I could not live without elk and I don’t want to try. So, I live next to them on a year round basis. Forever agonizing the herd as I stumble along, intruding (or trying to intrude) on their parallel humanity, with my hat in my hand.

I like Brook Trout because they live only in cold, fresh water and therefore distant and out-of-the-way high-mountain canyons. I like them because I like the places they live. We can trust in where the Brookies will always be, their over-all movement is naturally restricted to waterways.

Elk move right along with the seasons, from Spring to the beginning of Winter they live, breed, and worship (I suppose) in the quaky groves of the highlands of the best purple mountains in the west. But now, during the grey days of winter, they wander foothills and forage among sage and scrub cedar. A cheerless assemblage, forced to live to close to the pits of humanity, to close to private property and high-ways. They do their best to avoid billboards and telephone poles, but things are getting to be crowded down here.

Like me, they must dream of the time when they can play in the wallows and grasses of the high plateau, the Boulder, Hell Hole, Reeder and Black Canyon, to get up, above the valley, to leave the asphalt and criss-crossed, loose and electrified-cables of progress alone for as long as possible.

Wapiti know their mountain habitat not by its name, but by some eccentric knowledge that flows in the blood from one generation to the next, a map in crimson, spelling direction to the best water and cover and feed.

In the winter, these lost, longing souls float along the fringes of civilization, their faces and countenances staging the stress brought by the company they’d rather not keep, in places they’d rather not be.

Check it out from Barbara Kingsolver in “Prodigal Summer”:

"The world was what it was, a place with its own rules of hunger and satisfaction. Creatures lived and mated and died, they came and went, as surely as summer did. They would go their own ways, of their own accord."

So, the Bull I limped into up Grizzly way who sniffed and snorted my stink, tasting it with his mouth and glands, he knew I was a human, and I knew he was an elk.

Jon Krakauer reported in his book, “Into The Wild” that our hero Alexander Supertramp a.k.a Christopher McCandles said that a man should own nothing more than he can carry on his back at a full sprint.

That's not just a flippant comment. Our ancestors became human when they stood up and started carrying things around while either chasing or being chased by wild beasts.

I guess I'll be human again after recovering from my latest tragedy, a torn hole in my gut that is allowing my intestines to bulge on through.

I'm staring hernia surgery in the face, surgery and recovery and maybe then I'll be able to walk more than a mile or two without doubling over in pain. I guess I'll be human after I deal with all that, if I live that long.

Look, It's not just a move toward “simplicity” but a change of perspective concerning who we actually are.

We aren't our profit potential or the cool people we know, we aren't a job title or an investment portfolio and we aren't men because of the animals we've killed.



Jack Kerouac wrote:

But I had my own little bangtail ideas and they had nothing to do with the “lunatic” part of all this. I wanted to get me a full pack complete with everything necessary to sleep, shelter, eat, cook, in fact a regular kitchen and bedroom right on my back, and go off somewhere and find solitude and look into the perfect emptiness of my mind and be completely neutral from any and all ideas. I intended to pray, too, as my only activity, pray for all living creatures; I saw it was the only decent activity left in the world. To be in some riverbottom somewhere, or in a desert, or in mountains, or in some hut in Mexico or shack in Adirondack, and rest and be kind, and do nothing else, practice what the Chinese call “do-nothing.”

He's right, I think he finally figured out how to live, I mean really live man, the only “decent” way to live...I'll try it...you know...in a while...after some rest...

When you see Bob Dylan in concert nowadays, you really see Woody Guthrie in his hospital room and Jimi Hendrix in the rain and Johnny Cash at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Last night he sang, "God said to Abraham, 'kill me a son.'"

And, "yes these people that you mentioned, I know them, they're quite lame, I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name."

And, "outside in the distance a wildcat did growl, two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl."

It was a great night, a reminder that Dylan's influence in my life continues...

He's the last man standing.

“God. Dog. We fail to see the reflexivity of what lives inside us. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.” He didn't say “wilderness.” He knew that no piece of land—no matter how scenic or pristine—would restore what we have lost in ourselves. That's not to say we don't need wilderness—we need it more than ever. For this is the place where Coyote dwells, free of persecution, free of the projection of the abandoned, feared self.

In Coyote is the preservation of the soul. That howl, had I let it rise up into the dark sky like a prayer, would have grounded me. And at the same time, it would have gotten me out of the house, nose to the ground, loping circles until I found my way.

Pray or crawl. I never imagined the choice as anything except either-or. But really, for thousands of years, they were one and the same.”

Is written in a book called “Trespass” by Utahan Amy Irvine.

It reminded me of what Ed Abbey said, "Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the Canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the...cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe."

A crawl IS a prayer, Goddamned it...

I took some pictures from Dead Indian Pass, a place named after a century old incident involving an escaping band of Nez Perce. A group that included women and children. They were escaping the United States Calvary and an order to kill every single person in the band, an order that would have the Calvary leave none of the women or baby children alive.

The Nez Perce were heading toward Canada.

They left an injured Brave at the pass to distract and delay the troops. He was killed.

Now, as Adam so poetically said, “White people come here to take a shit.”

There's facilities at the look out, real nice facilities.

More than anything I miss from the recent trip to Yellowstone country, more than anything I miss waking up in Cooke City, Montana.



It's a tourist town, a tourist town to be sure, but it's a bit "rougher" than the Jackson's and Cody's, and a whole hell of a lot smaller...it appeals to me...



The October morning was cold, and Adam and I took the defrost time to snap some pictures.



I'm glad we did.

The winds of change have hit the high desert square in the nose. We are all trying to hit back, it's still late summer warm around here, but it's a fight we know we are going to lose, the only type of fight I like...

I spent a beautiful day on the mountain yesterday, the opening day of the muzzleloader deer and trophy elk hunt in my backyard. I didn't shed blood, but I did gaze on the desert from 10,000 feet and contemplate the yellowing quakie leaves and I did take a long walk through Meadow Fork and Brough Fork of Black Canyon up onto Little Mountain and through the Red Pine Cove with my brother.

We met my dad and two sons at a predetermined spot in the wild to compare notes and tell lies.

It was a good day