We found this fellow in Pyrgos on the Greek island of Tinos. It was giving us the look. “Why are you interrupting my nap time?” Cats, as everyone knows, enjoy their naps— 12-16 hours a day, or even up to 20.
Unlike Ancient Egypt, where people had a cat god and mummified their pets, domestic cats weren’t around in Ancient Greece. Now it’s different. We found them everywhere we travelled this past month: Athens, the island of Tinos, Nafplio, Olympia, and Delphi. We even had temps, cats that volunteered to be our pets, to hang around and meow at us— assuming that we kept the food coming.
This skinny female didn’t mind us waking her up. She had adopted us at our Vrbo on Tinos and persuaded me to feed her while we were there for a few days. Our appearance meant the it was time to jump down and start rubbing against my leg.
From research on past posts I’ve done that included cats, I learned that the leg rubbing business is the way a cat marks you with its scent to claim ownership. Other cats need not apply. I also learned about the kneading business where the cat sinks its claws into your leg or stomach while purring. That apparently comes from when they were kittens and kneaded their mother’s teats to encourage milk flow. Even grouchy old toms seem to take comfort from this activity.
There was no leg rubbing from the cat in Pyros however. The message was “Go bother another cat. Preferably a big one.”Uh, I think we’ll let that kitty sleep. (Photo from our Southern Africa safari.)Actually, lions once roamed throughout Greece and the surrounding area with the last being recorded in Macedonia in the first century CE. I think every Greek ruin we visited had at least one sculpture of the large, scary animals. A few were chomping down on something… or someone.Ouch. Scary didn’t involve chomping in most of the sculptures, however. Looks were enough.This lion was having a hard time keeping it together. No wonder it was angry. “Where did my body go?”I introduced this kitten in my last post. She was fascinated with a bird up in the tree. We were down on the Peloponnesian Peninsula at Mycenae, which includes one the world’s most famous lion carvings. Her brother appeared to be off on an adventure. I imagined it saying, “Can I see the Lion Gate again, Mom? Please, please, please.”“If you are a good kitty,” Mom admonished.Kitty wasn’t alone in his desire to see the Lion Gate. I also promised to be good. Mycenae had been the center of Greek civilization between 1600 and 1100 BCE. I had been waiting to see it ever since I took World History in High School. While that wasn’t 3000 years ago, it was awhile. The Gate features two lionesses flanking a central pillar.A close up. The lionesses are missing their heads. It is thought that they may have been made out of metal and been facing outward to warn any potential invaders.This lioness that Peggy and I took photos of in Southern Africa would have served as a great model for the missing heads. Invaders wouldn’t have to had known that the lion was simply yawning.This lioness would have worked.Shortly after leaving Mycenae, we came to the town of Nafplio where we stayed for a week. The lion sculptures there had wings! We had seen them before. In Venice. Their presence in Nafplio was due to the fact that Venice had once occupied the city. The winged lion is the symbol for Saint Mark the Evangelist, who was the patron saint of Venice. A close up.Another example of a Venetian winged lion in Nafplio. In case you are wondering about the round things around the lions’ heads, they represent halos, a required accouterment of saints. (“Don’t forget to put on your halo, honey.”)The halo is solid here. Judging from the looks on the lion’s face, he was not having a good day. Is pissed a good word here? Sort of how one might look if you had spent your day being dragged through the streets of Alexandria, which is how St. Mark met his maker and gained his wings. But, now, back to kitties.We found this cat ensconced on its chunk of wood in Ancient Pisa, a small community about two miles away from Olympia, Greece where the Olympics were founded. To us it symbolized the fact that cats can sleep almost anywhere. Chairs are quite common in Europe but we have also found cats on the backs of motorcycles, tombstones, all sorts of stone ruins and even on the ground, if nothing else is available.The ground seemed okay to this cat outside our Vrbo in Delphi, Greece…The challenge was getting comfortable…Here’s a hint if you are looking for a little kitty companionship in Greece. Sit down at any of the innumerable outdoor tables you find throughout the country. The odds are a cat will be by to visit in minutes, if not immediately. It’s how they make their living and seems to be universally acceptable to restaurant owners. A bite of whatever you are eating, followed up by another and another will guarantee you have a companion for the whole meal. Unless someone makes a better offer. This pretty little calico had just issued an inquiring meow. It was joined by two other cats while we all had lunch.Including this handsome fellow.I’ll conclude today with one final lion sculpture. My question is does having a bad hair day make you look scary? Or does it just make you look silly?That’s embarrassing. (Photo from Peggy’s and my trip through southern Africa.)
Peggy and I have been back in Virginia for a few days, but tomorrow we head out again, this time for the Scottish Highlands and Northern Ireland. Once again, I be choosing tales from UT-OH to fill in while we are traveling.
First up: I’m going to start with bear tales from the years I lived in Alaska. This is large grizzly that was self-entertaining with the bone of a moose that it kept throwing up into the air. “Come a little closer, you will get a much better look.” Yeah, right.
Peggy and I are continuing our journey through Greece, the Scottish Highlands and Northern Ireland. Today’s tale from my WordPress blog-a-book, UT-OH!, is about the time my friend Bob Bray, got lost in a snowstorm…
There is beauty in freshly fallen snow, but there can also be danger. Avalanches, hypothermia, and getting lost are three frightening possibilities. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)
Over the years I’ve had a number of challenging experiences in the snow. They have ranged from being buried under three feet fresh snow in an emergency snow shelter to camping out in 30° F below zero weather in the Alaska wilderness. I know what it is like to be on the edge of hypothermia and to cross country ski through avalanche country.
Only once, however, have I been involved in a search and rescue effort during a snowstorm.
I was out hunting with my friends Bob Bray, Hunt Warner, and Phil Dunlop in the early 70s. As usual, I regarded hunting as an excuse to be out in the woods with friends, not a reason to shoot a deer.
Deer season had come down to its last weekend. Pushing the season to its limit meant risking bad weather. We were hunting north of Highway 50 in El Dorado National Forest one Saturday afternoon in late October when the snowflakes started drifting lazily out of the sky.
It wasn’t much to worry about. We zipped up our coats and continued hunting. If anything, the gently falling snow added an enjoyable element to the trip. But it kept snowing and the flakes became more serious. After a couple of hours there were six inches of the white stuff on the ground and my tracks were beginning to disappear. I decided it was time to make a judicious retreat to the T-bone steaks that were waiting for us back at the jeep. I soon ran into Hunt who was walking with Phil.
“Have you seen Bob?” I asked. He and I had parted an hour earlier at the edge of a large thicket of brush where Bob had been convinced he would jump an evasive buck.
“I haven’t seen him since it started to snow,” was Hunt’s reply. Phil hadn’t see him since lunch. Normally we wouldn’t have been overly concerned. We were used to traipsing around through the woods on our own. But evening was coming, the temperature was dropping, and the snow was continuing to accumulate.
“Maybe Bob has more sense than we do and has already returned to the jeep,” Phil suggested. That seemed logical so we made the short 15-minute walk back to it. No Bob.
“This is getting worrisome guys,” I said in a definitely worried tone. It wasn’t like Bob to be late for dinner. “Let’s go back to where I saw him last and see if we can find his tracks.” The advantage of snow is that it leaves a trail even a city slicker can follow, assuming that it hasn’t already covered the tracks. Even then, there are usually dimples in the snow.
This cougar track from our backyard when we were living in Oregon shows how clear tracks can be in fresh snow.
Unfortunately, no tracks or convincing trail-like dimples were to be found. I did spot the tracks of a very large deer, but they disappeared at the edge of the thicket.
“It looks like the buck stops here,” I said to Phil and elicited a weak groan. I suggested we split up and look around.
“We need to meet back here in 30 minutes,” I urged. “Don’t go far, and pay attention to where you are going. It is getting close to dark and the last thing we need is a second person missing. If you come across Bob’s tracks, fire your rifle and we will join you.” My degree of concern was reflected in my bossiness. Normally we were a very democratic, almost anarchical group.
Ten minutes later I had made my way to the other side of the thicket and found nothing. Neither had I heard any rifle shots announcing that either Hunt nor Phil had success. Discouraged, I turned around to rejoin my fellow searchers. It was then I spotted tracks leading out of the thicket. Up went my Winchester and I fired off a shot.
“Bang!” the sound of another rifle being fired resounded from the direction Bob’s track had headed. I quickly levered in another bullet and fired again. There was no response. I did hear Phil and Hunt making their way through the brush toward me, though. They sounded like a pair of large bears. We held another council. Once again, we decided to split up.
Phil would return to the road where the jeep was parked and flag down a car. His job was to get a message through to the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department that Bob was missing. Hunt would cut back through the thicket and wait on the jeep trail where the thicket began in case Bob made his way back there. He’d fire his rifle if Bob appeared. I was going to follow Bob’s tracks until dark to see if I couldn’t catch up with him. There were only about 30 minutes of daylight left so the odds were slim. My concern was that Bob had somehow injured himself and was stranded, or that he had become disoriented and become lost.
Following the tracks was a challenge. They would be clear for a few yards and then disappear under the snow. It was continuing to fall and beginning to drift, whipped on by a strong breeze. Each time I lost the tracks, I would work forward in a zigzag pattern until I found them again. It didn’t help that Bob was tending to wander or that I was tired from a full day of tramping over mountains. Dusk was rapidly approaching when I came across another set of tracks that crossed the trail I was following. They were fresher, and they were Bob’s! I yelled but the only response was the silence of the snow filled woods. It seemed to me that Bob was beginning to follow the classic lost person syndrome of wandering in circles.
I wanted to go on, needed to go on, but knew that the decision would be the wrong one. Dark had arrived to reduce an already limited visibility. I was tired, close to exhaustion, and cold. Hypothermia was a real threat. Ever so reluctantly I turned around and begin to make my way back toward Hunt, leaving Bob behind to face whatever fate the dark and snow and cold had in store for him.
The realization of how tired I was really hit me when I came to a downed tree and couldn’t persuade my leg to step over. We had quite the discussion. I reached down, grabbed my pants cuff and gave the reluctant appendage a boost. Hunt was waiting where we agreed and I filled him in on my findings as we made way back to the jeep through the ever-deepening snow.
Phil had had more luck. The vehicle he flagged down had a CB Radio and the driver was able to contact the Sheriff’s office. A team with snowmobiles would be at our jeep at first light, prepared for a full search and rescue operation. Bob, who was manager of Placerville’s newspaper, The Mountain Democrat, was well-known and liked in the community. We knew we would have lots of support in our search.
There wasn’t anything else we could do. We were too tired to set up the tent so we climbed in the jeep, grabbed a bite to eat, downed a Bud, and prepared for a long night. Hunt got the front seat—it was his jeep. Phil and I shared the back. It was beyond uncomfortable and even exhaustion couldn’t drive me to sleep. Somewhere around two I finally managed to doze off only to be awakened at 5:30 by Hunt’s cussing about how damn cold it was. And it was. Our sleeping bags hadn’t kept us warm and the doors had frozen shut. We had to kick them open.
We soon had our Coleman lantern blasting out light and our Coleman stove cooking up a mass of bacon, eggs and potatoes. We were expecting a long day and knew we would need whatever energy the food could supply. The storm had passed, leaving an absolutely clear sky filled with a million twinkling stars.
The Sheriff’s team arrived just as the sun was climbing above the Crystal Range of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, exactly on time. Introductions were made and snowmobiles unloaded. We filled the team in on our efforts of the previous day. The deputy sheriff in charge asked me to climb onto the back of his snowmobile and take them to the point where I had left Bob’s tracks the night before. It was to be my first ever snowmobile ride. Except it wasn’t.
Just as the search team was firing up their engines, a wraithlike figure wearing a plastic poncho came slowly hiking up the hill toward the jeep. He looked like a bad guy out of an early Clint Eastwood western. It was Bob. As soon as the sun provided a hint of dawn, he had managed to orient himself and start walking back toward the jeep. Yes, he was freezing, but he was alive. We knew just how alive he was when he demanded his share of breakfast. As we cooked up another mass of bacon and eggs (fortunately we hadn’t eaten everything), Bob told us his story.
He had become disoriented after coming out of the thicket and headed off in the direction he thought would take him back to the jeep. It didn’t. He fired his rifle several times to get our attention but the sound of shots is fairly common in the forest during hunting season. We just assumed a deer hunter had gotten lucky. Bob continued wandering and eventually came across his own tracks. That was when he seriously began to worry.
Knowing he was lost and knowing night was coming on, he gathered wood for a fire. The wood was wet and refused to start burning. Bob’s lighter ran out of fuel but he still had a few matches. He took his lighter apart, placing the innards under the wet wood and used his last matches to light it. The good news was that the fire started. The bad news was that the wind and snow put it out almost immediately. It was some time during this process that I had fired my rifle and Bob had used his last shot to respond. Out of options, he had dug out a packrat’s nest to provide shelter and prepared for the longest night in his life. He had survived in lodging that made Hunt’s ancient jeep seem like a five-star hotel.
“I even fell asleep once or twice,” Bob managed to get out around a mouthful of eggs.
Of course, the Mountain Democrat ran a major story on Bob and he had to take considerable ribbing in Placerville over the next several months. It was a small price to pay considering the alternatives. That Christmas, Bob received several compasses for gifts. It was years before he had tolerance for any temperature below 70.
I took this photo out my front door of our home in Oregon. And then went back inside…
Next Post: You will get to meet both ancient and modern cats of Greece. They were everywhere.
A bird had caught this kitten’s attention. It was laughing at it.
Peggy and I are presently traveling through Greece, Scotland and Northern Ireland. While we travel, I am posting stories that will be in my WordPress blog-a-book: UT-OH! Today’s tale is about a 1965 confrontation with a terrorist group on a remote road in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.Few things get much more Ut-Oh-ish.
The Symbionese Liberation Army released this photo with its star recruit.
“Death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people.” —Motto of the Symbionese Liberation Army
In the spring of 1975, two friends and I went on a scouting trip. We had driven up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains early in the spring to look for likely fishing holes. Trout season was only a few weeks away. The mountains were still coated with snow. Following Highway 50 up from Sacramento toward Lake Tahoe for 60 plus miles, we took Ice House Road into the ElDorado National Forest. We carefully made our way along the ever-narrowing road until a snow bank suggested that further progress was best left up to animals with big furry feet. We stopped and got out to stretch our legs.
We had wandered a few feet when a white van came roaring up from behind and tried to slip by the right side of our car without slowing down. Normally it wouldn’t have been more than an irritation, but the narrowness of the road combined with the snow left just enough room for one and one half cars. Not two. We watched in slow motion disbelief as the van barely missed our vehicle, slid into the snow, and became seriously stuck.
“Yes!” we said in unison, “There is justice in this world!” Right about then the side door of the van opened and disgorged a polyglot group of rough-looking characters. “Whoa,” I mumbled more quietly, “we had better keep our opinions to ourselves.” While two or three of the men bent down to look under the van, a not so rough, in fact an attractive young woman, disentangled herself from the group and came strolling over to where we were standing.
“I am in love,” Hunt mumbled. Phil and I joined the admiration society while an elusive thought began tugging at the back of my mind.
“Hi, guys,” she smiled at us, becoming even lovelier. “Do you have any guns in your car?”
My tiny elusive thought suddenly became a very large insistent nag. Attractive young women don’t normally start conversations by asking whether you are carrying weapons. Hunt, on the other hand, was beaming. He liked guns and— even more— he liked women that liked guns.
“I have a twenty-two along,” he announced proudly.
“Oh,” she replied, apparently a little disappointed at the size of Hunt’s gun. “My friends taught me how to shoot automatic weapons in the Bay Area. We are up here to practice.” It was stated with the same type of pride a new mother might talk about her child’s first steps or words. My large, insistent nag turned into a five-stage fire alert.
Meanwhile Hunt had suggested that he and his new friend take the twenty-two out for a little target practice since it was obvious that the van wasn’t going anywhere quickly. I don’t remember how I managed it, but I pulled my friends aside sans beauty for a very quick and quiet conversation.
“I am not one hundred percent sure,” I began, “but I think the young woman who likes big guns is Patty Hearst, aka Tania, and that her friends over at the van are members of the SLA. If I am right, we are in a very dangerous situation.”
The SLA, or Symbionese Liberation Army, was one of the more bizarre and misled of the radical groups to be born out of the ferment of the late 60s and early 70s. Viewing itself as an urban guerrilla movement, SLA’s first action of note had been to gun down Dr. Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Schools, and seriously wound his deputy, Robert Blackburn. Blackburn had earlier served as Peace Corps Director of Somalia and then gone on to work for the Philadelphia School System. He had recruited my first wife, Jo Ann, and me as teachers in Philadelphia when we left the Peace Corps. It would have been hard to find two people more committed to helping disadvantaged inner city kids in America than Foster and Blackburn.
SLA’s next major public statement was to kidnap Patty Hearst, heiress to the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearse, while she was a student at UC Berkeley. At some point, Patty switched from being an unwilling kidnap victim to willing participant in SLA and adopted the name of Tania (the name of Che Guevara’s girlfriend). The common assumptions were that Hearst was brainwashed or a victim of the Stockholm syndrome, a psychological response through which a kidnap victim comes to associate with his or her captors. Certainly, the young woman we talked with, was proud of her skill with automatic weapons and had the freedom to come over and chat with us. She was not an unwilling prisoner.
In 1974 Patty participated in a San Francisco bank robbery and then moved to Los Angeles with the SLA where several members of the group met their death in a fiery confrontation with LA police. Some 400 LAPD officers had surrounded a house occupied by SLA and emptied over 5,000 rounds into the structure. (Over kill?) Patty, who wasn’t there, watched the whole confrontation on television. She, along with William and Emily Harris, then fled to Pennsylvania for several months before making their way to Sacramento and another bank robbery.
There was enough similarity with Hearst and the SLA that I suggested we go over to the van and help the nice folks get unstuck— which we did. They drove up to the end of the road, turned around, carefully edged by our car and headed off down the mountain. We waved and smiled vigorously as they disappeared.
Was it Patty Hearst and the SLA? The timing was right, the young woman looked like Patty, and the group could have fit a description of the SLA. Patty reported later that the group had taken their van into the mountains for weapons practice. In May of 1975, the SLA robbed a bank in Sacramento (Carmichael) and a young mother, Myrna Opsahl, was shot and killed. Patty Hearst drove the get-a-way vehicle. It was one more sad and sordid event in the history of the SLA. In most ways this group of want-to-be revolutionaries was a group of losers. Their murder of Marcus Foster was regarded with disgust by most members of the radical community. It was their kidnapping of Patty Hearst and, even more so, the fiery shootout in LA that gave their organization legendary status.
As for Hearst, I have no doubt that the Stockholm syndrome played a role in her behavior. But I am also convinced there was more. The atmosphere of the time encouraged radical thinking and Patty, who was something of a rebel, was living in a cauldron of dissent at Berkeley. I suspect it wasn’t all that hard to slip into a role of radical chic.
Patty’s crime spree came to an end in the fall of 1965 when the FBI tracked her down in South San Francisco. Here she is shown with agents and in hand cuffs. (AP photo)
Wednesday’s Post: My friend Bob Bray gets lost in a snowstorm when we are out hunting. Night falls before we can find him…
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts from the past 15 years that will eventually make it into the book I am blogging: UT-OH!.
Today’s post follows my adventure with the beaver in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. I drove south down into NewMexico for a backpacking trip into the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico next to the Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southern New Mexico.
Peggy photographed this herd of elk near the Redwoods.
I thought I was prepared for everything when I started my backpack trip into the Gila Wilderness. Little did I know…
My pack was loaded with a week’s worth of food and six topographic maps, more than enough to let me wander wherever I wanted and hopefully avoid getting lost. I had started off up the West Fork of the Gila River in the Cliff Dwellings National Monument, but soon came across a trail jogging out of the canyon to the right.
Looks good to me, I thought to myself and started climbing. I was determined that wherever I went for the week would be based on random decisions. So much of my wilderness experience had involved leading groups or scouting out potential routes for organized trips that the sense of abandon felt delicious.
Consequently, years later, it isn’t exactly clear to me where I went. I was more than happy to hike 4 to 5 miles in one direction and then 6 or 7 in another. The only thing I tried to avoid was backtracking. I do remember wandering through Woodland Park and Lilly Park as well as climbing in and out of several canyons.
Southern New Mexico is UFO Country, so I had brought along two science fiction books for evening and early morning entertainment. I was also carrying my usual field ID book and one serious read, Aldo Leopold’s “Sand Country Almanac.” Leopold had been responsible for the creation of the Gila Wilderness in 1924, making it the first specifically designated wilderness area in the United States, and, I might add, the world. People who love wild country and understand its intrinsic value owe a great debt to the man for his vision. I had read the book before but reading it again in the Gila Wilderness added a special significance. I declared a layover day so I could savor it all at once. I was camped on a small stream located in a minor canyon and hadn’t seen a soul for four days. It was the perfect setting for getting lost in a book.
At some time in the early afternoon, a loud “Woooeee” shattered the silence.
Big Bird, I thought to myself. Big Bird on steroids. Aldo Leopold would have been up in a flash to discover the source. Of course, he would have had his rifle with him. He was quite the hunter. As usual, my only weapon was a three-inch pocketknife. Still, the mountain man in me demanded I get off my lazy tail and go exploring. I grabbed my binoculars and climbed out of the canyon. I was greeted by a broad, flat expanse of Ponderosa Pines but no Big Bird. “Woooeee,” I heard receding into the distance. I put on my stalking cap and begin to sneak through the forest.
“Woooeee!” Big Bird shouted behind me. I whirled around only to catch a glimpse of something disappearing behind a bush. Big Bird it wasn’t. Nor was it the ghost of Geronimo, whose territory I was wandering through. It looked suspiciously like a cow elk that had morphed from stalkee to stalker. I wasn’t sure that I liked my new role but decided to play along.
“Woooeee,” I called out and jumped behind a Ponderosa.
“Woooeee,” I heard a delayed three minutes later. I stepped into the open to discover that my female companion had come out from behind her bush and was staring intently at my tree.
“Woooeee,” I shouted at her as she once again disappeared. We had a game. A cow elk was wooing me.
Years earlier I had discovered that much of the higher animal kingdom is quite curious about humans that don’t act like humans. I once had a similar experience to my elk chat with a coyote on the American River Parkway in Sacramento. First I would hide and then he would hide. Finally, out of frustration, the coyote plopped down in the middle of the trail, raised its head, and began howling. I plopped down in the trail as well, raised my head and joined him. We had quite the discussion.
The elk and I continued our game for about 15 minutes when I changed the rules. I sat down in plain sight with my back against the tree. Instead of hiding, she stood watching me for several minutes. I could tell the wheels were grinding away in her mind.
Suddenly she charged. I didn’t move from my seat but my adrenalin cranked up several notches. She was all of 10 feet away when she slammed on her brakes, lowered her head, stared me in the eye, and woooeeed again. Half fascinated and half frightened, I didn’t budge. Several hundred pounds of frustrated female were looming over me. I had zero doubt that she could kick the stuffing out of me. She held my gaze, snorted in disgust, shook her head, and trotted off.
While smaller than the bull elk, there is nothing puny about the females. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)
Whatever conversation we had been having was over. I breathed a sigh of relief and returned to camp. My first chore was to get out my guidebook. Female elk, it noted, can become rather aggressive and dangerous in the spring when they have calves. I’d been both ignorant and lucky.
After dinner, I went for my evening walk following an animal path that ambled along beside the creek. I heard a snort and looked up. Five elk were standing on the canyon rim staring down at me. The old girl had recruited some buddies to check out the weird human. Unfortunately, this time I knew enough to be worried. I was an intruder in their territory, a possible threat to their precious babies.
My worry level turned to panic when all five came charging down the canyon wall. One moose had been scary; now I had the whole damn thundering herd! Running was out of the question. Think, Curtis, went dashing through my brain. The only thing I could dredge up was something I had fantasized I might do if charged by a grizzly bear in the wilds of Alaska. I started jumping up and down, scratching my armpits, pounding on my chest, and screaming ooh, ooh, ooh! It worked for great apes, why not me.
For the second time that day, I heard the screeching of elk brakes. This time there was no standing and staring, however. The herd turned as one and charged back over the canyon rim, disappearing into the night. Somewhat satisfied with myself, I returned to camp and the security of my tent.
I wandered around for another two days, keeping an eye out for UFO’s, steering clear of cow elk, and visiting sites where this or that pioneer had been killed by Apaches. The pioneers also did a pretty good job of killing off each other, not to mention the Indians. With my food running low, I finally ceased my wandering ways and hiked back to the National Monument.
NEXT BLOG: I finish my series on three of the backpack trips after my return from Alaska by going back to my first one: Backpacking into the Grand Canyon. After barely surviving my trip into the canyon, an unknown creature visits me in the night and dines on the edge of my sleeping bag.
Peggy and I are now at the site of Ancient Olympia on the Peloponnesian Peninsula where the Olympics were born in 776 BCE.. The large column is part of the Temple of Zeus completed in 456 BCE. The column was rebuilt for the Summer Olympics hosted by Greece in 2004.Peggy uses her walking stick to demonstrate how javelins were thrown at the Ancient Olympics in Greece. Women, however, were not allowed into the games. An exception was made if you were the daughter of the gods. I had my suspicions…
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts from the past 15 years that will eventually make it into UT-OH!.
Today’s post is about a solo backpacking trip I took in 1986 into the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. After three years of intense work in Alaska, I was taking six months off to go on solo adventures throughout the West. Several involved backpacking trips. This week, I am going to feature trips into the Wind River Mountains, the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, and the Grand Canyon of Arizona. All involved worthy Ut-Oh experiences. A beaver stars in today’s tale.
‘Busy as a beaver’ was once a common description of someone trying to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Beavers are known for their industrious ways. Peggy and I took this photo on one of our trips up and down the Alaska Highway. A colony of beavers had dammed this creek to create a pond for their home, which you can see out in the background.
The adventure started at the small town of Pinedale, Wyoming where Mountain Men once gathered for their version of a spring fling. After a winter of living alone in one room cabins covered in snow while they trapped beaver, it was time to sell the pelts they had collected and party! Think rotgut whiskey, Virginia tobacco and women. It was a wild time. One report I read had men playing poker on a deadman’s chest. Another talked of a rabid wolf that wandered into the event and bit several people before someone shot it.
From Pinedale I drove up into the mountains above the town to Fremont Lake. A trailhead to a small lake looked promising. Whether I arrived at the lake or a different one is open to debate.
To start with, I was traveling with a United States Forest Service map instead of my usual detailed topographic maps. Contour lines on topographic maps provide a preview of the route ahead and help identify prominent landmarks. You can then use the landmarks to make compass sightings and determine your location. (Today’s hikers just use their GPS. It wasn’t an option then.) Forest service maps are more oriented toward road travel. Still, my map would have been adequate except for the snow.
Whatever trail I was following quickly disappeared. Normally, I would have searched around and found it. Tree blazes, rock cairns, and patches of clear ground all help. This time I didn’t care.
I was a make-believe mountain man exploring uncharted territory in search of beaver. My route would be the one of least resistance. I did use my compass to maintain a general direction. There is a significant difference between being sort of lost and hopelessly lost.
A couple of hours later I discovered a lovely small lake free of ice and snow. I set up camp and went for a quick dip to rinse off the day’s grime. I can guarantee it was quick because the lake’s water had been snow a few hours earlier.
Warm sun and my Thermarest air mattress enticed me into taking advantage of my splendid isolation for a tad of nude sunbathing. I had drifted into a nap when a young couple walked into camp.
The woman’s surprised “Oh!” woke me up.
“Hi, how are you doing,” I said to their disappearing backs as they quickly made their way around to the opposite shore to set up camp out of sight. So much for splendid isolation…
I decided to go exploring. My camp was nestled up against the south side of a peninsula and my first action was to hike across it. Much to my delight, a beaver hut was located on the small inlet. Even more intriguing, Mother Nature had provided a tempting bridge of rocks out to the well-built stick house.
Never having stood on top of a beaver’s home, I decided why not.
The inhabitant was not pleased. He shot out of his underwater door and surfaced about ten feet out, whipping around to glare at the strange intruder roosting on top of his house. Appearing disgruntled, he paddled off around the peninsula toward my camp.
“Aha,” I fantasized, “he is going to go stand on top of my tent to show me what it is like to have someone perch on your house.” I quietly made my way over the peninsula to check out my theory.
The beaver was indeed near my tent but he was busily munching away on tender young willow shoots. A mid-afternoon snack, it seems, was more important than revenge. I strolled back to camp, retrieved a book and settled in so I could read and keep a watchful eye on my gnawing neighbor. Thirty minutes later he had made his way 20 yards down the edge of the lake and embarked on a strange project.
I watched him dive under the water and resurface with his front paws full of mud he had scooped up from the bottom of the lake. He made his way on to shore and carefully sculpted the mud into a mound.
That’s when things got really interesting. He peed on his pile.
As I watched him dive into the water for more mud, it suddenly dawned on me he was creating a scent pile, a personal want ad of the woods: “Strong young beaver with prominent buck teeth and great smelling pee seeks beaverette for long-term relationship.”
Either that or his mound served as a no trespassing sign for the competition. Maybe both.
“This,” I thought, “I have to see up close.” Using the young willows for cover, I got down on my hands and knees and carefully worked my way toward the beaver over the cold, soggy ground. The mountain men would have been proud of me. I was proud of me.
Naturally, right at this time, the young couple chose to reappear.
They couldn’t see the beaver. All they could see was the guy who had been nude an hour earlier down on his hands and knees crawling through the willows in the general direction of their camp. I waved and pointed at the beaver but they had already disappeared.
Fifteen minutes later they had packed up their gear and were hightailing it home. It was the fasted job of breaking camp I’ve ever witnessed. It would have been interesting to hear the story they told their friends about the wild, and possibly deranged, man in the mountains. I suspect they spent their next vacation on the crowded beaches of Hawaii. I admit to feeling a tinge of guilt. One of my goals in life is to encourage folks to enjoy the wilderness, not frighten them off.
None of this stopped the beaver and me from enjoying our solitude. I continued my wandering, lost ways for another week.
Several beavers were at work at the Alaska Highway pond. This one was pushing a tree trunk to add to the dam. I watched him stop and nibble on the trunk, eating while he worked.
NEXT POST: Backpacking in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, I am charged by a herd of elk! But first, I had a long discussion with a cow elk.
Elk are large animals. When several decide to charge you at once, it’s an UT-OH! moment for sure. I took this photo at Pt. Reyes National Seashore. Unlike the elk I encountered in New Mexico, these guys were merely curious. Dealing with people was a daily, ho-hum, occurrence for them.
My first backpacking trip wasn’t in the Wind Rivers or Gila River, it was hiking into the Grand Canyon. It’s UT-OH! is the tale of a tail. And surviving.
There are several ways to explore the Grand Canyon. Over the years, I’ve tried most of them. My first trip in was by mule in the late 60s. I’m second from the top in this photo with a dark, plaid shirt and sunglasses. I could barely walk afterwards. The physical challenge was nothing in comparison to my solo backpack trip down in 1986. The great beauty of the Canyon, fascinating geology and close to mystical setting easily made up for difficulty, however.
Bone has been in many tough situations in his life; he can handle tough questions. Here he rests on top of a saguaro cactus in Arizona looking for ICE agents. His lack of official papers, or even a birth certificate, can cause problems at times. –Curt
Q:Do you really talk? We’re speaking ethics here, Bone. Blogging is about transparency. That means honesty.
A. Are you crazy? Have you ever heard a bone talk? Of course I don’t talk. I just think out loud.
Q:Curt sometimes refers to you as he. Does this mean you are a male bone?
A. No. He makes assumptions, lots of them. He was showing me to a biologist at a writers’ conference in San Francisco and she suggested I have my DNA tested. “Just cut a small chip off of it,” she said nonchalantly. “You can determine its sex and breed.”
“Just cut a small chip off of it!” Outrageous! I am not some it to have chips cut out of. Besides, I lead a rich fantasy life and have no desire to know whether I am male or female. Call me she, he, or Bone, but never it.
Um, I think Bone is definitely a male. –Curt
Q: You have traveled all over the world and met thousands of people. How do they usually react to you?
A. With befuddlement. You should have seen the look on the face of the customs agent in New Zealand who tried to seize me as ‘animal matter.’ But emotions run the gamut. There was a Japanese man who got off a tour bus at Yellowstone National Park and wanted to hold me for good luck. Soon there were 40 other Japanese handing me around, oohing, and taking photos. I was thrilled. On the opposite side, I know a woman who refuses to touch me, like I have cooties. “I don’t know where Bone has been,” she states primly. Not surprisingly, there is also jealousy. “I want to be you and travel the world,” a good friend in Sacramento told me.
Some people act like I have cooties. This woman almost dropped me and then washed her hands! –Bone
Peggy and Curt’s niece, Christina, on the other hand, show the proper way to treat me. —Bone
Q: What is your favorite thing to do?
A. Visit graveyards; there are lots of old bones there. My favorite grave is Smokey Bear’s in Capitan, New Mexico. I once stood on his tombstone for ten minutes trying to communicate but all I could get was something about ‘growling and a prowling and a sniffing the air.’ A close second is the grave of Calamity Jane in Deadwood, South Dakota. What a woman! These are difficult choices, though, when you toss in the likes of Hemingway, Daniel Boone and Billy the Kid. On the light side I once visited Ben and Jerry’s graveyard of discarded ice cream flavors in Vermont. My spookiest experience was a visit to the Capela dos Ossos, the Chapel of Bones, in Evora, Portugal, where an estimated 5,000 corpses were dug up to decorate the walls of the chapel. Those folks definitely have a skeleton in their closet, lots of them. The skulls kept whispering, “Join us, Bone.”I ran.
Bone has a special fondness for unusual graves. Here he hangs out with Billy the Kid in New Mexico. Has he been in a gunfight? Are those bloodstains on his vest? -CurtThe camera broke when Curt tried to take a photo in the Chapel of Bones but here is my all time favorite sculpture at Burning Man, the Bone Tree. -BoneBTW, I married the lovely Bonetta at Burning Man in 2013. -Bone
Q: So, what’s your second most favorite?
A. Too hard; I am a dilettante dabbler, but here are a few.
Wandering, of course, anywhere and everywhere and by all modes: bikes, kayaks, rafts, skis, backpacks, sailboats, planes, helicopters, trains, cars, RVs, etc. I’ve been to all 50 states in the US and to over 50 countries worldwide.
Visiting wild, remote and beautiful natural areas. I started life wandering the Sierra Nevada Mountains, John Muir’s Range of Light.I’ve been to the majority of National Parks.
Seeking out the strange such as ghosts and aliens (I’ve been to Roswell four times and Area 51 once).
Attending unique events like Burning Man.
Meeting weird people.
Bone backpacking on the John Muir Trail. -Curt
Bone, Curt and Tom Lovering at 10th and R Street Fox and Goose Restaurant in Sacramento. Tom owned the Alpine West backpacking and wilderness specialty store at this location when he and Curt discovered Bone in 1977. (Photo by Peggy Mekemson.)
Q:Tom Lovering and Curt ‘discovered’ you in 1977 when backpacking south of Lake Tahoe. You have wandered extensively with both. Which do you like best?
A. Eeyore, the jackass who can’t keep track of his tail. We’re traveling companions and he saved me from being strung up and buried on Boothill in Tombstone, Arizona. I’d robbed a bank, cheated at cards and hung out with women of questionable character. (This is what I mean by having a rich fantasy life. It’s also known as evasion.)
I was in deep trouble in Tombstone. Wyatt Earp had arrested me for robbing a bank and Doc Holiday was checking me for weapons. -Bone
My life as Bone was in serious jeopardy. -Bone
Odds were I was going to end up on Boothill, along with Billy Clanton. -Bone
But then, the ever brave Eeyore came to my rescue! I hopped on his back and we went riding off into the sunset while leaping over large rocks.
Q:Which of your journeys has been most memorable?
A. I would have to say traveling the length of Africa in the back of a truck from the Sahara Desert in the north to Cape Town in the south with Tom. Almost falling off the back of a riverboat into a piranha infested section of the Amazon River would have to be a close second. I was perched on the back railing doing a photo shoot with Peggy. And then, of course, there was the 10,000-mile bike trip with Curt in 1989 and hiking 750 miles down the Pacific Crest Trail with him to celebrate his 75th Birthday in 2018.
Bone on photo shoot barely escapes falling off the edge into the piranha infested waters of the Amazon. “I was falling off when Curt leapt across the boat and grabbed me.”
I was much smarter when I rafted down the Colorado. I wore a life jacket! -Bone
That didn’t protect me from pirates. The dreaded pirate Steve held a knife to my throat and demanded to know where I buried my treasure. -Bone
Q:You are often seen scrambling over rocks in remote sections of the Southwestern United States. What’s that all about?
A. I’ve developed a fondness for Native American rock art. It resonates with my bone-like nature. It’s also another excuse to go wandering around in the outdoors. Plus, some of those places might be haunted and it is a great place to look for UFOs. A number of petroglyphs look amazingly like aliens. Finally, wandering in the desert is known to be good for the soul. Ask the Prophets of yore.
How can this guy and his strange dog not be aliens? -Curt
Q:Ah, being a born-again bone, do you have any insights into the great unknown?
A. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Q:Finally, and this may be a little sensitive, but do you always run around naked?
A. What kind of a question is that? Do you think I am uncivilized? For shame. I am the epitome of haute couture! A bow and arrow toting, card-carrying NRA member in Montana has designed and made me two leather vests. What’s more, a 90 plus year old woman in Kansas going on 20 with a crush on Johnny Depp and a room devoted to the Egyptian gods, has made me a kilt and several other outfits. Face it; I am hot stuff, clothed or naked. I may take up a modeling career.
My Bahamian/Canadian friend makes me a new vest in the wilds of Montana. –Bone
Bone, wearing his newly made kilt, fights off a ferocious sea monster in a scene straight out of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ –Curt
Next post I’ll do a wrap on the many places Bone has been in his 49 years of wandering the world.
Bone, feeling a little low, in Death Valley National Park. It is one of the numerous stops he made with Curt on his 10,000 mile bicycle ride through the US and Canada.Peggy and I are presently in the Greek city of Nafplio on the Peloponnesian Pininsula. On our way down from Athens yesterday, we stopped at several Ancient Greek sites, one of which was Mycenae (where Helen of Troy originally came from). I was going to show you the gate to the city until Peggy pointed out this kitten on the trail up to it.
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. Initially, I decided to put the blog on hold, but I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts that may eventually make it into UT-OH!.
In today’s post our group of five splits up and Lynn and April hike out to South Lake Tahoe to care for April’s sprained ankle while Tom, Terry and I backpack on to Lake Aloha through the Desolation Wilderness.
Tree blazes were an important way to mark trails through wilderness areas in the past, and still can prove useful today. This is an old tree blaze in the Desolation Wilderness.
I watched regrettably as April and Lynn headed out. I would miss the inspiration. Soon, however, my mind was more than occupied with route finding. The trail had disappeared under the snow.
Tom pulled out his map and compass to establish our general direction. We searched for ancient tree blazes cut out by axes and left behind by early foresters, cattlemen and sheepherders.
We also watched for ducks where the snow had melted. I’m not talking about fowl that quack and taste good in orange sauce. Ducks, in backpacking terminology, are piles of stone set up to show the way. With a little imagination, they can look like their namesake. Caution is advisable. The people creating the ducks may have had a different destination in mind, or perhaps they were lost.
This is what a duck looks like. I used this form extensively on Sierra Treks. I had my rear guard kick them over to avoid confusing other hikers.
An hour later we found ourselves more or less where we supposed to be, on the edge of the Rubicon River. A student of ancient Roman History undoubtedly named the stream. Like Julius Caesar, we were faced with crossing it. In a month or so it would be a tame creek inviting a refreshing dip but now it was a roaring river filled with icy water from quickly melting snow fields.
Not carrying a camera with me in those years, I asked AI to generate a photo of what a stream filled with raging snow-melt looks like. It did a good job! While our crossing was on a flatter portion of the Rubicon, the river was still daunting.
I entered with trepidation and was almost washed off my feet. Facing up-stream, I used a walking stick to give myself a third leg. Water crept up to my knees and beyond. I have short legs. The force was incredible. I set each foot carefully and moved crab-like, searching for solid ground between slippery rocks.
I’d undone my pack belt so I could shuck the pack if I was knocked over. Swimming in freezing water with 50 pounds on your back is hazardous to your health. In a few minutes, that stretched out forever, I was across. Tom and Terry also made it without incident.
We plopped down on a convenient log to catch our breath and munch down on GORP (good old raisins and peanuts). It was a quick meal. A thick swarm of mosquitoes dive-bombed us with kamikaze abandon. Slap one and five more landed, gleefully licking off our bug repellent before plunging in their beaks. Snow melt time is primetime for mosquitoes!
We were driven to put on our packs and scurry up the trail. Fortunately, Rockbound Valley is relatively flat and we were able to escape. Stopping was not an option as we hoofed it for the next four miles, crossing the Rubicon two more times before we begin our labored ascent up aptly named Mosquito Pass.
Life slowed down immediately as we began climbing. The blood sucking hoards caught up. Near the top, we were confronted with a different challenge, more snow. Eight hours of hot sun had turned it to mush. We spent as much time sliding as we did climbing. It was slow, hard, slogging work. And it was dangerous. Running water, partially exposed boulders and tree trunks melt snow from the ground up and create hidden cavities. More than once we plunged through up to our knees.
Ignoring the danger, Tom and I laughed our way down the other side, skiing in our boots (glissading). Control was minimal. Camp was in sight. Terri came along at a much more sedate and careful pace.
There was nothing about Lake Aloha that made me think Hawaii. It was a strange Dali-like creation with a convoluted shoreline and innumerable Rorschach type islands. What’s more, mini-icebergs decorated its surface. Bright white on top, they turned an icy blue under the water. All I could think was cold. Plowing through snow on our way around the lake to camp added freezing to my thoughts.
That night, we built a small campfire to fight off the chill. Terry wandered off to bed. Tom was slightly melancholy. He looked off into the distance over my shoulder.
“I was married on that peak,” he announced to the night. I turned around and stared across Lake Aloha at the towering Pyramid Peak, the centerpiece of the Crystal Range. It was bathed in moonlight.
Several years earlier, Tom had met and fallen in love with Hilde, a slight, attractive blonde who shared his love of the wilderness. They decided to get married on the mountain. Mom, wedding party and friends were invited to share their 9983 feet “I do” in the Desolation Wilderness.
A photo of Lake Aloha on my 750 mile trek on the PCT. It was in August: No snow, no icebergs. (Grin) Tom was married on the farthest peak.
The marriage didn’t last long and Tom was reluctant to talk about it. The fire burned down to glowing embers. We shared the silence in memory of lost love.
Next: Bone Is Found… but not before the naked ladies jump.
Peggy and I are now on the Greek Island of Tinos. This is a sunset view from our VRBO.
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts from the past 15 years that may eventually make it into UT-OH!.
Today’s post is a continuation of my tale about how Bone was found south of Lake Tahoe along the Tahoe-Yosemite/Pacific Coast Trail.
Tom had a little more hair when we were backpacking together in the 70s.
I awoke with a Mountain Jay screeching at me from the safety of its perch in a Lodgepole Pine. A faint light announced the morning, but the sun still hid behind the mountains on the east side of Lake Tahoe. It was frosty cold and I burrowed into my bag, pretending for a few more moments that I didn’t have to get up. Nature drove me out.
I could ignore the faint light, I could ignore the Jay, and I could even ignore the stirrings of my companions, but I couldn’t ignore my insistent bladder. Among muttered good mornings, I wandered off into the woods and peed on a willow near where I had seen a coyote the evening before. I was marking my territory.
Back in camp Tom had his stove going. Lynn smiled at me. She, too, was a tall, good-looking woman. Terry had yet to emerge from her cocoon and April had replaced me out in the woods.
I heard a kersplash in Stony Ridge Lake and turned to watch as ripples spread out and announce that a trout had snatched its buggy breakfast. Briefly I regretted that I had left my fishing pole at home. The sun was now bathing the peaks above us in gentle light; ever so slowly it worked its way down the mountain.
Instant coffee, instant oatmeal and a handful of dried fruit made up breakfast. All too soon it was time to pack my gear and urge my still stiff muscles up the trail.
The troops were in high spirits. The sheer beauty of Desolation Wilderness demanded it. Our backpacking day would take us up to Phipps Pass, down in to the Velma Lakes, across to the Rubicon River, up Rockbound Valley, over Mosquito Pass and end at Lake Aloha, some 13 miles from Stony Ridge Lake. We took a few minutes to make sure our camp was clean.
Almost immediately we began to climb. Flashes of blue lupine, multi-colored columbine and cheerful monkey flowers eased our way along the switch-back trail. My pace of travel provided ample opportunity for appreciation. I caught a brief smell of mint at one point and wild onion at another.
Monkey Flower.
We passed by two more small lakes and began our ascent of Phipps Pass. By this point I had moved in to granny gear and could hear my heart pounding in its cage, wanting to escape. Each step was a test of will. I kept moving. I had long since learned that the difficulty of starting outweighed the benefits of stopping. One step at a time I reached the top. A spectacular view rewarded my effort.
Peaks still buried under snow stretched off into the distance. The Sierra is a baby mountain range, the child of plate tectonics. Once, ancient seas covered the area. Volcanic activities left behind vast pools of subterranean granite. Crashing continental and oceanic plates lifted the granite into spectacular fault-block mountains, steep on the east and gentler on the west. The Ice Age brought glaciers that carved peaks, scooped out basins and left behind rocky moraines.
We stopped to catch our breath and enjoy the view. Soon we would begin our descent toward the Velma Lakes but first we worked our way around Phipps Peak. A series of lakes came into view. Tom and I immediately began to debate which was which.
A view of Middle Velma Lake early in the morning.
“And you expect us to depend on your trail finding skills?” Lynn asked. Tom whipped out his topographic map.
“See,” he said decidedly, allowing a note of triumph to enter his voice. While we were the best of friends, this didn’t eliminate an element of alpha male competition between us. He, after all, was the owner of an outdoor-wilderness store, and I, after all, was the leader of wilderness treks. I glanced at his map and an impish grin filled my face.
“Your map is upside down, Tom.” Oops.
We did agree to detour from the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail and go through Rockbound Valley. Heavy snow still covered the northern and eastern side of the mountains. It was unlikely to melt by the time of the Trek.
The trail we had planned to use followed the red PCT to Lake Aloha from the Velma Lakes. The route we chose instead followed the dotted lines. The Trekkers would have enough challenge backpacking 13 miles on their second day out. They didn’t need to slog through five miles of snow while muttering unprintable thoughts about me.
We started our descent into the Velmas carefully. It is hard not to think, “Oh boy, down hill!” after a hard climb. But going down is much tougher on your body than climbing. Stepping down is a form of free fall. Velocity and weight are focused on the joints of your legs and feet. Adding a 40-50 pound pack increases the problem.
It is easy to twist a knee or sprain an ankle, especially at the beginning of the season. And that was what happened. By the time we reached Middle Velma, April was limping.
“I stepped on a loose rock and slipped,” she explained in obvious pain.
While April soaked her foot in the cold lake water and broke out an Ace Bandage, Tom and I mulled over whether to go on or hike out. We arrived at a compromise. Lynn would hike out with April to Emerald Bay and the two of them would stay at a motel. They would rejoin Tom, Terry and me at Echo Lake some 18 miles down the trail.
Next: Raging rivers, kamikaze mosquitoes and a marriage on top of Pyramid Peak.
Peggy and I are now at the beginning of our month in Greece. We booked a VRBO at the Acropolis View Apartments for our first stop. They weren’t kidding. This is the view from our balcony.
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ll be sharing some of my favorite posts from the past 16 years that may eventually make it into UT-OH!.
Today’s post will kick off the tale of how Bone was originally found in a mountain meadow 49 years ago south of Lake Tahoe when he was still just a bone. For those of you who have been following Wandering through Time and Place for a while, you’ll be familiar with the slightly whacky, opinionated Bone. If you aren’t, he’s weird but fun, an antidote for our present weird but not so fun world.
Bone in his Bone Cave. Here he is with some of his companions. They like to dress up. Bone is on the left riding on the back of his best bud, Eeyore, who once saved him from hanging in Tombstone, Arizona. Next to him is his wife, the lovely Bonetta. He found her in a Florida swamp. They were married at Burning Man. On the right is George the Bush Devil. He is featured on the front of my book about the Peace Corps, The Bush Devil Ate Sam. Bone borrowed the masks from Peggy. This assemblage looks like it is right out of a horror movie, or a voodoo ceremony. Bone loved it. (Not shown: Baby Bone.)
It was the summer of 1977 and my wife was divorcing me. Apparently I lacked in stability, or at least in the desire to pursue the Great American Dream. She was right of course. I had absolutely zero desire to live in a large house in the suburbs. None of this made the divorce easy. I had been prepared to spend my life as a happily married man. (As I am today! Thank you, Peggy.)
To keep my mind occupied, I was working on the route for the Fourth Annual Sierra Trek, a challenging, nine-day 100-mile backpack trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that I had created as a pledge-based fund-raiser for the American Lung Association in Sacramento.
“So what’s your problem?” my friend Tom Lovering asked over a beer at the Fox and Goose Restaurant in Sacramento. He’d been-there-done-that with divorce and dated a number of women since. Tom owned Alpine West, an outdoor/wilderness store in Sacramento, and sponsored the Sierra Trek. His store was upstairs from the restaurant.
Tom, Bone and I are in front of the Fox and Goose at 10th and R Street in Sacramento in 2018, 41 years after Bone was found. Tom owned the Alpine West backpacking and wilderness specialty store at this location in 1977. Both the Goose and the Fox appear quite interested in Bone. It’s possible that the fox was thinking ‘food.’
I had persuaded Tom to go backpacking with me for six days to preview a section of the new route. Our plan was to start near Meeks Bay, Lake Tahoe and work our way southward 70 miles following the Tahoe-Yosemite Trail.
Tom had invited his girlfriend, Lynn, and Lynn was bringing along her friend Terry. Terry was nice, but not my type.
“I have a friend named April who wants to go backpacking,” Tom offered. “Why don’t I invite her to go as well? Maybe you two will hit it off.” The implication was it would help me get over the pending divorce.
A friend drove the five of us up to Meeks Bay. April was gorgeous and Tom was right. I followed her long legs and short shorts up the trail. My gloomy focus on the Soon-to-Be-Ex faded like a teenager’s blue jeans.
Hot feet and screaming fat cells were even more potent in forcing me to live, or at least suffer, in the moment. As usual, I’d done nothing to physically prepare for the first backpack trip of the season and I was paying the price.
We climbed a thousand feet and traveled six miles to reach our first night’s destination at Stony Ridge Lake. I crashed while Tom broke out some exotic concoction of potent alcohol made out of 190 proof ever-clear alcohol and Galliano Liqueur.
The Desolation Wilderness west of Lake Tahoe is filled with numerous small glacier-carved lakes and gorgeous granite peaks. This is Susie Lake.
After consuming enough of his ‘medicine’ to persuade my fat cells they had found Nirvana, I fired up my trusty Svea stove and started cooking our freeze-dried dinner. It wasn’t hard. Boil water, throw in noodles, add a packet of mystery ingredients, stir for ten minutes and pray that whatever you have created is edible. That night it didn’t matter.
Afterwards, we headed for our beds. The next day would be long. I slid into my down-filled mummy bag and looked up at what seemed like a million stars. There were no city lights or pollution to block my view and the moon had yet to appear.
I traced an imaginary line from the Big Dipper and found the North Star. It seemed far too faint for its illustrious history. A shooting star briefly captured my attention. Thoughts of divorce, short shorts, the next day’s route, a rock digging into my butt, and sore feet jostled around in my mind for attention.
Peggy and I are off journeying through Greece, Scotland and Ireland over the next several weeks, so there won’t be much time for blogging. I’ve decided to republish some of my favorite posts from the past 15 years that may eventually make it into UT-OH!.
Today, I am going to relate a story about going backpacking in 1972 with my Basset Hound Socrates. I took along a book I was reading by Carlos Castañeda that I had picked up at a bookstore in the Bay Area. He incorporated three things that had caught my interest at the time (and continue to): Cross-cultural experience, meditation, and wandering in the woods.
Socrates was not actually built for backpacking but he loved it. His grand daddy, so his papers claimed, had been the American-Canadian grand champion for his class. Socrates had no such ambitions. His two passions in life were digging and Milk Bones, although there was some question whether he preferred hotdogs. Both disappeared down his gullet ‘faster than a speeding bullet.’ Carlos Castaneda’s first book was published by the University of California Press in 1968 and considered an academic work of anthropology. It immediately caught my attention. Later, when his books were considered New Age instead of Academic, I still found his writing and message interesting.
About the time Socrates came into my life, I took up backpacking. While I normally backpacked with friends, I also enjoyed going out on my own. Naturally I decided that Soc should go backpacking with me on these excursions– you know, a guy and his dog type thing. So off we went to my all-time favorite spot in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, a small lake basin that had been carved out by glaciers north of the I–80 Freeway half way between Sacramento and Reno.
I’d driven up to the take off point at Grouse Ridge, hoisted my pack, and started off down the trail with Soc more or less tagging along. Usually it was less. His bloodhound-like nose often led to detours. I never worried about it. He knew where dinner was— and the same nose that led to his adventures always found me.
Plus, at the time, I was on a mission, practicing a hiking meditation that fit into Castaneda’s recommendations for enlightenment. “No words” I told myself. It was my mantra for the day. It must of have worked. I had backpacked for an hour, colors had become intense, and my sight sharpened to the point where I was noticing many things I would normally miss. I was on a meditative high. It was then I heard the voice. It was very clear and demanding. And internal. “Speak to me dammit!” Apparently, the part of my mind that is constantly chatting with itself, did not like to be ignored.
Grouse Ridge: The start of many adventures for generations of people. Peggy took this photo of me in 2017 when I was off on another solo adventure, getting in shape for my 2018, 75th Birthday, 750 mile backpack Trek down the Pacific Coast Trail. BTW, the PCT crosses I-80 on the other side of the far peaks on the left. My goal for the trip was this beautiful little lake that I have returned to numerous times over the years. I’ve rarely found it occupied.
Sharing the lake with Soc was close to being totally alone. His concept of a quality wilderness experience was disappearing into the woods and seeing how many holes he could dig. He never seemed to catch anything so I am not sure of his motivation. I’d get up in the morning and cover his handiwork. I almost felt like I needed to file an environmental impact report. Socrates would end up limping back to the car with sore feet.
In the Carlos Castaneda book I’d brought along, Don Juan takes Carlos out into the middle of the Sonoran Desert on a pitch-black night and abandons him. Not long afterwards, the monsters come hunting. It wasn’t the best book for a solo night in the woods. As I read into the evening, I found myself paying more attention than usual to wilderness sounds. I ingested a little medicinal herb to lighten things up. It was the 70s, after all. Bad idea; instant paranoia set in. Soon I could hear the wind stalking me through the treetops. Monsters lurked in the water. An old snag turned into a ghoul.
A monster was reflected in the water. It’s on its side here. The Black Buttes are in the distance.An old snag turned into a ghoul. Off in the distance something big and ugly was digging and snorting. Socrates, I hoped
“Here Soc,” I called. “Come here boy.”
The digging continued and grew more desperate.
“Come here!” I yelled. Still no response but now I could hear large claws scratching at granite.
“Does someone want a Milk Bone?” I added in a quiet, conversational voice.
The digging stopped. ‘Someone’ started coming through the brush toward me. Whatever it was, it was apparently interested in Milk Bones. Soc’s head, long body, and wagging tail made their way into the firelight. He might love digging, but he loved food more. There was a reason why my low-slung pooch weighed 70 pounds.
“Good boy,” I said while digging out a Milk Bone. I knew I was buying companionship, but it seemed like a good idea on this strange, dark night. Meanwhile, Socrates had started to drool in expectation. Soon he was shaking his head and shooting dog slobber off in a dozen directions. I ducked to avoid being slimed.
Unfortunately, my supply of Milk Bones was limited. I tied Soc up to assure his faithfulness. It was time for bed. I put the fire out and was greeted by a moonless, dark night. But hey, who needed the moon when I had my faithful companion and a million stars. I invited Socrates to snuggle up on my sleeping bag and laid my head down on the coat I was using for a pillow.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH!
“What the F…!?” I shouted, sat up straight and grabbed for my flashlight. Socrates joined in by barking at my sleeping bag.
“No, Soc, out there,” I urged and pointed the flashlight off into the woods. Soc glanced up at me with a curious, what are you talking about look, and started barking at my pillow.
“Look Socrates,” I pleaded, “just pretend there is a garbage man out in the woods.” Soc had never met a garbage man he could resist barking at and I wanted his teeth pointed in the right direction. What Soc did with my advice was make three dog circles and plop down on my bag. I gave up and reluctantly laid my head back down on my pillow.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH!
I sat straight up again. Soc growled at me for disturbing his rest and started barking at my sleeping bag again.
“Fine watch dog you are,” I growled right back at him while straining my ears for the smallest of sounds. When Soc shut up, I was rewarded with a faint ‘crunch, crunch, crunch.’ It was coming from under the sleeping bag. I had a proverbial monster under my bed!
Gradually it dawned on me that what I was hearing was a gopher tunneling his way through the ground, innocently on his way to some succulent root. I put my head down on my pillow. Sure enough, the ‘crunch’ became a ‘CRUNCH.’ The ground and the mystic weed were magnifying the sound. Soc had been right all along. I was lucky that he only barked at my sleeping bag and hadn’t started digging.
Don Juan would have appreciated how I had been tricked. Reality isn’t always what it seems.
In the next four posts, Curt relates the exciting tale of how I was found in a field of corn lilies along the Tahoe/Yosemite (Pacific Crest Trail). He called me trash!
Wandering through Time and Place 
