First book in Roland's popular Valediction For Revenge western series

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insight pared

KNOWLEDGE SHARED

Outdoor bold

 

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Tip o' the Day

Have you smelled fear; the cloying sickly fear that turns your stomach? Perhaps it was when your pickup hit an icy patch on a winter road, or when the grammer school bully singled you out for special attention at age eight.

Personally I've smelled fear in the outdoors -- very real and very cose when I inadvertently came between a sow grizzly and her cub along the Whitefish Divide, just north of the Big Mountain ski area; and when I intruded on a monster grizzly's territory up the Spotted Bear River.

But both were mere child's play compared to the smell of fear I've innocently invoked by clambering along tough mountain cliffs during a an exploratory day in the wilds. Unbeknownst to most, the danger of pushing relentlessly toward forbidding rock summits in the hope of continuing into remote and isolated territory is beyond doubt the most formidable danger an outdoorsman could encounter in our western mountains.

I've been there enough to know it's much easier to go up until you find you can go no further, then discover it near impossible to descend over the same route you ascended only a few moments before. It's there, while staring at the ledge below, that the smell of fear trickles into your backbone. It's there you discover that courage travels but a short distance from heart to head, but when it goes, it goes so far no one can know where to look for it.

A bear will, nine times out of ten, yield in a dangerous encounter. Not so with a rock face. It is unyielding, somber, emotionless. There is nothing -- nothing at all -- you can do except swallow your fear and begin your descent. Staring at the abyss won't help; only lowering yourself down, tentatively feeling for the toeholds and fingerholds you so confidently scrambled up moments before.

Better that you never got there in the first place. Better that you recognize and respect the greatest danger our wilderness mountains afford. Better that you never smell the bile that rises to your throat, or suffer the consequences of a foolish climbing error.

Roland, I am Robert's [West] youngest son, Ben. I truly appreciate the tribute you did for my dad on your website and your friendship with my dad throughout the years. He loved hunting with you. I miss him everyday because he was my hero. The only hero I ever had / email from Ben West

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ANOMALOUS ADVENTURES

As a youth, I swiftly learned the first rule of outdoors adventure is that a guy named Murphy played a key role. For instance, it's not uncommon to experience a certain degree of panic when a six-inch patch blows off your inflatable raft while July fishing a hundred feet offshore on a mountain lake with icebergs still calving into it. In a case like that, the whooosh you hear might not entirely be attributed to air escaping from the sinking craft, especially when icy waters first rises above your thighs!

I've also learned it's quite impossible to digest a leisurely breakfast while thirty miles from road's end and no horse bells have tinkled in the distance since you rolled from your sleeping bag at sunrise.

Or try this one on for size: blow-outs on both your loaded stock truck's left-side duals. Naturally I have but one spare. Naturally I'm halfway between home and target trailhead.

I've pulled into camp just at dusk and found tents erected a week earlier flattened by an unseasonal snowfall.

Nor can I recollect all the times when one of my hunters ran smack into the bull elk of his dreams, snapped off his rifle scope's lens caps, only to discover the lenses fogged.

Mosquitos cranky after a long winter? Guess when you're most likely to forget the repellent.

Rained for a week? During your canoe vacation on a chain of lakes, I'll bet.

Yet perversely, those trips are precisely the ones we most remember, most tell others about, most laugh about--they are adventures! On the other hand, trips where everything goes as planned, while enjoyable, are ones that merge into fond memories with no clear face.

My wife and I sold our outfitting business in 1990, keeping just four horses. Each of the thirty head in our former string were good animals. but the four we kept were the best of the best. Each had traveled thousands of miles over all sorts of trails in all kinds of weather. Each could be both ridden and packed. All were steady and reliable and old enough that they no longer were encumbered by the dumb kid-stuff ideas of inexperienced youth.

Back in those halcyon years when Jane and I wished to go into the wilderness on our own, without the eormous responsibilities of caring for guests, we would load our four old friends before daylight, drive to the end of the road, unload them at the trailhead, brush them, and grain them. They'd stand like bored New York cabdrivers while I slung saddles and packs. From arrival time at the trailhead, we were on the trail in minutes, traveling at a pace so steady NASA could've set their clocks by it.

We were always early into our planned campsites. Once there, Jane and I worked as a well-oiled machine. She untied and opened our packs, then loaded the patient ponies' nosebags with grain, while I jerked saddles and brushed down the stock. She set up our small two-person tent while I assembled the dining fly. She laid out our bedroll while I strng a highline, then hobbled and turned our horses out to graze.

Within an hour of our arrival, Jane has her kitchen in place and I had enough wood gathered for the first night. Within two hours, we're climbing a mountain or swimming in a river--depending on weather, mood, and circumstances. It was glorious?

And it was forgotten a week after returning home.

The trips most remembered are which? The ones where the packstring blundered into a yellowjacket nest and rolled down a mountainside; where we helped bring a helicopter in on a mercy flight for an injured man from another party; where lightning struck around us while we sat huddled in a meadow as God peed a bladder-full and thunder crackled His laughter down from on High.

The upshot of all this?

Yeah, the guy Murphy can indeed be annoying. But he plays an indispensable role in making for lasting memories.

 

 

 

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

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Book four in the Valediction For Revenge series, Gunnar's Mine, is set in Colorado mining country, as is the sixth and final book in the series, The Silver Yoke

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