However there is something about the wilderness that either puts a siren song in your soul or drives you bat shit crazy.  I think I’ve been a little of both over the years.

There have been times after a particularly hard season in the bush that I left and wanted nothing to do with it ever again.  I was going back to carpeted floors, central heating and running water and NEVER EVER going back!  I made plans that didn’t include camp cooking or horse wrangling.  I was going to get a CAREER!

Tombstone Lake, Alberta

Then March came along and I found myself aching at the very thought of camp smoke sifting through crisp mountain air, horse bells jangling in the quiet morning and bacon sizzling on the campfire.  And I forgot the previous season’s aches and constantly cold feet and drippy nose and camp smoke sitting heavy in my unwashed hair.

Yep March is a deadly month for me.  Every March I get itchy and restless.  Get me out of this place!  I’m tired of sitting!  I want to be surrounded by beauty!  I want to DO THINGS!

I forget about having to sleep on top of my jeans so that they will be warm when I get up in the morning as I scramble about of my cocoon and brace myself in the frigid, damp morning air.

I forget about trying to get fires going with damp soggy wood and stiff, cracked fingers.

I forget about hauling water from frozen creeks or lakes with five gallon pails.  Sometimes the haul is only a hop and skip from camp and others you needed a map and compass to get to.

I forget about the stench of outhouses, or balancing on rails, or nothing at all.  And that soggy roll of toilet paper.

I forget about having to sleep under bug nets, and how those no-see-ems that always find a way inside to eat flesh or drone and keep sleep at bay by buzzing around your head constantly.

I forget about working with the swarms of never ending mosquitoes and horrid black flies and vicious horseflies that attack and attack until you half eaten away and raw from scratching.  I forget about drowning myself in DEET poison and living in it for weeks until finally I get a “shower”.

I forget about not finding time or the place to have a shower or bath to get clean and living filthy, covered in dust and muck and sometimes blood (usually animal, sometimes my own) for weeks.

I forget about not having fresh veggies or fruit or really anything fresh, except the meat—and sometimes that’s too fresh.  And having to rotate food through coolers and running out of food and having food spoil and always coming up one ingredient short.

I forget about the cranky, finicky lanterns.  Those crazy old white gas ones that you have to prime just so or they flare up and catch things on fire, or don’t ever work when you need them too.  But the propane ones never give you enough light because they hang from awkward positions behind your back casting shadows on everything you do.

I forget about having to wash really dirty clothes by hand in freezing cold lake water and hanging them up to dry in icy winds.  And nine times out of ten it always rains when you are trying to dry the laundry.

And the billions of dishes, three sometimes five times a day, all after hauling the water and heating the water and having a guest come in and use all the hot water just before you were ready to use it for dishes, so they could have a sponge bath . . .

And I forget about staying up late to finish dishes by my lonesome and then preparing lunches, while everyone else snores in their sleeping bags.  Then rolling out of bed in the frigid cold first thing to stoke up the fires and make sure the coffee is hot and breakfast is going.

And I forget the generators that won’t start, without lots of muscle power and sweet talking and caressing in all the right spots.  I hate generators and they hate me.

And the wood stoves that take to long to get going and then burn too hot, or too cold and never at the right times.

I forget about the fierce winds that uproot stove pipes from the stoves and tear open tent flaps and shred tarps.  Winds that howl and shriek and blow for days and seem to possess voices that drive you slightly insane with their constant moaning, whistling and wailing.

I forget about the rains that come and never leave until everything is wet through and through and all you walk in is a quagmire of muck that sucks boots off feet and coats everything in sight.

I forget about having to LIVE in rubber boots and rain pants.  And always having hat head or more realistically, toque-head.

I forget about having to run horses into camp, but coming in late because they decided to take a night romp and ended up miles from camp up a mountain and then laid down so I couldn’t hear them.  Or crossed a stream.  Or doubled back.  Or took up with a caribou herd.  And the panic attacks I’d have every morning as I set out to find them and bring them back to camp.

I forget about the cranky guides and demanding hunters or needy guests and stressed-out outfitters.

And I forget about the endless hours of sitting in camp with nothing to do or too much to do, and the whole hurry-up-and-wait routine, always the waiting .  .  . and the hurrying . . . and always at someone else’s bidding.

Burn’s Lake, Alberta

All this becomes romanticized somehow in March.  I fail to remember how nasty and hard it was and all I recall is glorious mountains in pristine wilderness and beautiful horses, and the great people I worked with and for, and especially the feeling of conquering each day—of being part of something bigger than me and being full drive and purpose.  Of being ALIVE!

And then I make that phone call. Yep I’m going back.  I’m going to do it all over again.   I just can’t stay away.  Something out there beckons me.  (Or maybe the mosquitoes really did more damage than I gave them credit for!)

Only now I can’t, or I don’t, pick up that phone.  I’m a mom, with a different life.  One I chose and I’m happy with.  So now I just get March fever, and I get all nostalgic for the good ole days!

Until a spring snowstorm pounds on my house and I click a button that cranks up the furnace one notch and I sip tea from a kettle and curl up in a recliner all comfy cozy, and I don’t have to go anywhere because I’m my own BOSS now, and I can go enjoy the wilderness on those rare comfy sunny pleasant days . . .

Ah hell, who am I foolin’?  I never feel more ALIVE THAN WHEN I’M STANDING ON THE EDGE OF MISERY.

It was down to the last possible day of the hunt before we had to pack up and ride our hunters out to the road to catch transportation into town.  After four days of being socked in and stuck in camp, our hope was waning thin for an animal to be put down.  The kid’s caribou was a highlight that gave us hope, yet we were still despairing of finding a goat or sheep for the kid’s dad.

Guide Joel made a decision to head out despite the dense fog still covering the mountains.  We weren’t going to find any animals while sitting in camp.  So I ran the horses in that morning and we saddled up.  I remember I was riding a green colt named William, that had been used mainly for packing up until this point.  He was nearly black, tall and very quiet.  The opposite of most colts who don’t have many miles on him.  When he was nervous or uncertain, he froze up and didn’t budge and it took a lot of convincing to get him to move after the other horses.  By convincing I mean, banging his sides with my rubber-booted feet, which wasn’t very effective on this non-ticklish colt.

We rode out. Guide Joel in the lead with hunter W. and myself bringing up the lead.  We were close to the border of the NWT.  On the other side was Nahanni National Park and we were only a few miles from the Rabbit Kettle Hot springs, which made me dream of quitting this hunting-animals-thing and go off on a mission for some hot water.  (I hadn’t had a shower in over two weeks by this point and was desperately cold all the time).

The land we traversed was scenic despite the weather.  Wild.  Beautiful.  Untamed wilderness.  We wandered up the valley in a drizzling rain and came to a narrow gorge, where we tied up the horses and then climbed up a steep bank into another high valley covered in a thousand hues of green.

We toured along, Joel keeping a sharp eye out for a goat that had decided to drop beneath the heavy veil of fog that was shrouding the mountains around us.  Eventually we ended up on a pile of rocks that overlooked the valley.  It was sheltered and gave us a good view, which Joel took advantage of by scouting with his binoculars.  The rain left off and the fog lifted some.

I snapped this picture just before Joel spotted the goat. The grizzly I saw later passed through pretty much where I had been standing to take this picture.

Can’t say I was the best help in scouting for a goat.  I was just hunkered down in my jacket trying to stay warm, which is a difficult thing for me to do when I’m sitting still. I was probably dreaming of that hot spring while I snacked on a chocolate bar, as I casually perused the valley before me.

Suddenly, Joel spotted a billy goat across the valley on a mountainside, just under the fog.  He got busy plotting with W. on how to pull a stalk on the goat.

I was not even really paying attention, just ready to do whatever they wanted me to do, but then my eyes caught something moving below us in the valley.

“Hey look!  A bear!”  I pointed out. A midnight-black bear was galloping along beneath us.  He looked pretty small—but then bears in the wild always do to me—however Joel corrected my thinking.   It was a massive grizzly that he figured would measure close to nine feet nose to tail.

W. had a grizzly tag and Joel had to make a quick decision.  Go after the grizzly and risk alerting the goat to our presence—which meant losing the goat possibly for good.  Or leave the grizz alone and proceed on the goat stalk as previously planned?  Though there was a good chance the goat would spot the grizzly and take off anyway leaving us with neither.

W. was vibrating in excitement, not really sure what to do.  Joel lost sight of the goat and the grizzly was only a hundred yards away moving at a steady lope away from us.  The decision was made to go after the bear.  Joel grabbed his video camera and W. grabbed the gun, and we ran at an angle to the bear hoping to get within shooting distance.

Let me back up here. W. had originally come on this hunt as a bow hunter.  It was his strong intention to get his trophies with a bow, but with the weather and the lack of animals within close range he had decided on this last day of hunting to take Joel’s gun, a Browning .300 Win. Mag. (If I remember correctly) with lever action and open sights.   It was the only gun we had between the three of us.

We lost sight of the bear as he loped over a rise.  However Joel had guessed correctly and the bear reappeared in front of us still moving at an angle.  Joel called out and got his attention.  The bear stopped and then started towards us.

Joel ordered W. to get the gun up.  We didn’t foresee what would happen next.

W. unraveled in pure terror and panic, shoving the gun at Joel and yelling “Shoot him!  Shoot him!”  as he wheeled around and grabbed me by my backpack.  He held me in front of him like a shield, with a death-grip on my shoulder straps, as both me and Joel stuttered in disbelief.  All the while, the bear was still heading toward us.  “Put another bullet in!!!  Shoot him!  Shoot him”

Gotta hand it to Joel, who in milliseconds, managed to negotiate with his hunter, and then process that his hunter wasn’t going to shoot the grizzly, and then figure out what to do instead—all while watching a BIG bear coming at us.

Obviously W. was deathly afraid and in no shape to shoot the bear, and Joel couldn’t without serious repercussions to his guide license and the outfit.  He was in a difficult predicament.  Hopefully he would be able to scare off the bear without having to shoot it.  He threw up his hands and yelled at the bear.

The big grizzly stopped and stood up looking at us and then with W. shrieking something about chasing him off.  Joel yelled again, and the bear after one more curious sniff in our direction took off, barreling back over the hill away from us at full speed.  In the time it took to inhale and exhale he was gone!

Only then was I released from my “shield” position.  We all took a big breath—actually I’m not sure W.  ever took a breath for all the babbling that was still coming out of his mouth.  Joel and I were still a little shocked and disappointed over what had just transpired.  I can’t say I even felt afraid—mostly excited and a little thrilled at seeing a grizzly in the wild.

Joel turned around with his binoculars, hoping the goat he’d spotted prior the bear kerfuffle hadn’t been scared up the mountain, and miraculously spotted him still on the mountain beneath the fog and still accessible.  With barely a chance to recover from the adrenaline rush of the moment before we were off, running down the valley towards a rocky gorge that a narrow creek tumbled down. We climbed up beside the creek, as stealthily (as three people with full packs can be) and as quickly as possibly—working at staying out of the goats line of vision.

Joel got W. into the place and position he wanted him in, and we waited for the goat to present himself.  All I saw was two horns and two ears poking up over a rock, two hundred yards above us.  Joel and W. in a slightly different position could see more of him, but not enough for him to risk taking a shot.

So we waited.  Huffing and puffing from the exertion of our run.  I could see the gun wavering as W. fought to keep it still.  Joel cautioned him to wait until the goat turned sideways.  I think at one point W. was going to ask Joel to shoot the goat, but Joel kept him calm and focused, doing a masterful job of coaching his agitated hunter.  Ever hear of Buck Fever?  Well I think W. had Goat Fever.

The goat was very aware of us and, whether curious or scared, he popped out from behind a boulder and moved up the wall broadside to us.

Boom!

We had a goat down!  And did he ever roll!  I thought he’d never stop.

It was the first kill I’ve ever witnessed.  It was at once sad and exhilarating at the same time.

I didn’t have much time to process all that was happening as I was immediately sent back down to the creek below us to fill all our water bottles to help clean up the goat for pictures.

W.’s  Billy Goat after we cleaned him up some.

Joel skinned out the goat and eventually I helped as much as I could.  It was the only way to keep my hands warm as it started raining and then sleeting again.  I did have time to marvel at the goats hooves, with the soft squishy interiors—like suction cups, and the really sprung ribs—like a barrel.  (Could explain why goats roll so well down hills).

Joel filled my pack with as much meat as I could stand to carry, and then carried the rest of the meat and the cape and horns in his.  We set off on an hour and a half “jaunt” back to our horses.  At this point in my life, it was the heaviest weight I had ever carried on my back for the longest period of time.  Joel guesstimated around 45-50 lbs.  Not much for most guys, but a lot for my poor knees, hips and back to take after hours of navigating slippery, rocky terrain in gumboots.  It rained and sleeted the whole time.

I was pretty much bushed by the time I got back to the horses and then discovered that riding with a 50 pound backpack of meat could really keep my seat in the saddle—even if poor William had turned out to be a bucker!   On the hour a bit ride back to camp I eventually discovered the art of loosening my shoulder straps and letting the weight of the backpack rest on the back of my saddle and my rolled up slicker, instead of carrying the whole of the burden myself like I had been for all the weeks prior of packing and riding.  We arrived in camp elated with the success of our hunt and full of stories.

It was a day full of new experiences and lessons.

Lesson 1: You have more chance of accomplishing what you’ve set out for, if you get off your butt and get out of camp.

Lesson 2: People do really strange things when they are afraid, and faced directly with what they fear.

Lesson 3: A person stays warmer if they keep busy.

Lesson 4:  Letting something/someone bigger and stronger than you carry the burden is far easier on your own back and much more enjoyable.

Lesson 5: Most importantly NEVER let someone use you as a shield when a grizzly bear is coming at you!  Instead, try to be the one with the gun!

Horses grazing at Hidden Creek

Silence.  Stillness.  Solitude.  These are words that describe a time, a place, a condition, a feeling that many of us in our hectic North American culture rarely experience—if ever.  Even if we do reach that time or place of quiet we quickly find ways to fill it with television or smart phones.  Always connecting, never connecting.  Always busy even in the quiet.

People head to the wilderness to find peace and quiet—space maybe. Yet rarely do you find one without a massive RV towing a whack of quads and sporting satellite dishes, to eventually park in a campground saturated with other massive RV’s and trailers and people.  Truly, it’s hard to find REAL silence and real solitude anymore.

There was one time in my life that I vividly remember being in absolute silence and solitude.  It was so quiet it hurt my ears if you can believe it.  I kept tugging at my ears to make sure they worked because it was like I was suddenly deaf.  I’m not one to sit long in one spot (especially at the time), so I didn’t appreciate or fully realize the moment of silence and solitude as much as I would now, I think.  However it did make an impression on me—mainly because of what I experienced before the silence descended upon me, and Who met me in the silence.

It was my first summer working at a wilderness bible camp in the Alberta Rockies, and it was my first introduction to a horse pack trip.  Now it’s been over ten years and my memory is getting a little foggy, but if I remember correctly it was maybe a 5 day trip through the mountains with around seven or eight teens.

Diagram of a One Man Diamond Hitch drawn by author of Horses, Hitches and Rocky Trails, Joe Back. This is most similar to the one we used at this camp, in where we tied it at the top. And yes, two people are better to keep the tension in the line (unless you are 6’3″ and taller, or packing a mini pony). Have fun deciphering the moves!

The night before we were to leave, our wrangler/teacher Mark gave us newbies a packing lesson on a dark bay horse named Cherokee.  This involved him demonstrating how to saddle the horse with a sawbuck packsaddle and then lift the plastic panniers (pack boxes) on either side and strap them down.  He then placed a top pack on top of the panniers and then used a canvas to cover the entire pack.  He proceeded to loop a diamond rope around the whole shebang and then leaped up onto the rump of Cherokee (who stood stoically, thank God) and tied the diamond hitch together at the top of the diamond.  He explained that this was the way it was done and then had us all practice tying the diamond over and over.

It was very intimidating for me.  First to stand at the back end of a horse and pull myself up over his rump (using the pack saddle hip straps) to kneel on top, then to fumble with a rope, all the while trying to keep the tension as tight as possible and knot it securely without losing a finger.  It took a few tries to hoist myself up and I think I broke my glasses in the process.  (Hate glasses, but I had scratched my eyeball pretty hardcore earlier that summer and had to wear glasses the rest of the season.)  It also took very strong fingers to twist the rope to form a diamond shape on top of the pack—strength my fingers didn’t have at the time.

Well that was Packing 101, and I pretty much failed Round 1—and 2 and 3 and 4  . . .  (I did, however, go back for another summer, so I guess I never learned to quit when the going was tough and eventually I got to the point I could pack a whole string of horses by myself.  But that summer was just difficult all round—HUGE learning curve!)

There were four of us Senior Staff going on the trip—my tent mate and wrangler Rachael, and the guys, Mark and Craig, and two Junior staff.  Mark was the only one of us who had packed before and knew where we were going.  Rachael and I were told to pack light.  We were given a duffel to fit our sleeping bags and gear for five days—yep,both of us in one duffel bag!  The rest of the teens and staff did the same—shared duffel bags.  Then we proceeded to pack four horses for the fourteen people going along.  All of our food, cooking gear, shelter, horse tack, toilet paper, you get it, went on those four horses.  Big top packs for these guys. (In later years working for different outfitters, we would pack an average of eight or ten horses for four people.  Slight difference, huh?)

Pack horses grazing while riders take a break.  Cherokee is on the left.  Jubal on the right.

The campsite at Hidden Creek with the giant communal sleeping quarters.

We managed to get the horses packed, the kids saddled and then we headed off down the trail.  We climbed a mountain and dropped into another valley, crossed a creek or two and entered the valley of Hidden Creek.  (I’d tell you more about where it was, but well, it’s hidden).  We set up camp.  A giant tarp was thrown over an A-frame.  The food was prepared over a fire ring and let me tell you, I wasn’t very good a cooking that year.  In fact I wasn’t very good at a lot of things that year, but I kept doing what I could at what I was told to do.  I survived.

That night was the coldest night I can ever remember because I had brought only my smallest lightest sleeping bag—it was the only one that fit in the duffel along with Rachael’s and it definitely wasn’t warm enough by itself.  I didn’t sleep.  I shivered and shook as the entire lot of us slept under the big tarp together like one big family.  As well, Rachael didn’t sleep, and if I think about it, probably most of the kids didn’t either.  It was a very bleary morning as we all un-kinked our muscles and prepared for a day-ride up Tornado Pass.

The next night was a bit better, as Mark told us girls to take the packsaddle blankets to throw over our sleeping bags, and in a moment of brilliance (read: insanity) we also snitched the packsaddle pads to sleep on top of. (Sorry to say I was selfish enough at the time to not think of the poor kids who had to be just as cold).  But Oh was it so stinky!  The smell of fermented horse sweat lives on in my memory.  It is not a smell you can get rid of easily, especially when there were no showers to be had for the next week, so I think our little selfish plot backfired on us.  However I was far warmer that night!  That—combined with a full day of riding, chaperoning kids and chasing horses hobbled to graze in the clear-cut above camp—probably helped too.

The horses grazing at Hidden Creek early in the morning.

I was more involved with preparing food on this trip than I had been in previous camps—which was difficult for me and took most of my attention.  So I don’t remember much about what the wranglers did, but I do believe there was concern about the horses making a dash for our base camp and they may have tried in the two days we were at Hidden Valley.

Cooking on a pack trip

The next morning we packed up and headed for the Cache Creek campsite.  It was a long ride sprinkled with a bit of rain.  When we arrived we discovered the campsite wasn’t well used and covered in tall grass.  It was a lot of work for the wranglers to clear an area to put up the tarp while I made a fire ring and scavenged wood to cook a meal of pasta for twelve hungry people.

Meanwhile, the horses—who had been turned loose to graze—made a dash for it.  Mark, Rachael and Craig raced after them to turn them back while I stayed in camp trying to keep the kids calm.  All I remember is trying to open the bag of spaghetti and dumping it over one of the kids and scattering it in the tall grass.  It took us a while to gather up our supper and then get a meal cooked over a struggling fire, while entertaining hungry, tired, cranky kids.  It was a huge lesson in mind-over-matter for me that night.

Well we just got supper in our bellies and it started pouring.  The wranglers returned with all the horses and set up a better perimeter and then we pushed all our saddles and gear under the tarp and stuffed all the kids and staff inside to sleep.  I was on the edge curled up in a two foot by two foot space.  The snoring and the cramped smelly quarters, with, needless to say, the pouring rain drumming on the tarp, made for a very uncomfortable sleepless night.

About four in the morning we heard horses leave again.  Mark and Rachael took off again in the rain and chased down the horses.  One mare headed back to camp and they never did catch her.  We were down a much needed horse, but thankfully we had just enough to finish the trip.  We were behind in getting started, but eventually everything was packed up and kids mounted and off we went.

Thankfully the rain let up mid-morning yet we rode through a lot of bush that was still wet and I never did dry out that day.  It didn’t help that my rain gear had melted earlier in the summer due to an exploding rock from a fire I had been tending.  So I think I was making due with a poncho at first and then an old yellow slicker, thanks to Brad one of the junior wranglers that year.  Ponchos suck. My jeans were wet, and nothing is as awful as riding in wet jeans with wet boots, knowing you are going to have no place to dry off come nightfall.

Mark, with Cherokee the packhorse at the Beehive campsite

We made it to Beehive Mountain.  It was a steep climb up to our campsite right at tree line.  The water was a few hundred yards from the campsite.  We put up the tarp under the shadow of a huge gigantic monstrous boulder that looked like it had fallen out of the mountain above us.  It was bigger than a house and was tilted precariously, ominously over our campsite—like it was going to start rolling any moment and crush us all.  That’s where we slept.

I don’t remember making food or eating it.  I don’t remember much, other than climbing up a path above the trees to a wide open alpine meadow at the base of a towering rock to watch the horses while they grazed.  I was alone.

I sat on top of a boulder at the base of the scree tumbling off the mountain and gazed out over the breathtaking beauty of the mountain meadow and horses fanned out grazing, and beyond, to the tree covered valley below and the mountains beyond.  The sky was dark and heavy with rain clouds that were slowly drifting to the south.  The sun was dipping behind the mountain at my back casting a rosy glow to the land before me.

And then it hit me.  The SILENCE.

Not a breath of wind to stir grass or the leaves of the trees that weren’t there.  No rushing stream.  No trickling brook.  No birds twittering.  No insects buzzing.

The silence was deafening.  The ringing in my ears hurt and I tugged on them to check if I had gone deaf.

A horse lifted his head down below me and whinnied and I knew I wasn’t.  Deaf.

The silence returned and I knew that God was in that place with me.  I can only describe that moment as transcendent.

A rainbow spread in the sky before me.  It was ethereal.  It was a vision splendid.  The Creator of this world spread a feast for my eyes before me.  For me alone to see!

And then I moved.  I snapped a picture.  The moment was gone.  And let me tell you pictures don’t do it justice—transcendent moments just don’t translate on film.  They just don’t.  I heard voices below as Mark and then Rachael joined me and mere seconds later I was caught up in the continuing saga of our adventure.

The giant rock of Beehive Mountain rising above me.

Why is that moments of true silence, stillness, solidarity are so rare?  Why is that we don’t recognize them for what they are until they are gone?  Why is it that we are the first to move?

I want to come to that place of silence again—Of silence, stillness and solidarity before God.  Not just in the wilderness, but in my day-to-day life.  I don’t want the transcendent, holy moments to be fleeting, but perpetual.

In this busy, noisy world, I want to practice silence—become great at stillness.  Maybe then I’ll be able to let go of this continual need to be busy.  Maybe then I will set aside my irritations and anxieties.  Maybe then, in the silence, I’ll be at rest and peace with God.

And then—maybe then, God will let me know when it’s time to move—and I’ll actually HEAR HIM and be ready to ACT!

“Silence is praise to you,
    Zion-dwelling God,
And also obedience.
    You hear the prayer in it all.”

Psalm 65:1-2 (The Message)

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Psalm 46:10 (NIV)

Our abundant grocery store aisles.

I was trying to remember the last time I was truly sincerely grateful for the food I was eating—like I would have gone hungry for a long time without that food—starved maybe for real.  And I couldn’t.  I am a very blessed Canadian—and I’m told I live in the country that is one of the world’s biggest food wasters.  I can believe it every time I walk into a grocery store.  Where does all that food end up, because it surely isn’t all eaten?

When I lived in Yellowknife and came down “south” to Alberta for a visit, I was always blown away by the absolute abundance of food in our grocery stores!  It was amazing!  I think Yellowknife and subsequent northern communities are as close to the third world as Canada gets.  I think every Canadian should live at least one year up north (or in Africa) to get the idea of gross over-indulgence.

Since I couldn’t think of a time when I would have truly starved, I thought of a time when it was pretty close.  We were down to a can of SPAM.

I was horse wrangling in the Yukon and it was the second sheep hunt in August.  I had already been broken in by the first sheep hunt of the season, but was still learning the nature of the job.  We picked up 2 hunters, a father/son team from Pennsylvania, at the base camp Ceaser Lake.  We packed up the horses and headed down the trail.  We stopped at a halfway camp and planned on doing a goat hunt on a nearby mountain.

It was on the hike up that mountain, crossing slippery shale that I noticed the 16 year old boy stumbling around like he was drunk.  He couldn’t keep up with the guides and looked like he would go tumbling down the mountainside at any moment.  The dad was lithe and limber and was already 50 yards ahead with the one of the guides.  I was regulated to coaxing the teenager up the steep hill, but it became apparent that he would not only kill himself, but ruin the whole “sneaking up on goats thing” we had going on.  So I was told to take the kid back to the horses and wait—which could mean hours and hours of waiting if they happened upon goats.  Thankfully I managed to get the kid back down the hill with only one minor mishap that sliced his wrist open on the jagged edge of a rock.  We stemmed the flow of blood with bandages from my first aid kit, and thankfully our wait for the others wasn’t too long as they hadn’t spotted anything to go after.

The dad then explained that his son had had a virus a few years prior that had attacked his nervous system and robbed him of his balance and muscle control of his legs.  He had just not mentioned that to the outfitter and hadn’t realized how strenuous goat hunting could be for the kid.  It was now obvious that his son would not be goat hunting with him and it was decided the kid would go after caribou instead.

View from my tent at Sheep Camp at six in the morning. I had already been up 1.5 hours getting the horses into camp and saddled for the days’ hunt.

We packed up the next morning and carried on to Sheep Camp.  During the pack up I caught one of the guides (who shall remain unnamed at this point) throwing out all the green vegetables—actually all the vegetables.  His excuse was that they would only get damaged on the trip.  Ha!  This coming from an expert packer who never cracked an egg.  I knew better.  I was on to him!

The day before the weather socked us in with heavy fog, rain and sleet was a beautiful, hot and sunny day.

Well, we set up at Sheep Camp with only a tarp on a frame over a little 2 burner wood stove and pup tents to sleep in.  We were in a high mountain valley filled with stubby balsam trees that don’t burn well, and little grass pockets.  Beautiful.  When it was clear.  Which was only for the first day of hunting I think.  After that, it socked in with a thick soupy fog and sleet.  Cold.  I bundled up in every pair of clothes I had and it felt like I never got warm unless I was running after the horse herd or dragging the kid up a mountainside in search of an elusive caribou.  But then I broke a sweat under my rain suit and was drenched and once I quit moving, I slowly iced up as my body temperature lowered.

This Picture was taken on the twelfth day of the hunt as the fog had lifted enough for us to hope for a chance at a goat hanging out below the curtain.

The heavy fog prevented us from hunting for goats, as it would be pointless to blunder up the mountainside in a vain hope of spotting that wily animal.  Just our luck they would spot us first and take off for the next mountain range.  So for days we all sat under the tarp beside a little 2 burner wood stove that put out no heat.  Often we would retire to our tents to wait out the boredom in sleep.

Unfortunately the foamy in my tent became wet from the constant drizzle and eventually the wet claimed the bottom two feet of my sleeping bag.  So I slept in a fetal position for most of the hunt which makes for lovely cramped muscles come morning.  Five days of this and we were going stir crazy!  The guides were under a lot of pressure to get their hunters onto and animal, but the time of the hunt was ticking down and so was our food.

This outfit only supplied enough real food to last maybe five or six days into the hunt and then assumed an animal would be down and hanging in camp with which we could supply the rest of our meals.  Since the veggies were gone and we were bored sitting in camp munching on things, we were soon down to a can of SPAM to make meals with (there were a few other odds and ends, but SPAM was the main course).

Let me back up some.  On the first day of hunting from Sheep Camp, guide Floyd had spotted a big old bull caribou on the mountain next to camp.  He pulled a stalk with the kid that day and by the time he got the kid into position the bull had wandered off too far for the kid follow.  During the next number of days that we were sitting in camp we spotted the bull again on a lower part of the mountain, just under the fog and just before sundown.  Each time Floyd and I would drag the kid up the mountain side after that caribou, we would get to the point where we would top a rise or round a tree to be able to see him and the darn bull would have wandered off out of the picture.  Frustrating!  Especially when you got a teenager hanging off your backpack, dead beat from hauling him up a hillside with him hardly able to keep his legs underneath him.  Then the fun part, getting him back down.

Well the tenth day of the hunt and we spotted the bull again near suppertime.  I stayed with the dad and watched the stalk through the spotting scope while the guides pulled the kid up the mountainside again.  The dad was pretty desperate to see his kid down an animal!  And I was pretty desperate for warmth of any kind.  It was absolutely frigid out.

The Kid and his caribou!

The shot rang out through the frosty valley!  Yeehaw!  One shot through the neck and the bull was down!  Boy was the dad ever stoked to watch his son get his animal!

Since it was close to ten at night, the guides ripped the tenderloins off and raced back down the hill in the dark for a celebratory meal.  I cannot think of another time there was such joy from EVERYONE in camp!  The tenderloins were extraordinary!  We were all very grateful the shot the kid made, had put the bull down where he stood, and now we had FOOD—and hope!  It was truly a meal of thanksgiving!

Now I know that to be truly thankful requires the knowledge and experience of being without.  If you don’t ever know what it’s like to be without, you will never really appreciate what you have.  For me, spoiled Canadian that I am, that meal was the closest I’ve ever been to being without food easily attained.  And it’s really just a silly comparison to truly being without—all we had to do was pack up and ride a really hard day or two to the road and then flag down a vehicle to make it into town and we would have been okay.

As I celebrate Thanksgiving this year, after a bountiful year in my garden with which I can supply pretty much all of our thanksgiving feast if I wanted too (minus the turkey), I am reminded again of how many people in this world would be so absolutely astounded by the spread on my table and so completely more thankful than I.  It really makes me stop and thank God for all He has blessed me with.

Now there is a story in the Bible that makes me think of thankfulness.  I know this passage centers more around forgiveness, but it kind of fits with how I think of Thanksgiving.  It’s about a time Jesus goes to a friend’s house for a party.

One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him.”

Jesus said to him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Oh? Tell me.”

“Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?”

Simon answered, “I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”

“That’s right,” said Jesus. Then turning to the woman, but speaking to Simon, he said, “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? She was forgiven many, many sins, and so she is very, very grateful. If the forgiveness is minimal, the gratitude is minimal.” Luke 7:36-47 (The Message)

In other words if you have much, your thankfulness is minimal compared to if you have little and are given much. 

So go into this Thanksgiving time remembering that you have been given much and have MUCH to be truly grateful for!  And with that thanksgiving comes a responsibility:  HOW can we pass on some of our bounty to others?  How can we bring Thanksgiving to those who have nothing?

 And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God.  Hebrews 12: 28 (The Message)

Blaine Glassing High Mountain Valley for Moose

We were up against a high tower of rock, next to the only tall trees and grass in the high mountain valley.  Before us opened a long, wide meadow covered in knee high brush with only a few pockets of visible swamp grass.  Two small ponds glittering in the high evening sunlight a short distance from us

Once we decided to set up camp here, I left Blaine to put up the tents and start a campfire for supper, while I took the horses for water.  After hiking a long ways towards the ponds I came to the realization that the good water was a lot further than I thought and that it was all mucky swamp.  I came to a very shallow pool of water and the horses slurped as much as they could from it until it was just mud.  I returned to camp and tied up two horses and left one to graze.

Blaine Glassing from our Campsite

I was hoping supper was started as I was hungry and tired from the long day but discovered that only one tent was up and the fire wasn’t yet going.  It was up to me to start the fire and get a supper of pork chops and spuds on. While I cooked Blaine glassed the valley and spotted a bull moose directly across from us.  We watched him while we ate.  He wasn’t big enough to get a trophy hunter’s pulse racing, but he was big enough and evidence that moose did indeed inhabit this valley.

After supper I went to collect water to wash up the pans and get some more drinking water to refill our water bottles.  I went in a different direction than I had gone with the horses and after tromping through swamp hills and thickets of brush for over thirty minutes, I realized water was going to be a problem with this campsite.  I ended up dipping my cast iron skillet in a slight depression that held stinky, bug-infested water and scrubbing it with muck and swamp weed.  I rinsed it as best I could in another puddle.  There was no where I could find to fill my water bottle with clean drinking water.

Did I mention this day was over the thirty degree mark and scorching hot, with no clouds—just clear blue sky with a sun that didn’t retire until midnight.  The mosquitoes were horrendous!  The tiny, vicious, blood suckers covered me in clouds as I tromped back to camp, to find Blaine cozied up in his tent.  I looked for a place to set up my tent and couldn’t find another dry or even somewhat level, non-rocky spot.  Blaine graciously allowed me to share his tent.

However I still had to let the other two horses out to graze for the night.  Since we had left from the ranch camp we hadn’t any hobbles or tether ropes to use as they were left in the back-country base camps.  I only had the diamond cinch rope to use as a tether rope.  I knew that we were only a day’s ride from the ranch and that would be very enticing to the horses as they were in unfamiliar area with little grass or water to keep their interest long. I caught up Buckles and tied her up and then chose a good spot to tether Sisco.  I left Blackie loose on the assumption he would stick around because of his sweetheart Buckles.

Well it was a hot airless night that I tossed and turned listening to the loud drone of mosquitoes swarming outside our little sweat-box of a tent and to the horses moving around restlessly.  Obviously the mosquitoes were tormenting them too.  I was praying Sisco wouldn’t tangle his rope overnight, as it wasn’t the best place to tether out with too much low brush around.

Buckles started whinnying around four-thirty in the morning and I jolted out of my semi-unconscious state and crept out of the tent into a swarm of hungry mosquitoes.  The sun was up but hadn’t yet reached where we were camped or where the horses were grazing.

I rushed up the grassy hillside and after some searching found Sisco tangled around some low trees.  I untangled him and tied him up next to anxious Buckles.  Sure enough Blackie was gone!  Headed for the ranch.  I ran a ways down the trail in hopes that he’d stopped to nibble at some grass along the way.  But he had lit out of there like his tail was on fire, leaving his sweetheart behind.  (This whole time I was only in my shorts that I had put on for sleeping and my legs were on fire from scraping through the brush and from mosquito bites.  Silly move on my part, but I had been in a hurry leaving the tent.)

Blaine glassing for moose with Chevy

Well we were a bit disheartened after the loss of our packhorse, but I thought maybe it was for the best.  It meant there was more grass for the remaining two horses and hopefully more water if we could find it.  Blaine wanted to pack up and head home right away.  He sounded like a broken record at this point.

After much debate he agreed to stay and scout for the morning and then we would head for the ranch.  The lack of water was the swaying factor for me to not protest harder for staying another night.  If we didn’t find water soon for both us and our horses, we would not be in good shape.

Jake glassing for game. Notice the swarm of mosquitoes! Oh they were awful!

So we took off on horseback to scout around the rim of the valley for both moose and water, but the day was as clear and hot as the previous one.   Guaranteed, all the game was bedded down in nice shady spots (with water, I’m sure) and would not be moving on this day.  So by ten o’clock we called it quits after seeing nothing but a lone caribou bounding through the tundra over half a mile away. We returned to camp to pack up.

We packed Buckles and threw my saddle on top of the pack boxes and cinched it down good with a diamond rope. Since Blaine had injured his calf and wasn’t up for walking and since it was my fault we had lost the packhorse, I would be the one walking.

That was okay with me, as I generally enjoy walking.  We took off from our nasty little mosquito-inhabited, waterless campsite without a glance backwards and headed for the road.  The first bit was knee-high brush that made walking for me difficult.  Soon I was a good half mile behind Blaine and the two horses who glided through the tough brush as if they were hovercrafts, while I stumbled and tripped my way along.

Once we hit the road I could keep up easier.  However walking sure makes one thirsty and I was clean out of water.  It was a few hours before we finally hit a small rushing creek amongst some trees.  We were all thrilled to hit some cool mountain water and shade after traveling so long in high noon sun and took a break to eat some chocolate bars, as I had been too hurried packing up camp to make lunches.

Unlike our trip up, we stuck to the road that eventually zigzagged and put us on another road that took us quicker than we expected to the point where we had emerged from the swamp behind the ranch only the morning before.  If we hadn’t turned off the road in my impatience, our journey up wouldn’t have been such a wreck and a waste of time!  I was just relieved that I only had to walk for six hours instead of the ten hours it had taken us the day before.

We arrived at the ranch in one piece to tell our tale of misadventures to Greg and Allan who were in the midst of shoeing horses.  They were somewhat prepared for a story as there was that loser horse Blackie tied up to the tree with a non-repentant look on his face.  Buckles nickered a greeting as we walked by, but he didn’t give her the time of day. (They never were buddy-buddy again that season like there were the year before.  I guess their puppy-love was over.)

The overall verdict of our doomed trip? Don’t take horses up to that valley.  We advised Allan that quads would be easier and able to carry the necessary water and fuel for a hunt, as there was a perfectly good road that would take them pretty much to the point they needed to be.  As well, we assured Allan there was moose in that high valley, and it was a good bet they would stay there for an early-in-the-season hunt.

Our mission was accomplished despite Murphy’s Law!

After flying over some ground that looked promising for a moose hunt, he set a topographical map in front of me one night and asked if I could go scout it out for a few days.  Our mission would be to find if there was a suitable campsite with good water and enough grass for the horses.  But the main focus of our assignment would be to see if there was moose inhabiting the valley to warrant using it for a hunt later in the season.

I’ve always had a bit of a bug in me to go see what’s over the next hill, so I jumped on the idea.  The outfitter’s son would be accompanying me.  Blaine, had just arrived from Smithers, BC and this was his first time working for the outfit.  He was young and he wasn’t super keen about horses and he didn’t know the area, so it lay on my shoulders to get us up to the spot on the map Allan had shown us.

It seemed simple enough.  We were leaving from the home base ranch next to the Atlin hi-way.  This area was more accessible than the rest of the outfit, and it seemed, according to the topo map, that there were a few old logging roads that we could utilize that would take us within a few kilometers of our intended destination.

We had to get from the x on the left to the x on the right and then scout the valley around the 2 small ponds.

Greg, the only guy who had over ten years of guiding experience with the outfit, mentioned that it was very over-grown back behind the ranch.  This area hadn’t been used in years and the trails tended to be pretty swampy. However, he was certain once we got past the initial swamps we would find the old trails to be dry and decent.  All we had to do was find a certain big ridge and follow it up to the high valley Allan wanted us to scout.

Greg and Blaine Packing Blackie

So we packed up our gear.  Greg put Blaine on Sisco, his “go-to” lead horse, and I rode Buckles, a young mare I had been working on the previous year and who was showing promise as a lead horse.  I also led the only packhorse as Blaine wasn’t comfortable leading yet.  Blackie was in love with Buckles and would follow her anywhere.  Those two were inseparable.

It was a glorious sunny day when we took off from the ranch.  Immediately we set to bushwhacking around a pond and then had to cross a deep mucky creek.  It was Buckles’ first big ride of the season and she was a little anxious but settled down once we made it past the swamps to higher ground.

We came to a wide, clear road heading north-south, not the east-west we were hoping for. I stopped and consulted the topo map.  The road was stretching in a completely different direction than the map said.  I could see the peak ahead of us that we were aiming for and kept in mind that if the road took us away from it we would have to find another route.  So we started along and sure enough we realized after a good bit of riding that we were going away from our intended mark.  We traveled back the way we came and followed the road the other direction and soon enough realized it was going in the wrong direction too.

Blaine and I were both in a quandary as we studied the map.  We knew where we needed to go, just not how we were supposed to get there.

Well I’m not much of a patient sort, and I had a few years of experience under my belt by this time, so I suggested we just head straight for the peak that we needed to get to by nightfall and quit following the stupid road.  Maybe we would run into the road that was shown on the map.  Blaine protested, as he really didn’t want to just head off into the forest.  He suggested following the road a while longer.

After following the road a fair distance with no change in direction I was becoming more and more adamant that we ditch the road.  Blaine warmed up to the idea enough to be agreeable and we turned off the road into the forest.

It was wide open forest.  The trees nicely spaced apart to ride through with little underbrush and fallen timbers to trip us up—spacious enough to wind our way through easily with a packhorse.  We were making good time.  The purple peak in the distance appeared closer every time we topped a ridge that afforded us a view.

We hit thicker and thicker forest and by the time we realized it wasn’t getting any better it was too late to turn back.  Thick, deep moss coated the ground, covering up dead-fall and rocks.  The trees were heavy and tight and it took lots of patience to pick our way through the forest and keep an eye on our direction.

At this point Blaine started harping about how this was a bad idea and maybe we should turn around.  Maybe it was pride that kept me leading us forward, maybe it was my eternal optimism that eventually things would get better.   I was aiming to hit that ridge I could see ahead of us and that would be the ridge we needed to be on—the one the map pointed to as being the one to lead us straight up to the valley.  In my mind there was no point in turning back to slog through the nasty forest just to have to do it all over again.  Besides we were getting ever so close to that ridge and my patience which Blaine and Buckles was running out.

The ridge was right in front of us, only hundreds of meters away and we would soon be on top of it.  Suddenly we broke out on the edge of a narrow, deep ravine.  We were sunk.  It had straight down sides and the opposing side was taller and steeper yet. The rocky walls ran straight down into a rushing creek at the bottom.  There was no way down.  No way up.

I consulted the map again.  I was dead certain that the opposite side of the ravine was the ridge that we needed to be on.  Blaine wasn’t certain and kept telling me we should just give up and head back to the ranch.  It was too late in the afternoon to make it back to the ranch the way we came, and we had a job to finish.  So I told Blaine we had to look for a way down.  We continued along the edge of the ravine, bucking trees, dead fall, moss, rocks and willow brush.

The ravine bottom widened and the creek flowed into a beaver pond.  The walls seemed less steep and there was a spot on our side that looked ride-able and the other side promised the ability to walk our horses to the top.

So we went over the edge—there was no going back after this.

I got to the bottom and hit swamp covered by thick willow and alder brush.  I managed to coax Buckles through to the edge of the creek and that was as far as she would go.  We traveled up and down the creek looking for a promising spot to cross—beaver pond on one end and tight, narrow walls of slick rock on the other end.

I urged Blaine to take Sisco across the only spot that looked promising on the hope that Buckles would follow the lead horse.  Blaine and Sisco made it across and immediately Blaine started up the other ridge without looking back.

Buckles downright refused to cross.  She reared up and I lost my hold on Blackie’s lead.  He took off and got tangled up.  I was yelling at Blaine to come back and wait for us and trying to figure out what to do now.  I HAD to get up on that ridge, but my horse wasn’t cooperating.

Blaine had dismounted and headed back up the ridge to tie Sisco at the top and wasn’t coming back down.  I yelled that he needed to get down and me help out.  Eventually he came down and we discussed rather heatedly what needed to be done.  He was happy that he was across and figured that was good enough.  I tried to make him see that I needed help to get my horses across and he should too, as the pack horse carried the food.

Food was the key word and Blaine decided to get half-way across the creek on a fallen log and help encourage Buckles forward by holding onto her lead rope that I tossed him.

I tied Blackie on to Buckles piggin’ string (see explanation in previous post here) so that I wouldn’t yank my shoulder out of place if Buckles decided to jump the creek.

Jump she did and landed belly flat in the mucky creek with her front knees on the bank and her hind quarters submerged.  Needless to say I was soaked to my thighs.  In the crossing the pigging string snapped and Blackie was left on the other side calmly eating a clump of swamp grass.  I managed to keep my seat as Buckles scrambled out of the creek and slowed her to a stop before she bolted up the steep hill that was far too steep for me to ride up.

Blaine was hollering because he was wet up to his waist from falling into the creek and the mare had put a dent in his calf muscle on her way by.  Since he was already wet, he grabbed a hold of Blackie’s lead rope and walked the packhorse across.  We scrambled up the hill that was beyond steep with Blaine complaining the whole way about his ankle and mucky jeans.

We had clear blue skies and hot sunny weather for our scouting trip. Here we could see the mountains across Atlin Lake. On the other side of these mountains is the White Pass and Skagway, Alaska.

The top afforded us a beautiful view of Atlin Lake in front of us and the peak we were headed to behind us.  We could even see the open meadow of the ranch where we had come from, just hours before.  Already it seemed a lifetime.  We rested and Blaine and I took turns changing into rain pants so our jeans could dry.  Rain pants on a +30 degree day and riding in a saddle? Wowzers! Not my idea of fun.  Or Blaine’s either for that matter.

We started for the peak again and not 20 meters off the ridge we hit the old road we were supposed to be on in the first place.  I gave myself a big pat on my back for being right about the ridge. (That’s all that I could pat my back for at this time, so I took it).  It was a virtual hi-way in the forest and we coasted the remaining hour and a half up to the valley Allan wanted us to scout.  The road ended just before the peak and we waded through knee deep brush and found an ideal camping spot just below a big rock formation that reminded me of a crumbling castle tower.

Things were looking up.  Or so we thought . . .

Horses packing near the Coal River Camp.  Note how the willow brush is high and basically swallows the horse.  This is the stuff I had to track horses in.  I had to find a path rather than push my own way through the brush as I generally wasn’t strong enough to walk against that stuff very long.

One time in particular, was at a halfway camp near the Coal River.  This is the camp with the cabin that had deep imprints of a grizzly bear track right in through the door of the cabin.  This is the spot where I pitched my little pup tent below some mighty huge trees and prayed a bear wouldn’t come sniffin’ in the night.  From what I remember this camp is pretty much surrounded by river on at least 2 or 3 sides, basically making an island for the horses to be turned loose on to graze.  Willow bushes shrouded most of the “island” with a few pockets of open grass.

The first night the horses stayed close to camp keeping everyone awake with the ringing of their bells,  and by the second night the whole area was a mess of tracks from the horses roaming around in endless circles.

The brush was thick and tall and I basically had to pick a direction in the morning and hope my ears could catch the sound of bells so I could know what direction to head.  This was also early in the season for me and I was still trying to get the hang of coming into brand new area with no idea of where the horses liked to hang out.  From the tracks it seemed they preferred to graze in circles that ranged further and further out and then circle back in and start all over again.  It was completely frustrating and confusing for me—new to tracking that I was.  It’s one thing to follow one set of tracks in an untouched area and entirely another to pick out the freshest tracks of fifteen horses that have been in an area for a few days.  Hats off to Mantracker!

Hunting near the Coal River Camp. Scouting for mountain goats.

Well it was a few mornings in and I was basically sucking at bringing the horses in fast enough to please the guides.  I was told to NEVER EVER come back to camp without the horses.  But the one morning I just couldn’t figure out where they went and it was getting later and later.  I figured I would tuck tail and just ask for help, rather than delay the hunting anymore. I was told they were probably across the river.  I assured them that I hadn’t found any tracks leading that way.

Well one of the guides was more than displeased with me.  After tearing a strip off my back, he stalked off into the bush to show me a thing or two.  Within fifteen minutes of flat out walking we came to the river.  He pointed emphatically and stated that they were across the river.  I firmly pointed out that I hadn’t found any tracks leading into the river, so I wasn’t crossing the river on the supposition that they MAY POSSIBLY be across the river.  It was wide and fairly fast flowing and I was on foot.  I only had the jeans I was wearing and one spare pair to last me to the end of the hunt.  I wasn’t getting wet unless I absolutely had too!!!

He told me in no uncertain terms that I was crossing the river, because the horses were there whether I had found tracks or not.  I think he realized I was a little upset and so crossed the river with me, shouting profanities the whole way.

Yep it was waist deep and shockingly cold.  And yep he was right the stupid horses were on the other side lazing in a grassy meadow, all the bell mares laying down having a snooze.  I was astounded at the time that the hobbled horses would cross that chest-deep, rocky-bottomed river.  But after the things I’ve seen horses do since then, it takes a lot to shock me now.

The only upside was I could ride back across the river and I had a pair of dry jeans and socks to change into.

Jake, with horse Bunny, still wet after a morning tromping through the river to catch up the horses.

Well the next morning I was counting on the horses not ending up in the same place, as they had never yet that year returned to the same place the following morning.  So I started tracking as best I could.  After over an hour with no sign and not a whisper of tinkling bells, I began to get a sinking feeling in my gut.  They were back across that river.

Oh that water was icy cold!!!  Oh was I ever mad!  I used a few choice words I had picked up the previous morning on those horses when I found them.  Barely managed to snag a horse to ride before they all perked up and charged back across the river to camp.

Dang it!  My last pair of jeans was soaked and the pair from the day before wasn’t dry yet.  Definitely made for an uncomfortable day in the saddle.

All this was running through my mind as I was stomping through a mucky swamp after the horse who had bolted away from me a few days ago.  A huge part of me was mad and grumbling at the mare as my jeans were soaked to the knee and my hikers were saturated and making wet squishy sounds with every step I took. However, a funny little part of me was gleefully delighting in the fact that I was again chasing after a stupid horse in some mucky wet country.  Kind of made me nostalgic for my younger “wilder” days.  Only this time I was able to change into dry shoes and jeans!!!

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Hello Apron Stringz readers! A nod of thanks to CJ for providing the platform to share my experiences living in the backcountry, and thank you for being willing readers.

In 2006, my ex-significant other, M, and I did trail restoration work in central Idaho. One job was near an in-holding surrounded by national forest and designated wilderness. The in-holdings along the Salmon River, commonly called “ranches” although the days of cattle rustling are long over, are a mix of privately owned properties or commercial guest ranches catering to fisherman and hunters. This particular ranch was private ownership and located three miles up a drainage which dumped into the river. We cleared the trail that connected the ranch to the river and fell in love with the landscape.

Two years later we were offered the jobs of caretaker and horse packer for that ranch. Knowing the operations, it was an easy decision to make although it would be work (a word I later came to redefine). There were no neighbors less than a days’ hike away, no phone, no roads, no hot water nor electricity on demand. But what it had far outnumbered any so-called deficits….off-the-grid living, huge garden beds, fruit trees, chickens, blacksmith shop, a 90+ year old cabin, wood cook stove, horses, barn, woodshop, wild animals, bird songs, mountains to ramble in any time I wanted, a river to swim in, mushrooms to pick, solitude, each season’s joys, time to indulge my knitting obsession, and most importantly the opportunity to whole-heartedly explore our interests. Our jobs were multi-layered: maintain the buildings and grounds, garden for our personal sustenance, farm the hay fields, cut firewood, assist the owners when they visited, and pack horses.

Because it was a road less area, horses were the muscle and transportation to and from the river. All supplies came upriver on jet boats, which required serious foresight on our parts. This led to really contemplating so-called needs, evaluating whether things could be acquired in a better manner (i.e. dry beans vs. canned), and how best to use every stinkin’ component of whatever arrived at the ranch. Upon delivery to our beach, what couldn’t be shoved into a backpack was loaded onto the animals- seven horses and a solitary mule (Spider, I apologize but I am going to refer to you as a horse for ease). Everything came in this way including a love seat, 6 ft. long panels of roofing, 25 spring chicks, a case of wine, our mattress, two nervous cats, beloved house plants, and the horses’ oats (which seemed like a cruel form of torture).

Although I was raised in Idaho, I was FAR from handy with horses. My parents are both from Phoenix, and bless them for trying to adopt a rural lifestyle, but horses were not on their radar. Like many girls, my sister dreamed of having a horse but I was always content wandering trails and collecting rocks. A particularly bad horse riding experience at age 8 left me swearing off horses forever, which I attempted until it seemed like a juvenile fear and I got back on the proverbial horse.

M was experienced with stock animals and relished the opportunity to learn more; declining a wonderful opportunity out of semi-unfounded intimidation was not something I was willing to do. And thus I entered the world of horse packing. With trepidation, to be sure, but with horses you can’t waffle with dominance or you’ll get taken for a sucker pretty damn fast. I won’t discuss horse behavior and horse culture since it’s an extensive topic and some of you likely have more experience than I. Let’s say initially it was my biggest challenge at the ranch.

These horses were exceptional. The previous caretakers lived at the ranch 17 years, and bred and trained all of the horses. Until a few years ago, the hay fields were farmed with horses so these creatures were valuable machines (stay tuned, farming resources below). From the moment they were born, the foals were imprinted. They had pots and pans rattled near their heads, were herded by a hyperactive cattle dog, heard gun shots, got used to human voices at all decibels, and were generally put through the ringer. The result was divine. The horses were calm and intelligent. I watched one squish a rattlesnake without fear. I saw another cock its head at the sight of a bighorn sheep ram on the trail, as if to say “oh, you again”? One horse packed out a dead bear wrapped in plastic without a second thought. They patiently let me load and unload astronomical weight from their backs. They were free-roaming and had a permanent mental map of the trail to the river.

One evening we dropped a load of items at the beach to be picked up by jet boat the following day. We were tired, it was nearly dark, we’d enjoyed an afternoon beer, and the horses were empty. We decided to ride home, despite not having proper riding saddles. M took the lead and headed down the trail while I was lollygagging, oblivious to the fact my horse was missing her herd. Just as I swung myself up on the pack saddle (a highly delicate manoeuver) she took off, running down the trail in utter darkness to catch up. While wondering if my entire body was actually ON the horse, I experienced an evolution of emotions: terrifying images of my imminent death, a serious questioning of my decision-making skills, appreciation for the horses’ intuition and guidance, and faith.

Ah, faith. That word always comes up when discussing horses and the riding thereof. To me, faith in horses falls under the category of “do not over-analyze.” Of course you need to know about the horse to make good choices to keep yourself and the animal safe, but at some point jumping up top is the best action. I carried this approach forward to my ability to learn horse packing skills.

Each February M and I oiled and mended the saddles, saddlebags, bridles and various other parts. Laying everything over saw horses, the winter sunshine warmed the oil and allowed me to stitch busted leather. Packing season started in early March, so this was an opportunity to prepare and work out any kinks in the systems. Since the horses were free-roaming, I hiked around the hills to locate them. They seemed to anticipate the upcoming trip, and there was an air of pride in their movement.

There were two parking spots in the barn with accompanying oat bins. Packing days were the ONLY time the horses were given oats, and they could stand at the ready until eternity if you maintained the oat flow. We each took a horse and due to my short stature I had personal favorites, which was less about their disposition and more about their height. It didn’t take long to figure out each horse’s quirks. One didn’t care for the foot stool I used, so I loaded him first while I was fresh. Another didn’t mind the stool, but didn’t like the way I put the blankets on him. A third adored being brushed and therefore occasionally struggled with her work ethic. Creativity and flexibility became my new best friends.

Pack saddles are uniquely minimal in order to add weight in the form of loaded boxes or mantis (when you wrap the entire load like a Christmas present in heavy canvas). We used Decker pack saddles and each was specific to a horse. The boxes are hitched to the exterior of the saddle through D rings, one box on each side to maintain balance. One box is roughly 18” x 12” x 12” (this is from memory, don’t quote me) and can accommodate two fruit boxes on their sides or two bags of chicken feed. The boxes need to be the same weight and contents are critical. Something as simple as a rattling spice jar will drive the horse batty. A batty horse makes for a dangerous situation, so the load needs to be tight, secure, and quiet. A combination of knots and hitches (designed to unravel quickly if one end is pulled) keeps the system together. I spent my first winter practicing hitches on the legs of the kitchen chair only to realize there is a dizzying amount to learn.

After 17 years of working with these specific horses, the former caretaker taught us exactly the right hitches and knots. We didn’t mess around with that solid system, and our goal was to prepare the horses in a timely and thorough manner, and work to guarantee there was NO way the saddle would roll. A saddle rolls when the weight shifts and the boxes slide unevenly on the horse, or worse, underneath. Often this is human error, although similarly to airplanes contents may shift during the course of the flight. Which is why knowing the contents of the loads is important.

A rolled saddle was my worse fear when I packed alone. Fixing the problem requires breaking up the string and repacking the load. The horses are tied together using piggins, medium weight string or rope that will easy break under the pressure of a 1000 pound horse in an emergency, but tricks them into believing they are one unit. The order of the horses in the string largely depends on their quirks and behavioral problems. When a saddle rolls, you hear the unmistakable POP of a broken piggin (as the horse self-adjusts), say a few choice words, and then must quickly hitch up the other horses somewhere in order to repack the victim. Without fail this occurs a) mid-slope b) in the blazing sun c) in the middle of the creek d) in the one spot on the trail without trees to hitch to. It is a stressful situation and fortunately there were two of us when that occurred. And, I should note, it was a rare, rare event.

It was under the duress of our first rolled saddle that I had a breakthrough about my energy. Yes, energy in the New Age-y way, but horses pick up on vibes, man. They know when we are concerned or when their riders are tense. I’m naturally energetic, downright annoying with caffeine. I don’t really walk, I bustle around. Therefore, days I was nervous or worried (about the load or my hitches) the horses toyed with me. One would act out, Houdini out of her hitch, another would nip my butt. I began to observe my breath, my voice, my movement around them and watched their reactions. When I was calm, stopped fidgeting, used an unwavering voice, and punished offenders all was well. I’ve since read this is very common, but it took a rolled saddle to clarify this personally. In jest I called this my horse Zen methodology. It also works on people.

In general, I was successful in my solo packing endeavors. Typically both of us got the crew dressed for the day, strung them up, and then I walked lead. Packing to the river was often an empty box affair. Everyone slogged home on the return trip when they were loaded down with river gifts. I liked to walk lead on the trail in order to move fallen rocks and wayward animals. If it was a small load and we could spare riders, M and I would ride home. Those were nice days. Once at the barn it was a race to unload the boxes (perpetual Christmas), tugging and pulling on the horses while they calmly ate their oats. We always examined them for boo-boo’s or heat spots, ending with a rub down and words of praise.

The ranch stopped farming with horses a few years before we arrived. The barn loft was full of horse tack, harnesses, collars, parts instrumental to farming. I have read Small Farmer’s Journal for years and was curious about how the process would play out. I knew each horse was capable of haying those fields, and had mentally selected who I would work with. I wondered if they missed pulling the equipment, feeling the tug of a driver, or if their identity was linked to the task. We hoped to one day farm with them, if only for a singular experience, but didn’t have the opportunity.

After I left the ranch my nightly dreams were full of horses. It took a full year for those dreams to subside, and now I relish the sporadic occasions when I see running horses and hear their hard-working breath as they return from the river loaded with goods.

If you are interested in learning more about farming with horses here are some classic guides and references:

-Search your area for local farms and trainers, hands on is the best approach!

-Small Farmer’s Journal (most issues have basic info, spring quarter 1980 dedicated to horse farming)

-Draft Horses and Mules: Harnessing Equine Power for Farm and Show by Gail Demerrow

-The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour (not solely dedicated to horse farming)

-The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball

If you are interested in horse packing there are many enthusiastic websites, as well as these books:

-Packin’ In on Mules and Horses by Smoke Elser and Bill Brown

-Horses, Hitches, and Rocky Trails by Joe Black

-Horse Packing: A Manual of Pack Transportation (1914) by Charles Johnson Post

-Hells Canyon Mule Days- annual celebration in Enterprise, Oregon

Do any of you farm with horses? Have you been on a horse packing trip or helped someone load up? Wanna share a horse tale?

Guide Raymond, a tag-a-long Frenchman named Romaine and Allan, the outfitter, rode the horses in from Atlin to the base camp on Rainbow Lake.  It is a grueling two day ride over some of the worst trail I’ve seen horses go through.  Three or four horses died on the ride-out the year before, to give some perspective. I heard the previous wranglers wanted to get out in one day and they pushed so hard and long through such miserable terrain the horses just gave up and died or they had to put them down.  There was some not very happy people over that stunt.

When I flew into Rainbow Lake, I met up with Raymond and Romain. Raymond had worked the previous summer with the former outfit to learn the country and camps so he could teach us the ropes the the following year.  Raymond is a big, gentle giant.  A really fantastic guy to work with.  He has a big laugh, a soft heart and is a hard worker!

Romain is a Frenchman who was hitch-hiking around BC when he met up with Allan, our outfitter.  Allan said he could come along to help trail cut and clean up camps for room and board.  So Romain joined us for June and July and got a real taste of Canadian wilderness.  He was an extremely enthusiastic guy to work with.

Since the horses were at camp in the beginning of June and hunts didn’t start until August, there was the potential problem of overgrazing the grassy meadows at Rainbow Lake.  So the decision was made to drive the bulk of the horses up to Dry Lake, a high mountain lake and camp surrounded by alpine meadows chock full of grass.  A rare and treasured find in the north.  The herd would stay for most of the June and July to fatten up before being brought back to Rainbow Lake at the start of hunting season.

Jake, Raymond and Romain, before embarking on the ride to Dry Lake

So Raymond, Romain and I saddled up at Rainbow Lake and started the ride for Dry Lake.  Maybe an hour into the ride we joined up with the original Telegraph Trail—the northern leg that ran from Hazelton to Atlin.

Side Note: A very interesting and exciting part of Canadian History is the Yukon Telegraph trail that was used to link the south country with the Klondike gold fields.  I highly recommend the book, Wires in the Wilderness by Bill Miller.  It is a fantastic read about the Yukon Telegraph filled with adventure, daring and survival.  It is a dream of mine to hike the entire thing one day—but I might just be slightly out of my mind to dream that way after riding a portion of it (and that was the frequently used portion).

Raymond with his pack string just east of Rainbow Lake

Pretty much where we linked up with the Telegraph Trail the bush began to get thick and tight to the trail.  There were lots of places with trees down or willow clogging the trail so bad that we had to find alternate routes around.  As well, it was June and the ground was saturated from the snow having just left and spring rains.  It was terrible quagmire of muskeg, rock and bush.  From the looks of things this trail either grew back incredibly fast or hadn’t been cut out the previous year or two. The only thing that added some interest to the trip was the occasional spotting of telegraph wire still running alongside the trail, sometimes still attached to living-poles (trees) or man-made poles, sometimes just along the ground.

Raymond trying to hack his way through the bush

We eventually started through an old burn that was incredibly miserable going.  Raymond, being in the lead, was off his horse constantly to hack fallen timbers out of our way and slash a hole through the clinging willow brush as we forged on towards Nakina Canyon.

Horses trailing through an old burn

We finally came to the steep edge of a gorge, with the trail, finally clear, leading down to the turbulent Nakina River.  Here there was a small meadow that housed remains of the old telegraph cabin where lineman Guy Lawrence stayed for many years.  In his book 40 Years on the Yukon Telegraph, he describes this spot one of the loneliest and most depressing since it was off the beaten path and at the bottom of a narrow canyon where he only got sunlight for maybe 2 hours out of the day.  It was a pretty nifty spot of history to poke around in while we gave the horses and Raymond a break and ate some lunch.

Then came time to cross the river.  Spring run-off made for an even more treacherous crossing than usual.  The bottom of the river was littered in huge rocks and the water is fast and deep.  The far bank was steep and slick with mud.  I was very happy I was on a tall, black, sturdy horse named Beauty.

Lunch Break at Nakina Canyon

I went after Romain (who went ahead to take pictures of the crossing) with the rest of the herd following and Raymond pushing.  Beauty stumbled right at the deepest part and I had a slight jolt,

thinking we were going down, but he recovered and pulled himself out.  I heard a yelp and realized that my dog Chevy was trying to get up the bank but couldn’t.  I couldn’t help him as I was holding the entire herd behind me and had to keep heading up the steep hillside so the horses would get stuck in the muck or getting out of the river.

I looked back and saw Chevy being swept down stream and thought I lost my dog.  The river was flowing fast and there was steep walls on either side.  I didn’t think I was going to see him again.

Jake riding Beauty across the deep and treacherous Nakina River with the pack horses and Raymond close behind

I wanted to stop, but there wasn’t much choice as I had to keep leading up out of the canyon.  The bushes grew tight and heavy and kept threatening to scrape me off the back of my saddle.  My shins were repeatedly smacked by thick branches and I was constantly wishing for a pair of heavy leather chaps instead of the thin rain pants I was wearing.

Raymond was at the tail of the herd and shouted out that Chevy had made it.  He appeared maybe half an hour or so after the river crossing.

We slugged upwards through bush hell for hours.  It started to feel like my legs were being hit repeatedly by golf clubs.  My torso from the bending the twisting the leaning the pushing.  Beauty would bust through bush holes were there was no room for a rider and I would take the brunt of crossed over branches (some as thick as my arm) in my midsection and hang on for all my might until they bent and gave and let me pass.  Sometimes I just hugged Beauty’s neck and made it through.

Raymond Crossing the Nakina River

Our trail---yep we had to ride through bush like this for hours.

The suddenly I was swept off the back of my saddle by one good stout branch in the midsection.  Luckily Beauty was held up by another.  The only problem was to figure out a way to get back on with the loose horses crowding up behind me.  I managed to cut the branches down and skimmy back in the saddle and not thirty seconds later, Raymond was swept off the back of his saddle.  He was mad and went on a chopping frenzy for a few minutes.

We were all slightly mad at this point.  Bruised and aching, I was starting to wonder when this would ever end.  It was only supposed to be a 3 hour ride and we were nearly double that.

We scraped though endless willow brush and suddenly, GLORIOUSLY, we broke into a high mountain meadow!  Oh it was like stepping into paradise!  No more bush!  No more grasping branches seeking to rip you of your mount!  The horses picked up the pace and eventually the loose horses broke out from behind us and galloped off ahead in wild abandon.

Suddenly GLORIOUSLY we broke out of the bush and entered Paradise!

It was still another hour ride to the cabin on Dry Lake, but it was very enjoyable.

The lake was large enough at this point to land a 180 Cessna on, but I was told that by August it would down to the size of pond and usually by September there was nothing much by a stream running to a puddle in the center of the lake.  Locals used to try and damn up the lake by putting tarp and other things over the hole in the middle to keep the waters from draining out.  However nothing worked very well or very long, and the lake would dry up, hence it’s name.

Riding the trail alongside Dry Lake into Camp

Dry Lake Camp was used as a hub for a few other satellite camps extending off of it, so it was very well set up, with a high cache and big main cabin, bunkhouse and tack shed.  It was a very nice camp, that I didn’t spend much time in at all, as I was whisked away by the plane the next morning leaving the nasty trail cutting job to Raymond and Romain on their return to Rainbow Lake.  When I arrived back at Rainbow lake, I took a look at my aching body and have never to this day seen such terrible black and blue bruises up and down my shins and thighs and around my torso—looked like someone had beat on me with baseball bats or something.

The Ride to Dry Lake reminded me of 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;  persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (NIV)

I felt surrounded and battered by the bush, but I kept going because I knew from what Raymond had told me that the bush would eventually end and we would rise above it into the open meadows—free and clear.   I believed Raymond and had hope that the hard riding would be momentary, and it was—though longer than I would’ve liked.

Romain crossing the Nakina River

It’s pretty much the same thing in our Christian faith.  Here on earth we’re going to hit many troubles, difficulties and irritations.  What we believe in makes all the difference in how we endure them.

Like the apostle Paul reminded the Corinthian church, “And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people, more and more praise!

Guy Lawrence's line cabin ruins at Nakina River

So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.” 2 Corinthians 4:14-18 The Message)

So if times are tough or hard and you feel hard-pressed and battered, let me be the one to remind you today that this is only temporary.  Paradise is coming!  And all the bruises and wounds we collect in the here-and-now will serve as battle-scars for our stories in the then-and-coming.

Storm clouds at the end of Rainbow Lake

One day the crew packed up from Ceaser Lake to head south to Mosquito Camp.  (Yes it is aptly named).  I was riding a young horse named Mocha, who basically had been “broken” a couple of days prior by guide Donn.  Or rather Donn was broken by Mocha because he was the one who ended up in the hospital with a broken shoulder or something.  Mocha was to be my horse to put miles on that summer, and I was happy because I really liked the look of this horse.

Left to Right. Mocha, Missy and Surprise

At this outfit, they ran their pack string loose and it was my job as wrangler to keep the horses up with the guide leading out front.  However for this trip, I was given a task to ride behind Terry, the outfitter, because I was on a young, basically untrained horse who didn’t know how to rein yet and also because he wanted the pack horse Nicky to keep up tight behind him because he was prone to falling asleep while walking and lagging far behind.  My task was to slap the ends of my long rope reins on Nicky’s rump to keep him awake and moving forward.

We rode with long yellow rope reins, eight to ten feet in length, for this very purpose.  We could ride along and whack the pack horses to keep them moving.  The heavy rope made for a good thwack.  As well, whenever we stopped we could drop the reins and not worry about the horses breaking them while they grazed.  It was a genius method that I carried on with me to other outfits!

Pack horses following lead guide Joel.

Mind you, I was on a green horse, who was fairly spirited.  Whirling yellow rope past his head made for some sketchy moments on this ride!  It’s always good times training a young horse on the trail, especially when they don’t have much ground work in them!  But we were doing good and getting somewhat comfortable with each other.

I can’t remember how long the ride is from Ceaser Lake to Mosquito Camp, maybe 3-6 hours.  Long enough.  Nicky was doggin’ it.  I had to continually be whacking him.  Terry gave me a willow switch to tap his back end with, because I wasn’t very proficient yet at swinging my reins and I was on a green horse that was a little jumpy.  I really had to poke that stubborn bay horse.  You could see he was just miserable with his job carrying a pack.

We were riding right next to a wide creek, maybe two feet above it, right on the edge of the bank, when Nicky tried to commit suicide.  He just leaned over and fell in the river!  Pack and all.  Lying there trying to put his head under the water.

Terry busted into the river astride his horse, and whipped and yelled and tried to get that bay moving.  But the horse just lay in the water, to stubborn to heave himself out—too determined to die.  Eventually Terry dismounted in the river and tried to manhandle the suicidal horse into a standing position.

Joel, the other guide and Terry’s son, took over leading us to camp, because we had a string of pack horses getting antsy. So we left Terry in the creek trying to get the bay on his feet.  By now Nicky’s pack probably weighed 300 pounds or more, saturated with water, and all I could think was that it had to be just my luck that it was MY sleeping bag in his top pack.

I looked back just in time to see Nicky stick his head under the water again and I marveled at the horse trying to die.  I wondered what would make an animal just want to give up like that?  Could his life really be THAT bad?

Well, since then, I’ve hit times in my life where I’ve become so overwhelmed with burdens dragging me down, so squeezed into a corner, so stuck, that I couldn’t see any other way out except to die.  So I’ve gained an understanding for Nicky now.  The desire to just give up.  That feeling of being unable to cope anymore, that death seems to be the only way OUT, the only way to find relief.

It’s very hard to admit to anyone, let alone myself, that I struggle with depression.  That I’ve reached points in my life where I haven’t been strong enough to pull myself out of the mental muck that overwhelms me and drags me down.  That I need help.  That I need to ask for help.  That I need to take the help that is offered.  It’s humiliating and a blow to my ego, when I can no longer cope with things that used to be so simple, so easy, so manageable.

The pack gets too heavy, the burden more than I can bear and all I can think about is that I want to die.

The day I took this picture, it was rain storm after rain storm. I felt like I was being pummeled by rain and it wasn't letting up. We still had more than 3 hours to go until we reached camp and I was soaked and miserable. It was one of those days when I really wanted to give up and quit.

Thank God, I’ve never planned my death or attempted it, but just coming to the point of thinking there is no way out except to die, is scary enough!  That thought has been the primary motivator for me to do something about my situation.  To ask for help.

Though sometimes I feel like poor Nicky lying in a creek submerged in water with far too heavy of burdens weighing me down and my “help” whipping  and yanking and yelling, trying to get me on my feet again.  Help doesn’t always feel like help.

What is the thing that ends up getting me back on my feet again?  Well, it’s been a combination of things from the support and prayers of family and friends, sometimes medication, sometimes sleep or an escape, sometimes counseling.  Ultimately, it’s HOPE.  Hope starts shimmering through the darkness.  Without hope there is no reason to get back on my feet again.

A picture I took (a few minutes after the previous one) on a day when it rained and poured and I was soaked, miserable and we still had 3 hours back to camp and I just didn't know if I would make it. And then I looked up and saw this rainbow and it gave me HOPE! I found I could endure the next onslaught of rain.

What do I hope in?  Well I come to the point that Jeremiah, the great prophet to Israel during their exile to Babylon, did.  He witnessed and endured the fall of Jerusalem—the intense suffering and carnage that happened, from cannibalism to slaying of innocent children, rape and murder—the worst things that can happen to body and spirit, to person and nation.  Called the weeping prophet for good reason, Jeremiah remembers the bleakness that covered him, the anguish of that time he experienced, “I gave up on life altogether.  I’ve forgotten what the good life is like.  I said to myself, ‘This is it.  I’m finished.  God is a lost cause.’  I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness, the taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed.  I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—the feeling of hitting bottom.  But there’s one other thing I remember, and remembering, I keep a grip on HOPE:  God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, His merciful love couldn’t have dried up.  They’re created new every morning.  How great is Your faithfulness!  I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).  He’s ALL I’VE GOT LEFT.”*

I’ve learned, that despite all the bad things, the suffering, the darkness, that my HOPE is in God.  It’s the same conclusion that Jeremiah came to and he advises,  “It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God.  It’s a good thing when you are young to stick it out through the hard times.  When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself.  Enter the silence.  Bow in prayer.  Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear.  Don’t run from trouble.  Take it full face.  The ‘worst’ is never the worst.  Why?  Because the Master won’t ever walk out and fail to return.  If he works severely, he also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.”**

Hope creeps in through the blackness

When I find that HOPE starting to creep into the blackness, I’ve learned to fall on my knees in worship and prayer to my God, as King David did.  King David of the Israelites also dealt with severe depression throughout his life and if you read his Psalms you will recognize it clearly.  Yet David learned to turn to his HOPE, his ever present HELP in those dark times, as he states in Psalm 42:5 “Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?  Why are you crying the blues?  Fix my eyes on God—soon I’ll be praising again.  He puts a smile on my face.  He’s my God.  When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse everything I know of you”

Worship and prayer are key in expanding on the hope I find, yet sometimes they are the hardest things to do when I am laying in the water, weighed down by burdens too heavy to stand up with.

All I can say is HOPE does come when I wait for it.  I just can’t give up.  The ‘worst’ is never the worst!  My advise is: take the help that is being offered.  Know that God is ever present, even in the darkest of times. It’s a promise we can depend on.

“If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, He’ll help you catch your breath.” Ps 34:18

I’ve come to hang onto these verses, as reminders of what to do when I’m in those dark places:

“Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders—he’ll carry your load, he’ll help you out.” Psalm 55:22  Call out to God, PRAY—let Him know everything; all that is troubling me.

“Worship God if you want the best; worship opens the doors to all His goodness.”  Psalm 34:9 WORSHIP, praise God and remind myself of His Greatness and goodness to me, past and present.

“I’m hurt and in pain, Give me space for healing, and mountain air.” Psalm 69:29  Find SPACE to heal—which for me is often in the wilderness, away from whatever is overwhelming me.

Mountains always rejuvenate my soul!

So, please, if you take anything from this story, or these verses, remember that there is HOPE!  Fix your eyes on Jesus!  Take the HELP offered you, when you need it.  You don’t have to be like poor old Nicky.  Life will always come around if you give it a chance and stick it out.

Nicky didn’t die that day.  Terry did manage to get him out of the creek and on his feet again—though it took him over an hour.  The horse then had to carry his saturated, very heavy pack all the way to camp, but he survived his little “suicide attempt” though he didn’t look too happy about it.

(And my sleeping bag was soaked, but thankfully it was July in the Yukon and one of the few really HOT days we had that year.  The sun stayed up long and hot enough to dry out my sleeping bag before bedtime.  Just in case you were worried.) 

What happened to Nicky?  I do remember he wasn’t used much the rest of the year and  stayed in his grumpy, useless state.  I heard he died the next year, but I don’t think it was suicide.

*Lamentations 3: 18-24 (The Message)

** Lamentations 3:26-32 (The Message)

I have.  I was cooking for an outfit east of Atlin, BC for a season.  It was my first summer, as I mentioned in my previous post “Jingling on on Old Blaze” and I was asked to do a number of things that put me way out of my comfort zone.

This time we were camped at an old tent camp halfway between two hunting cabins—one on the south end of big Trout Lake and one on the high mountain Lincoln Lake.  It was also the midpoint between two really tough stretches of trail, but hadn’t been used for many years as there wasn’t much grass for the horses to graze on.  We decided to use it for a few days because we were on a hunt for stone sheep with two hunters from California and it put us in close proximity to a promising cliff with sheep that we’d spotted earlier in July.

Al and Clint with a hunter setting up a stalk on a stone sheep across the valley

Al, the outfitter, and Clint, his son, were guiding.  I joined them for the first day of hunting from the midpoint camp.  We rode the horses through the swampy valley bottom then took a steep climb up into a high valley.  The guys pulled a stalk on a ram that day, but decided after watching it for a long time from 80 yards, that the curl of his horns was just short of being a full curl and they couldn’t determine 8 distinct rings. (In BC, male Stone’s sheep can be legally hunted if their horns curl past the bridge of the nose “full curl” or if the sheep is at least 8 yrs old, determined by counting horn annuli.)  They returned to camp in high spirits, thrilled at getting so close on their first day.  Al decided to pull up camp and head onto Lincoln Lake, and do some hunting from another angle.

So he asked me if I could get to Lincoln Lake by myself with the pack horses as he wanted to hunt with his hunter on the way over.  I had never been there yet.  He said it was easy.  Just go and follow the trail along the bottom of the valley we were in until I hit the same steep climb we’d done earlier into the high valley.  Then he said the trail sort of disappeared in the tundra, but to stay to one side of the mountain because there was some rough stuff in the bottom and then I had to find this exact knob to come down on and cross over the valley to the other side and then pick up a trail there and stay above the river because it got nasty for horses.  Then I had to find just the right spot to ford the horses over the river because it was super rocky and fast and had steep sides, so if I missed that spot, I would be in a pickle.  After that, it was supposed to be a breeze.  I just needed to pick up the trail and stay to the one side of the valley until I saw the lake and then followed along the west side of the lake until I hit the cabin.

Horses taking a break while out on sheep hunt

I wasn’t sure, it didn’t sound super easy, with all the admonishments to stay on this side or that, or to find JUST THE RIGHT SPOT to cross here or there.  However we couldn’t think of any other way to do it.  Al asked Greg what he thought over the SAT phone and he said, “Take Blaze.”  The infamous Old Blaze I had jingled on a few weeks prior in a crazy mad dash for camp. “He knows the way, he’s done it a million times, he can do it blind.  He’ll take you there.”

Okay, I had learned my lesson about listening to Greg, and if he said Blaze could do it, I guess I could too.  So I agreed to head on to Lincoln Lake by myself while the guys hunted their way over.

We broke camp the following morning and packed the horses.  I didn’t have the greatest string of pack horses with me.  Actually, I had some of the worst of our herd.  Big Burt, a yellow buckskin was one I was still training and he was a bit anxious in mud.  Buckles, a zebra dun mare, was the worst packer we had, she usually managed to buck a pack off every trip.  If her pack wasn’t perfectly balanced she took offense quickly and rid herself eagerly of the weight.  Spirit, was a weenie and liked to pull back.  Bandit, was usually my good lead horse, but I packed him this time, he was slow and methodical and didn’t like to be behind in the string.  He had a mean streak as well, so it was better to be on top of him leading, keeping him too busy to kick the other horses. Thankfully I had Magnum, a huge Belgium cross, and Bell, a big black mare, that were both excellent packers, despite their quirks on the ground.  (Bell was a biter and a kicker and Magnum hated to be left alone, driving you mad with his frantic high pitch whinnies if he was kept back in camp as a jingle horse).

After we finished packing the horses the guys left camp and proceeded to tie the pack horses on to my piggin’ string and then to the next horse in line’s piggin’ string until I had all 6 horses strung out in a line behind Blaze. 

Parts of a basic Western Saddle

(NOTE: A piggin’ string in the fashion we used was a piece of thin yellow rope that was tied to either side of a saddle’s, or pack saddle’s front rigging dee ring, under the fenders, and came together in a small loop just past the saddle’s skirt. There we tied 4 loops of baler twine, that hung just as far as the horse’s rump, and then tied a lead rope to 2 of those loops.  It created a strong enough hold for the horse next in line to be led along, but if he got his head around a tree or jerked back strong enough it would break away and I would have to get down and re-tie the lead to the remaining 2 loops of baler twine.  I always carried spare baler twine in my saddle bags for when I used up all 4 loops.)

I quickly mounted up and pointed Blaze in the direction I wanted to go.  “Lead the way Blaze.”

Since I had been on this first part of the trail I had a little bit of an idea of where we needed to go.  However Blaze had an idea of where he wanted to go and there was a bit of miscommunication between the two of us.  Before I knew it, I had my pack string in a tangle and I was frustrated.  It was swampy and tight with big spruce trees and willow brush and I soon ran into deep muck holes that threatened to send Burt into a panic.  Blaze was impatient and kept jerking the reins as he tried to get us out of one mess and promptly sent us into another.  I had to get down a few times and retie my pack string as they popped their break-aways or got tangled up in branches.  Then there was trees down that we had to maneuver around, sending us back into another muck hole.

Part of the High Valley I rode through on my ride to Lincoln Lake. The valley floor here was pure swamp, later on it got rocky.

You may be wondering why there wasn’t a clear trail to follow from the previous day.  Well we had zigzagged our way through the swamp and had to turn around and find a new way many times that day.  So there wasn’t really a trail to follow.  Just a mess of muskeg and fallen trees and dead ends.  It was miserable and I was feeling desperate and as anxious as my pack horses with their rolling eyes and snorting nostrils.  Finally Blaze managed to get us on track and we found the blazed trail leading up the steep cliff into the high valley.  I was rather relieved, but that relief was short lived.

Once we hit the high valley the trail started out good and clear, but disappeared.  I literally had to trust Blaze to pick his way through the rocks and tundra along the side of the mountain, praying he knew when to cross over.  It looked dangerous.  The bottom of the valley at the beginning was pure swamp and further on, was littered with huge rocks from avalanches that looked formidable.  We were cruising along as only a Tennessee Walker X can, with the pack horses almost jogging to keep up, when I became convinced we were far past the point Al had told me to look out for.  I tried to turn Blaze, but he was stubborn and I finally just let him have his way and prayed we wouldn’t have to double back.  Suddenly he turned off onto an imperceptible trail and we descended down into the valley between high jagged boulders, across a shallow creek and up the steep creek bank.  We made it to the other side of the valley, winding our way between boulders and pockets of willows.  The creek below us started getting bigger and faster as we traveled along it, until it was a gushing torrent between high steep banks.

Marble Dome on the East side of Lincoln Lake

There was no trail that I could see in the spongy tundra, but Blaze lowered his nose at a few key points and then found us a way around boulders and through a couple gorges and then came to the edge of the tumbling river.  I let him have his head and he carefully picked his way through the big rocks under the rushing waters.  He stumbled a number of times and I was reminded of his age.  29!  The pack-string stretched taut and I was nervous I would lose it in the middle of the river.  But baler twine has surprising strength when it’s not jerked suddenly, and the string held together.  We made it across and then only had to wind through willow brush that just reached to my stirrups.  Very pleasant compared to the thick stuff we had to ride through in the low valleys.

The trail was clear here and I let Blaze walk out.  Boy could that horse walk!  And smooth, like sittin’ in a rocking chair, it was that comfy.  I gotta say I have a real appreciation for Tennessee Walkers.  My poor pack horses didn’t though, they pretty much jogged the rest of the way to camp.  But I didn’t care so much, as the packs were sittin’ pretty and the faster they moved the less squabbles they had.  Though grumpy Bandit had a rebellious look in his eye that if he could just slow down long enough he’d boot poor Buckles in the chest.  “Ah haa!  Too bad Bandit, no time for foolishness today!”

Lincoln Lake Cabin

Blazed cruised on through the brush and then the incredible cobalt blue of Lincoln Lake came into view, tucked between two tundra covered mountains.  It is a high mountain lake, with no trees rimming it, except at one spot in near the middle, where I figured the cabin to be.  We crossed the river again—it is wide and shallow at the mouth of the lake—and we rose up on a sandy trail that ran alongside the lake.

Blaze brought us “home” in three hard-riding hours, rather than the customary four it takes with a different lead horse.  And Buckles never had a chance to buck off her pack, for the first time I’d ever had her on a trip!  Such a success!  It was exhilarating!

For me, whenever I think of how Blaze guided me through that mountain pass and the valley and rivers, I think of how Jesus gave his followers the Holy Spirit as a counselor or guide.  Sometimes, I approach life like I need to get from A to B and I feel like I just don’t know how.  I’ve never been there, I don’t have a “map” and I don’t have anyone who speaks my language to show me the way and I just want to stay where it’s safe in my comfort zone.  But then I remember that because I follow Jesus, I have the Holy Spirit to help me navigate through the mountains and valleys of life.  Well, He’s kinda like Blaze was, under me, moving me along.  I just have to TRUST Him.  He knows the way even if I can’t see it.

Lincoln Lake Camp, with horses out on hobbles

When I first step out of my comfort zone, it’s hard getting used to not really having control.  I know I keep trying to take the “reins” back, trying to find my own path where it looks good.  However, once I learn to just BE.  To be still and let the One who knows the way take control, the ride is so much more enjoyable, and far less nerve-wracking! Furthermore, it’s far easier to relinquish control to someone I know and trust.  So it’s imperative for me to spend time getting to know Jesus and what He’s all about, because when I do, I start to see He has my best interests at heart. As I begin to grasp this concept, I am starting to TRUST Him even when I can’t see the way forward.

I really like the promise God gave to Isaiah to pass on to the Israelites (I’m adopting it for myself): “But I’ll take the hand of those who don’t know the way, who can’t see where they’re going. I’ll be a personal guide to them, directing them through unknown country. I’ll be right there to show them what roads to take, make sure they don’t fall into the ditch. These are the things I’ll be doing for them— sticking with them, not leaving them for a minute.”  Isaiah 42:16 The Message

Old Blaze resting in the foreground at Lincoln Lake Cabin. Bell, the big black pack mare standing to the right

Jesus also promised His followers a gift: “But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won’t draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said.”

So as a follower of Christ, when I get up each morning, I need to remember that I am not left alone to navigate life by myself, but that I have help.  Help, that will take me by the hand and guide me through the unknown and bring me home to safety!  The “ride” of life can be a little scary and a little frustrating, and a little daunting, but as I get used to letting go of control and trusting the One guiding me, it is becoming a little more peaceful, and a little more exciting and a little more beautiful the further I head out of my comfort zone.

Marble Dome, across from the cabin we stayed at on Lincoln Lake

My trusty ax and knives I used while I wrangled in the Yukon

Terry patiently taught me how to position the chunk of wood on another larger log and look for cracks extending from the bark to the dense core.  Then I would aim the sharp edge of my ax for that crack and hopefully successfully split the log in half.  Easy enough if the wood was dry and small in diameter.  Not so easy if it was massive and a bit soggy from the pervasive damp of the Yukon.  My only hope with my little ax was to sink it in firmly and raise the log and ax above my head and bring it down on it’s butt using the weight of the log to split itself.  Sometimes I had to do this little routine many times before  a stubborn piece of wood would split.  Adding a little hop jump at the end for emphasis always seemed to help.

Some of the log rounds I was required to split up into itty-bitty pieces of kindling for the cook stove were bigger than I could wrap my arms around and in no way could lift off the ground.  I remember one time in particular wacking away at a log that big.  There were no cracks in this log.  It was dense and solid.  I’d sink my ax into it with a disheartening thud and then have to spend the next few minutes trying to wrench and lever it out.  With a creak and groan the wood obstinately gave up my ax for another try.  The frustrating part of all this was that there were 3 very big guys sitting on the porch of the cabin yelling out catty comments.  Something about how I swung like a girl.  Of course I did!  I AM a girl and weighed about 50-100 some odd pounds less than them!!  No matter how strong I got, I could never get as strong as them.  I had to use brains and ingenuity to make up for my lack of power in areas that required brute strength.  AND they never told me that there was such things as splitting mauls and wedges to accomplish a job like this one! 

Eventually the guys realized that I wasn’t getting anywhere and there would be no wood for supper, so Don came to my rescue, fired up the chainsaw and kindly sawed the log into fours so I could hack away at the quarters and mince them into kindling sized pieces.  Maybe it was kindness, maybe it was self-preservation, I’ll never know.  But supper did get made that night!

I wasn’t allowed to use the chainsaw as I was also not allowed to use the other guides’ axes.  We had our own equipment and no one shared.  It was a matter of survival.  If you broke your own tool you fixed it or ordered another one on the SAT phone for the next time the plane dropped off supplies.  And the plane often didn’t come in for weeks at a time, so it was imperative to keep our tools in working order at all time.  Our axes were kept to a razor sharp edge at all times.  That was one of the things I learned to do was keep my ax and my Swiss tool, that I carried on my belt, sharp at all times.  Sometimes the guides would help me sharpen my ax or knife as they were far superior in skill in that area. I also had a knife that I carried in my saddle bags for whenever we got an animal down and I had to help with the skinning.  Another of my wrangler duties.

I went out on every hunt, with the exception of a couple of days after I got trampled by a horse, and once, when I nearly froze in a morning blizzard bringing horses in.  Hunting days usually followed a routine somewhat like this:

4AM-ish wake up, get dressed, walk out from camp to track horses, un-hobble and run them in.  If I was lucky I caught a horse and rode in bareback, most times I just ran.

530AM-ish Tie up horses for the day and saddle them.  Gobble down breakfast.  Load up backpack with gear.

6AM-ish leave camp scouting for game with guide and hunter

1030AM-ish If we haven’t spotted game or aren’t pulling a stalk, make small camp fire (ax comes in handy) and have a pot of tea. (easy and less messy than coffee)  Yep those were good times.  I was supposed to help with the glassing (looking for game with binoculars) but I perfected the method of sleeping with my binoculars in front of my face.  After a while I just gave up and curled up in a tuft of tundra and slept.

Jake having a morning Tea Break with hunter John

Afternoon – Again if we haven’t spotted game or aren’t on a stalk, we would eat lunch, maybe light another fire if it was chilly and spend hours glassing or riding to another spot.

Snack on chocolate bars or open a can of fruit as we rode (or walked, I walked a lot because I was always cold).  I ate a chocolate bar or two a day.  Loved it!  Can’t do that now.  I don’t exercise quite as much.

Twilight- if we haven’t got an animal head back for camp.  Chop wood, haul water, Guide cooks supper, eat, make lunches for next day.  Sleep.  Oh Sweet sweet sleep!  And start all over a few hours later.

BUT if we got an animal it changed the game plan.  Then we had to gut the animal and take it’s horns (if they were too big like moose horns or caribou we would set them apart from the meat while we would head back to camp and get pack horses to come load up the animal.  Sometimes that was a two day job as the animal was downed maybe 6 hours of riding from camp.)

Guide Floyd skinning a mountain caribou

Then I would help skin the animals and take the cape and quarter the animal to load into pack boxes.  Sometimes we had to cut the quarters into smaller chunks because there was too much meat to load on the horses.  Usually a pack box could weigh 90-150 pounds and a horse carried two, plus often a top pack of the horns or cape.  That was where brute strength came in as I had to lift a loaded pack box onto the side of a horse and hold it steady and balanced while I looped the ropes and pulled it tight at the same time the guide was working on the other side.  Then I worked with the guide as a team throwing a diamond hitch around both boxes to secure it tight.

Sharp knives and axes were essential.

We had to chop trees down to butcher the moose.

Often we had to cut trees down so we could butcher the animal or get the horses close to it.  Knives were kept at razor sharpness and often had to be sharpened on the spot as we butchered the animal.  Fat dulls knives quick!

Back in camp it was my job to help “flesh” the cape and then rub salt into it to help preserve it until we could have it flown

Jake cleaning up an elk cape, Alberta

out to the taxidermist in town.  I had to scrape the underside of the skin of any meat so it wouldn’t rot.  Then while the guide did the detailed work of fleshing the cape off the skull and then  around the ears, eyes, mouth and horns, I would take the skull and have to clean the meat off it and pull the brains out.  Dirty, messy job.  But rather fascinating.  Like getting a hands on biology lesson, I got to learn fascinating facts about animals.  Like how a bears skull is a third the size of it’s head when it has

Cleaned Bear Skulls, BC

fur on it and it’s brain hole is so small I needed a straw to suck it’s brains out.  (Just kidding, the guides wanted me to do that, but I had gained enough “balls” to tell them off at that point).  Also when the guide would cape out the paws of a bear it looked just like human hands and feet lying on the ground, except where our hands form into nails, theirs turned into claws.  A mountain goats hooves are very squishy and almost suction cup-like on the bottom and their ribs are extremely sprung (very round almost barrel shaped).  Wolves just stink.  It’s a stink that you can’t seem to get off your hands.

Sitting in a moose horn rocking chair

Alaska-Yukon Moose are incredibly large animals and it amazes me how silent they are in the forest.  Like dark ghosts.  One minute they are there and then they are not.  Their horns are incredibly huge.  I could sit in one side of them like an arm chair.  And caribou fur is so soft and warm.  The hairs are hollow trapping air to create warmth but it crushes easily.

Salted Caribou Cape drying in the foreground at the Hyland Lake Cabin

Anyways, back on topic.  Axes and knives are an essential tool in the bush.  When the guide was cape-ing an animal he had to be very precise and steady.  Like a surgeon.  He used scalpels or knives honed to a scalpel’s edge.  SHARP!  He didn’t want to make a hole in the cape.  A mistake could cost hundreds of dollars to fix.  A hunter paid a lot of money for his trophies and it was his guide’s responsibility to produce a fine cape for him.  So he refined his skills and he kept his knife sharp at all times.  The guides I worked with were first rate, some of the best I’ve had the privilege of working with over the years and they took their job very seriously.

I was reminded of this when I was reading Hebrews 4:12 in the Message “His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey.  Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word.  We can’t get away from it no matter what.”

I recalled the times I had to use my knife like a scalpel, with finesse and precision, and the times I had to use my ax with brute strength to split wood.  The difference to me is obvious—Surgeon’s tools heal but an ax splits things apart.  I need to make sure I use the Word of God like a scalpel rather than an ax, with precision and not blunt force.   I think many people in history or in our day have used Scriptures bluntly with little thought or consideration to who they are hurting or the things they are splitting apart.  However, there have been great men and women of God who learned to use His Words with great attention and discernment and have brought healing to many people and situations.  It is my desire to have God teach me how to use His words to bring healing to those in my life.  To be meticulous in learning the character of Christ.  To let the words I speak be ones that build others up, not tear them down.

“Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won’t be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple.  Stay clear of pious talk that is only talk.  Words are not mere words, you know.  If they’re not backed by a godly life, they accumulate as poison in the soul.” 2 Timothy 2:15 (the Message)

Guide Joel glassing for Dall Sheep

Along the Pole Creek trail

Short and sweet. Challenging enough to be an adventure. Far enough away to see some spectacular country. Long enough to be missed. Hard enough to tire my body (though no, still nothing like a day of digging…).Exciting enough to wet my lips for more…

A gentle stretch on a quiet morning

I stayed in our big back yard, as we call it. For those familiar with the area, the route headed up West Lost trail, up over and down into the Pole Creek drainage.  Then on into the Weminuche Wilderness at Starvation Gulch, perhaps the most beautiful place I know of… so far… From there, up to the ridge above Beartown, along the trail into West Ute, down the Utes… and home.  On a map, a distance of only about forty miles. You could cover this in a day horseback if all you’re doing is riding, and far more distance if you’re on anything motorized. But the camping and packing, I suppose that was the challenging part.  Especially alone. These are the chores we are used to sharing.  Setting up and breaking down tent and tarp and gear, tending horses, gathering firewood and water, cleaning up to leave no trace… and lifting all on the big horse….made me long for a little mule! I found myself in a sweat before even climbing in the saddle.  Riding was more relaxing.  Though being there, building a little home for the night alone in the wilds with the only sounds as I finally would crawl into the tent at night would be the rushing of the creek, the bugling of the bull elk oh-so-close, the rustling of mice or other little critters outside the tent, and the occasional gentle sigh and shifting of the horses in the trees beside the tent, tired and relaxed and content to be by the safety of their two legged companion.

In Starvation Gulch

Being alone along the trail in the wide open country of the world above tree line.  You can talk all you want to the horses and no one will hear you.  You can see forever.  You can feel as though your horse has wings as you reach the pass and open up a brand new horizon before you. Breathtaking! You can look back and see the ominous clouds building and chasing you and hope you can get your slicker on in time, or your tent up against the wind.  You look out of your tent and hope the horses are still there. Walking home is not a comfortable option in boots and levis and chaps.  And the chance of someone else coming along to “rescue” you isn’t a likely option.  I ran into one person on the first day, and a couple on the last.  All were somewhat surprised to see… a woman.  Alone with her horses.  I hope I showed them what I learned myself.  It can be done.

the trail on the top of my world

And now I think of where else I can go… Will we ever stop longing for more?

The trail heads up and up and up

And the trail down the other side...

Far from home: Yesterday, my horses on top of the mountain.

Today a tin cup sky hangs heavy over the mountain, leaden and weighty and every shade of grey, pouring forth its burden of rain and hail.  In the high country, I imagine this would be snow.  But me, I am safe and warm.  I sit by the woodstove, with my husband at my side and dog by my feet.  I am home.

Sometimes, just sometimes, we make rash decisions… and they prove to be good ones. 

Yesterday afternoon I sat by the camp I had just set up, with my horses grazing on lush tall grass nearby. It was a camp I had been to many times, only a few hours into the Wilderness from home. The adventure was over.  The challenge, the newness, the unexpected was over.  It was, almost, comfortable.

The panniers were unloaded, tent set up, firewood gathered.  I sat on a log by the little fire pit and was getting ready to start a small flame.  It was early still, about a quarter to four.  This is the time I had arrived at a camp site the past two evenings after a long day on the trail, still awaiting the work of tending the horses and setting camp in a new location, a new home for the night for me and my two four legged companions.  Ah… so now I had a long evening of free time ahead of me.  Vacation?  That’s not why I was there.  Adventure.  A challenge.  To prove to myself I could do it.  To push myself and find what matters most to me.

Free time is not what matters most. 

My husband?  Yes. A partner who allows and supports one to bloom and grow and at times fly free only to welcome your return with open arms. 

My son?  Oh yes!  And Forrest was to be heading out to hunting camp before my scheduled return.  A last minute decision, a chance to work for a friend and outfitter, Forrest was pleased with the opportunity, but displeased with the timing that he’d have to head out without a chance to see me first… This complication meant that with my planned Thursday return home, Friday I’d have saddle up and ride horseback another five hours out to hunting camp and back just for a brief occasion to see my son. Of course I would do it, but there’s work to do on the ranch… another day off?

So what is important to me?  My boys.  My animals.  Nature. Wild things. My independence.  And finding the balance that works best to juggle it all.  Making compromises at times and being willing to push myself beyond my comfort level at other times in order to best achieve this precarious balance. It doesn’t always work.  But I have to try.  And so… this leads me to that part about rash decisions…

As I sat there staring far away into the still unlit fire, I decided to pack it all up and hit the trail home.  If I took down camp, packed back up, resaddled,  rode fast enough along the nine miles of Wilderness trail, and if all actually went well, I’d be home before it was pitch black.

And so it was. With just a little light left in the sky, me and my horses crossed the mighty Rio Grande, climbed back up the bluff on our ranch and returned home. 

My boys were reminded of how important they are to me.  My dog was relieved to have me back by his side (May I add here that, for me, camping without a canine companion is just not right!).  My horses were grateful to be back on their home turf with their herd.  And me, well, I had my adventure. I learned what I needed to learn.  I saw such beauty (I can’t wait to share a part of that with you next).  And I got the feeling, or perhaps the reminder, that we really can do almost anything we want.  We are strong in body and mind. We learn to move ourselves forward with whatever we have, what ever our strengths and overcome weaknesses may be. We may get tired and sore, but we can push ourselves and get there.  Where ever “there” may be.  Even if its home…

Most important, I suppose, in this short but rather special solo journey, I reminded myself of something that’s always been essential to me: I don’t want a list. I want a life. 

My horses grazing after a long days ride at the most beautiful home away from home I know: Starvation Gulch

Keeping it small and simple: a morning in front of the camp fire at ditch camp

As Forrest’s poem yesterday reminded us, the campfire is much more than a back country staple, a part of camping and being in the back woods that is not only often necessary for survival, providing basics like comfort and cooking, but there is something much deeper there. I may not have the words to express it as well as Forrest did, but you all probably know what it feels like, what it is.  You can’t sit before a camp fire without staring in, staring beyond, going somewhere far away in mind and soul…  It happens every time.  It mesmerizes the observer more powerfully than a TV. And mind you, that’s said by me, someone who hasn’t had TV in 20-something years because of that:  I turn into a zombie before the screen.  Conversation, thought and free will are instantly zapped!

But zoning out before the fire, I allow myself.  My thoughts don’t evaporate, but rather, become enriched by the dancing of the flames…

I suppose any fire will do this.  We’ve all been known to stare mesmerized at the flames in a fire place or open wood stove.  But it’s different, it’s somehow more, when you’re out under the stars, in the cold night air, or bundled up at first light with the pot of coffee boiling away…

Of course at times, a fire can even be done without, and should be done without. We’ve camped during fire bans and in locations that fires are restricted because of over use.  Going without is easy.  We cook over a small propane stove, and turn in early.  And yet, I miss the camp fire during those times.

Camping in the Wilderness as we so often do, Leave No Trace ethics are a staple.  This is an easy theory and practice that is simply summed up by being responsible and cleaning up after yourself.  Keep things small.  Small is easier to clean up afterwards, anyway. 

There is a good amount of information on the internet and in any camping/outdoor shop on LNT ethics. I have a post on my horse blog which covers many details (please click HERE to view). But today I just wanted to reiterate the “how to” of campfire building.  My concern was raised after spending a good deal of time on our various back country trips scattering newly built fire rings, and even putting out fires that were left hot. Cleaning up for other folks so that the next people by will feel like the wilderness is really wild.

The basic how-to of responsible back country campfires is simple. If there is a designated fire ring, use it.  Otherwise, don’t build one.  Fire rings lined with big rocks are completely unnecessary.  If you do build one, clean it when you’re done by scattering the cool rocks. 

To make a fire pit, dig out the top soil, stash it under a near by tree.  We use a small camp shovel and dig a pit about 12 x 24 inches, and probably 6-8 inches deep. This is more than large enough for us to cook all our meals on, and enjoy the warmth and beauty.  We use a portable camp fire grate which we can set up over the fire on which we put our pots and pans. When you’re done with your fire and are certain the coals are dead out (you should be able to stick your hand in there – if you’re concerned, pour on more water and stir up the ashes), put the top soil back on top and naturalize the site again.  I returned to the site where we camped last year.  After 24 days of camping and cooking, the location where our fire pit was is barely visible. 

Leave No Trace is a no brainer.  A ring of rocks is a big trace.  Who needs to see it?  Any indication of the next person seeing where the last person camped is not only unnecessary, but it’s rude. By seeing the number of huge fire pits left behind, I’d guess some folks just don’t think about the impact their actions might have on the next person.  Here’s a good, but unfortunate, example.  A group spent just one week earlier this month camped at a site Bob’s family, as well as innumerable back packers, horse packers, and hunters, have camped in for nearly half a century.  In this one week, a huge fire pit was not only built, but left, hot coals and all.  This is the photo we took after already spending time scattering the big rocks they had used for decoration. 

what NOT to do for a campfire

In just one week, the land is scarred for decade… Think about it.

The Rio Grande Pyramid on a stormy evening

As we worked late into the afternoon up at the ditch on a section that crosses a Forest Service trail, a part of the Continental Divide Trail, we had the rare pleasure of meeting people so far and away up there as we were, a couple of backpackers in the middle of their journey up the CDT, part way through their latest 110 mile section of high mountain hiking. I love to stop to talk to folks on the trail, if they have the time and breath (air really is an issue up here in the elevation!) to talk.  Usually I’m horseback, and do my best to hold up my horse and pack string long enough to share a kind word with the strangers we pass.  I tell the boys we are “Ambassadors of the Sport” on the trail.  Everyone is, really.  And for whatever your sport… Forrest rides a dirt bike.  He’s now stopping on the trail, killing his motor, taking off his helmet, and introducing himself to people he passes.  Don’t you wish everyone would do that?  All we can do is start with ourselves.

Back to those backpackers… So, the sun is setting, just north of the Rio Grande Pyramid and La Ventana.  The open field before us is aglow with the last light of the day and the mountain ahead looms majestic and impressive, already appearing as a silhouette towering over the field of softly swaying summer grass.  A nice view, to sum it all up.

I ask the backpackers, in all their journeys, where has been the most beautiful place?  A wise young man, he answers that he has seen such beauty everywhere, in every place he has travelled to.  He has seen it, he has found it, he has looked.  All so different, all so special, all with its memories and attachments and stories which bring it all back to him and make it “his” in a way, but keeps him open to knowing that such beauty is not a fleeting site, but around every bend. Everywhere. Look for it.  It’s there.  In the deserts of New Mexico from where he had just completed hiking, to the high lush land before him in southern Colorado; and all the way up the rough and wild lands of Alaska and British Columbia.  There is beauty everywhere, he said. He is right. He told me how in all his travels, the people he meets all find the land they live in to be the most beautiful. And I wonder as I look at the magnificence before me how right he is.

We smiled at the brief touching of each others lives, sharing of our stories brief but true.  He turned to watch me resume work, lifting my shovel up here in our awe inspiring mountain, so far from anyone else except my boys working right here beside me.  And I watched as he and his friend got smaller and smaller as they crossed the open meadow and disappeared into the shadow of the mountain before us.

wild iris blooming under the aspen trees

(Off to Ditch Camp… see you all Thursday evening or Friday morning!  Hope each and every one of you have a good week.)

horses on pasture above the reservoir on another rainy day

I have not shared any of our back woods/survival skills as of late.  In spring time, we’re lucky to sneak off the ranch for a quick walk.  The back woods, and high country, seem at times out of touch for the season.

But the season is about to change… summer’s about to begin, though the weather tells us perhaps it came and went without us knowing it.  Today, we’re ready to head for the hills.

In case we’re not far enough away from it all here, the three of us, with dog and horses, head up higher for work when we can.  We dig ditch in the Wilderness.  For those of you who know what we do, you’re chuckling and rolling your eyes knowing how odd we may truly be for actually loving this job.  For those who have no idea what I’m talking about… I think I’ll keep you on pins and needles until we return and share it all with you then. 

In the meanwhile, back to the survival skill tip I wanted to share.  It’s about fire, among the most precious of survival tools up here.  And it uses hand sanitizer wipes – little individually wrapped packages of towelettes soaked in hand sanitizer.  Forrest and Bob shared with me the trick they recently learned that for an emergency fire starter, hand sanitizer gel, just a squirt, works great.  Of course you’ll need matches (preferably the waterproof/strike anywhere sort) as well.  More often than not, most of us seem to be carrying that hand sanitizer gel with us any way. Try it out. It works.  And remember to use it to build a safe, warming fire should you be stranded and chilled.

Well, I have these packages of individually wrapped towelettes of hand sanitizer – a big box of them that my mom found at Sam’s Club for me a couple years ago – even easier to carry around that a bottle.  Rather than packing the gel, I usually pack a little package.  I can fit one easily into the pocket of any jacket or jeans. So, I tried these out to see if they’d burn well too, and sure enough, these turned out to be the ultimate of fire starter/tinder.  They burned even and slow and for long enough one should be able to get some small kindling burning on top and a good warming fire going in no time.

Of course, the biggest thing to remember here is to be prepared, and not to leave home without them and your waterproof strike anywhere matches.  The elements can get you very quick up here.  You need to be quicker.

Anyway, friends, I’ll be gone until Thursday night.  In any emergency, Beka is here at the ranch checking my e-mail (and about a zillion other things for us). Otherwise, I’ll look forward to hearing from you and writing when I get home. Bet I’ll have a lot to share, so check in Friday morning!

http://picasaweb.google.com/sierracrest/BlackKaweahSouthwestFace

Ken did the ascent earlier in 2007
For reference for any of you wanting to do the climb here are our estimate of distances, elevation changes via the alitmeter and the times it took us.
Aug 13: 9 hrs, 5900 ft gain, 3160 ft descent, 20+ trail miles w/daypacks to Nine Lakes Basin.
Aug 14: 3 hrs, 1560 ft gain, cross country travel with full packs to high camp below Black Kaweah.
Aug 15: 8 hrs, 4000 ft gain, 4000 ft descent, climb Black Kaweah & then back to Nine Lakes Basin.
Aug 16: 11 hrs, 4400 ft gain, 6400 ft descent, climb Eagle Scout Peak return to camp and hike with full packs about 15 miles from Nine Lakes Basin toward Wolverton.
Aug 17: 2:11 hrs, 800 ft gain, 1570 ft descent, backpack about 5 miles back to Wolverton.