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
When I say I believe in a Square Deal I do not mean, and nobody who speaks the truth can mean, that he believes it possible to give every man the best hand. If the cards do not come to any man, or if they do come and he had not got the power [skill] to play them, that is his affair. All I mean is that there shall not be any crookedness in the dealing.
[Where's Teddy now when we really need him?]
To access Roland's weblog and column archives
Tip o' the Day
The retired forest ranger told of his experiences taking a group of boys out to work as volunteers on trail projects. "There's nothing wrong with today's kids," the man said. "They're just as good as kids ever were. Our problem is we've emplaced a system that won't let them work."
He's right. It's easy to recall how naysayers of my youth claimed kids of that day weren't worth the powder to blow 'em to hell. Isn't it ironic those same kids who were so reviled in my youth are (now that they are grandparents) so critical of kids today?
Like the retired ranger, I believe in today's kids. I believe most of them want to work; want to do a good job; want to be respected (and praised) for their performance. Their problem--what my contemporaries believe mirrors laziness and an unwillingness to work--is the same problem of youth of any age: they have trouble seeing work that needs to be done.
I hired young guides back in the days when I led guests to adventure in some of the ruggedest lands in all the northern Rockies. Without exception, those guides came to my outfit with a willingness to work and a driving desire to please. What they lacked was experience. How could they they possibly understand the importance of adjusting an off-kilter pack before it rubbed a sore on the horse's back without first soring a horse? How could they know to mantie everything possible the night before pulling out for hunting camp without experiencing the time gain on the following morning?
They couldn't unless they were told. Then they still had to be shown how to accomplish it. But Lord did they know how to work! They worked from daylight to dark, day in and day out. They worked for little money and few material rewards. They worked for the sheer joy of "being" part of adventure, "because" of a zest for the outdoors, and "for" a love of wildlife.
The second half of the old ranger's critique constitutes a definite problem: that we've emplaced a system keeping kids from doing the kinds of quality work they'd like to achieve. Three "ell" words preventing them are laws, liability, and litigation.
I once read a truth I believe to be especially appropriate for this thesis. I don't know its source and my delivery may lack polish, but here it is: "Generation after generation, the very young do the impossible because no one bothered to tell them it is impossible."
That's my final word on the youth of today, except for this: There are three requirements for top performance for all people: 1) work at something you want to do. 2) be praised occasionally for a job well done; 3) receive a living wage.
If you are an employer and wish to receive top performance from your workers, pays special attention to 2) and 3).
GRAPPLING WITH ICE FISHING
My friend is an accomplished outdoorsman, but he has one glaring weakness: he's never long on outdoors secrets. Find a honey hole where big fish lurk and by the time he spreads word around town, you couldn't find a place to park your boat trailer within a mile and half of the launch slip. That's why I yawned when the guy told me how perch fishermen are nailing limits of big rainbows in the lake that takes up the prime view from his living room window.
The second reason I yawned is because he told me this while crosscountry skiing. It's January, see, and six-inches of snow lies on his lake, with eight-inches of ice beneath that. The temperature hovers in the mid-teens.
The third reason I yawned is because I tried ice fishing and the sport leaves me cold. Literally.
"Why don't you come down and try it?" my friend asked.
Since my friend has a notorious aversion to passive pursuits when there's not enough red stuff in the thermometer for delightful ambiance, I said, "Why don't you step out your living room door and try it yourself?"
He only grinned and glided away.
"I suppose they're jigging?" I asked upon overtaking him.
"Yes."
"And the trout are big?"
"About fifteen inches."
We glided on, each lost in thought. When next we paused, I said, "There's bass in your lake, too. Right?"
"I've seen some come out of there that went three pounds."
I squinted at him and saw he still held out a shadow of a smile. So I shook my head and muttered, "Nope. The two times I tried ice fishing I got wet feet, froze out, stiffened up, and bored to tears. Now if I had an ice house . . ." Then the thought struck: "Or if I rigged a pole up on your lake and tended it from one of your living room recliner chairs . . ."
My friend's rambling home is a good fifty feet above the lake and at least a hundred yards distant. But he laughed and said, "Come ahead."
As we skied away, I said, "I'm accustomed to a thermos of hot chocolate while ice fishing."
"We have hot cholcolate."
"And schnapps."
My friend (a tee-totaler) said, "That, you'll have to furnish."
I was on a roll. "In the movie Grumpy Old Men, Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau had television sets in their ice house."
"There's a TV in our living room."
"And how about Ann Margaret? She shared their ice houses, too.
We sobered at that thought, skiing on for half a mile in silence. Finally, at yet another pause, I said, "You know, I'll bet the kind of ice fishing we're talking about really could grow on a guy."
"I may even have to take it up," he muttered, "with or without you."
I tsk, tsked him. "Wouldn't it be a pain if the strike bells on our rods started tinkling just after Ann Margaret came knocking?"
He nodded. "We could cut cards to see who has to respond to the bells." He started to ski on, then paused and said over his shoulder: "No, you'll have to tend rods and clean fish. It is my ice house, you know."
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, January 13, 2009
for more info about these and other Roland Cheek books
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 classes, as well as for journalism students.
Roland, of course, visits schools. For more information on his program alternatives, go to:
NEXT WEEK:
BACKPACK VS HORSEPACK -- A CONUNDRUM
www.campfireculture.com
Too honest to deny its roots in hunting, but too human to be contained by its limits, The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou is a book for those who care about wildlife of all kinds.
Check out Roland's office: sun roof, daylight basement, and no parking problems. Short takes, sage wit, large humor, all gleaned from outdoors lifetime
Good grizzly mother? Or a savage killer. Your choice. An entire book about the life of a single charismatic grizzly bear
9 X 12 coffee table book about the best loved chunk of wild country in America: the place? Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness . . . When? Then and now -- and always will be -- the way God made it.
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
- Theodore Roosevelt
To learn more of Roland's & Jane's exciting life as outfitters and guides in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, read Dance On the Wild Side
Learning To Talk Bear is Roland Cheek's best selling book -- now in it's 5th printing.
Safety in bear country? Of course! But this book also teaches the reader about the animals themselves.
