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Tip o' the Day

Legion are the numbera of folks who envy Jane and me for the location in which we chose to dwell for the rest of our lives.

"The splendid mountains, rushing streams, lakes, lush farmland! Boy, are you guys lucky!" Then they marvel at the relative few people compared to, say, Southern California, or Chicago, or the Boston-to-Richmond megalopolis.

I wonder. . . .

I wonder if they've taken time to discover what's in their own backyards? Once upon a time, Jane and I traveled through Nebraska and chance to spend the weekend at Rock Creek State Park. The 300+ acre Park sprawls only a few miles from the Kansas border, say, 75 miles west of Missouri. The Oregon Trail passed through the Park, and one can still discern wheel tracks and where pioneers dug away cutbanks to let their wagons down to the Rock Creek crossing.

Rock Creek was also a way station for the Pony Express, complete with an old log barn, log cabins, pole corrals, and hitchracks.

There are complete wagons -- a Conestoga and three prairie schooners -- parked in the meadow by the barn. All one needs to resurrect them would be a span of mules, their harness, and a wagon sheet. Kids can, and do, play on the wagons.

Rock Creek State Park's 300+ acres also contains the only real Tall Grass Prairie Jane and I ever had a chance to stroll through. That Tall Grass Prairie is a mere remnant of the prairie that once blanketed much of the American Midwest.

I envy those Nebraskans for their Tall Grass Prairie, their Oregon Trail wheelruts, and their Pony Express Station. I envy them the wonderful Visitor Center they've placed on a nearby hill. I envy the Old West memorabilia within that Visitor Center: the real Pony Express saddles and mailbags, the bits and harness used on the Westerning wagon trains.

Someday I'd like to spend time in the Sand Hills of northwestern Nebraska -- the "Old Jules Country" made famous by Marie Sandoz in her many fine books. Though Jane and I had little time as we whisked through, the pine-covered hills -- actually the Nebraska National Forest -- looked intriguing. Full of history, too.

Perhaps the point of this tip-sheet that no one needs envy another's geography. The truth is there's ample things to see and do everywhere! All it takes is a little imagination and the willingness to look.

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No, Roland Cheek hasn't been in a gunfight at the O.K. Corral or punched dogies down the streets of Abilene. But he has straddled rawboned ponies over 35 thousand miles of the toughest trails in all the Northern Rockies and spent five decades wandering the wild country throughout the West. Now, after crafting six prior nonfiction books, hundreds of magazine articles, and thousands of newspaper columns and radio scripts about his adventures, the guy has at last turned his talent to Western novels, tales from the heart, dripping with realism, and based in part on a plethora of his own experiences.

MOUNTAIN EDUCATION

 

They're known as "hills" to folks around Montana; just another of the Treasure State's many island ranges thrusting from the prairie. Indeed, maps list them as the Sweetgrass Hills. Locals refer to 'em as buttes, however: East Butte, West Butte, Gold Butte, etc. But after crawling around in those undersold pimples, Jane and I are wont to refer to the entire series of upthrusts as genuine mountains.

With a little time between booksignings in Shelby and Great Falls--an entire afternoon and the following morning--we decided to visit where a Cheek boot had not previously trod. Friends told us of a campground a short distance south of Whitlash (a small community just short of the Canadian Line). It's a beautifully kept campground, maintained by the Liberty County 4-H Club, visitors welcome!

A visit to one of the scattered foothill ranches to ask if we could hike, then a quick trot out to do battle with these puny little "hills." Four hours later Jane and I limped back to the ranchyard to thank our gracious hosts and maybe raise a little hob because they didn't tell us a prudent visitor would've trailered ponies to aid in ascending the little mound known as East Butte.

The view was worth it, though. One could stand on tiptoes and inhale cross-border air, so near Canada were we. Chief Mountain and Glacier and Waterton Parks spread across the western distance; the Bearpaws to southeast.

The "Hills" are remnants of attempts by molten lava from the earth's bowels to break through the earth's crust as volcanos. Obviously there was, at one time, several hot spots in what is now a cold country.

It's also a dry country. Arlo Skare, who ranches southeast of East Butte, once said, "You recollect the biblical account of Noah and the 40 days and 40 nights of rain?" (Yes, Arlo, go on) "Well, it only rained 25/100ths of an inch at Whitlash."

From Great Falls, Jane and I headed for yet another booksigning in Lewistown. With more time to kill and more questions asked, we drove up Maiden Canyon to an old N.O.R.A.D. site that was once a key missile defense installation during the Cold War.

What a view!

The Judith Mountains is yet another Montana island range, and nowhere is this more apparent than atop that old radar site. Turn 360-degrees and there are lesser mountains in the foreground and the prairie beyond. Farther out are other island ranges: north to the Bearpaws, northeast lie the Little Rockies, south are the Snowy Mountains, southwest to the Little Belts, and west to the Highwoods.

Most of those ranges have been extensively surveyed for theminerals most commonly found in upthrusts formed by vulcanism. Lots of mining took (and is taking) place. But there are still vestiges of unroaded, undeveloped wildlands existing in both the Little Belts and the Snowies.

Perhaps the most important point to be made in this particular column isn't so much that Jane and I visited places we'd not been, but that we seized the opportunity to do so as time afforded.

But above all, the story is that we utilized time-tested social means to ask for directions and permission. It's a way that beats whining and sniveling while standing at a locked gate.

 

 

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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