Moose

Many years ago now - sometime late-1980's - my dear friend Zachary and I were making big plans over dinner at his home located in a very small coastal town just north of San Francisco. It was a long weekend of relaxation, gluttony and "objective seeking" as he liked to call these get-togethers - so we came prepared to hunt bear and take no prisoners. We would get together for barnstorming weekends several times a year to dig deep into life - deciding what we wanted and how to get there. These weekends were always intense, always productive and always made you feel like you could accomplish everything. Zachary was good about opening his home on the coast for these kinds of things and though the place was beautiful, it held the deep memories, the wisdom and folly of many generations that had cooked in the massive kitchen and paced the floor of the antique-strewn living room - you could literally feel the collective wisdom of his ancestors bearing down. Was it haunted? No. That's ridiculous. But the house itself hosted memories that refused to go away with the ocean breeze. It was a magical place where cool things happened!

As I mention earlier we came prepared for big game that weekend. Braised elk steaks with plums, peppers and coconut milk, pounded and pan-fried breaded freshly caught abalone with light lemon froth and fried herbs, slow-cooked earthenware pots of homemade sopa de tortilla with crunchy home made tortillas, thick and fluffy crab fritatas, mountains of fresh organic salads, open range steak tartare, steaming huge piles of mixed shellfish fresh homemade sourdough loafs - all were cooked in that classic kitchen, all devoured and washed down with copious amounts of excellent, perfectly stored wines from Napa Valley, Sonoma, Germany and France - Burgundies and Rhones, Champagnes and Rieslings, Cabernets and Zinfandels - all weekend long. The crash of the ocean and screams of the gulls, mixed with an ever-changing music selection depending on the moment made for a moment in time hard to forget.

The primary goal - the centerpiece - as decided earlier that week was to be the discussion about what Zachary wanted to do with his impending retirement. He had been incredibly successful in everything he touched throughout his life and to that end really could do anything he dreamed up. Yes - he had built up a dream-like financial warchest; he had plenty of FU money and was of the mind that he wanted to do something spectacular with it. Like all truly successful people, Zachary had no problems in acting the role of alpha male in every situation and he always reveled in the fact that I couldn't care less and could make him squirm uncomfortably, because I love to push and pull at the cracks in someone's personality just to watch them bleed and sweat - all in good humor and fun. That, he said, was what he always liked about me. Fearless was how he described our friendship. I was touched, honored, that he thought of me in that light.

It was Sunday morning as we drank scalding hot coffee on the bluff overlooking the surf that Montana began to take shape. Watching the sun come up behind us illuminating the Pacific Ocean for breakfast was painful. We hadn't gone to bed and were both feeling the effects of a no-night night. Montana had been kind to both of us in our various travels. The thought that there might be someplace to purchase, where a purchase might really mean something, set hard that morning. Some 50,000 or 100,000 acres purchased and put into the Nature Conservancy holdings for permanent protection was the decision. A mighty fine idea and I knew of one such place that just might fit the ticket.

Two weeks later and I was flying up with a plane-belly full of camping and trekking gear, photo equipment, and power of attorney and proxy documents to Twin Falls Idaho where I rented a truck and headed north into one of the prettiest parts of the west. There was an entire town for sale that came with its own valley at the base of an east/west spur of the Rockies.  Much of the land was already a part of the National Wilderness Preservation system but there was still plenty to grab and protect. My job as Zacharay's proxy was to scope out the inholdings, outholdings, and all holdings in between; go to the county office and scour the current and past ownership and lien records of the entire valley; talk to the locals and subtly see what was going on in that  little-traveled pocket of Montana.

In preparation, I contacted the last family of the town - a place that didn't have to pretend to look like an "authentic" old-west settlement. It was an old-west homesteader town and was falling down upon itself to prove it. The last standing family owned everything except the air-traffic control rights and ran the land and back county trails as a historical dude and back-country horse-camp ranch operation for adventurous souls who don't mind a few saddle sores, pork and beans, Jack Daniels and cowboy coffee.

After a few days due diligence at the county offices, historical society and library, 3 dozen rolls of film, and starry nights camping lakeside, I accepted the family offer to come stay at the town bunkhouse where I would have the place mostly to myself. Myself and the two permanent staff cowboys ... who looked at me with a comic distaste of something fresh they scraped off the bottom of their ancient Justin boots. Real life-indentured cowboys who thought Jack Palance was a sissy. They had the other end of the bunk house and it quickly became apparent that they'd had the other end of the bunkhouse for a very long time. I'd call them Tweedledee and Tweedledum but they wouldn't get the joke so Ike and Mike it is. For the next four days I was to hang out checking out the town, and then ride with Ike and Mike throughout the region both on horse and a Powerwagon that looked like it meant mountain business!

We decided to use the back-country camp for my second night. The family thought it would be a good idea for Ike and Mike to saddle me up and take me up into the mountains to see the extent of the holdings from many vantages. I won't say that I wasn't worried. I had spent a lot of time back then in back-country places doing some damned hard backpacking, kayaking and rafting big water, and rough-country camping. I loved that kind of adventure when I was younger. There were a couple of issues though... including the horse they saddled up for me... it's name was Nasty. Also, I had always planned and picked my partners in back-country adventure with care. I figured these guys could take care of themselves but we were heading up into serious bear country and it was a time of year that the grizzlys were very active foraging the rich low country to start their slam-on-the-fat process of early autumn. I didn't have a gun nor did I really want one... but Ike and Mike had some serious firepower with them... "just in case" they told me - Mike snickering with a sarcastic evil grin for effect - just to see my reaction.

The horseback ride up the miles of back country was stunning, wonderful and beautiful. That night around the fire, after a great meal of franks and beans, I drank Ike and Mike right into their tent. Howls of pain erupted in the morning as three empty bottles of Jack Daniels lay by the fire ring attesting to a night of cards and guitars, story-telling lies, bigger lies, and loud howling late-night prayers for all the beautiful naked women of the world to come ravish us in our tents. I felt fine, cooking the breakfast that the dynamic duo were supposed to cook. Ike and Mike forgot to talk down to me the rest of the day.

One thing I can tell you is that the ass view of the Grand Tetons - the backside - the side that you never see - it's more beautiful than the east side - without the traffic and tourists. Trust me. You should make the effort to see this once in your life! It was decided by the cowboys to ride up valley about 20 miles north back above the town, where decades ago the family had cleared some mountainside trails creating a few private ski runs accessible only by horse and  snowmobile. By the time Ike, Mike and I got there it was late afternoon and heading towards sunset. It had been a hot day and I was in a t-shirt and thought that it would be a good idea to gear up but the top of the peak was only about 500 yards above us. I figured 15 minutes of vista, snap a couple of rolls of film and back to the horses, throw on a sweater, and down to the town we would go. I tethered Nasty to a tree and hiked up to the peak.

The top of the peak - about the size of a large city block - hosted stunning views all around but to the west was the sun and miles upon miles of mountains and forest. The peak itself was covered with a thicket of Don King hair in the guise of lodgepole pines and there was a well worn doughnut trail leading all round the copse of trees. Ike and Mike stayed with the horses - they'd seen it all before. It's a shame when you get tired of natural beauty. People talk about urbanites and their jaded view of the world. It happens everywhere if you let it - that piss-poor attitude that says "I'm bored with what's in front of me." It is only by looking carefully at what's in front of you that makes the rest of the puzzle fit into place.

I skirted around the trail to look north and snap some pics with the cool blue light of twilight. It was then that I heard heavy snaps and crunching in the trees behind me and immediately thought of death. Grizzlys love country like that - it's their bedroom. Shit! I scanned the treeline and immediately started looking for the biggest solid tree to climb my cowardly ass up, all the while knowing full well that if I wasn't already up that tree - too bad! I decided to start making  noise to alert whatever it was that I was big and ferocious. I yelled. I screamed. I growled. It all came out like a piccolo with asthma.  This was a BIG mistake. A full grown adult bull moose came charging out of the trees to my left. IN an instant I put the biggest lodgepole between me and moose and felt the tree shudder hard as Bullwinkle fully butted the trunk trying to get to me.

I don't know how many of you have ever been near a moose. They're big. Really really big. This one topped out at about 7 feet without the rack. And they stink - oh man they smell ripe! To top it off they really are stupid. For such a big animal they have one of the smallest ratios of brain to body mass on the planet. This one was trying desperately to prove he was a model moose. He kept chasing me around that damned tree - for 20 long minutes! Those were some of the scariest 20 minutes of my life. It was cold but I was not. The adrenaline of watching for every move, every muscle twitch, indicating directional change, and the reaction to those shifts in his massive body as he tried somewhat desperately to attain a goring victory, was emotionally charged for both of us.

Then I heard hysterical peals of laughter and hoots and hollers. Talk about insult to injury! Ike and Mike had come up to see what all the shouting was about and were watching, on their horses, from a safe distance, the wilderness ring-around-the-rosy - they were loving the city boy meet nature show. A couple of minutes of that - which really did seem like an extra hour at the end of a double work shift - and Ike and Mike kicked it into gear and drove the moose down the hill with some of the best riding I had or ever have witnessed. Ike and Mike - the real deal, knew how to ride horse.

None of us could figure out, that night back in the bunkhouse, what the hell a moose had been doing up in the high county - these are riparian zone animals and don't really stray far from bottom land where the sweet grass and water is. The predominant theory came to rest on  the possibility that earlier in the day a grizzly had been in the area - not unusual for the area and time of year - and spooked the moose into high ground. That's all conjecture but fact be told, a 7 foot high moose is a terrifying thing when it is trying to kill you and I really didn't care if the damned thing had sprouted wings and flew up to the top of that mountain.

Zachary spent two weeks going through the reports, photos, and negotiation strategies I devised for the project. In the end he decided that there was somewhere else he wanted to protect, so he did. I was proud of him and his desire to do something great for future generations and though I have never been back to that part of Montana, I think about the people that I met and the moose that didn't kill me from time to time. It still makes me smile to remember the tough cowboys who couldn't hold their whiskey and the smell of the high country in autumn with 100 mile views.

Namaste
Lonely Man Travels