Kimball Oil; Challis, Idaho. I paid Linda, the cashier, the $12 I owed her for the repair tire wrangler Colton had just performed after he mounted the big lug tire on one of Alderspring’s four-wheel drive pickups. Kimball’s was typical of small mountain town stores; they sold fuel, they …
The Power of Ten
As I left a note for the outrider horseback crew at the tiny outpost, or spike camp known as Aspen Spring Camp, I heard a twig snap. There, just 100 yards away, a thin line of wayfaring and lost-to-us Alderspring cattle picked their way across the down logs in the thick fir and aspen forest. I …
Death… and Life in Bear Basin
The wind whipped across the basin with a pesky cheek-stinging flurry of horizontal snow. It was just a week ago, in mid-April. Caryl, border collie Clyde and I were on a quest: to find a sort of black gold, deep beneath the rolling hills of sage and grassland. We were in Bear Basin, and it is …
A Rat’s Tail
Dear Friends, The faint but rhythmic thumping was unmistakable. I laid awake in bed on my back, eyes open and unfocused on the ceiling in the faint light from a setting crescent moon, Caryl breathing the deep respiration of sound sleep. It had to be around 2AM. I halted my own breathing to …
Of Bison and Beavers
Let’s roll back the clock 34 years, and I’m still me. Instead of my 2021 gray, my hair is the dirty blonde that goes with my blue eyes of Dutch ancestry. I’m working in the forests in the steep and rocky mountains of Central Idaho. I’m in great shape from hiking up and down at elevations of …
Sheep in the Deep
Fresh out of the showroom, and on the way home from church, the 1972 red Pontiac Bonneville with a faux rag top cut a path through the early spring whiteout conditions on the high plains of Colorado. Sheepman Dave Jolly was behind the wheel, and his wife, Albertine, rode shotgun. She alone was …