by Pete Fromm
When we decided the engine was cool we started it up again and Rader ran it another two hundred yards up the road while I walked along beside. It wasn’t going to make it.
We sat down in the snow again.
He could drive me back to Missoula, but he couldn’t really afford to take off more time for another shot at bringing me back. We couldn’t afford another rental, even if the guy would be willing to let us kill another machine. I said I thought I couldn’t afford to be away from my fish any longer. A tree could fall across the channel. A blizzard could strike. Anything.
We sat there, beginning to avoid one another’s eyes. “It’s already one o’clock,” he said.
We hadn’t eaten anything that day, hangovers spoiling our appetite.
“You don’t have a sleeping bag, do you?” he asked, though the answer was obvious. I didn’t have a pack.
I shook my head. “No food either.”
“Or snowshoes?”
I shook my head again.
“How much sleep did you get last night?”
We both started to smile. “About an hour, I guess.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? See you later.”
We laughed at that, but I told him I thought I really would walk back in. He didn’t think it was a good idea, and he was right, but I didn’t want to go back to Missoula. I didn’t want to arrive at Sponz’s step to announce he hadn’t gotten rid of me yet. I didn’t want Rader to have to explain to Lorrie that he had to try to take me down again. I’d worn Missoula out and I was ready to get back home.
I assured Rader that I could stop at Blondie’s or Slow Gulch if things got bad and we stood up. “You sure?” he asked, and I nodded. We shook hands and he sputtered the machine through a circle. “Goes great downhill,” he said.
“Great.”
“Good luck,” he called, and as he crept back down the road, I started to slog uphill, toward the pass and the Selway, and eventually Indian Creek.
Within an hour the sun had softened the snow so that in the open southwest switchbacks my feet broke through the crust at nearly every step. The snow was heavy enough that I’d only sink to my knee, unlike the hip-deep plunges of the powder months, but it was slow, tough, maddening progress.
Up high the sun on the snow was dazzling and my eyes began to water, the night’s headache resurfacing behind them. I wondered how quickly snow blindness struck. I’d been picked up on a rainy day and my sunglasses were back at my tent.
To top it all off, Boone had gone into heat, beginning to bleed. She’d walk a little ways, then drag her rear in the snow, whimpering. I didn’t know much about that, and I wondered if she’d gotten a load of pups while she’d been out painting the town on her own.
I still felt pretty good by the time I made the pass. At least it was downhill the rest of the way. But I was hungry now, and Magruder was still fourteen miles away. I stopped at Blondie’s, feeling tired, from sleeplessness more than anything. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t imagine what I’d do then. It was still light out and I had no food to eat, or bed to sleep in. I pushed on, sucking mouthfuls of snow now and then.
I didn’t have a watch or even my wind-up clock, and I spent a lot of time looking at the sun, wondering how much light I had left. I didn’t have a flashlight either, and I tried to remember what the moon was doing, but in the city I’d paid no attention, and I didn’t know if I’d have any light at all.
Trudging past all the landmarks of my search for Paul and Dad brought up some of those memories, but mostly I had Missoula on my mind, and the wild ride out last week on the snow machines. I couldn’t yet quite believe how anxious I was to get back in here, to get out of Missoula. I put one foot in front of the other, over and over again, wondering how I’d spent all winter hanging on the hope of getting out for a few days. What had I been thinking?
I stumbled on in a daze, finally reaching Magruder just as it got too dark to see what I was doing. I was played out as I’d ever been, too beat to even turn on the propane. I found a can of apricots in the cellar and ate them. After stoking the furnace I sat down on the heating vent, waiting for the fire to take hold, driving away the chill of my drying sweat.
For the first time Magruder didn’t seem very deluxe. It was only a rest point. If I hadn’t been so exhausted I would have pushed on to Indian Creek. I’d even considered it, when I reached the Selway. After twenty-five miles, the last ten to my tent seemed like a pretty short hop, a path I knew every inch of, and I’d been going on autopilot for quite a while already. But I had just enough sense left to see how foolish that would be, and I put it off for the morning.
As soon as I was warm and dry I crawled into a couple of sleeping bags and passed out. I woke in the morning with a mouse pulling at my beard, and after checking to make sure the fire was out, I made the final trudge. Before noon I was back home. I thought I’d be famished, but after checking the channel and finding everything there to be fine, Boone and I walked up the side of Indian Creek and stretched out in the baked dry dirt beneath a ponderosa and fell sound asleep.
19
As soon as I had my camp and the channel squared away from my long absence I crunched over the hard frozen snow to the top of Indian Ridge. Once up top, I strapped on the snowshoes I’d left up there and strode on. I walked until I could see Trapper Peak guarding the Bitterroot Valley, and I perched on a rock and stared. It looked better from this side, something in the distance, something impossible to see too clearly, something I could make perfect in my mind.
I stayed up top all day, looping back to the point of Indian Ridge just before dusk. I hung my snowshoes back in their tree and slogged through the sloppy brown mud and rock fragments of the southwest slope toward home.
Rain closed back in soon afterward, mixed with snow in the mornings, and I stayed in my tent tending to any chores I could think of. In one of my Angier books I came across directions for making a hunting sling—not a slingshot, but a sling, like the one David used so effectively against Goliath.
I cut the leather pouch and the thongs and tied them together, then stepped into the drizzle to give it a try.
Picking up a stone the size of a robin’s egg, I twirled it over my head, three times, just like the book said. Then I released one of the thongs. The stone shot off into the trees—behind me. I laughed and walked farther from my tent, out of range, before picking up another stone. Soon I was sending stones whizzing in every possible direction, occasionally even near where I wanted them to go. By the time my arm felt as if it might drop off I had the technique down solidly enough that I could usually throw a stone forward, rather that backward. If Goliath had strolled into my meadow I would have been in a world of hurt.
I worked with the sling every day, ambling through the drizzle close to home. I’d sizzle stones into the rising river currents, eventually even bouncing some off the rocks I aimed at.
But, even though the rain did not let up, my energy seemed to grow with every day of spring. The snow in the meadow began to disappear, only the hard-packed paths of my trails hanging on, skinny white lines showing where I’d walked all winter. One evening a pair of mergansers appeared in the wide stretch of river about my tent, the stretch the moose had crashed through. Their brightly white and black breeding plumage shone as they skipped across the water like stones, heads beneath the surface in a feeding frenzy. I’d nearly forgotten such creatures would be returning.
I kept on hiking, rain or shine. The calls of the ruffed and blue grouse boomed though the woods, so low it was hard to tell if I heard or felt them. I began to see bear tracks regularly and every day I crossed paths with herds and herds of deer and usually a group or two of elk, though the elusive bighorn remained just that. Elk antlers lay scattered through the woods like chaff and I dragged the most impressive racks home with me, building a pile I didn’t have any use for. The antlers were somehow fascinating, and I carried them home just because I couldn’t leave them lying around where I’d never see the
m again.
Coming back down Indian Creek one evening, lugging a huge matched pair of seven-point elk antlers I’d found more than half a mile apart, I glanced up at a small black speck swinging through the sky. I stopped and watched as the speck grew in size, diving down until it had grown into an eagle. It kept coming, wings tucked like those of a falcon, screaming into full size, its head and tail gleaming white in the high haze.
I looked for what it might be swooping at but could see nothing. Just before I thought it would crash into the trees it opened its wings and swung into a screeching turn, climbing wildly with the built up speed. As its momentum ebbed it slowed, tucking its wings back into its body. Finally it stalled completely, hanging motionless for an instant before tumbling over on its back, into another swoop, its speed building again until it swooped back into the sky, nearly scraping the trees. I watched as it swooped over and over, then finally caught a thermal and circled upward, climbing completely out of sight. I whooped, unable to keep quiet when something played so wildly so close by. The eagle looked exactly as I felt.
When the weather broke a scattering of small, sky-blue butterflies began to appear, hugging the ground and scattering around my legs as I walked. Boone never tired of chasing them. I started to cook outside, rather than remaining cooped up in the hot, smoky tent, and I lay on the ground waiting for dinner, watching ants and heavy, round-bodied, iridescent green flies crawling on the damp earth. Tiny wildflowers, specks of yellow and blue, popped up everywhere. I was surprised how little of this I had realized had been missing all winter.
More mergansers returned, and a pair of goldeneyes. Then real ducks started to move through. Teal first, green-winged. I stalked them without a trace of success. I was used to grouse, which would watch with interest as I aimed my rifle at them. The ducks winged away as soon as they caught a glimpse of me, rifle still on my shoulder.
As the water in the creeks and rivers continued to rise, beginning to carry dirt and silt along with it, my work around the channel increased slightly. I had to shut the flow down as much as I could. The silt the creek carried from the runoff was heavy enough to bury the salmon in the rocks where they hid. I put a screen in the end of the channel, which was actually a crude holding tank. If the salmon started to make their move they would pool up there until I could count them and release them.
But no salmon appeared.
The weather turned fine for several days and I began to take even longer hikes. If it was above forty or forty-five degrees I often tied my shirts around my waist. I wondered if I’d really forgotten it would ever get warm again. One day it hit sixty and I staggered awestruck through the heat.
I finally found a way around the cliffs I’d nearly fallen off of earlier and I made my way to Sheep Creek, searching the wide drainage there for bighorn. The sides of the draw were treeless, already green in the rush of water from the melt-off, dotted with broken chunks of gray boulders. Once I spotted a herd of nearly fifteen sheep, but it was late and they were so far away I couldn’t actually be sure they weren’t deer. I turned for home, still hoping to find a bighorn up close. I’d never seen one in the wild.
I found bear scat in my meadow one morning and, stooped over the blackish clot, I glanced quickly around the dark trees surrounding me. My tent was loaded with bear delectable like peanut butter and honey. I went in and loaded my muzzleloader, wondering what it would sound like if I had to shoot a bear inside my tent in the middle of some horrifying night. And, remembering how slowly it had affected the moose, I wondered if it would do any good.
I began to search for bear on my walks, never having seen any of them in the wild either. I found more scat, and tracks—even scarred saplings they’d torn up scratching away their thick winter coats, the naked branches sticky with sap, long hair clinging everywhere. After inspecting one such tree I walked more stealthily, sure the bear was nearby. When I popped my head over the next rise I was twenty yards from a huge mule deer. I was so set on the idea of finding a bear I nearly gasped, sure for an instant that I’d stumbled on what I was looking for.
The deer didn’t run. Instead it stood tense, its ears swiveling for sound, its nose twitching. It shifted its weight nervously, then took a step. Toward me. It took another and I wondered what was going on. It kept coming at me and for a moment I wondered if a deer could be dangerous. I hadn’t moved and Boone was stone still by my side.
The deer came to within ten yards, then veered suddenly, giving an odd, huffing bark. It bounced down the hill in its jarring, stiff-legged bound, then stopped, its nose high in the air. It was nearly around me then and my scent, or Boone’s, was clear in the air. The deer was gone in a streak.
I followed after it, smiling, wanting to see where it would go once over the rise before me, when it knew I couldn’t see it. I wanted to know if it would continue straight on, or loop around, or just top. I glanced across the draw, checking for any trace of bear, then crept up the ridge to peek over for the deer.
What I saw instead were bighorns. Almost tawny, much lighter than deer, they grazed single file into the wind away from me, the closest thirty yards away. Two of them lifted their heads now and then, checking below them before counting to graze. It was several seconds before the last in line lifted his heavy head and peered down the slope. Before dropping back to feed he glanced over his shoulder. His gaze stopped dead on my face.
His jaw hung in midchew and he brought his legs up solidly beneath him. He turned in a little stiff-legged shuffle until facing me head on. The others grazed on a few moments more before the largest sheep glanced back and saw the twitching legs and fixed glare of my sheep. He whirled around then, startling the others, and in a clatter of loose rock all the sheep were suddenly facing me, all rams, their faces, framed by their strange horns, intent on mine. Watching their battering ram heads all pointing my way, I remembered wondering if a deer could be dangerous. If these sheep charged I wouldn’t land until I was back down on the Selway.
Suddenly there was a scuffle above me and a smaller ram burst down the hill, straight through the group before me. That was all any of them needed and they cascaded down the hill behind the smallest ram, straight away from me. I stood still, grinning as the last white rump disappeared around the curve of hill.
Searching for bear, chasing deer, and finally the mythical bighorn pops out of nowhere, right in my own backyard.
It seemed as if there were no end to the animals. On my way home that evening through the dense woods on the creek I was startled out of my wits by a rushing blur at head level. I ducked in time to see a goshawk lumbering down the trail, trying frantically to avoid crashing into me without dropping the squirrel in his talons. In a second he was gone, flitting between branches so thick I wouldn’t have guessed anything could fly through them, leaving me with my heart beginning to race, too late as usual.
I hiked and hiked and the days grew longer but I wished for days longer still. It seemed there wasn’t nearly enough time to see everything I needed to see. Up high I would sit and watch the storms come in, the clouds tearing apart on the saw-toothed ridge backs. Now and then I had to hide beneath trees as berserk hailstorms flew over. I’d laugh then, as the deafening roar of the hail and wind made even my own laughter impossible to hear, and I’d cuff at Boone at the wildness of it all. By the time the storm passed we would be rumbling in the crunching balls of ice that would disappear as soon as the sun tore back through the ragged clouds.
But even though my excitement was barely containable I still had to eat, and to eat I had to cook. I’d neglected that while I spent all my time out in the hills and I was finally down to the bitter end of everything. I had to take a day off to bake loaves of bread and pots of beans and delicacies like rice pudding and coffee cake.
The heat from the baking fire drove me out of my tent, but I could not wander away. Every hour I had to punch down the rising dough, pull another taste treat out of the oven. I remembered Rader laughing at my frying-pan bread, and when I p
ulled a perfect loaf of French bread out of the battered old stove I wished he could see me now.
Finally the only thing left to cook was dinner itself, a blue grouse I’d found on the top of the ridge, booming out his low, rumbling call. A few weeks before I’d shot a squirrel and when gutting it I’d discovered it was pregnant. I’d killed six squirrels with one shot, and I hadn’t shot any squirrels after that. I’d been letting the grouse go for the same reason, but by his booming I knew this one was a male and I hadn’t been able to resist.
While I waited for my feast to roast I sat in the remnants of my woodpile, soaking up the last of the sun and searching for ticks, another of the animals that had reappeared with the spring. I’d just pulled off my shirt when I heard a rumble. I sat up on my stump and turned to the end of my meadow as the noise became deafening. It wasn’t long before a yellow snowplow lumbered into view, followed by a Forest Service truck.
I stared. Except for the snowslides, the road had been clear of snow for almost a week. The plow lumbered on but the pickup stopped and a Forest Service employee I had met in the fall came out; we shook hands and talked a bit. It had taken them a week to open the road and he raged about what a bitch the slides had been to cut through. As if it were the snowslides’ fault, or maybe even mine.
They wanted to get clean through to Paradise, the end of the road, and back out before dark, so he didn’t stay long. They were opening the road for the bear hunters, he said, who pushed for an earlier and earlier opening each year.
I thanked them for stopping and went back into my tent to think. I was still there a few hours later when they roared out, beeping their horns.
The road was open. I could drive around now. To Paradise, or to Magruder for a bath. I could even drive clear out to Montana, to Missoula. I could go anywhere I wanted. It was an odd feeling and I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know if I wanted to go anyplace. I was afraid I might miss something in here.
