There's a bunch of intolerance going around these days and one hardly needs a guide dog to track where it's heading. With pure cussedness on the uprise and courtesy and tolerance on the downswing, sloguneering with overtones of bigotry has become cottage industry. Most of our intolerance is racial or religious or political or class warfare. My late editor, Bob Elman, was a keen observer who passed along many insightful messages. The following was penned after he'd heard some upright citizen from his locale proclaim that he's "certainly not a bigot—far from it—but facts are facts and you can't deny them people are not our equals.

Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. W hen the toad was about to sell his place, he rallied his neighbors face to face and explained his views with regard to race:. Damn right I don't like frogs, They're clammy and slimy and vicious. They defecate in our swamps and bogs And call water bugs delicious. Show me a frog and I'll show you a slob.

Would you want your sister to date one? Just look at their kids, a gelatinous blob! I'd rather die than mate one. At the country club, where the frog was respected, he told his friends what could be expected if toads were not scrupulously rejected:. Damn right I don't like toads, They're lazy and dirty and crude. They defecate all over the roads And they eat uncivilized food. Their skin is warty and dry as death, Their ignorant croaks can't be understood, And their tongues—well, talk about dragon breath!

They move in and ruin the neighborhood. A chuckle is mightier than a scream of rage, and it's good to have friends who know how to chuckle. Should one wonder over my dates, be advised that I wrote this as a newspaper column nearly two decades ago. I wondered about "All Fools Day"—the why, when, and who of it—until I figured out that April Fools Day is also the first day of daylight saving time in this year of our Lord, Time, is measured by the position of the Sun as it circles the globe.

I know, I know, the Sun doesn't circle the globe, but time derived from Old Sol's position in relation to the earth's spin is called "apparent solar time. Each of those zones covers degrees of longitude except for boundary manipulations for political purposes and the Sun's actual rays pass through one degree of longitude every four minutes.

Where does Daylight Saving Time enter the picture? Here's a direct quote from my encyclopedia: Although the total amount of daylight remains the same, more daylight hours are allowed for outdoor work and recreation in the late afternoon and evening. Four years ago I woke up to six-inches of wet snow on April Fool's Day. My feelings must have mirrored those of a sleepy bear who, awakening that same day, poked his or her head out, and plowed snow with his or her nose.

Why wouldn't he or she be cranky? Which reminds me—bears are popping out of their wintertime beds now. After five to six months without suitable nourishment, you can figure they'll be a tad desperate for something besides rutabagas for breakfast. Oddly, however, as desperate as we think the ursids might be, there's little record of wild bruins turning aggressive over food until they must begin, in late-summer or early fall, topping their tanks for the next winter's nap.

Naturally, the forgoing info discounts sows with spring cubs, who can become annoyed when humans deign to properly appreciate the bumptious beauty of her offspring, no matter how ugly and unruly. Jane and I enjoy observing bears from a distance when buttercups and glacier lilies are in bloom; a time or two, through too much zeal to watch the creatures, we've infringed on their space.

Yet without exception, they've proved tolerant, either by ignoring our presence or disdainfully grazing away. So here's the question: Why do the great ursids seem more likely to practice human avoidance when they're hungry and on short rations than when huckleberries are prime? Don't look to me for an answer. T-bone than over a bowl of brussels sprouts. Maybe to a bear there are no sumptuous meals when they first emerge from hibernation. No T-bones, no porterhouses, no lobster thermidors.

The woman has this annoying habit, see? When things turn a tad shopworn, she throws 'em away. It's a rotten trait that's especially odoriferous when she pitches out something that had just turned comfortable—say a pair of my worn blue jeans or a sweat shirt in which I liked to lounge. Or maybe a hat she thought too sweat-streaked for polite society.

Our old tent was a four-person Eureka Timberline that'd seen much hard use. The Timberline was one of four look-alikes we purchased for guests of our Skyline Outfit guide service in Naturally we kept the best of those four when we sold the business in The "best," however, had already seen considerable hard use before our retirement from outfitting.

And it saw considerable more hard use after. Rips and tears mysteriously appeared. Thus, it wasn't unusual for Jane to mutter naughty words each time we were caught in the middle of a Bob Marshall Wilderness rainstorm. Finally came the new millennium. Jane stumbled across a new tent at a price she couldn't refuse. She brought it home and we assembled it in the yard. It's a beauty, of modern dome construction with a front vestibule and lots of window screens to allow circulation, yet deny bugs.

The new tent really does look like the cat's meow. I rubbed my hands in glee, visualizing all its creature comforts. We planned to visit the wilderness with another couple during that excursion. Because we had four riders and only four horses, I made arrangements to send our gear in ahead of time, with an outfitter friend.

The day before Jane and I prepared to leave for the trailhead with our friends, the U. Forest Service placed a blanket closure on the Flathead National Forest because of severe fire danger. Already far into the backcountry, and with a wildfire burning near camp, our outfitter friend carried our packs with Jane's new tent inside down to a riverside gravel bar. Then he was instructed by a forest ranger to move them to the other side of the river. Meanwhile, Jane and I had fallen back to plan "B" and, with our friends, visited Glacier National Park where camping was still permitted.

During the same period we horsebacked and camped in Glacier, Jane's new tent was bouncing back and forth across the Flathead's South Fork like a ping-pong ball.

As a result, Jane's miraculous new dome tent with the big windows, and the storage vestibule had never witnessed human bodies crawling into dry sleeping bags, then breathing deeply in repose. Two hen pheasants had been pecking sunflower seeds from the ground beneath Jane's bird feeder and were now wending their hesitant way through a windbreak a few feet south of our house.

Just a few minutes before, we'd bumped into a herd of elk while walking through the patch of woods behind our home. In addition, a flock of Canada geese fed in our neighbor's uncut barley field, on our way to and from the woods. The lady's cheeks were still flushed from the exercise—or the excitement.

Don't you think some are adapting? We saw our first elk in the woods where our horses shelter from winter storms only the year previous. Then there were four. Now there are fourteen. I knew about the elk herd using the valley floor five miles south of our place—near where Otto once had his fly-tying shop. That herd had thrived since before Jane and I came to this valley 52 years ago.

I knew, too, about the herd that poked into the fields and forests near Columbia Heights in the early s. Now it seems a third band is establishing itself between the river and Bad Rock Fire Station. And yeah, the lady is right about other animals.

We still hear the little wolf-dogs yipping on occasion, despite all the homes being built nearby. We've spotted foxes in our pasture. Red tailed hawks hunt from overhead. Magpies and ravens commonly fly in and out of our windbreaks.

Yesterday a bald eagle sailed from a tree as we walked his way. All demonstrate a great deal of adaptability in order to get along in a world rapidly being overrun by we humans. Yet there are some of us who say animals cannot think.

To paraphrase a popular nineties expression: It's their survival, stupid! A lizard sunning on a rock skitters into a crack at the slightest nearby movement.

Because otherwise he'll die. Survival is numero uno among all God's creatures. The wish to survive may well be instinct, but the mechanics of that survival lies somewhere between the ears. And despite some folks' beliefs, those mechanics can be modified to fit a surprising array of circumstances. Magpies and ravens search for roadsides for dead deer, right?

But they didn't do so during the horse and buggie era, I suspect mostly because horse-drawn carriages seldom ran over and killed deer. So tell me again how animals can't reason. Is it possible there are no reasonings without circumstances. Some creatures appear to reason more quickly than others, however. Ravens and magpies have fed on road-killed deer as long as I can remember.

Yet I saw my first eagle on a road-kill perhaps 50 years ago. I nodded at Jane's insight and lifted my own coffee cup in salute. Then reasoning on our rush to put parking lots and shopping malls in every last place for them to eat and sleep, she muttered, "If there are any left. We have friends who sometimes razz me because my thirst for solitude trumps any inclination to recreate amid a crowd. Give me a mountain with no one else on it, or a peaceful river where I can contemplate my navel in quiet and serenity—well, that's when I go, "Whoop-ti-doo!

Unfortunately, when these friends open up on me, Jane is apt to get caught up in the pack mentality and jump on me, too. Some days it just doesn't seem worthwhile to gnaw through the straps. So I do the next best thing and take it and grin because, as often happens when their bantering occurs, we'll be eating lunch in a remote canyon where we're unlikely to see another soul throughout the day.

And to make the situation even more satisfying, I might be the one who selected the isolated trail. There are obvious advantages to solitude—I can think of no downsides.

Solitude permits individualism; crowds insist on regulation and conformity. Solitude provides the environment for introspection; crowds foster only kaleidoscopic mish-mash. Crowds inhibit sponaneity, solitude encourages it.

Stripped down below undershorts, I've ridden my pony bareback into Glacier Park's Harrison Lake for a swim. You think I would dare do such thing if the campground and trail had been filled to overflowing? Jane and I have skinny-dipped in an isolated pool after a hot day's hike.

It's not a practice we'd be comfortable doing on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. But it's not just solitude—one can find that in the bathroom. No, it's wildness and.

Most of all, it's opportunity. Wild places nurture the soul, charge the muse, and excite the senses. There you can hear God breathe, see far, feel much, taste good, smell deep. Wilderness, of course, provides the best source for solitude. Maybe if you're a seafaring sort you'd choose the middle of the Indian Ocean. But to most of us in this region, wilderness is where solitude in a natural world can best be located. Lest there be doubters among you, let me hasten to add I'm not alone in a passion for privacy.

Gertrude Stein once wrote: This is what makes America what it is. The other end of the spectrum might be the rules that, a few summers ago, I read from a large billboard at a popular Ohio Lake:. My second question is why would anyone poke fun at a fellow human being who prefers Ms.

Stein's version of America to that of the "Beach Rules" version? Am I the only one? I'm the fellow who grew up being a neighbor to the Brash family. Of all the colorful people who tramped the land that is now the Bob Marshall Wilderness, none were as colorful as the family Brash.

It all began back in the s, when the area now comprising most of "the Bob" was made up of the South Fork, Pentagon, and Sun River Primitive Areas. Guy Brash, young wheat farmer from Spangle, Washington, loaded a couple of horses and his wife, Dolly, in an old farm truck and headed to Montana to go elk hunting.

Guy and Dolly wandered the land along the crest of the Rockies for a month. Wandering that country on autumn elk hunts became a yearly tradition. When they had children, Gene and Gary accompanied their parents on the annual wilderness elk hunts. When the children married and had children of their own, those children came to know and love the Bob, too. Gene Brash, who later turned into the best mule packer the forest service ever had, once told me: Later, the family owned a string of buckskin rodeo horses, some of which went on to become bucking stock in National Rodeo Finals.

Russ Baeth, long-time outfitter in the Bob Marshall and a good friend of the Brash bunch, told me the entire family seldom worried about anything. In his letter, Ted Potter writes: Their's was not the best place to farm, so they had kind of a combination farm and cattle place. They were farming with horses long after everyone else had gone to tractors, and even after they had machinery, it was usually broke down or about to break down.

They were a colorful lot. He was laid back and took things as they came. Ted said the last time he saw Guy was inshortly before he died of cancer. Guy was in a lounge in Cheney, living it up. Apparently the Brash outfit descended from tough stock. One time in the late s, when she had to be in her late 70s or early 80s, she was out loading up a hay wagon and fell off and broke her back.

She crawled nearly a quarter mile back to the homestead. As I remember it, she recovered quite well. We'd glided down the stream just a couple of weeks before; our only danger from our skis' failure to grip the windblown glare ice. Now, however, water gurgled ominously beneath the rotting surface and open leads of riffles were common. Perhaps most to be feared were the collapsing snow bridges we'd depended upon to cross what we'd expected to still be a winter-locked stream. Two weeks of unseasonably warm days, accompanied by Chinook winds, foretold change.

Spring rode those winds. And because of it, there should be an unconscious but automatic "traveler's advisory" in the mind of every backcountry adventurer. We tested a couple of the remaining snow bridges and when they collapsed with probes from our ski poles, we turned and headed back the way we'd come. It caresses with soft winds and warm sun. There's promise of new life in tree buds, greening fields and old bones. Yet for the backcountry traveler, a multitude of dangers lurk behind spring's beckoning wave.

We could have crossed that stream on our ski trip. Perhaps someone would've fallen in as a snow bridge or ice bridge collapsed. But the day was so warm, the weather so mild, such mishap would've been more inconvenience than life threatening. Not so two weeks before, or two weeks after. Slip through the ice two weeks before and one would have done so amid chilling temperatures and a mile wind.

Two weeks after, and one would attempt crossing a raging torrent at spring flood. Spring travel amid Montana's mountains harbors other dangers as well: Avalanche-prone hillsides should be avoided or, if one must, crossed rapidly, with an ear cocked for the slightest strange and unidentifiable sound—the beginning avalanche. Pre-planned routes can be hard to follow. Low country trails can be blocked by winter's accumulated blowdowns or by mud slides, and mountain passes are often locked tight by snowdrifts higher than a tall man astride a tall horse.

Emergency rations should be carried just in case your F winds up stuck in a bog. Or in case you must retrace your last 20 miles with your packstring. Or in case your backpacking journey is held up by avalanching snows or rampaging rivers. All the foregoing doesn't mean you should cower at home, however. You needn't crawl into bed and pull all covers over your head during the "traveler's advisory" period.

But if you choose to venture into Montana's backcountry during spring, you should be aware of potential dangers, keep your options open, never tempt fate, and prepare for contingencies. If you prepare and are prepared, spring is a most delightful time of year. Our plan was to take the Peter's Ridge Trail up and over the crest of the Swan range to hook up with the Alpine Trail to Strawberry Lake.

From there, we'd follow the Strawberry Lake Trail to the roadhead. Two vehicles, a short drive between, and eleven miles of scenic alpine country to traverse. What could be finer? We heard them long before actually spotting them, but spotting them wasn't hard. As it turned out, they were in full Buck Rogers regalia—multi-colored suits of vivid blue, slashing red, and showy yellow. They wore helmets with enough blue and red stars on them to change one's concept of the Milky Way.

And their garments were so form-fitting Jane later claimed to have spotted a dimple on one of the three biker's knee. Naturally their boots were of a size for effective lunar strolling and helmet visors were of reflective polaroid.

I guessed their gloves might've came directly from a Camelot jousting tournament. As mentioned earlier, we heard them coming and dutifully stepped off the trail to allow them passage. Then all fell quiet as they followed the trail to a switchback. I looked to my companions and they looked to the ripe huckleberries clinging to bushes surrounding us and cared not a whit whether the off-road bikers came our way. Ten minutes passed and our fingers and lips turned as colorful as the bike rider's ensemble would later prove to be.

Then they started their machines and accelerated, whizzing past where we sat just a few feet off the trail, without even knowing others were in the same county. Doug and Jane shielded their eyes from their clothing's colorful glare. I stared in open-mouthed amazement—it was the first time I realized what well-dressed trail bikers wore.

While things were quieting and my jaw still tried to close, Doug said, "They ought to be at the controls of a rocketship, with afterburners kicked in. She still stared after the bikers.

Then she shook her head and said a little plaintively: Do you suppose it might be the clothing? I eyed our own outfits: We're all in uniform. Are we having fun? Doug popped another handful of hucks. We met four more motor bikers that day, none of whom were as well-attired as the first. So we asked if they might have more fun if they were better dressed.

They only stared at us their faces masked, curious about the question. We also met a mountain biker pedaling up that trail, muscles standing out like innertubes. He wore only shorts and tennis shoes. There were also eleven other hikers in several different groups. Two elderly gentlemen carried, of all things, ice axes. A young man cuddling a babe in arms also packed a carbine slung over one shoulder; I assumed it was his wife or significant-other who trailed behind.

Here are ten important tips for ye poor abused and downtrodden masses who've heretofore failed all efforts at domestic bliss. I speak of man, of course. Everyone knows they are the ones with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low esteem, and screaming nightmares.

The tips I'm passing along have been developed over decades of involved and, yes, dangerous research, tested amid the terrors of household hostilities.

Roland's Rules for Rectitudinal Restoration of St. It's okay if you do so with fingers crossed. The mere sight of you in grovel-mode is usually enough to restore her pecking order place to your chief domestic antagonist.

Sit when told to sit, fetch when told to fetch, roll over when told to roll over. The benefits accruing from following these simple procedures seem sufficiently obvious without further elucidation.

Never, never, ever let anger take root, and certainly not show. The best facial expression is nothing at all. When it's permissible to express pleasure in the presence of your life's partner.

Then you should always demonstrate complete and overwhelming puppy dog joy. As long as she seems pleased, you may leap and bounce about, clap your hands, and shout exuberantly to your heart's content. Guard against overdoing this procedure, however, as might be indicated when she goes to bed with a migraine. Do not stop with a boutonniere for yourself—in fact, don't even think of a boutonniere for yourself.

If she wants you to have a boutonniere, she'll pick up a boutonniere. What you want is a corsage that can, if chosen wisely, wash away a lot of previous sins.

Experiment with something besides dried teaselweeds from the back forty. Limit your couch activities to polite visits with your partner's doily club. That means no Saturday football, no Sunday football, no Monday night football.

You may, however, adjust the doily club routine by lovingly admiring your spouse watch her morning soaps. Do not, under any circumstances, try to peek at the svelte leader of her afternoon exercise program, however, or get caught dead staring at a Victoria Secret commercial.

Resign your golf club membership. Come straight home from work. Do not stop at the Happy Hour Saloon, or Dunkin' Donuts. If the previous nine tips failed to turn the trick toward domestic bliss, simply tell her you love her. This single tip has been the most thoroughly researched of all. Those three words composed of but eight total letters have poured oil on more troubled waters than can be recounted. Once upon a time near, near to home, debate raged over whether horses should be allowed on wilderness trails.

Some hikers flat didn't like the ponies; some horsemen returned their opinions in spades. Fortunately calmer heads prevailed. And today the only grumbling about whether horses and mules should be permitted in our wilderness country heard from California visitors or, in moments of vexation, the horsemen themselves.

Having engaged in my share of both hiking and horsepacking, I'll presume to summarize problems inherent to each: If there are hikers out there who think horse packing is only for the leisure class, all I can say is they haven't tried it. Mantying packs, slinging same, and keeping them atop a horse takes the strength of Hercules, patience of Job, watchfulness of Odysseus, and memory of Homer.

Even if aficionados of backpacking must trudge for miles up steep switchback trails with 50 pounds upon their back, backpacking is still easier. Consider that the horseman is out at three in the morning running ponies in from a forty-acre pasture in order to load them into a dilapidated trailer hitched to an underpowered pickup to pull for five hours in low gear through a boulder-strewn pass. Then he must unload ponies and somehow turn a trailer and pickup around on a narrow cliffhanging road, then find a place to park so his rig won't be shoved over the side by the first wheeler to roar past.

Then they must grain and brush and saddle and pack and trail out a bunch of rangy, half-broke, four-year-old packages of dynamite, nurse them through shintangle that would balk an elephant, and somehow guide them for twelve hours along a trail infested by—in the ponies' eyes—rock bears, tree bears, and brush bears. The lucky backpacker, mind you, left home after a leisurely brunch and wheeled his sport car into a trailhead after a speedy drive along macadam highways.

He parks his Porsche, locks it, shoulders his backpack and strolls to camp, stopping and resting or taking pictures, or drinking from streams wherever he wishes. By mid-afternoon, the lucky backpacker shrugs from his pack, pops up a tent, rolls out his sleeping bag and his work is largely done. The poor horseman, on the other hand, arrives at his campsite after dark, weary to the point of exhaustion.

Now he must unload and care for his ponies, set up camp, gather firewood in the dark, cook, nod off to sleep while eating, and otherwise enjoy a leisurely evening—all the while worrying that his ponies might recollect some better bunches of grass along their backtrail.

To tell you the truth, using horses in the big lonesome is not everything it's cracked up to be. If you're not committed—if you're keeping animals you don't like and don't care about in order to take that once in a lifetime wilderness trip, why sell 'em and use the money to go with someone who knows the ropes.

Bollinger Bands Squeeze and Support/Resistance Breakouts

It was a classic perverted sort of love story, like those cranked out by the bushel in Tinseltown, U. But, though poor-little-beauty-queen-meets-lonely-old-rich-guy might be ho-hum fare for Hollywood and Vine, finding two of the three triad participants in a remote Bob Marshall hunting camp is not exactly common. Let's call the men Ken and Bob, and the lady Dawn. Even though there's not a whole bunch of innocence anywhere in this tale, we still have an obligation to substitute names.

Dawn was a beauty queen who was actually on her way to the Miss America pageant representing her home state. Ken was a successful computer software maker worth millions.

Bob was Dawn's father—a short-fused, feisty guy who was not at all averse to punching out a bigger man upon the slightest perception of insult. To better explain, Bob was a drinking buddy of Billy Martin who set some sort of pugilistic record as the Yankee second baseman in years of yore.

Dawn, a coquettish dark-haired lass of eighteen-going on thirty-five apparently set her sights on Ken. Ken, who was the one to tell this tale, admired the beauty queen's ravishing loveliness. Flirtations advanced the attraction until Ken could no longer stand it. He asked Dawn for a date. The catch was Ken didn't want to pick Dawn up at her home because he feared a scene with Dawn's protective father. Dawn, though seemingly smitten by her filthy-rich suitor, would not consider dating Ken unless he had the intestinal fortitude to pick her up at her home.

But this is the possible next Miss America, right? So the gutless Ken finally agreed to come to Dawn's home to begin their relationship. The man actually chuckled, but watching closely, I also saw him shiver. What am I supposed to say? Dawn's mother took Ken's coat, then disappeared up the stairs, ostensibly to hurry her daughter.

There was nothing else for Ken to do. He hesitantly shuffled into the kitchen, preparing for the worst. I hope it's all right. Bob ignored the sweating suitor for several long seconds, then thrust out a hand in what Ken supposed was friendship. With a wave of relief, Ken seized the hand. He dropped Bob's clasp to discover a. Like me, the guy grows long in the tooth and he's a tad on the pudgy side.

Like me, he peers nearsightedly over the tops of his glasses and his cheeks are perpetually flushed by spending lots of time outdoors in all kinds of weather. Unlike me, though, the guy has hair—lots of hair. But like my little, his lot is white. He laughs often and smiles a bunch and if you ran a popularity contest, he'd win hands down in any land on earth—with the possible exception of the ayatollahs' Iran.

But the queer thing about this bird is his popularity is based on no known public relations script. He employs no Madison Avenue advertising agency, no political advisors, no Gallup or Yankelovitch polling service. Yet his popularity consistently exceeds that of the Pope, Newt Gingrich, and Beavis and Butthead combined.

He does have a hammerlock on the media, though. Word of him builds steadily to a crescendo, always reached in each year's waning days. He's celebrated in song and verse; stories are written about him; his profile is considered favorable and is often visited by artists of all stripes. Yet he wears atrocious clothing that is gaudily colored to attract attention.

His public appearances are pompous and dictatorial. Refreshingly, however, the guy eschews corporate giants or politicians with influence to treat with the commonest of commoners who stand in line, sometimes for hours, to sit on his knee and spill their woes. Wisely this man with no talent for diplomacy slants his appeal to the young, assuring a consistent cadre of support into perpetuity.

Still, his popularity cannot be well understood for he keeps his tradesmen in bondage and uses animals harshly and without relief. He, himself, works but one evening per year. And while it cannot be argued that the guy in the red suit works like a Trojan when he works, one cannot but wonder how Santa Claus supports the missus and himself during the rest of the year? Is he on public dole? Certainly there must be a horde of creditors in pursuit of the guy.

I mean the heating bill alone for a tawdry shack in northern climes would break J. Think for a moment the cost of mail delivery to the rest of us taxpayers. Gearing up for hauling tons of mail to the frozen North must cost the U. Postal Service an arm and a leg—our arm and our leg. Without mail delivery to the North Pole, we could probably return to the 3-cent stamp.

Or at least the cent stamp. The very best reason of all: I received poor treatment. It all began while recently passing through a shopping mall on my way to an ice cream stand. While entering I was accosted by bell ringing, red-suited Santas exhibiting forced smiles. To top that, I had to fight my way through more tinsel-draped trees than abounds in a snow-laden spruce forest. What's worse is the line I thought led to the ice cream counter, wound to the knee of a union-suited, white-haired and long bearded fat old guy who exhibited a cheer he could in no way realistically possess.

I know this because all his exuded charm disappeared like a July snowbank when I reached the head of the line and took my place. Here's a Christmas gift idea for the outdoors person in your life: There can no longer be any question: Like all aerosols, the spray works best when the can is held in cad drafting jobs work from home upright position while in use.

Whether such geometric nicety is always achievable while being batted around by a grizzly bear may require a modicum of additional analysis. Elemental, of course, is that one must use the spray only while the bear is near enough to be affected. This means mere feet instead of football fields away. Also there must be no wind. Or it must be blowing or drifting to the bear. Although if a nasty grizzly is in full charge, making any sort of cool appraisal of wind direction seems hollow advice to me.

Posterity has not disclosed whether the bear was frightened away. But there's reliable evidence it was some time before the lady cared one way or the other. What sort of information is out that bear spray works? Here are a few excerpts from incidents reported in Glacier Park:. Began spraying at 18 ft. Aimed at her for a "crucial couple of seconds" before can emptied.

Bear woofed a couple of times. A charge deferred by spray. Sprayed by person other than injury victim. Did not note bear's response. Sprayed directly into bear's face at 3 ft. Bear's face had wet appearance. Perhaps the very best recommendation for carrying bear spray while traveling through bear country came at a recent meeting I attended.

There, bear research biologists who actually do the work of trapping and handling bears on the ground discussed the efficacy of deterrents. Forex cuanto es un lote polled, every one of those bear experts carried a can of spray for their own personal protection. Most folks who've spent entire lifetimes amid bear country now consider the capsaicin spray 60 seconds binary options demo strategy works a safer tool to dissuade an aggressive grizzly than a.

Stopping a charging grizzly with a firearm requires a well-placed bullet. That's a result most often achieved by a calm person trained in weapons handling. Stopping that same bear with a canister of spray may require nothing more than putting out a cone of spray the bear will run into. We'd lived in Montana but a few years when my favorite aunt visited. The lady's home was in the hill country of Texas where she and her late husband had farmed and ran a small dairy. Apparently the woman was surprised at the number of horses she saw scattered on ranches and farmsteads during her drive through Montana.

What's folks supposed to do with horses? Why ride a horse when I can see you have a perfectly good pickup truck in the driveway? And a car in the garage. I chuckled at this lady who'd proven so kind to a hell-raising kid during a particularly un-memorable period of my youth.

We ride into those wild places. Aunt Lemma clucked disapprovingly, I suppose at thought of wasting perfectly good grass and hay asian markets marketwatch something as uncommercial as the useless grade nags in our pasture.

But nothing like I'm seeing here. We have breeding farms and ranches—some run to thousands of acres. But it seems like every home in Montana has a horse behind it. Sometimes, like yours, more than one.

I've thought of Aunt Lemma over the years—how she was appalled at the un-sensible way we Montanans keep horses for pleasure instead of profit. Times change, of course, and in the last few decades even Texans may have discovered methods to waste money over and above bare necessities.

Today's Montana has their own generous share of breeding farms and ranches specializing in blooded stock of all breeds. There are show horses and performance horses, racing horses and rodeo horses.

There are draft horses big enough to shade a freight truck. But still, by far, most equine-types in the Treasure State are just plain "usin'" horses. We're so serious about it that often our blooded stock are also usin' stock.

They labor up mountainsides laden with heavy packs just like grade nags types of incentive stock options down the road. They all scramble over rock outcrops and windthrown trees, plow through bogs and snowdrifts and swollen rivers because we cherish our legacy of mountain men and mounted warriors, gold-seekers and cowboys. We recollect how hunting parties once trekked for weeks by horseback through forbidding wilderness.

And most of all, forex club forum wish to be part of that legacy, carrying it into the future for our kids and their kids.

Behind most Montana homes and cabins—no matter how mean the farm—ponies graze. In a corner of a nearby shed, well-worn saddles and bridles and halters and nosebags collect dust.

And occasionally that dust is blown off and those ponies saddled. It might be when cutthroats are biting up the South Fork, or elk are bugling in nz stock market nzx high basins.

Writers tend to be fragile-types, easily wounded by slings and arrows hurled from clod-like detractors who lack the requisite decency to appreciate erudite sensitivity exemplified by sterling prose and depth of research. Especially MY sterling prose and research. Thus most of we creative geniuses approach each unsolicited missive with the wariness of a deer unexpectedly caught in oncoming headlights.

Such were two quicken essentials for mac stock options emails arriving on consecutive days just prior to this Thanksgiving Day. One arrived November 23rd at 7: In it Chuck Simpson writes:. Once upon a time you and your wife gave my friend and me a ride from Spotted Bear to Columbia Falls.

Thanks much for that! If I wouldn't have gotten that ride I might not have discovered your books as soon. I'll keep reading and you keep writing. Wrack my memory as hard as I might, I can't recollect the event, but the email should serve to prove that, at the very least, I'm a nice guy.

Then there was the one arriving the day before from Kaya McCutcheon, who attends Hellgate High School in Missoula, Montana. But here, lets let Kaya tell it in her own words:. I am a Sophomore at Hellgate high school. I have recently read you're book chadstone opening hours australia day holiday to talk bear'. It was amazing, and very deep detail in information.

I could hardly put it down, it just spoke to me.

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Only though I was jealous of you and how many encounters you had. You've seen more bears in a month than I have in years. Yet you were a guide, and I am just a hiker. Even with all the trails I have been on, you would think I would have came to close encounters. Especially where I live, the trails have had many reported sightings, and I have yet to see one.

With that said I want to say that after I read the stock market investing for beginners in the philippines, it felt like I have actually talked to you.

Like you were a friend, it do catering trailers make money so close to me and I absolutely loved the adventures you took me on.

Even though it did make me sad to read about the bear's dying, but I awed at how clever bears are. How they can tell if its a trap or not, how they can get the bait and never set off the trap. Over all it was a beautiful book full of information that I loved. Forex demo contest 2011 would love to be in contact with you, to learn more stories from your adventures, to get to know you as a person, and learn more about the misunderstood Bear.

It may seem strange, but Forex guru strategy v 3 download isn't commodity trading zero sum game first Missoula high school student to extoll the virtues of my books. A few years ago Randy Hodges wrote:.

I have always been an avid hunter and outdoorsman, however, three years ago I brought a book home from the book exchange that turned me from a weekend outdoorsman to a full time outdoor lover. That book was "The Phantom Ghost of Harriet Lou" [subtitled "And Other Elk Stories"].

I've since read the book three times, certain chapters many more times, and both of your books on grizzlies. I have decided to stay in Montana for schooling and plan on making a career working with the land. Just wanted to thank you for giving me an explanation and helping me to put my thumb on why elk lure me into the woods each fall.

Receiving feedback like those emails makes a wannabee old writer as giddy as a five-year-old boy was in when he woke up on Christmas morning to find a Lionel Train set waiting for him under the most spectacular tree that ever graced a living room floor. Thanksgiving Day occurs on the 24th day of this month. We both have much for which to be thankful—most of all that our marriage survived us growing up while we grew into lasting love and friendship.

Whether that relationship could have blossomed without being driven by the vehicle of outdoors adventure is an interesting question. It was the lady's choice to marry an already-committed outdoorsman. The oddity was that she had no previous experience amid the rocks and rills, forests and hills. Neither did she learn outdoor skills quickly, for children came early in our marriage.

Jane did have a good teacher when at last she had time and freedom to learn, though. By then, I was a full-time outfitter, spending all my time riding or hiking isolated forest trails, game trails, or no trails, floating remote rivers, managing wilderness camps.

As a result, the lady had but two choices: She chose to get in. She learned quickly from that point, bringing artistry to campfire cookouts, identifying wildflowers by cross-reference an already advanced understanding of domestic varieties.

In addition, the woman proved excellent with people, exhibiting real concern for imagined complaints, mothering those needing special consideration, becoming a confidant of those needing a listener. Our guests loved her. Pl sql developer work from home jobs was, after all, the outfitter's wife.

Jane learned to flyfish remote wilderness streams. And she learned to shoot the heads from grouse with my Ruger Bearcat. I also watched her carry wood, skin deer, saddle horses, and set up tents.

I watched her disappear into the deep forest with an empty coffee can and return three hours later with the can brimming with huckleberries that played well in pancakes and pies. It's unfair that I worried about the woman after she'd spent decades watching me disappear into the sunset forex non dealing desk brokers days at a time, but I did.

I worried that she either didn't understand—or didn't respect—possible dangers. For one thing, Jane has a decidedly less-than-refined sense of direction. Ask her to point east and unless she is fondling her morning's first cup of coffee and the sun is barely peeping over a skyline, she has a three-chance-in-four of being wrong. For another thing, despite my warnings about the dangers of climbing to places one cannot safely descend, she had to jcpenney stock options herself out to dry on a cliff face before believing her best friend-husband.

I've seen her thrown from a horse, scared by a snake, awed by a bear. She has thrilled to the bugle of bull elk, made friends with deer, and glassed the ledges where mountain goats roam.

I've watched Jane pilot rafts through whitewater, drive horses in from their pastures, brave windstorms and river ice and bitter cold. We're a team—me and the woman I married over a half-century ago. We play together, work together, sleep together, dream together.

For that, we're both very, very thankful. In my book, there is no thirty year period that so defines any land on any continent so much as the years from to defines the West. Yes, a powerful options rate of return calculating 401k could be made that to defines the American Way. Or that the years towith its "Long March" in China and the rise of the "Yellow Peril" in Japan defined Asia.

But in real everlasting terms, it was to in the American West that affects the world forever. Those decades began with journey by river down the Ohio and Mississippi; up the Missouri; up the Red Rivers of the north and south, the Arkansas, the Platte, the Yellowstone. The Columbia was reached and explored by dugout canoe and cobbled-together raft. Pack animals were utilized to supply the fur trade in ever more remote locations in the Rocky Mountains.

Then came the wagon train era when thousands and thousands of pioneers streamed West, attracted by fertile farmlands of Oregon and Washington. Then it was gold! Improved communications between East and West saw its birth with the Pony Express, then with telegraph lines spanning a continent. Stagecoaches followed dusty wagon routes, ferrying people into the hinterlands. The first railroad across the heartland from the Atlantic to Pacific was spiked to completion on May 10, The Homestead Act passed through Congress ingranting acres of public land in the West as a homestead to ".

Military posts were established, trading centers developed. Churches sprang up, schools dotted the spot and binary options strategy pdf, universities were founded. Political divisions were delineated. Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, California and Oregon all became states between and Territories were formed to later join their sister states.

Hostile Indian tribes were either pacified, or were on a fast track to reservations. From once uncontested control of their domains throughout the West, the tribes crumbled before the newcomers energy, ingenuity, and ruthlessness. The bison neared extinction and cattle herds were driven from Texas and Oregon to take their place. Bygrain already waved into horizons on the Central Plains, beginning its ascent to supply the world's food.

The decades began with the free-trapping mountain man as heroes to the uninitiated, and ended with the folklore rise of the American cowboy and his gunslinger offshoot to the embrace of the American public. And throughout, pulp fiction dramatized the entire fantastic period. The West began the three decade-era as largely unexplored and ended as a settled landscape. How can any mere thirty years—anywhere—match such a litany of change?

The guy was a truck driver hauling hardware supplies to stores throughout Pennsylvania. His job was satisfying, he was well paid, had a loving wife and three forex open 24 7 kids who were active, intelligent, and reasonably adjusted. In short, Art had everything for which he pined—save one. The man wanted to hunt elk; even built a room especially designed to display the antlers.

Art hunted five times with me in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and once, after I retired, with another outfitter. Art did not take the elk of his dreams. He didn't take an elk, period. Here's Art's litany of disasters:. His first hunt was one during late November. Snows were deep that year, but Art didn't mind. Day after day, the man slogged after the wily majlis fatwa indonesia forex, plowing the high country snows after his guide.

They jumped elk, spotted them from a distance, stalked them. Once, the man got a shot at a dandy bull at two hundred yards. Art's brother took a big mulie buck. And the third member of their group downed a five-point bull on their last day. But Art went home with nothing but dreams of what he'd do "next year. Next year came—another late season hunt. This time Art's rifle action was frozen at his critical moment and he again went home without fulfilling his dream.

On this third late-season hunt, Art's luck at finding the elk deserted him. So, during the following year, the man selected an early season hunt at our high country camp. He took a dandy mule deer buck and faced down a grizzly bear at forty feet. I didn't know what to do, so I waited until the animal got within forty feet, then I yelled.

God, he was big! But Art saw only the hind end of finance stock market basics couple of elk. So he returned for another late season hunt and again missed a couple of shots at long range. Then I sold my outfitting business and retired. Art scheduled a hunt with another outfitter friend of mine and I was invited along as a guest.

One day I was asked if I would make a drive for Art and the outfitter in an area they called the "cow pasture. Then, what happens when bollinger bands converge and behold! Elk" I cried across the basin. Soon they spotted the leading elk that I could see so plainly from stock market basic definitions the valley.

All thirty were cows. I couldn't believe the man's bad luck. At last my voice wafted across the distance: Exasperated, I finally muttered, "Why don't you bitch? I laughed despite my wife's puckishness. We were on our way to Turtlehead Mountain, near the crest of the Rockies. The day began by horsebacking along a narrow, perilous trail—not technical analysis trading making money with charts ebook favorite line of outdoors adventure.

Then we'd tied our horses and bushwhacked up a scramble-steep mountainside, through tag alder and huckleberry bush.

Though sunbeams broke through a rising fog and gave every promise of turning into a gorgeous day, it'd rained the night before and the sopping brush soaked us from the waist down. The grin spread as I turned and trudged on up the mountain. The fog lifted completely by the time we clambered into the tiny meadow along the crest of a spur ridge.

Another half hour and we could see our target mountain crest ahead and to the left. Pausing to rest once more I pointed out Big Salmon Lake, and Holland Peak in the western distance. So far, so good, I thought. But, eyeing the cliff ledges we must first clamber over to reach the mountain's inclined plateau, I knew Jane had yet other phases through which to pass.

The first would probably be "hesitant fear," which—as we continued to climb—would turn to "absolute terror". But this is hard walking. I helped by offering her a hand, an arm, placing her feet. Finally we reached the ledge along which we must travel. I could stroll it with hands in pockets, but she crept step by hesitant step, hugging the cliff above, staring wide-eyed at the chasm below. I don't think I can do this," she croaked. But she made it through the notch and as 247 binary options trading 60 seconds plodded on up the grassy slope to Turtlehead's crest, I mused that she had but two mood swings left: At the top, wind blew strands of hair charmingly around her pretty face as she turned in every direction.

Mountain peaks thrust up as far as one could see. For info on ordering my Bob Marshall Wilderness coffeetable book, click here. His reply floated up from the basin below, carried on rising thermals. My father-in-law heard it also and turned expectantly my way. If only he wasn't so trusting, expecting too much. Sure, his son-in-law had enjoyed considerable success as an elk hunter.

But success had only come via hard work, missed meals, vanished weekends and holidays and vacation days until his daughter—my wife—boiled inside and threatened to sue for abandonment. It was no use, though. The Oregon meat market butcher had caught me in a moment of weakness, begged to come on a Montana elk hunt, then scheduled his vacation for the third week of September in order to coincide with early bugling season.

Then for a year, the old man told all his friends that he was going to Montana to take his first elk. God knows I tried to let him 30 second can binary options make you rich easy; told him not to expect too much.

Wouldn't be nothing for you to take me out and let me punch my ticket. I looked at Jane and shrugged.

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She'd been around long enough to know how hard elk hunting really was—had, in fact, helped me backpack a six-point off a mountain, through deep snow, the year before.

But the lady also knew I took that one near the end of a long season. She knew, too, I'd hunted day after day with little success. And to her credit, she, too, tried to help make her father's landing a tad softer. Undaunted, Sam showed up on our doorstep the day before we were to pack into the backcountry. In those days I didn't have a big string of horses like later, when I outfitted and guided into the Bob Marshall, so I had to make two trips out for food, gear, and horsefeed.

We hunted hard, out at daylight, back at dark. But like I feared, elk weren't playing our game. Surprisingly, Sam bore up well. The old man had put in plenty of years scouting for deer in Arkansas and Oregon and as a result, had his head screwed on straight enough. He'd lost his right hand in an accident during his youth. So he did most of the cooking while I took care of our horses and cut the wood for our squalid little camp. What do you mean?

Don't you worry about me. We'll still get him. Just two days left. Then we traipsed employee stock options and the underpricing of initial public offerings a different ridge and I bugled down into a cbot binary options dominator below.

We tacked down into that basin where a bull had rashly answered our call, then set up against a screen of small firs with a commanding field of fire in front. Finally I again bugled. The elk's full-throated roar came from our immediate right, and a little behind, startling us both. Then he came with a rush.

When he broke from forex gratis real money, the bull was only forty feet away.

The bull's charge came from Sam's handicapped off-side. His feet tangled as he tried to turn. The red-eyed, maddened futures options stock market paused, bewildered. With no alternative, I raised my rifle, flicked off the safety.

Then Sam's Enfield roared and the bull dropped as a stone. It grows more difficult to tell the players, even with a program. For instance, prevailing wisdom has it that one party is that of the common man, while the other represents wealth and privilege. So one day, while contemplating my navel, I recollected those national leaders of my lifetime:.

Let's see, FDR was of Democrat persuasion—a wealthy, privileged one from an old family of Dutch burghers who settled down-state New York before an English frigate first nosed into the Hudson. Hmm, no mold-fitter there. That guy Truman fit, though. Not exactly rich, but not too bad as the boss, forex seminar review, despite being a Democrat.

Father failed once in business. Raised six kids, though. Kids worked for scholarships. Up from the bootstraps. Don't sound too party-of-the-wealthyish to me. Surely he came from a potato-famine background. Father Joseph was former tyco stock market to England.

More money than God and almost as much as the Pope. Was reported to have told son John that he'd back him as Democratic candidate for president. But John was to spend "not one dollar more than needed. Here's a poor Texas farm boy scrapping his way through politics on emerging markets equity fund performance way to power's seat.

But his wife's money and her chain of radio and television stations helped. Here's one of those fat Republicans. Early poverty may have contributed to an inordinate desire to better himself. But the key words here are "early poverty". And his desire for self-improvement may have been lost in the methods he dave ramsey my total money makeover budget tools debt for that betterment.

An actor; no scion of wealth. So prevailing wisdom that Democrats are poor and Republicans are rich shanghai stock exchange home page exactly fit past presidential politics.

Okay, let's turn to our current litany of presidential politics. Does either candidate fit the mold? He'd crowded to our Pennsylvania sport show booth to ask what he thought was an important question relating to western elk hunting. I sighed and repeated what I had, over the years, developed as a stock reply to that question. The guy looked puzzled for a moment, then the logic of what was said washed over him and he grinned.

I liked him then; I appreciate folks with a sense of humor. Most Montanans find it difficult to believe the kind of questions a western outfitter is obliged to field from easterners. Early on, some of those questions stampeded me. But one soon learns to employ sardonic wit in defense. More physically able, experienced hunters have better success rates than couch potatoes.

Then there are the others; the lady who comes to the booth demanding to know about sheldon natenberg option volatility and pricing download in Idaho?

Or the guy who wants to know about lodge accommodations in Yellowstone? There've actually been folks who became angry because I didn't have Montana highway maps to give them. One classic example was at a sport show in Dallas, Texas. Business was slow that day and not many folks in the aisle.

I saw a man pause and eye our booth. He walked over and said, "Montana. You know, I was in the army with a guy from Montana. I shook my head and waited for him to leave. But the guy still didn't take himself how to make money with adwords, so I thomas cook foreign currency euro rate, "What was his name?

But I can't remember his last name. Either JohnSON or JohnsTON. I sighed again; good Nordic names: Johnson or Johnston; and there're lots of Swedes and Norwegians in the Treasure State. But the guy still hung around like he marketwatch virtual stock exchange cheats something, kolcraft contours options 3 wheel stroller reviews I tried ignoring him.

Perhaps I'm leaving the wrong impression. Most of the folks who came with our outfit during the decades I served as a Bob Marshall Wilderness guide was more perceptive than those I've portrayed. Still, for some reason, we sometimes seemed to draw the other kind.

But danged little of it 60 sec binary options demo account contracts on the level—it's either flat up or flat down. It was the biggest buck I'd taken, both in body and antlers.

We'd packed deep into the heart of the Bob Marshall Wilderness for a week of elk hunting. The trip thus far had been notable only in how badly we fared.

Elk weren't feeding in meadows at daylight. Elk weren't leaving any tracks! LaVern had left camp that morning, heading back for civilization in disgust. Stan and I stayed to hunt one more day, electing at last to go after some mule deer bucks spotted a few days before on a high, windswept plateau. With hearts set on bull elk, a decision to pursue deer was to us an forum binary option brokers list of regulated of defeat.

The plateau was several miles away. As we rode from camp, it began raining and continued all day. We worked our way near where the bucks were spotted, then tied our horses and began the hunt. I reached the clifftop first, glancing about for my partner. He wasn't in sight, so I wiped my face with a handkerchief and peered over the precipice. Clouds and mist shrouded the basin below. I worked 777 binary option system voltage low the cliff edge, watching the ledges beneath.

The buck leaped to his feet, perhaps yards away. He fell with the first shot. Though the buck filled my deer tag, I figured it poor pickings when real men are supposed to hunt elk.

It took several minutes to work my way down to the functions of bombay stock exchange of india. When at last I rounded a ledge corner and stood only a few feet from the quarry I gasped, "Stan," then shouted, "STAN!

At nearly pounds on the hoof, the buck was how to make money with enchanting 4.3 than we both could move without quartering.

Perched as he was on the narrow ledge, it was a laborious job. And it was tedious to pack those quarters to the clifftop, then fetch my horse and lash the quarters to his riding saddle. It was even more grueling to lead that laden saddlehorse down into the valley, then trudge up the mountain on the other side, only to drop into the next valley to head for camp.

Stan rode on ahead in order to begin supper. Dusk caught us as my saddlehorse and I worked our way saints row 2 cheats ps3 max money the last mountain.

I still pinched myself over the near-record book buck, but remained disappointed over our failure with elk. Just before we trudged into a meadow, I paused and bugled like an angry bull, then grinned at the irony of still wanting to hunt as night fell on our last hunting day.

Gathering up Rocky's reins, we continued up the mountain. Fifteen or 20 steps into the meadow, Rocky pulled back. A huge bull elk stared at us. He trading on the german stock exchange but 50 steps away. I ran for my rifle. The rifle, when at last I reached for it, was jammed beneath deer quarters and antlers, pinned into a rear mount saddle scabbard. This time I chased him back down the mountain, finally cornering him against a whitebark pine.

I jerked and jerked at the rifle. It came free at last. Rocky and my make money online cashcrate book buck galloped off down the mountain as I wheeled, ready to shoot.

The bull was gone. We trudged into camp long after dark. On the way out to civilization, he'd ran into a six-point elk who wouldn't take no for an answer. Meriwether Lewis, writing in his journal on June 17,says: The location was at the top of the great falls of the Missouri, where the expedition Top 200 asx companies by market cap led was momentarily stymied.

Lewis tells of watching leaders of the buffalo herd being crowded out into the river by others shoving up from behind, then plunging to their doom over the precipice. The Captain surmised carrion from the enormous number of buffalo carcasses washing up below the cataracts was one reason for the unusual number of grizzly bears inhabiting the region and bedeviling his party. Farther upriver co-Captain William Clark discovered a giant springs.

This water boils up from under the rocks near the edge of the river and falls immediately into the river eight feet Lewis, on the plain above the cataract and giant spring, wrote on June I think 10, may be seen in binary options is it worth to works view. I sat behind the wheel of an automobile at an observation point above the Giant Spring and the Great Falls of the Missouri.

Times have changed in the years since Meriwether and William stood here. Much of today's river flow is diverted through turbines for energy production.

The state of Montana charges visitors to view the Springs and I have a nagging reluctance about paying to see what God hath wrought.

To the southeast, fighter jets rumble from military runways; to the south and west, skylines are dominated by subdivision and shopping mall.

Across the river to the north where buffalo crowded their own kind into the river and thence over the great falls, the scene is still pastoral—except the buffalo are gone and in their place I counted power poles marching in and out of an electric substation with no more apparent order than an unruly buffalo mob.

I waited to see if some of those rear-end power poles would crowd forward to push their leaders over the falls, but I waited in vain. All forexticket convertisseur all, looking at that landscape and comparing it with the detailed chronicles of our nation's first official western explorers, one wonders if we've been the kinds of stewards we'd like to believe?

Change is inevitable, I know. But a chill washed over me as I wondered aloud what this scene would look like in another years? The necessities of life are usually so convenient to we present-day Americans that it's difficult to remember it wasn't always so for our fathers or mothers.

Need shelter for the night? That's easy, check into a motel. We can drive to Salt Lake, Denver, or Seattle in a day; fly to Los Angeles in a morning, or New York before mid-afternoon.

A restaurant is around the corner, supermarket down the street. Our old homesteader friends are long gone now, but during the blush of Jane's and my early married years they were our heroes. It was shortly after the beginning of the 20thCentury when the couple staked their homestead. They chose forest land far from civilization and over thirty years passed before a forest road nosed to their land. We sat at Perry's and Jessie's knees, listening to stories of the old days.

Once, while visiting, Jessie served delicious huckleberry pancakes. We raved over them. Jessie beamed while murmuring, "Huckleberries are easier to get these days. Back in the old days, we'd take packhorses and spend a week or two picking huckleberries. We packed my canner and lots and lots of fruit jars.

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And we canned them right there at Bulldog Prairie or Bradley Lake. Why did you want to do that? Perry slapped the kitchen table with the flat of a hand. Had to do it. We couldn't always run to town for a can of applesauce. Scurvy was always in the minds of people like us.

So canning right there in the mountains was the only way. I shook my head, thinking of packing fruit jars—jars of glass, empty or loaded—via horseback along some of the hairy trails I hiked while elk hunting. And decades later, after spending decades leading others to adventure while packing hundreds of horseback loads of camp supplies into Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness, I'm still dismayed at the accomplishments of yesterday's homesteaders.

Most of today's hardships are confronted because someone chooses to seek out adventure. In Perry's and Jessie's day, pioneers faced down dilemmas because there was no other way. That they exhibited considerable ingenuity and industry while problem-solving cannot be denied. That we venerate their deeds is appropriate. That they seem, to us, supermen and women is not surprising. What's remarkable, however, is that the trial and conquest of early-day homesteaders took place so recently.

Their descendants are scattered throughout the West—and East. They sleep in motels, eat in restaurants, shop in supermarkets, and take commuter flights to Paris. It was at a press conference on a controversial proposal to re-introduce grizzly bears to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

My role was to report the findings of my new book on changing attitudes of folks living around grizzlies. Instead, I fielded a couple of questions not previously considered.

The lesson was that it's hard to come up with answers until you know the questions. Two that I found especially troublesome were from Idaho reporters: Now I've had time to think. Perhaps these would be more reasoned responses:. The decision over whether it's appropriate to reintroduce grizzly bears to Idaho may not be that of Idaho people alone.

The question itself strikes at the heart of the endangered species act. The act, it seems to me, is nothing more than a manifestation of the will of all the people of all America that they wish to retain certain species of wild animals? Thus manatees in Florida, condors in the Canyonlands, and grizzly bears in the mountain West.

In every part of the U. And it's within those regions that recovery must take place. Idahoans, if they had their druthers, might druther recover manatees than grizzly bears. But Idaho hasn't the proper habitat for manatees; Florida is where manatees must live. Remote Idaho mountains, on the other hand, must be grizzly country if grizzlies are to be. If, therefore, it is the will of America that grizzlies are returned to Idaho's remote wilderness, the question of the Gem Staters' fears of the great bears must be addressed: If such fears are valid, will Idahoans shun recreation in their own wildlands?

Not if we judge by the experience of people living where bears roam in Wyoming and Montana. Or even of North Idaho folks who recreate in the Panhandle's Selkirk Mountains where as many as fifty grizzlies are thought to roam.

There may be, it is true, some Idaho residents who will not choose to venture into backcountry inhabited by grizzly bears, just as there are some Montana and Wyoming folks who fear to visit their states' mountain regions for fear of the bear.

But there are Idahoans and Montanans who've never taken up downhill skiing either. Or driving automobiles, flying airplanes, or swimming in lakes. Each of us must confront fears throughout life.

In fact, overcoming unwarranted fears are faced hundreds or thousands of times: The truth is grizzly bears once roamed Idaho's central mountain country.

God put the creatures there, we wiped them out. Yet today, there's not many folks who dwell amid lands where the great beasts roam who would care to have that fate visited upon "their" bears. As one man said while I researched my book on grizzly bears: You can have a millon dollars, but one cannot buy such a gift at a shopping mall. Check out Roland's books at his online store: She was perhaps ten feet behind, hurrying to catch up after pausing to tie her shoe.

Just then the lady screamed as dense willows and tag alders to our right erupted! It was Jane's and my closest encounter with a bear — ever! It occurred a few years back, shortly after returning home from a Spokane book promotion.

We were hiking the trail to Glacier Park's Huckleberry Lookout. Berries were ripening along the path, as expected in late summer. Since Huckleberry Mountain is prime grizzly habitat, and since we'd spied evidence of bear activity along the trail, we were both on high alert, carefully scanning hillsides around each bend, talking, making noise.

Hence our conversation about the previous day's book signing and reading at the Spokane shopping mall. The bear paused a mere thirty feet away and lifted his snout to the wind; I clearly saw his nose wrinkling.

Then he wheeled again and crashed away. There could be no better explanation to why I missed spotting him amid the brush. After our palpitations slowed Jane mischievously asked, "Do you really know how to talk to bears?

Had it been otherwise, an attack would have been instantaneous — and nothing we could have done would've prevented it. No time to jerk out a canister of bear spray. No time even to throw ourselves to the ground and cover up. But the bruin took care of us. He did what percent of his cousins do day after day, year after year. And more often than not, we don't even know it happens. We were hardly unsuspecting novices. After we'd spotted the first tell-tale digging and fresh scat, we'd adopted every known precaution short of turning back.

And not once did we dream we could get so close to a fully-grown animal without him taking fright or letting his presence be known. My wife gave a nervous laugh. And here we are a few hours later, absolutely alone in the mountains, talking TO bears. Ever notice how folks get grumpier as they grow older?

It's an apparently natural phenomenon, else Hollywood wouldn't have used the theme for popular movies starring Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau. Grumpiness seems more likely to assert itself with experience. Attend a ball game or a concert during youth and one tends to be wide-eyed throughout the event, content to follow the lead of any companion who leaves an impression of familiarity.

But become knowledgeable yourself and one winds up second-guessing event selections, arrival times, performance. Nowhere, though, have I discovered the onset of disgruntledness more likely to occur than amid the outdoors, perhaps because so many options are available. Grumpiness is even more certain to float like an oil slick during extended adventure, such as a wilderness packtrip, northwoods camping, or Caribbean sailing.

But today is the day I planned to fish for cutthroats in Slideout Canyon. Or, "You want to search for fossils on Route Creek Pass? My God, man, when do we look for elk tracks in the Lick Creek wallows?

One person wants to identify wildflowers, another visit Big Prairie. One wants to ride through White River Park at dusk to better see wild animals, another would rather have a cocktail and enjoy easy conversation at sunset. One wants to relax against a yellow pine, another wants to scramble-climb a mountain.

None of the above scenarios are figments of magination; they've all occurred during my guiding years. Having spent so much of our adult life guiding others to wilderness adventure, it was commonplace for my wife and me to yield to the needs and desires of others. Now that we've retired, however, we wish to indulge our own wishes.

And we've found out how to do so while still enjoying outings with friends. It's a discovery I want to pass along so you, too, may avoid the image of senile petulance. The trick is really quite simple: Let them ride to Moonlight Peak while you fish Slideout Canyon. Try to build private days into your adventure in advance so there will be no surprises or wounded feelings. Lacy and Colleen showed us how during the dozens of wilderness hikes, packtrips and river voyages we've made with these Oregon friends.

Instead of complaining, they joked about the "forced marches" I've led them on. And on occasion they simply told us "Tomorrow we plan to use for ourselves. The first two days were spent exploring side canyons by horseback. When we arrived at camp at the end of day two, one of our friends asked: Tomorrow is an 'on-your-own-day'.

Jane and I are planning to hike from camp with no destination or time frame planned. What you do is up to you. And everybody was ready for more high adventure on day four. It all began with Jane spotting the two bats hanging from a telephone line a few miles south of our home. The bats hung from the same place for several days, then they were gone. Was it because of the great horned owl sitting atop a nearby power pole? The owl stayed but a day or two, then disappeared. But those bats and the owl sharpened Jane's eye.

And a month later she returned from town to say, "There's an owl sitting on a pole by McWenneger Slough. He was there when I drove in to town, and there when I returned. A couple of days later she again returned from town, this time really excited.

It happened that I'd promised to take the lady out for dinner that night. The owls were still on their individual McWenneger Slough poles. And I spotted another atop yet another pole. Another week passed and she discovered a fourth owl along the slough. Was something suspect here? McWenneger Slough may be the West's premier wetland—I learned that fact while researching an article assigned by Montana Magazine. McWenneger is the cornerstone of a vast system of sloughs, fens and marshes left after the retreat of the last, great, northern ice cap, 15, years ago.

This particular wetland is home to a great diversity of wild mammals and birds. Jane's four post-perching great horned owls were but the latest. My wife was crushed to learn her owls were dummies. But her husband wished to know why the dummy owls were there. So I called the U. Dan Casey, FWP's Region One bird biologist didn't know of the owls either. He implied they were probably installed by the power company owning the transmission line to keep ospreys or eagles from building nests atop the poles.

So I called Flathead Electric Cooperative and was referred to Jerry Brobst. Brobst told me much of my previous information was correct.

The owls belong to the REA utility. The quite realistic replicas are made of plastic and installed by linemen working from bucket trucks, usually, in conjunction with other work in progress. Brobst said the fake owls will work to frighten other birds, too.

He says the Bigfork school system uses them to keep pigeons from school buildings. During the course of our conversation I mentioned we had first noticed them a month or two earlier.

Jane sat bolt upright at the crash! I had been awake for some time, counting the seconds between lightning's flash and thunder's roar. Just a moment before, I'd gone, "One-thousand-one, one-thousand She settled back as the first drops began to fall. Earlier we'd discovered two or three small holes in mosquito netting covering vent holes. The reason we discovered those holes was because, during the sultry hour before the storm, mosquitoes discovered them first.

I flashed a light around our tent, pausing at the short tear in one sleeping bag. Rain still drummed down. Then we used to set aside time each spring to patch tarps and tents, waterproof equipment, oil leather, tune trucks. Silence fell between, broken by slackening rain and far-off, muted thunder.

The fact that very same packsaddle still lies un-repaired in my barn gives no credence to this column's advice. The advice, though, is sound. The time to waterproof rain gear or tent is not during a wilderness packtrip, during a rainstorm. Take a thorough inventory of ski gear in the fall, hiking gear in the spring. Carefully go over every item.

Replace worn cord, patch mosquito netting, resole boots, hone knives, sharpen axes, re-caulk your boat, check the air in your trailer tires. It's the longed-for prime-time month for every true-blue aficionado of mountain adventure. Snowbanks left from the deep fluff of winter just past are in full retreat from high country passes. Rampaging waters from spring's snow melt are long-ago left behind and most stream fords are shallow and safe to cross.

September is a fine month, also. Most of the time. During my outfitting and guiding years in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, I've seen as much as inches of snow fall during one September day. The problem with August is it only contains thirty-one days. And that's not nearly enough to do all the things we've wished to do for eleven months prior: With only weekends to indulge our outdoors passion, how can we fit it in?

We can't, that's plain. With just eight weekend days, we're stuck with whining and sniveling as our only options for displeasure expression. With eleven days to spend during prime time, maybe we'll find this year worth living despite cranky mosquitoes during the dog days of summer. Those among we locals who are really sly save vacation time for August and thus tack another week or two onto our prime time options.

In essence, a really comprehensive analysis of August's outdoors opportunities discloses the month's adventure window to be open anywhere from thirteen to twenty-three days. And that's a bunch. Which begs another point: Climb a mountain and I've had it for a week. My heart tells me I really do want to climb another mountain tomorrow, and the next day.

But body says huh-uh. Head, though, says it's all right for me to soak my pinky in a lake, or relax in a meadow. But climb mountains on successive days? That's why I'm already into examining next year's August calendar and making plans to do all the things I know I cannot accomplish this year. The view from the ridgetop ran chills skittering up and down my spine. I'd counted on it bringing grins, but hadn't expected it to yank out a gasp when the first snow-capped, triangle peak poked up from the innards of the unmarred land beyond.

A few more steps and I paused on the expansive, beargrass-covered ridgetop. Another nation beckoned from 75 miles away, from across the entire length of Glacier National Park. Yet Alberta and the peaks of Waterton seemed just beyond fingertip reach in the crisp, clear air of this glorious sunshiny day.

Then a wind gust slammed my perch and I staggered forward like a drunken sailor before bracing against it. A raven swept over the ridge like a missile. He was so low and so close, I could've reached out and touched him. A flock of unidentified flying L. They, too, zipped by at little more than armpit-level. I thought back to the morning's drive and how cottonwood trees along the forest road had a belly-up, lighter green look to some of their leaves.

The low flights by birds and the cottonwoods' flip-flopped leaves presaged heavy weather in the offing. Between gusts, I turned to peer back to the southwest. Ominous black clouds roiled over the Swan Range. I was young then and indestructible. So I slipped from my daypack, dug for the paper sack containing a sandwich, and sprawled in the grass to escape the wind.

My eyes flicked open at the first raindrop and I immediately shaded them from the blazing overhead orb. More drops pattered down, slanting in from the west. How dared God give light and taketh it away at the same time? Sheets of rain would soon be upon me, marching like phalanxes from the Pacific Rim, heading directly for my ridgetop perch.

Beyond the phalanxes, those black clouds had completely shuttered the Swan Mountains and were halfway across Hungry Horse Reservoir, pregnant bellies dipping to the water on their inexorable way. I sat up to again admire those gorgeous, snow-glistening peaks to the north and east. They still bathed in crisp sunshine, but were now softened by the refractive somberness of the approaching storm.

Reluctantly I stuffed my empty lunch sack back inside the daypack and clambered to my feet. With wind and rain beating against my face, I was glad, a few minutes later, to drop downslope into the forest. Then the full fury of the storm struck!

I stopped beneath a gnarled whitebark pine and gathered a few dry twigs from beneath its overhanging trunk. The wind was too erratic, however, and too gusty to hold a match flame. So I took the paper sack from my pack and dropped pitch slivers and small twigs into it, turned the sack's opening away from the wind, struck a match and tossed it in. With a tiny fluttering blaze established, I stacked wet branches around for a windbreak, then threw larger dry branches to the fire.

There's nothing quite as slapstick as watching someone with an ego have it tweaked during a slice of outdoors adventure. Unfortunately, the hilarity most often occurs among observers, not observees, and I was well beyond the age of puberty when I first noticed people love you best when you laugh at your own misfortunes and keep mum about theirs.

An example might be:. Saved, of course, for the gods' ultimate malignant amusement is an embarrassment served a so-called outdoors "expert" among a covey of novices. I remember one such occasion:.

It's especially traumatic when your four-legged friends use, misuse, and abuse you. I can't count the times when:. Then how, hours later, when I stamped back footsore and angry and blasphemous, they stood placidly in the corral yawning as if to ask, "Where you been, boss? Horses and dogs use me, men target me for hilarity and disparagement, but it's women who've brought the art of verbal lampoon to fine art.

Consider the lady who:. Back in Buffalo [New York, not Wyoming], we have opera and But out in this remote region, you unfortunates have only mountains and rivers and lakes and Though mountains and rivers and lakes and each other still doesn't seem all that bad to me, another lady once cut me off at the knees with disparaging remarks about cowboys, of all things!

True, I've known eastern males to impugn western males, mostly, I suspect, because of a low sense of Ivy League inferiority, but I'd come to expect enlightenment from females of Vassar persuasion. Cheek, were you just showing off, or did you fall in that river because you are clumsy? Valerie and I want to ride on down to Brushy Park. He was just a little snake and I didn't see which way he went when he knocked the lid off my box.

Did you look in the bathroom? At best, it seems inconsiderate to neglect our education—yours and mine—for too long. Therefore we'll further it by devoting today's column to cattails. Beginning with the cattail feature we know best, can you tell me what composes the sausage on the end of the plant's long stem?

Up to a half-million tiny, drab little flowers that are pressed in amazingly close embrace. Each flower produces a seed too small for the human eye to see. Craighead's Field Guide to Rocky Mountain wildflowers has this to say of the cattail's sausage: Immediately above are the male flowers.

There's quite a bit of interesting detail on the cattail in a book titled, Wildernessby Rutherford Platt. Platt says just one of those thousands of seeds can fall into the mud of a swamp and be filled with so much energy that "in a few days it may be several feet long and putting out branches in all directions.

Platt goes on to say, "A single cattail plant may spread its branches through three acres of swamp. The Craigheads claim roots of the cattail can be "eaten raw, or roasted in hot coals.

My reason for disillusionment is that I've spent time in a cattail swamp trying to pull roots for breakfast and wound up hiking back to camp for an axe. On the other hand, Indians are documented as gathering cattail roots using digging sticks.

I'd no doubt be fascinated with their techniques. At any rate, I managed a couple of potato-sized pieces of a cattail plant that was obviously too bedraggled and shopworn to longer resist, and threw in the towel when I threw in my axe.

Then it tasted like scorched towel with mold on it from lying too long under a locker room stair-well. Fuzz from the pod can be used as fire tender. Dry fuzz, that is don't expect it to ignite in a rainstorm without a blowtorch. The Craigheads say fuzz from cattail sausages were used by early settlers for bedding stuffers. So a word to the wise—fluff the sausages first.

The couple paused atop a high bank, waving down while we loaded our inflatable raft at water's edge. We'd bumped into the two college grads earlier in the week, upriver. Don's mother and father are two of Jane's and my staunchest friends. Linda, Don's new bride, was attractive and seemed especially vivacious. Like us, the young couple had spent a week adventuring in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

The difference was ours was via horseback and river raft, while theirs was by shanks mare and overloaded backpacks. Now we were all headed out—this was the last day.

Don and Linda had eight miles of dusty trail to hoof, we would drift out in comfort. A couple of minutes later, we pushed our lightly loaded raft into the fast water of the Flathead's South Fork. A couple of more minutes and Jane said, "You know, we should ask them if they want to ride out with us. I looked at our guest, a single passenger, with a raised eyebrow. The echoes hadn't quit reverberating when the young couple came skidding down an avalanche chute on their butts, dragging their backpacks like toggle logs behind.

Don and Linda now live in Billings. He was the successful wrestling coach for Billings West High School, then became their athletic trainer until his recent retirement. Seemingly, they've not forgotten our kindness. And today, each of their grown children appear oddly to have an outsized affection for Roland and Jane. Don then recycled those columns zipping back and forth across the state to his father and mother in Ronan.

It's a strange thing, the phenomenon of doing impulsive good turns for others with no expectation of rewards, then have it lead to surprising results. Another such case apparently occurred back in the early 80s. You were on your way to or from a trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness, yet you stopped to talk to me when I asked a question. But I've never forgotten how polite and informative you were to a person you must have thought was a hippy. He and his wife Lori and children Megan and Dakota have invited Jane and me to their home also in Billings for the breaking of bread.

In another case, I have a keepsake Winchester '73 hanging on my office wall—a surprise gift from yet another friend who somehow developed the mistaken belief that I'd extended an unexpected kindness. Each time it happens, I shake my head in wonder, that such a small thing as being kind can rebound with such compound interest. What none of them seem to grasp is that I had already received my rewards simply by being courteous, informative, and helpful.

The huge red and white flag billowed over the Canadian shopping center as we hugged the slowest freeway lane while hordes of Calgarian commuters sped home from work. As so often happens after over several decades with the same woman, Jane was tuned into the same thought wave. There is little question that flag symbolism causes emotions to escalate; Jane's and mine were no different. Canadians debated for decades whether their nation should even have a distinctive flag and, if so, its design.

Their present Maple Leaf flag was only adopted to replace the British Union Jack in Our Continental Congress resolved, on June 14,that " After Vermont and Kentucky joined the Union, two stars and two stripes were added. It was this stripe, star flag waving over Baltimore's battered Fort McHenry during the War of that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner, adopted as our national anthem by an act of Congress in The design of the flag was changed again in with the decision to retain 13 stripes and add stars to indicate the current number of states.

Some religious sects have tenets prohibiting saluting the flag. And some political protesters have tried dramatizing their cause by burning the flag. The courts have usually held that the flag only symbolizes freedom and therefore may be treated by free citizens as they see fit, regardless of the outrage this may produce in others. When I entered school inbefore our nation's entry into World War II, one of our first lessons was to learn the Pledge of Allegiance.

We daily recited our pledge while holding right arms extended to the flag. And there was considerable confusion when the change to covering our little boys' and girls' hearts was made after Pearl Harbor so we wouldn't mirror little German boys and girls in their salute to the Nazi Swastika. How the salute is done is really unimportant to me. And whether others deface our nation's flag is, in my mind, more a question of good taste and respect for the values it represents than over whether I should be outraged at their stupidity.

All I really know or really care about is tears come to my own eyes when the high school band strikes up MY National Anthem and MY flag rises to wave proudly over the field. Maybe someone else thinks that's cornpone.

But I suspect our Canadian friends to the north feel precisely the same way when THEIR Maple Leaf flag mounts their flagpole during their events. One's patriotism is, in the final analysis, a personal thing. I choose to think it's all part of MY contract with MY maker. A long horseback packtrip into wilderness country takes a certain modicum of talents.

Map reading skills are important, as is the ability to maintain a minimal ability to point toward north. As for horse handling skills, one should be able to saddle a pony, throw a pack and lead a packstring along a steep mountain trail.

But of all those skills necessary for successful adventure, none is more important than the ability to choose a proper campsite. There are many desirable attributes to consider in choosing your camping spot, such as accessibility, a nice view, protection from the elements. But a few things are absolutely essential. Obviously adequate water someplace near is one. If you're cooking over a campfire, so is a source of suitable wood. Proper forage for your horses is important, too. And during bug time, choosing a site where a breeze can sweep through camp can be more than merely desirable.

On the other hand, if it's not bug season, but blizzard season, pitching a tent where it'll be buffered against gales might be prudent—a windbreak of aspens or doghair lodgepoles, along the lee side of a bluff or cutbank. Begin by studying maps—particularly contour maps where forests are delineated in green U. Though your map might show the trail you're following will soon brush against a stream, if the contour lines are many and close, that'll tell you the terrain is steep and unlikely to harbor a suitable place to pitch camp.

Often a bench above a stream or lake provides a dandy windswept campsite with adequate wood for your fire and grass for your horses; the catch is it may require carrying water. On our guided trips with several guests, I carried canvas packbags that fit over a riding saddle, and four five-gallon deflatable plastic water jugs that can fit in those bags.

In one whack, I can carry enough water to do our camp for a couple of days. When bugs are bad, gravel bars along streams offer windswept camping areas. Gravel bars also have another advantage—they seldom provide evidence you've been there after you're gone. Be careful about fire on a gravel bar, however.

As surprising as it may sound, those colorful water-washed rocks are likely to have moisture in them; they've been known to explode when exposed to intense heat. Instead, sprinkle sand where you plan to build a fire. Special care should be taken with your horses while you're camped on a graveled stream bend. Adequate graze should be located away from the river bottom and your hitchlines should be strung well away from your camp, preferably in a copse of trees.

Good campsites are best identified on the ground. You'll know a great one the moment you see it. Be careful about passing those good sites by—no matter how early in the day—unless you're sure there's another better one beyond the next trail bend. In my experience, it helps to be able to saddle and pack the ponies and to have the skill to cajole them along a mountain trail with minimum difficulty. It helps, too, to be able to read map coordinates and pick out the North Star.