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

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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?

Survival books say to "Stop early enough to gather firewood for the night," and it's good advice. Most of 'em don't tell you how much wood to gather, however, so I'll tell you to 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, dawn is also when you'll run out of fire--if you've 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 hungry 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

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MONTANA'S CULTURAL APPRECIATION GAME PLAN

I've always admired culture. Got a nice ring to it. Goes beyond obvious phonic similarities, like vultue, rupture, suture, and troglodyte. Makes a body want to buddy up to it; think uplifting thoughts: "Jane, did you sew a new button on the back flap of my union suit?"

Cultural sites, I'm told, are supposed to be tourism's new wave. Distinct possibilities arise for history's previously undersold centers of Treasure State enlightenment, such as Havre's underground town, a functional place to locate during the bootlegging era; Butte's Mercury Street, also a place of high repute during prohibition; and Helena's Capitol Dome, of diametric low repute, then, now, and hopefully ever after.

We Montanans have distinct cultural advantages over folks elsewhere--unfortunates who have to make more ado about much less. Take transport for instance: While Californians can only trace reliable conveyance to post-World War II and the advent of BMWs and Toyota Land Cruisers, Montana's mobile record can proudly be tracked to the American Indian's embrace of Coronado's horses; and before that to their "dog culture" days.

Montana waterways spawned canoes, pirogues, and steamboats while Kentucky was settled via ox-carts lumbering through mountain "Gaps."

Tennessee travelers wearied of slogging the mud of their Natchez "Trace" while up in Montana nail-driving men laid steel across a continent so that fjiord-loving Norsemen could search for dryland wheat farms in comfort.

It is said early Santa Fe traders went mad for want of vistas and water while crossing New Mexico's Llano Estacado--the Staked Plains. But up north, Canadian-bound whiskey haulers plying Montana's wild and wooly "Whoop-up Trail" enjoyed scenery galore and used water sparingly to add to the rotgut pilfered from barrels amid their freight.

Montana's first inhabitants were much less mean-spirited and conniving than those of eastern persuasion, engaging in hilarious, fun-filled competition with newcomers in places like the Little Bighorn, Big Hole, and the Bear's Paw mountains. Eastern natives, on the other hand, bilked the pale-skinned newcomers of 24 dollars worth of valuable trinkets in trade for Manhattan Island--at least twice what the place was worth then and now, even after 350 years of inflation and development.

We have a leg up on art, too, as any quick comparison between Charlie Russell and anybody else will show.

Ours is not called the Treasure State for nothing--even though a few other places like Mesabi iron, Comstock silver, or Homestake gold make idle and fraudulent claims on our namesake motto. Clearly we "ayes" have it by simply pointing with pride to the "richest hill on earth" (now the deepest lake in town).

In Montana, citizens hung their sheriff, and not the other way around. Meanwhile, corporations distributed suitcases filled with largesse to their favorite legislators, then bought office for their very own United States Senators . . . until the Company-In-Chief went belly-up in their own cascading hog swill.

We've got grizzly bears snoozing in suburbs, mountain lions adjacent to schoolyards, and wild wolves innoculated against canine diseases by government-paid biologists--a policy that is bewildering to the unenlightened 99.9 percent of Treasure State citizens.

We have horse sales where dumb rich folks bid real money on poinies who buck. We snag prehistoric fish that sport built-in paddles, still shoot buffalo, and hunt sandhill cranes.

You want culture? Culture we got to burn, culture to sell, and maybe even a little to use.

We're enlightened, emboldened, intriguing, and content. What more does one want?

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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