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
Like a grizzly who found his cage door ajar -- after three years without writing a newspaper column and five years since signing off on my last radio program, I'm nearing full freedom. Why? Because I'm now eighteen months into this "Campfire Culture" weblog, and still moving toward my Trails To Outdoor Adventure radio program's return to the air. That means I'm free! Free to share thoughts and ideas, secrets and soliloquies with folks of similar interests and values. To a writer who cherishes his readers and listeners (and I know none who doesn't), remaining mute is purgatory.
To access Roland's weblog and column archives
Tip o' the Day
During all the years I guided hundreds of other folks to adventure amid some of the wildest lands in all the Northern Rockies, we drank freely of the water flowing from the slopes of those mountains. I still remember one gentleman, an orthodontist from the California Bay Area, who smiled politely at my offers of cocktails in the evening, orange juice in the morning, or a beer at high noon. We were on a week's flyfishing trip, drift fishing down a river that rises and flows through one of greatest Wilderness areas in America. Our guest declined coffee and tea, also, and I finally figured out that his religion forebade many of the liquids we offered. Instead, Kent drank the water, dipping cup after cup from the cold, clear river. And he laughed at my offers of anything else.
"Roland," he finally said, "we can't get water like this where I live. Why would anyone want to drink anything else?"
Later, Kent told me confidentially, "This water is no good."
"Huh?"
"It has no body to it -- a man can drink it and drink it and never get enough!" Then I saw he was smiling.
During all those two decades of guiding to adventure, of all those people, only three contacted giardiasis, the intestinal disorder causing chronic intermittent diarrhea. Oddly, one of those three was a doctor, and another a doctor's wife. In all cases, thrice daily doses of the drug Flagyl affected a cure.
We always dipped coffee water from the river, added grounds, then brought the water to a boil over an open campfire. I've since been told water must be boiled 20 minutes in order to purify it. Ours might have boiled 30 seconds.
There are other little squigglies occasionally found in drinking water. Historically, some have been far more dangerous than giardia. That's why the U.S. Government issued Halazone tablets to its military personnel. Two drops of iodine or chlorine is supposed to make a quart of water safe for usage.
So, of course, is the aforementioned boiling for twenty minutes. But boiled water, even when cooled overnight, tastes "flat." So here's the secret about how to put taste back into boiled water: pour it back and forth between containers to aerate it.
Here's another tip on making water usable: Once, Jane and I were backpacking with friends in the Canyonlands of Utah. There'd been a big rain and all the streams were too muddy to successfully filter. We learned, though, to boil the water in the evening to settle the mud. Then the following morning, if we were careful not to stir the bottom mud, we could filter clear water from the container's top.
No, Roland Cheek hasn't been in a gunfight at the O.K. Corral or punched dogies down the streets of Abilene. But he has straddled rawboned ponies over 35 thousand miles of the toughest trails in all the Northern Rockies and spent six decades wamdering the West's wild country. Now, after crafting six prior nonfiction books, hundreds of magazine articles, and thousands of newspaper columns and radio scripts about his adventures, the guy has at last turned his talent to Western novels, tales from the heart, dripping with realism, and based in part on a plethora of his own experiences.
Valediction For Revenge
WHEN ACTION BECOMES IMPERITIVE
I spotted the thunderhead as 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 doubting first impressions.
Thirtteen-year-old Marc had the cloud in his sights, too. He'd twisted in the saddle to check loads on his packhorse and spotted the darkening mass as it was a-building. "We going to make it to camp first?" he shouted over the head of his friend.
I held palms out and up. A few minutes before and I would've said yes, but these thunderheads seemed to be taking on a life of their own, heading our way in a hurry.
A few minutes later the sun blinkered out like somebody bumped a celestial switch.
The two boys and I were on our way into the wilderness to set up a hunting camp. It was just before school started, in late August. We still had three miles to go to our destination. Then we must unpack and unsaddle horses, then set up a tent before we could presume ourselves sheltered from the elements.
I looked at the boy riding just ahead of my son and wondered what help we'd get from him. Marc was something else--already a mountain veteran at thirteen. But his school chum, though a brilliant student, always seemed a tad retarded to me--especially about "real world" things. I thought of the old adage: "One boy, all boy; two boys, half a boy; three boys, no boy at all."
Above our heads the billowing, churning black mass spread from horizon to horizon. I could see plainly now that we could in no way make it to camp before the heavens dumped.
Marc's friend looked around, seemingly startled. His voice was already beginning to crack. "What happened to the sun?" he said, peering at the sky for the first time. "Where'd them clouds come from?"
Just then the first hailstone fell. It was large as a golf ball, clipping through scattered lodgepole pine branches, twenty feet to the right. Another fell a few feet ahead of Marc. Then another bounced off a pack carried by my second packhorse.
"Head for the wolf trees!" I shouted to the boys.
Our trail snaked along a gentle slope of scattered lodgepole pines. Up the hill, perhaps a hundred feet away, there were a few shrubby Douglas fir trees, upwards of thirty feet tall with dense and spreading limbs. Marc needed no further encouragement and reined his little gelding for the shelter. The stones fell thicker and thicker. I reached the first shelter tree, kicked loose from the saddle stirrups and leaped free, lashing my pony's halter rope to a stout limb. Two packhorses began bucking as hailstones pounded them and I pulled the head of first one, then the other, beneath my shelter.
"Ow!" came a cry from the trail. I wheeled. Marc's friend still sat his horse where we'd left him. Another hailstone struck him squarely atop the head. "Ow!" he cried again.
"Dammit, boy" I shouted. "Get off that horse!" He leaped from the saddle, then stood there looking perplexed. "Now get under a tree!"
"Ow!" he cried as he sprinted for my tree. "Ow!"
The hail ended as suddenly as it began, turning to a drenching, mind-numbing rain that was more "Oh, shucks," than "Ow!"
As might be expected, the dreamy slow-witted boy wasn't much help. But Marc seemed to be embarrassed that he'd asked him along and tried to make up for his deficiency. Still, it took us the remainder of that day and all the next to get the camp set up and a starter-pile of wood cut.
The friend blessed his God and the Virgin Mary when we returned to civilization. And he found at least a dozen reasons why he could not do so when I asked, tongue-in-cheek, if he wanted to return with us next week to pack horsefeed and cut more wood.
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, August 26, 2008
To see the books, read reviews, even read their first chapters
There's a bunch of specific info about Roland's books, columns, 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 health education, environmental, or social government classes, as well as for journalism students.
Roland, of course, visits schools. For more information on his program alternatives, go to:
Dance On the Wild Side is the story of Jane's and Roland's life of adventure
SEPT. 16
WHO KNOWS?
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
RED ALERT!!! Jane and I will be in the Bob Marshall for a couple of weeks-- the next weblog will be Sept. 16
Award-winning Western writer Richard Wheeler says of Roland's novels:
Like Louis L'Amour, Roland Cheek knows how to start a story at a gallop and hold the reader to the last page. He writes richly and authentically about the Old West, drawing from an encyclopdic knowledge of his subject
