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
There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of cvilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences; this is compromise. He who stands unyielding upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on. * Louis L'Amour in Bendigo Shafter / (Pretty sharp, those Western writers.)
To access Roland's weblog and column archives
Tip o' the Day
Domestication of the horse and creating computer technology represents different dimension in human defelopment. Yet their operations share remarkable parallels.
Horses, as most of us know, are clumsy brutes with high performance capabilities and low actuarial proclivities. Computers, on the other hand, have enormous capabilities and a frustrating insistence on operating outside the realm of human comprehension.
Riding your pony to meet a friend? Don't count on the ride to be a pleasant one. If you're headed away from the barn, your steed will travel at a crawl. If you cluck him into a trot, he'll rattle your teeth; kick him into a gallop and he'll crow-hop or try to swerve back to the barn. Will you arrive on time for your assignation? No.
On to the computer front: I had a newspaper deadline to meet. At first, my screen went dead. Then it jumped to another file. When at last I cornered the confounded thing and hit my print button, it must have been set for a thousand copies.
The advice from this corner is don't try to meet deadlines when depending on either nag or novice.
Yet turn that horse and head for home and you'll be sitting back before your computer screen in short order. If you hold him to a walk, your pony will convince you he was bred for overseeing Tennessee cotton fields. Let him trot and you'll believe he's on the European show circuit. Or let him swing into a canter and you'll have to bend low to keep from being blown from the saddle.
Your computer has remarkably similar capacities. Tap into it in the middle of an insomniac night and you'll be able to enter programs you never dreamed existed--draw diagrams, do spread sheets, create stunning prose in exotic text. Try a repeat performance the day after tomorrow, however, and watch the infernal machine sulk while you blow a gasket.
Horses dominate a farm. Computers dominate a home.
Need more similarities? How about their most qualified handlers?
Techno geeks / computer nerds live in their own insular world, just like the teenage girl down the road who sees more class in horses than in her high school's football star.
In the final analysis, the greatest similarity between the horse and the computer lies not so much in their performance, but in their operators. Horses, you see, are really quite intelligent. So are computers. It's their users who are dumb.
Echoes of Vengeance -- A military outpost situated in an isolated region of the Department of the Upper Missouri. An embittered Commandant who believes unkind fate kept him from fame and glory during the recent War of Seccession. A band of starving Blackfeet too riddled with smallpox to withdraw to their reservation. A young mixed-blood army interpreter whose aging parents are with the Blackfeet tries to prevent a massacre-in-the-making; he's beaten and dragged to the guardhouse for the attempt.
Thus the stage is set and principal characters in place for the opening pages of Echoes of Vengeance * Mule Milk News / Official Newsletter of the Montana Outfitters and Guides Association
AGE AND EXPERIENCE VS YOUNG INNOCENCE
"We just can't get across to them that a week's trip into the wilderness isn't like strolling down the street, or across town."
I clucked sympathetically to my friend--I'd heard similar stories many times and was--well--only mildly interested.
"We tried to tell them, but I don't think they were listening. They're pumped up and want to see the wilderness. 'It can't be too hard, can it?' they said. 'You do it all the time.' So I asked them if they'd ever backpacked before and they said no."
"What did you tell them?" I asked.
"I said maybe they should go overnight into Jewel Basin before they try to do a week's backpack to the Chinese Wall in the Bob Marshall." She spread her hands helplessly. "Doug and I backpack all the time--you know that. And we barely made it to the Chinese Wall last year."
When I said nothing, my friend continued, "You know what they said? 'Maybe we should take horses'."
"Do they have horses?"
"That's what I asked and they said the guy's father has some on his ranch, over east. So I asked if those horses have ever packed in the mountains? And they said, 'No, but it can't be all that hard'."
"I laughed and asked, "Do they have any packsaddles?"
My friend shook her head. "But they said they could probably borrow some."
I stared off into the distance, remembering . . . .
Nowadays I've got everything I need for a week's packtrip into the mountains: saddles, stock trailer to haul the ponies to the trailhead, and a pickup truck to pull the trailer, saddles, horses. There are packboxes in our barn, manty canvas, ropes, tents, kitchenware, and medical kits for horses and humans. Mine were experienced ponies who'd covered thousands of mountain trail miles. I'm skilled at packing and know most of the best campsites in the country and how many miles it is between them.
And these friends of my friends know nothing of any of it. Yet they presume they can put a rag-tag outfit together on a whim and do everything I can do with my veteran string, sufficient equipment, and insider knowledge.
However, I must remember that I once was where they are now. I borrowed spavined ponies and rag-tag equipment and set out on untold journeys into the unknown. God knows how I survived, but I did.
And you know what? Veteran backcountry horsepackers of that day must've snickered at the absurdity of the ding-dong greenhorn who presumed he could make it on main strength and awkwardness to the Chinese Wall--and beyond.
Yet I did make it--not entirely without bumps and scars, mind you. But I made it.
So where do I (or we) get off laughing slapsticks at those who are now at the place I was then. Certainly I shouldn't.
Here's a fitting pearl ready-made for this discussion:
"The old provide experience and wisdom, but youth bring reviving innocence."
May both always exist in their proper proportion.
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, February 17, 2009
There's a bunch of specific info about Roland's books, columns, archives and radio programs. 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 history, economic, and government classes, as well as for journalism students.
Roland, of course, visits schools. For more information on his program alternatives, go to:
NEXT WEEK:
SEASONS OF THE MIND
www.campfireculture.com
Roundup Magazine says of The Silver Yoke, the final book in the acclaimed Valediction For Revenge series: This novel has lots of action, a terrific villain you love to hate, the smell of dust and dynamite, and a man sworn to bleed his enemies, not of blood but of money, the only they love.
This is another page turner from Cheek with characters that possess all three dimensions and are tough to kill. Any readers who likes action, adventure, and a plot with more twists than a sidewinder will love Gunnar's Mine * Roundup Magazine
Lincoln County, New Mexico, where poor farmers and ranchers are at the mercy of crooked merchants, the military, and a corrupt territorial government ran by something called the "Sante Fe Ring," But who are the "good" guys? Billy the Kid? John Chisum?
Book three in the Valediction For Revenge series, the completion of Jethro Spring's adventures in New Mexico
Crisis On the Stinkingwater is Cheek's darkest book. It is also the most realistic. The portrayal of the depth of hatred engendered by the bitter conflict between rancher and homesteader chills the reader * Roundup Magazine
Two books -- one about the people, the second about their place of adventures
For detailed information about Roland's books
source links for additional info
to visit Roland's newspaper columns and weblog archives
to send this weblog to a friend
to tell Roland what you think of his Campfire Culture weblog
