by Pete Fromm
They invited me to go hunting with them on their last day and I accepted. I planned on hunting for food during the winter, and I wanted to see how it was done. I’d shot some grouse so far, and some of the tiny tree squirrels, but I knew elk or deer would be a different game altogether.
The next morning, as I prepared for the hunt, my boss walked through the flap of my tent. As promised, he was making his last checkup before the pass closed. He said it looked as if I’d settled in well. He kidded me about the stack of firewood I’d amassed, saying how I was set for the winter from hell now, that he at least didn’t have to worry about my freezing to death. We walked to the channel and he looked it over and said it looked great, that I’d obviously been doing a fine job. I hadn’t done a single thing at the channel yet but look at it every morning, and I wondered what he was seeing.
We walked back to the tent and he pulled a white wooden box out of the back of his truck. We set it up in the meadow—a weather station I was to keep for the Forest Service. It contained two thermometers, one that stopped at the day’s high temperature, the other at the low. I was to record the temperatures each morning and reset the thermometers. A silver precipitation gauge perched atop the box.
When he’d explained the weather station the warden said he’d try to snowmobile in sometime in mid-December, to see how things were going and to bring in my mail. If I found that I needed anything I could hike down to Magruder and call out to West Fork and they’d get the message to him. Then he got in his truck and left. He hadn’t been in half an hour.
When he was gone I went over to the brothers’ camp and we went hunting, which was really nothing but a slow walk down the trail, looking around. We didn’t see anything, though I shot a grouse on the way home, neatly clipping its head with the bullet. They praised the shot and I couldn’t believe how good that made me feel. Though the shot was one I was getting used to making, I wanted to take it over and over again, while there was someone there to watch.
The snow kept coming harder as we walked back and when we reached their camp they cased their rifles quickly and began to pack. I went to my camp to get out of their way. From inside my darkened tent I listened to their shouts and the banging of their truck doors, and finally the first roar of their engine.
They pulled past my tent on the way out, leaving their truck idling. They gave me a paper sack full of leftover staples and we shook hands all around. They wished me luck and told me to look them up when I got out, that I was always welcome. I nodded, afraid to talk much, and they climbed into the cab of their truck. I could hear the heater blowing full blast. They waved once more and started off.
When they were gone my meadow was completely empty. After looking around it for a few minutes I hopped in my old truck and started downriver, away from the pass. At the end of the road was Paradise, where there was another summer ranger station, this one so small they called it a guard station. Paradise was also the camp for one of the big outfitters back here. Listening to the awful quiet around my tent I realized I hadn’t seen their trucks pull out. I raced through the snow, seeing if I might be in time to talk with them for a while.
When I reached Paradise there were only a few of the guides left and the outfitter. They were loading the last horses and lashing down the last of their tarps. They took quick sips of beer as they worked and when they decided they were ready to roll we all went into the cook tent to have one last drink. There was an old man in the tent, who’d been drinking all along. He was a friend of theirs who’d just driven in for the day.
I’d begun to feel foolish even before they asked what they could do for me, what brought me down to Paradise? I didn’t know these people well, and I didn’t have any reason I could give them.
I had a quick drink with them, but the old man was badly drunk and it was not comfortable in the tent. When they asked what I thought about staying in here all winter I said it seemed all right. These weren’t talkative men, and pretty soon they said they really had to be getting out while the getting was good. They said they’d be back in sometime, in January probably, on snowmobiles, to hunt mountain lion. I’d never heard of that before, but I said, “Good. I’ll see you guys then. Stop on by for a drink.” I didn’t have anything to give them except half shots of weird brandies, but it seemed to be the only social thing to do back here.
While we talked the drunken old man left on his own. I wondered about his driving, but I was in a group of older men, men who knew everything there was to know about this place, men who even knew how to hunt mountain lions—an animal I didn’t even know lived here. So I didn’t say anything but, “See you in the winter,” before climbing back into my truck and driving away, wishing I’d had the strength to never come. I’m sure they saw through to the frightened kid needing company, and I didn’t like that I’d let them do that.
Not a quarter of a mile down the road I saw the old man’s truck upside down in the ditch, saplings crushed and broken all around it. I jumped down and found the old man still inside, sobbing hysterically about the other guy. “Oh my God, he’s dead. I killed him.” I could see a long tear in his blue jeans, revealing nothing but red where I should have been able to see his skin.
Though officially I’d been a lifeguard at Lake Mead, I’d wound up doing all sorts of rescue work, including car wrecks, so I was on familiar ground now. The old man was thrashing around so much I knew his spine wasn’t broken, but as I worked on getting him out he kept crying for me to leave him along. “Leave me here. Get the other guy.” He didn’t have any teeth and he was hard to understand.
I hadn’t known that he’d left with anyone else, but I circled the truck looking for someone pinned underneath, then did a wider pass through the willows. I couldn’t find a trace of another person.
Back at the truck I finally, forcefully, fished him through the window. I started to get tough with him, telling him to be quiet, I needed to look at his leg. He was blubbering now, and I couldn’t understand anything he said. I laughed though, checking his leg, the one I thought had been covered in blood. The red was the red of his union suit, exactly the same color as the one I wore.
I hauled the old guy to the road and drove him back to camp. The others surrounded my truck and grumbled at the old man. I asked about the other guy he was so worried about and they said there was no one else, that’s just the way he got when he drank.
They shoved him in the cab of a truck and said thanks for bringing him back. I asked about the truck in the ditch. They said they’d worry about it in the spring.
With the leftover adrenaline still in my blood I couldn’t believe they treated this all as something to expect. No big deal. But I’d been in the ditch, arguing and struggling with a hysterical, delusional old may who could very easily have been killed, a man they’d let get in his truck without a whisper.
For the first time I saw into these people, these hunters I held in such awe. For the first time I understood there were things I knew much more about than they did. If their friend had been hurt I could have done something. They wouldn’t have even known. They were, after all, just people.
I said goodbye again and drove back down the snow-covered road to my tent. I stayed outside, splitting a little kindling, so I’d be out when the trucks from Paradise drove past. In less than an hour they rumbled by and though I waved, they didn’t stop, or even slow down. They waved back and the guy driving the horse truck honked his horn. I waved again and watched their rigs disappear into the trees at the edge of my clearing, racing the snowstorm that was closing the pass. I stood quietly, my ax dangling from my hand, listening for how long it took the twists of the canyon to silence even the roar of their engines and the banging of their trailers through the rutted road. The sound was gone within a minute and that fast it seemed as if I had been staying in this meadow a lot longer than three weeks. And that canyon seemed a lot narrower and a lot quieter.
The snow covered their tracks before the day was done and soon it was hard to beli
eve I had ever been anything but alone. The snows even took the last of the yellows from the trees and buried them, until it seemed I would have only the sky’s faded winter blue and the green-blacks of the unending ridges of spruce and fir and pine.
That evening I walked through the snow to the salmon, the heavy, wet flakes drifting down windlessly, more quietly than would have seemed possible, muffling the world.
Boone had grown enough that she ranged a little ahead as I performed my nightly duties at the channel, which consisted solely of looking dumbly at the black water flowing over fish I couldn’t see. Snow collected on her back and on my shoulders. The night began to wrap around me and the next six months grew in my head—ranging out ahead of me forever.
6
I’d realized the snow would close the pass. I’d realized it would drive the last of the hunters away. I’d even realized it would close the little bit of road I had for my truck. But, when it kept falling the day after even the outfitters had pulled out, and then the day after that, and after that, I began to realize what else the snow had done. My wood gathering was nearly over.
I bucked up one more tree, but the snow covering the logs soaked me and hid branches that dripped on me while I concentrated on carrying logs. Sidehilling once, carrying the heavy butt end of a tree, I stepped on a branch that pointed downhill. My foot whipped out from under me so fast I fell backward before I quite knew what was happening. I landed flat on my back and the log pile-drived into my chest; I lay there, the paralyzing feeling of being unable to draw the slightest breath swarming through me. I fought to hold back the panic, remembering how many times I’d had the wind knocked out of me playing football as a kid. When I finally began to suck air again, I decided I had enough wood.
Instead of killing time with wood gathering, I began to spend days splitting all the wood piled beside my tent. When even that was done I had a mountain of firewood. I leaned against it, knowing if the snow hadn’t forced me to stop I would have kept at it all winter, my version of a mind-numbing assembly line job.
But I would have had to explain the huge stacks of wood to the wardens, who’d made it clear that wood cutting was a loathsome chore to be gotten over as quickly as possible. I could picture the disbelief in their faces, the way they’d glance at each other and not at me. So maybe I wouldn’t have kept on cutting endlessly. Or maybe I would have. I could have built a solitary bonfire every night, getting rid of the evidence. I pictured how the flames and embers would race into the black sky, reflecting off he dark walls of the canyon. I’d stand alone beside the leaping fire, like some sort of Druid calling on the powers of hell, but really I’d be nothing but a bored kid, killing time without wanting anyone catching me at it.
I pushed myself off the stack of wood, ten rows of it as tall as I was, stretching the full length of my tent, sixteen feet. I went inside and did the math. Over eleven cords. I smiled, feeling I’d accomplished something. They’d said at the worst I’d need ten. I’d beaten that.
I walked outside and looked at the wood again, wondering what there was to do now. I strolled around the meadow. I hadn’t really thought this out. There was no more wood to cut, and I didn’t have anything else to do. Agreeing to come in here, I’d had some sketchy idea of freedom, of having to answer to no one, of being able to do exactly and only what I wanted. Now it seemed that I’d overlooked the simple fact that though I could do anything I wanted, at any time, there really wasn’t anything to do. It was a feeling as panicky as having that log crush the air from my lungs. What if claustrophobia pressed in that hard? What if I just went nuts in here for lack of anything to do?
I hurried to my tent and slipped my little rifle over my shoulder. I’d go hunting. Gather food. I started up Indian Creek, faster than I needed to, plowing snow with my shins, concentrating much harder than was necessary. This was serious business. Hunting was a job I needed to do. With the wood gathering finished I had to be able to convince myself of that.
When I didn’t find any game I practiced with my rifle. Rader had insisted I bring in a huge amount of ammo, thousands of rounds, and I began to plink. I shot down pine cones, clipped the ends off dead twigs, bulls-eyed knotholes. When that got slow I walked to the river and threw sticks into the rapids. I’d shoot as fast as I could at the racing, tossing, twisting sticks. At first water would cannonade into the air around the sticks, but as I continued to practice, the sharp crack of the rifle would slap through the canyon and the stick would only jerk with the impact. My rifle held five shots. Soon I was disappointed if I missed with any of them.
When I was growing up in Milwaukee I used to entertain myself endlessly on walks to and from school by throwing things—snowballs in winter, dirtballs or stones in summer. I’d pick trees or street signs as targets and throw as I walked, imagining hits or near misses on everything from battleships to World Series strike zones. I began to think of bullets as nothing but high-tech snowballs.
If I was actually out hunting I took more and more difficult shots, all part of the game I’d developed to make this more serious, more challenging. A miss could ruin my day. Grouse, the big prize, would routinely duck if I missed, then sit and blink and give me another chance. Marksmanship was not nearly as crucial as I pretended.
The first hints of ice appeared in the channel and I began checking it twice a day, scouring away every last scrap of ice—something to do. Walking back from the channel one evening I saw a grouse perched in a tree near my tent. It was still a long way off, maybe seventy-five yards, and that I spotted him at all was a fluke. But the shapes of my prey were becoming distinctive, something that stood out more quickly than other things.
Instead of moving in slowly, from tree to tree, as I should have, I sat down where I was and aimed and fired, just to make it that much harder. The grouse fluttered down, flapping wildly out of control, a clear sign it’d been hit in the head. In college I’d learned that the brain was a vast controller of functions. Rather than being just an initiator of action, it spent a great deal of time inhibiting random action. A chicken runs around after its head has been chopped off for that reason.
I stood up proudly, just stopping before I turned to no one to say, “Wow, did you see that?”
When I reached the bird it was still flopping weakly in the snow, its head completely gone. My pride at hitting something the size of a nickel with open sights at that kind of range diminished a little. I bent down and picked up the bird, feeling its muscles twitching, dying down as the nerve impulses lost the last of the energy needed to operate.
Then I noticed the fresh snow beyond the area marred by the fluttering of the grouse. A fine spray of crimson dusted the snow, no trace bigger than the head of a pin. That, I realized, almost with surprise, was from the sudden explosion of an animal’s head. I wasn’t shooting at something the size of a nickel. I was shooting at living things. I picked up my rifle carefully; I was not throwing snowballs at street signs.
At night I began to read. I went through my manuals and my Foxfire books again and again, because they were all I had. I took great interest in learning how to split cedar shingles from logs, or how to scald pigs to remove their hair. Because there was nothing else to do, I became an expert on several things I would never do.
I also read all sorts of advice on trapping. I remembered the bag of traps I had, my mountain man stuff. I spent a day boiling the traps to remove the oil that would give off telltale scents, then I boiled them again, mixing in a bag of powder I’d purchased—logwood dye. I didn’t know what it was for, but the books said it was necessary. It turned the steel black.
I began to make lists, too. I picked patterns for the moccasins I would make, set up ambitious trap lines on paper. I had things-to-do lists a page long that I would go over at night, convincing myself that tomorrow would be a busy day.
I wrote the lists in the notebooks I’d brought for my journal-writing class, and last thing every night I’d write down what I’d done during the day. There were some
pretty short entries. But now and then I’d get going and the power of the words to return me to Missoula or even Wisconsin kept me at the journal, kept the entries growing longer.
During the day, when I wasn’t out carrying my rifle, or chopping at my stacks of wood, most of this early time was spent adjusting to my tent and the woods. Snowshoeing was a snap. In one day the twitching of my groin muscles taught me to lift the shoes over each other, not to waddle the legs spread wide enough for the shoe’s width. The short, rounded shoes were much more manageable in the thick timber. But the longer shoes held my weight up higher, and in the open I could nearly fly, powder spraying.
I learned to cook, sort of. I rigged an old grill I found into a rack for my wood stove. By letting the fire burn down to coals and regulating the dampers I was able to bake. The heat regulation took some time to iron out, though, and I made ash out of most of my early projects.
Small failures like that could set off some desperate swings—to loneliness so powerful it could make me fight for breath. Then tiny victories, like pulling my first golden loaf of bread from the wood stove, would send me into idiotic charges through my meadow, laughing and carrying on as if I’d just won the lottery.
Each one of those victories, as minor as they were, cut a piece out of the loneliness that always skulked nearby, in the dark patches of trees, in the black water trying not to freeze over, even in the way the river talked at night, taking on voices it never had in the day. A hollow began to take shape for me in the woods, and I grew comfortable in it.
Thanksgiving came and I planned to let it go without any fanfare. I never was much for holidays. But as the day dragged on I began to imagine what was going on at home. Everyone would be there, everyone except my sister living in Germany, working as a medical technician. And me, living in a tent, working at killing time.
