“Well, here we go…I’m at the beginning of the greatest adventure of all. I have gone Into the Woods (not necessarily Into the Wild). As I look out my kitchen/work table window I see the stone cairn islands of Dowdy Lake, which have gripped me since CJ and I discovered them while ice-fishing a couple years ago. Nice!”
-Journal entry: Tuesday; May 8th, 2018; 10:10 am. In my camper, Cochise.
For some reason, I’ve kept notebooks and journals most of my adult life. I’m glad I did, because my memory isn’t what it used to be. I write this now, months after events, but the journal takes me back. I was able to put the trailer on the property when the snow finally allowed, later than I had planned. Note to self: Don’t get hung up on plans. Just do.
First night on the property, sitting with my dog, ten miles from the Village, no neighbors within ear-shot, nightfall comes with a gentle wind through tall trees. The trees disappear in the dark. Quiet comes. Quiet stays. Then the stars. Oh, the stars! I had forgotten what they looked like. How big they are. How close. I feel as though I’m in heaven. Damn close. Now the quiet brings a settling grip. I am in heaven. Not even dead. What comes to mind in these unique situations first discovered but often wondered about? At that moment…wild animals.
Yeah. I’ve heard all the stories of bears and moose and mountain lions. The Big Three of the high timber. The Rocky Mountain Trifecta. Call me Dorothy. I’m with my Toto. Getting on the yellow brick road… Going to the Emerald City… Off to see the Wizard… Lions and mooses and bears! Oh My!! Gotta love those Munchkins.
The bear up here are black, not grizzly. Big hairy pigs that just want to eat. I’m not worried about them. So long as my dog doesn’t want to chase one, which dogs will do. But if you don’t attract them, they won’t come. Don’t leave animal food, human food or trash outside. Ursus Major has a bloodhound’s sense of smell. They also have a nasty odor. They don’t know how to clean themselves after they evacuate their bowels. Probably don’t care. They’re wild animals. Only on television commercials do they use toilet paper. Bears have an acute olfactory sense and no regard for hygiene. So, they smell good, but they stink. That’s the irony of being a bear.
Moose are different. They don’t eat what bears do. They won’t bother me here. They’ll bother me if I go into their territory and get between a cow and her calves. Or a bull in rut. They’ll stomp my dog – yours too – because they regard dogs as wolves. Moose don’t like
No, the apex predator here is the one you seldom see. I’ve lived in Colorado and frolicked in her foothills and mountains, fished her streams and rivers for most of my life. I’ve never seen a mountain lion in the wild. I’m not complaining. But everyone up here has their big cat stories. Most involve dogs let out at night that don’t come back. (This seems to be a tough place for canines). Felines of all sizes have superb night vision, and they can get from their perch to your neck without a sound, over major ground. Imagine your kitty when it was small and not fattened from canned food and domesticity. Multiply by 100. Note to self: Go inside when the sun sets. Take the damn dog.
But first night fears are soon overcome. I would continue to hear the stories: bears stepping on tent campers who foolishly took food to bed, sows prying locked restaurant dumpster lids open and dropping their cubs inside to snack. Even a local living in a trailer who had a bear that often flopped off of a branch and onto his camper-top to sleep in the middle of the night, taking advantage of the warm roof when the weather got cold.
Moose stories are just big deer stories, mostly involving accidentally hitting them with your vehicle. The vehicles usually loose that battle. Or people getting charged for getting too close, trying to get the perfect photograph, or letting their dog run too far off, highballing back hard and barking right to their master with Bullwinkle in full pursuit. The best thing to do then is find the biggest tree available and keep it between you and the animal, start thinking about your next dog, maybe keep that one closer at hand, with a loud metal bell tied tight to its collar.
And the mountain lion stories…oh, the mountain lion stories. Mostly just about seeing tracks, inside your own footprints when you come full circle on a hunt or hike, seldom seeing the actual animal, sometimes seeing their claw marks on tree trunks, or the hind quarter of a mule deer twenty feet up in a tree, wedged in the crotch of a branch and tendering while the cougar is who knows where…
First night turns to second, third…first week. Fears melt as experience brings courage. Courage to overcome. Overcome your fears. Face them down and chase them away. Boo! Be gone! But… they never go away. Not completely. Probably a good thing. No need to feel as though you’re ever really safe. But I feel safer here than I did in Tweakerland. And I realize that it’s time to go to work. Lots to do to make a home in the woods. I need to clear the trees, branches and deadfall that surround my camper pad and take away the cover for a big cat to hide. Just in case they get curious, as cats are known to do, and I forget not to go out at night.
I have the gear to deal with timber: chainsaw and axe, hatchet and pruning shears, and a utility trailer to haul it all to the slash depot on the way to the Village. I love chainsaws, having bought my first one in Alaska 30 some years ago to make firewood for our cabin woodstove, the only source of heat where temperatures hit 40 below. I love wood heat, too. The way it smells. The sounds of kindling crackling and the bigger logs taking flame. Getting the fire in that Earth stove banked and setting the intake air vents and damper tuned to make that burner hum. Nothing like the heat off a throbbing woodstove when it’s caught its wind. My wife and I could strip down to our underwear in the middle of winter, me beating a conga drum and her dancing like Isadora Duncan. Moose watching from a distance. Listening for wolves…
Work also meant digging a hole big enough for a septic tank that could handle the effluent from my camper, so I wouldn’t have to pull the trailer to the dumping station, and back it down my driveway. I needed help doing that the first time, and I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if my son wasn’t guiding me, talking to me on the two-way radio so I didn’t drop it into the trees.
Digging a hole in the mountains is not an easy thing. It’s hard work, because it’s hard rock. The dirt goes just so far on the surface, the decomposed remains of vegetation are only the mantle of the granite underneath. You have to break it up and scoop it out. I have that gear too: pickaxe and rock bar, and all kinds of shovels. I don’t like this work. It’s hard on my back, which is now sending messages at 5G speed. I have to keep ignoring those messages as my sewage tanks fill. No romantic notions about sewer tanks, just the harsh actuality that their space is finite. But that’s life in a camper…the reality of the Rubber Tramp.
My most important chore is also the one I look forward to most: building a storage/work shed. I can put up a 120 square foot structure without having to pull a building permit from the county. No inspection necessary. No government yahoo coming onto my property telling me I’ve used the wrong dimension lumber for rafters, an insufficient roof pitch, improper fasteners on the hurricane clips, unsatisfactory headers over doors and windows. Not code compliant. Gonna have to red tag it. Everything is wrong to them. That’s what makes them right. I don’t need government inspectors here. Who does? That’s one of the reasons we live in the woods.
I have the gear to build a shed (you gotta love gear): the saws, sawhorses, hammers, slammers and measuring tools. The Ace store in the Village has the fasteners, roof edging and other hardware I’d need. I also have a buddy in Cheyenne with a nail gun, bigger trailer and stronger back. But my back is beginning to fail, just thinking about that project, as I finish the septic tank – in the nick of time. I’ve built plenty of sheds. Even framed a few houses, including my own. But I was younger then, and that was before I tore up my lower lumbar (L4) on a construction job when I was in my late 20s. Note to self: Tall, skinny guys are not built for heavy construction labor. The orthopedic surgeon informed me of that when I was flat on my back in the emergency room. He was right.
I had to hire a local handyman to build my shed. I had to pay someone else to do something I used to get paid to do. Something I truly enjoyed doing. Something you could look at when the day’s work was finished, and see something that wasn’t there when you started. But those days are gone. The times, they are a changing. Dylan was right, too.
