CULTURE
WHERE -
TALES ARE TOLD OF
Next week: All hell will pop!
famous Western artist Charles Manion Russell must have been having a bad day when, in a talk given to the Great Falls Booster Club in 1923, he said:
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Tip o' the Day
Think opportunity -- that's my Tip O' the Day.
Jane and I have become accomplished opportunists during our latter years. That talent manifested itself after years of being somewhat circumscribed by the circles our horses could make over wilderness trails. Then, after a little over two decades guiding others to adventure, we retired with the professed desire to guide ourselves to the same end.
Unfortunately a life filled in the pursuit of fun had yielded little in the form of filthy lucre, so we were compelled to venture out into the great beyond with a van loaded with our books to sell. Jane, as a peddler, is good at her trade. She allows me to be her chauffeur during these latest of our circles. It was opportunism that permitted us to blink at a Nebraska map, note that we had a weekend free, and see Rock Creek State Park was but a few miles away.
As it turned out, Rock Creek State Park is situated on 300 acres of tallgrass prairie, with several miles of hiking trails winding through it. A Pony Express way station, complete with the old log barn and replica corrals was there. And, as if that weren't enough, the Oregon Trail crossed Rock Creek right there on Park grounds.
There was a nice campground at the Rock Creek Park, with each site isolated from others amid rolling hills and juniper trees. Showers and restrooms were there, as well as macadam parking pads, electricity, and water at each site.
Parking pads? Electricity? Piped in water? Showers? Rest rooms? Is this the same folks who wrote the book Dance On the Wild Side, about their life of adventure in one of America's greatest wilderness?
I'm not sure if Ethan Lester, the 13-year-old Camarillo, California lad who likes my Westerns, has read any of my outdoor books. But Ethan isn't the only young person reading these days. Alexa Mrgich, a sixth-grader in Kalispell, Montana, wrote to say she's reading my book about elk [The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou}.
Alexa says, "I am probably the only girl you know that loves loves loves hunting." She says, "I go almost everday of hunting season, except for the week days." Alexa said her favorite story in my book is "where the 12-year-old boy and his grandfather go hunting".
If you find it bewildering that a young lass just entering her teens found The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou fine reading, consider that an officer on a U.S. Navy ship at sea liked it, too.
"I have just finished The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou. Wow! It was wonderful! I was transported from my stateroom aboard a destroyer to the wilderness I roamed as a teenager. Your tales were well told, enlightening, and dead on the money. The open ocean on a calm, clear night is beautiful, but I'll never hear the hoarse bellow of a rutting bull elk. Driving a warship into heavy seas and tailing green water on the bridge is exhulting, but not nearly as much as bucking into a northern blizzard and stumbling across grizzly tracks that haven't even begun to fill in [with snow]. Thank you for sharing with me. My dad has sent me the Thursday Great Falls Tribune no matter where I am in the world for the past 13 years. I have always enjoyed your columns, but this book was special.
Joel Stewart / USS Fife Dd 991
DEFINING THE ENEMY
The population of America has doubled in Jane's and my lifetime. My wife and I often commiserate about this regrettable fact while driving down Interstates and through cities. The hordes of people become even more distressing during the holidays when I'm forced to town to select a Christmas present for a woman who, from the day I met her, deserves more.
My big problem is I'm emotionally and physically ill-equipped to do head-to-head combat with the proletariat masses who've been sale-starved for the previous 365 days. Naturally traffic leading to all department stores are bumper-to-bumper. And traffic lights merely blink green while staring ugly red for three clicks on the hour hand.
Jane, though not as powerfully designed as her husband, is imminently more suited for going for the throat when diving into a crowd of screaming women at a sale table. Such carnage I cannot even bear to contemplate.
Not only are roadways clogged, but trails we once enjoyed hiking in solitude now thump with the tromp of countless Vibram soles. Hitler's storm troopers made less racket goosestepping along Dutch cobblestones, even while wearing hobnailed jackboots. The damned newcomers even invade eerily quiet ski trails we once glided along with no thought that other folks might be making babies faster than our psyches can adjust.
They built a couple of houses across the highway from us this past summer, and another in the field behind. Such cheek! The next thing you know they'll want to send their kids to the same school "my" taxes help to heat. And they'll want the fire department to use "my" fire engines if they have a garage blaze, too. No doubt they'll vote in "my" precinct come next election. (Probably some of 'em will even vote the wrong way.
Not only that, but their dogs will die on "my" highway, and their cats will be after "my" songbirds. Smoke from their chimneys and exhaust from their autos will pollute "my" atmosphere. It'll no doubt be their garbage that overflows "my" landfill.
All the newcomers will mean more people seeking more jobs that attract more factories and businesses to emply more people that will attract more. . . .
"We're making too many babies," I cried to Jane when carpenters began framing yet another home across the way. "Doesn't anyone else realize what we are doing to the land? Can't they see America cannot sustain unbridled growth? From whence will the natural resources come in another century?"
"The land will be stripped," she said, shedding a tear.
"How will this country feed so many people?" I added.
"The water--it's becoming polluted now."
"Animals are endangered. Fish stocks are depleted, even in the ocean."
"It's our fault," she said. "Ours and generations just past."
"Our fathers and mothers had one too many babies," I cried.
That stopped us. Her eyes met mine. "Aren't you the youngest in your family?" she asked.
"So are you," I replied.
Then I added, "Pogo had it right when he said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
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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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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There's a bunch of specific info about Roland's books, columns, and archives. 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."
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In my book a pioneer was a man who turned all the grass upside down, strung bob-wire over the dust that was left, poisoned the water and cut down the trees, killed the Indian who owned the land, and called it progress. If I had my way, the land here would be like God made it, and none of you sons of bitches would be here at all.
In all my experience in the wilderness wild, I find two of God's creatures especially fascinating: the ones you've read about above: elk and grizzly bears. Perhaps grizzlies are twice as fascinating because I've written two books about them, and only one for elk.
Learning To Talk Bear is Roland's best selling book, in its 5th printing. The book depicts his own learning curve to understanding the great beasts
An entire book devoted to a single charismatic grizzly bear
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NEXT WEEK:
BIG CHANGE!!!
www.campfireculture.com
Sure is. And these days Jane is loving every minute of it. These days, when we wake up and rain is pounding down on the roof of our little motor home, we eye each other, burrow a little deeper into our pillows, and murmur, "I don't have anything pressing to do today, do you?"
Opportunisim took us to visit Palo Duro Canyon, famed in Texas Panhandle history. There we hiked their several miles of trails, hunkered down and watch Rio Grande turkeys while the gobblers gobbled, then flew from their nightime perches in live oak trees. We saw honest-to-God Texas longhorns, horned toads, road runners, and rattlesnakes.
Opportunity. Seize it!
