A Fine & Pleasant Misery

by Patrick McManus

  The thought that I might starve to death before getting out of that wilderness occurred to me, and I promptly shot the head off a grouse at about forty yards (a feat that prior to and after that moment has always eluded me), plucked it, dressed it, and stowed it away in the game pocket of my hunting jacket. Squads of deer, like characters out of some Disney film, gazed upon me from all sides, no doubt wondering what kind of strange creature this was crashing frantically through their forest primeval. They went ignored, except when I had to drive them out of my way with shrill and vulgar shouts.

  Eventually I came to a road and flagged down a car by lying down in front of it. I was relieved to discover that the hunters in it spoke English and that I was still on American soil. An hour later I was seated at a roadhouse downing the first course of what I intended to be a ten-course meal, when my hunting partner burst through the door and started calling for volunteers for a search party. "Who's lost?" I asked.

  "You!" he cried. And then he uttered those words invariably uttered at the resolution of ill-fated rendezvous: "What happened to you?"

  Such was the traumatic nature of my ordeal that I forgot all about the grouse I had shot. Late that night my wife was cleaning out my hunting jacket and thrust her hand into the game pocket to find out what that peculiar bulge was. The resulting scream sent half the people on our block into the street.

  "What," my shaking spouse asked me as I came back in from the street, "is that bird doing in there?"

  "That," I growled, "was provisions, in case I had to spend the winter in those mountains."

  One of the axioms of hunting is that more time is spent hunting for hunting companions than for deer. I always feel that a hunt is successful if just one rendezvous is completed. Whether or not we get any deer is incidental: "How was your hunting trip?"

  "Wonderful! We met where and when we were supposed to one out of nine times."

  "Get any deer?"

  "Didn't see a thing."

  When I was a high school kid I used to hunt with an old man who had truly mastered the art of the rendezvous. He always directed the hunt, which may have been part of his secret.

  "You cut down through that brush there, work your way around the side of the mountain, climb up to the ridge, and circle back to the truck.

  I'll do likewise on the other side, and we'll meet back here in an hour."

  "That's impossible," I would say.

  "Listen, if an old man like me can do it, you can."

  Two hours later I would stagger in, scratched, bruised and torn, and there the Old Man would be, fresh as a daisy, sitting on the tailgate of the truck drinking coffee out of my thermos. More often than not he would have a deer.

  "What took you so long?" he would say.

  The uncanny thing about the Old Man was that no matter when you got back to the truck, even if it was just fifteen minutes after leaving, he would somehow sense your return and with some superhuman effort manage to get back and be waiting for you. But he was always modest about his talent, this sixth sense for keeping a rendezvous.

  "It's nothing, boy," he would say. "It's just a little something' that comes to you with old age."

  Cigars, Logging Trucks, And Know-it-alls

  Awhile back I was asked what I thought were the three greatest threats to a fisherman's wellbeing. Although this is not a question one hears every day, I have over the years given the subject much thought and was able to answer immediately: "Cigars, logging trucks, and know-it-alls."

  My interrogator was somewhat taken aback by this reply, obviously having expected a listing of such standard dangers as bears, bulls, rattlesnakes, rapids, quicksand, dropoffs, etc. Although these are all very real dangers and may frequently threaten premature termination of one's existence, the whole bunch of them together does not equal the potential for destruction compressed into a single small cigar, let alone a logging truck or a know-it-all.

  Twice in the past year alone I have been witness to two unwarranted and unprovoked attacks by a cigar upon innocent anglers. In the first instance the cigar, a small sporty El Puffo, nearly wiped out three fishermen, a dog, and a 1958 pickup truck. It happened like this: My friends Herb and Retch and I and Herb's dog, Rupert, had spent the day fishing a high mountain lake and were headed home, the four of us crowded in the cab, by way of a road that traverses the edge of a one-thousand-foot-deep gorge named, appropriately, Deadman's. Herb usually smokes a pipe, but since he had run out of tobacco Retch had offered him a plastic-tipped cigar.

  Chewing nervously on the cigar, Herb pampered the pickup along the road, the outer wheels nudging rocks into thin air. The silence was broken only by the sound of dripping sweat, an occasional inhalation or exhalation, and the dog Rupert popping his knuckles. Then it happened.

  Forgetting he was smoking a cigar, Herb reached up in the manner of removing a pipe from his mouth and closed his hand over the glowing tip of the El Puffo.

  "Ahhhhaaaiiiigh!" Herb said, grinding his foot down on the gas pedal.

  "Ahhhhaaaiiiigh!" the rest of us said. In an instant six hands and two paws were clamped on the steering wheel. Retch claimed later that he jumped out twice but both times the pickup was so far out in space he had to jump back in. In any case there was about as much activity in that pickup cab as I have ever witnessed before in such cramped quarters. When it was all over and we were safe again, I was driving, Herb and Retch were crouched on the floor, and the dog was smoking the cigar.

  Then there was the time down on the Grande Ronde River when Retch was so startled by a nine-pound steelhead hitting his lure that a lighted cigar stub popped out of his mouth and dropped inside the open top of his waders.

  Naturally a man doesn't turn loose of a nine-pound steelhead just because he has a lighted cigar roaming around inside his waders. He just makes every effort to keep the cigar in constant motion and, if possible, away from any areas particularly susceptible to fire-and-smoke damage.

  Retch knew all this, of course, and managed to land the steelhead in record time. Although his injuries from the cigar were only minor I thought possibly some of the other fishermen nearby might bring charges against him.

  First, there was his use of vile language, but since it was screeched at such a high pitch as to be understood only by members of the canine family and lip-readers who had served at least one hitch in the Marine Corps, I thought it unlikely that much of a case could be made on that count. On the other hand, there was a good chance he might have been convicted of obscene dancing on a trout stream. And finally there was the felonious act of attempting to induce innocent bystanders to laugh themselves to death.

  Cigars are dangerous enough, but logging trucks are a good deal worse.

  Some younger readers, particularly those living in the plains states, may not be familiar with logging trucks, so here is a brief description: the natural habitat of logging trucks is steep, winding, narrow roads situated between high mountain trout streams and the state highway. Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, they are a protected species. They weigh several tons and are in the habit of hauling sections of large trees around on their backs. No one knows why, unless they eat them. The term "logging trucks" is their scientific name; fishermen, however, commonly refer to them as blankety-blank-of-a-blank, as in "Great gosh-a-mighty, Harry, here comes a blankety-blank-of-a-blank!"

  Logging trucks are almost always encountered at the end of a steep, winding stretch of narrow road where the only turnouts are three miles behind your vehicle and ten feet behind the logging truck. To those inexperienced in such matters, the fair and reasonable course of action might seem to be that the logging truck would back up the ten feet to the turnout and let you pass, but that is not the way it works. The rules are that you must back up the three miles, usually at speeds in excess Of 30 mph, while your passengers shout such words of encouragement as, "Watch that washout!" and "Faster! The blankety-blank-of-a-blank is gaining on us!"

  Several years ago I made it to the turnout at the
top of a mountain road just as a logging truck, its timing slightly off, was pulling up for its winding descent of the mountain road, no doubt intending to drive before it a car full of hapless, shouting, fist-shaking fishermen. The logging truck pulled abreast of my car, spat a chaw of tobacco out the window and said, "Shucks, that don't happen very often." I could see the logging truck was disappointed at not catching me ten feet short of the turnout but that was its tough luck.

  Most of my friends and I have become excellent logging truck trackers over the years. You track a logging truck about the same way you track a deer. You get out and look for signs. The droppings from a logging truck consist of branches and twigs from its load of logs and occasionally the front bumper from a late model sedan. Any road with such signs scattered along it may be regarded as a game trail for logging trucks.

  Occasionally there are other signs to be read.

  They say, DANGER--LOGGING TRUCKS. These signs are usually put up by other fishermen in the hope of keeping a good piece of fishing water to themselves. This is a despicable trick, since an angler can ignore such signs only at his peril. As with any other dedicated angler, I am not above putting fresh grizzly claw marks nine feet high on a pine tree alongside a trail to a good mountain lake. But I would never stoop to putting up a logging truck warning sign. That's going a little bit too far.

  Know-it-alls are by far the greatest threat to the well-being of the angler. Your average run-of-the-mill know-it-all can reduce a fisherman to a quivering, babbling wreck with nothing more than a few well-chosen pieces of advice.

  Know-it-alls are sometimes difficult to spot since they come in all sizes, shapes, and sexes. They are all equally dangerous. A trembling little old lady know-it-all can be as lethal as a three-hundred-pound madman with an ax in either hand. Their one distinguishing characteristic is a self-confidence as total as it is sublime.

  Know-it-alls have probably gotten me in more trouble than all the other dangers put together. I recall one time a know-it-all and I were out fishing and decided to hunt for wild mushrooms. We drove up to a grassy meadow and I suggested that we leave the pickup on high ground and walk across the meadow because it looked wet to me.

  "Naw, it ain't wet," the know-it-all said. "You can drive across."

  So I steered the pickup down into the high grass of the meadow. After a bit the wheels started to slip in mud.

  "Hey, it's getting wet," I said. "We better turn back."

  "Naw. It's just a little damp here. You can make it across."

  Then plumes of water started spraying out on both sides of the car.

  "You better speed up a bit going through this puddle," the know-it-all said.

  I speeded up. Pretty soon we were plowing up a sizable wake.

  "Pour on the gas!" shouted the know-it-all. "We're nearly to the other side of the puddle."

  By now I was in a cold sweat. The pickup was bouncing, sliding, and twisting through the high grass and waves of water were crashing across the windshield. Suddenly, the grass parted ahead of us and we shot out into a bright clear expanse of open water.

  Later, dripping with mud and wrath, I paid off the tow truck man back at his gas station.

  One of the hangers-on at the station finally put down his bottle of pop and asked, "How come y'all got so muddy?"

  "Drove his pickup out into the middle of Grass Lake," the tow truck man said.

  "Oh," the other man said.

  Here are some statements that immediately identify the know-it-all: "Hell, that ain't no bull, Charley, and anyway you could outrun it, even if your waders are half full of water."

  "Quicksand? That ain't quicksand! You think I don't know my quicksand?

  Now git on in there and wade across."

  "Course it feels hot. That's a sign they're beginning to dry. See how the steam is risin' off 'em? Now you just keep holding your feet over the fire like that till your boots are good and dry."

  "Ain't no rattlesnakes in these parts."

  "Ain't no logging trucks in these parts."

  "You ever eat any of these little white berries? Taste just like wild hickory nuts."

  "With thin ice what you have to do is just walk real fast so it don't have time to break under you. Now git on out there and let's see how fast you can walk. Faster! Faster! Dang it, didn't I tell you to walk fast?"

  Because of such advice, the know-it-all is now listed as a threatened species. I myself have threatened a large number of them and, on occasion, have even endangered a few.

  But Where's The Park, Papa?

  On one of the doggier of last summer's dog days, my family and I simmered grimly in our own juices as we toiled along--a bit of the flotsam in a sluggish river of traffic. Our rate of speed was somewhere between a creep and an ooze. Heat waves pulsed in a blue sea of exhaust fumes. Blood boiled and nerves twitched. Red-faced, sweating policemen would occasionally appear and gesture angrily at the drivers to speed it up or slow it down. At least one of the drivers felt like gesturing back.

  We were on one of those self-imposed exiles from the amenities of civilized life popularly referred to as vacations. I was in my usual vacation mood, which is something less than festive. My kids were diligently attempting to perfect the art of whining, while my mother expressed her growing concern and disbelief at the sparcity of restrooms along this particular stretch of highway. Whenever the speed of the traffic slowed to the ooze stage, my wife took the opportunity to spoon tranquilizers into my mouth from a cereal bowl, all the while urging me not to enlarge the children's vocabulary too far beyond their years. Mother, in her increasing anxiety, already had them up to about age forty-seven.

  "Hey," one of the kids paused in mid-whine to complain. "You said you was gonna take us to a national park!"

  "Clam up!" I counseled him, drawing upon my vast store of child psychology. "This is a national park!"

  To keep the children amused until we found a park campsite, my wife invented one of those games which start with the idea of increasing the youngsters' awareness of their environment and end with them beating each other with tire irons in the back seat. As I recall, this particular game resulted in a final score of three, six, and eight points. Each kid got one point for every square foot of ground he spotted first that didn't have any litter on it.

  I can recall a time when tourists visiting national parks appeared to be folks indulging themselves in a bit of wholesome outdoor enjoyment.

  Now they seem to have a sense of desperation about them, like people who have fled their homes nine minutes before the arrival of Genghis Khan. Most of them no longer have any hope of seeing unspoiled wilderness, but they have heard rumors that the parks are places where the ground is still unpaved. Of course, if they want to see this ground they have to ask the crowd of people standing on it to jump into the air in unison.

  The individuals I really feel sorry for are the serious practitioners of littering. Some of these poor souls have hauled their litter a thousand miles or more under the impression they would have the opportunity of tossing it out into a pristine wilderness, only to discover that they have been preceded by a vast multitude of casual wrapper-droppers. (The Park Service does make a heroic effort to keep the litter cleared from along the highways but is handicapped because its rotary plows don't work well on paper and beverage bottles.) Since there are many people who get the bends and have to be put into decompression chambers if they get more than thirty minutes from a shopping center, the parks, at least the one we were in, provide the usual cluster of supermarkets and variety stores. Here it was possible to buy plastic animals at a price that suggested they were driven on the hoof all the way from Hong Kong. I refused to buy my youngsters any of these souvenirs. I told them they should find something that was truly representative of the park, and they did. Each of them picked up and brought home a really nice piece of litter.

  I find the rangers to be about the most enjoyable thing in national parks anymore. I always make a point to take my children by th
e ranger station to watch the rangers climb the walls. In recent years the rangers have been going on R-and-R in such places as New York and Los Angeles in order to get away from the crowds and noise and to get a breath of fresh air. By the end of the peak season they have facial twitches so bad they have to wear neck braces to guard against whiplash.

  The park bears aren't what they used to be either. Most of the bears you see along the roads look as if they've spent the past five years squatted in a chair before a television set drinking beer and eating corn chips. Half of them should be in intensive care units. They have forgotten what it is that a bear is supposed to do. If panhandling along the roads were outlawed, they would probably hustle pool for a living. A dose of pure air would drop them like a shot through the heart from a .44 Magnum. Any bear that wanders more than a mile from the road has to carry a scuba tank on his back filled with carbon monoxide. As far as spectacle goes, the bears just don't have it anymore. I'd rather drive my kids across town to watch their uncle Harry nurse a hangover. Now there's a spectacle!