, internet spam from Russia, movies produced in India, and Terrorists from the Moslem Crescent, now China wants to become an export player in the outside world.

The world-wide trade game is indeed heating up. It looks as though we're going to have to stand competition's heat or get out of the kitchen. Yet it's not so much their exporting cheap undershorts to WalMart that frightens me as much as their importing toilet paper to keep from staining the Fruit of the Looms they're bringing to Shanghai from Kentucky.

Have you actually considered what the demand of a billion Chinese for toilet paper is going to do your own supply from Costco or K-Mart? I don't know about you, but I'm predicting a run on the market -- probably beginning right now, since I've begun thinking on it. A billion Chinese! Why can't they start on the slick pages of Monkey Ward catalogs, as I did when I was four years old and just getting into product demand in a small way?

No doubt about it folks, we're embarking on a voyage of discovery in a brave new world.

 

 

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

for more info about these and other Roland Cheek books

Click Here

Click Here

for detailed info about each of Roland's books

Read Reviews

Read their first chapters

I just finished your book Dance On the Wild Side. I didn't want it to end. You said you didn't finish high school. Where in the world did you learn to write like that? / Barb Richards email

to send this weblog to a friend

to tell Roland what you think of his Campfire Culture weblog

Click Here