insight pared

KNOWLEDGE SHARED

outdoor bold

To access Roland's weblog and column archives

 

 

Tip o' the Day

Some time back, in this "Tips" column, we discussed some of the physical considerations for one to successfully visit the Bob Marshall Wilderness. We did, however, run out of time before we could get to a planners own personal constraints.

Physical considerations included dangerous water crossings, rules for using perilous trails, usual opening dates for the high passes, best viewing times for wildlife and wildflowers, prime fishing time, getting away from other people, finding awe-inspiring scenic grandeur, etc.

Now let's talk about one's own personal constraints:

First and foremost is vacation time. I'm talking about your own vacation, but you might well have to consider your accompanying friends' vacation periods, too.

Or perhaps it's when your children's grandparents might be available to babysit. Or when the company merger is scheduled to go through. Or when the wife graduates from advanced nursing training.

You get the drift, right? Many (or most) people are locked into opportunity parameters over which they have little control. They must visit the Bob Marshall Wilderness during certain periods . . . period! When one is constrained by time, certain personal needs and desires must usually take a subordinate planning position.

An example might be that an early June vacation simply does not allow travel through most of the high passes, nor is it the best time for fishing the main rivers.

Unfortunately, many people cannot--or will not--recognize the realities of their vacation time constraints. As a consequence, their planning suffers, and so does their adventure.

Then there are the dreamers--may God bless them because Roland won't. They're the ones who try to fit a place as grand as the Bob Marshall into their own tiny little square-block mode; like the magnolia-dripping New Orleans belle who told me, "I want to see everything there is to see in the Bob Marshall Wilderness." Then she told me she could spare three days from her hectic schedule!

Roland's Popular Valediction For Revenge Western Adventure Series

EVERY HUNTER'S DREAM

 

It was every hunter's dream--n bunch of huge bull elk grazing across a south-facing slope, foraging on the succulent shoots of serviceberry, willow, and mountain maple, plowing through deep November snow.

I'd set up the spotting scope at first blush of eastern pink and focused on the elk's breadbasket hillside. Yellow rumps popped immediately into view, barely different tinges of color 'midst the before-dawn gloom. The creatures were there! In a minute--or perhaps two or ten (who cares?)--antlers seemed to glow amid the advancing light. I stared through the eyepiece at the magnificent animals while a previously slumbering heart jackhammered ribs. One, two, three . . . eight . . . eight . . . no, nine! Then I jerked the spotting scope from the Jeep's hood, folded it, and leaped inside the machine.

The catch was getting up to the elk before they finished breakfast and ambled to their bedding grounds amid a north-facing slope of tangled fir and spruce forest.

I'd been there before, even took elk from the mountain. It was forbidding ground, that mountain, steep and unforgiving, yielding its secrets grudgingly--and then only to someone fit enough to challenge it to direct confrontation. Or, as in this case, its secrets could sometimes be had by someone glassing from a single isolated, hard-to-get-to viewpoint, three miles distant from where the elk sometimes fed. Then after assurance the elk were there, one must climb. Today, that climb must be accomplished--in part, at least--through deep snow.

I drove with reckless abandon, until parking the Jeep along an overgrown road, little more than a path, at the mountain's bottom, then shrugged into a daypack, snatched up my rifle, and charged to the assault. Marines crashing through the surf at Iwo Jima, could've been no more energetic.

There wasn't all that much snow down at road level, perhaps ankle-deep crust. The slope steepened, though, and soon I wallowed through soft fluff to the knees. My clothes were quickly soaked with sweat from the inside and rising steam from body heat melted clinging snow until I became wet through and through.

I toiled on, however, with no thought of the wet or cold or how steep was the mountain, ever wallowing upward, flinging myself like the towering summit was Suribachi itself and I carried our nation's flag. Naturally my motives were hardly less pure and instincts hardly less noble--after all I was lured by thought of massive bull elk checking their timepieces, restive for their daybeds. And I must reach them first!

I was young then, in the full blush of invincible manhood. Mountains were nothing! Cold was nothing! Exhaustion was nothing! Six-point bull elk were everything!

It was in thigh-deep snow when I finally caught the elk. They were just leaving the brush field where they'd fed, heading into the timber. Most had already disappeared, but two monsters paused long enough to argue over their pecking order.

Until that moment I thought I'd lost the duel with my mountain. Until that moment I thought I was at the end of my endurance, thought that I'd been tested and found wanting, second-guessing both my manhood and its invincibility. Until that moment I wondered if, after all, the mountain had won?

Then the two bulls!

I raised my rifle. I aimed. I fired!

I missed!

I can still hear the mountain laughing.

 

 

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

Click Here

for detailed info about each of Roland's books

Read Reviews

Read their first chapters