Drive - A Memoir 94th Installment
Russ
asked Victor, “Do you deer or elk hunt?”
“Dad
won’t let me yet. He said that if I got a job and bought my own gun
and bullets, then I could go,” Victor told us, “although,” he
added, “Dad and Richard have taken me along to bird dog the last
two years.”
“Casey
and I have hunted and shot our deer the last two years, and before
that, we were taken to bird dog for the Old Man and Uncle Chick.”
Russ explained.
“Hunting
I like – bird dogging, maybe.” I said ambivalently.
I
had my reasons for disliking bird dogging. One time, when Russ and I
were quite young – nine or ten – they took us to the mountains
above Medicine Lodge. The trust was liberating, but the Old Man just
sent us out, like he wasn’t that worried that we might never come
back.”
We
stopped on a snow covered dirt road going up a canyon, “Get out you
knuckleheads, and let me show you what to do. Ascend this mountain to
the ridge line,” the Old Man pointed as we strained to see where he
was pointing. “Follow the ridge through that next canyon, climb
back on the ridge and follow it until it splits there,” still
pointing this time with both hands. “Hold right and continue until
we find you and pick you up.” We set out as the truck, our ride
home, disappeared into the trees. We had stepped out of the pickup
into about four inches of snow, and it was getting deeper as we went
up the mountain causing us to struggle a bit. We followed the
ridgeline for what seemed like hours, but it was probably only an
hour. We dropped down into the first canyon, and at the bottom it
appeared like there were two different ways to ascend. We held right,
making the ridge again and kept moving.
“Maybe
this is the right ‘right’ ridge, maybe not, but don’t you think
we should be there by now?” I was starting to get worried. My feet
and jeans were wet and in the deep trees without sun it was real
cold. Russ was also worried, but said we should soldier on, although
he looked as wet and cold as I was. Sometime later I was scared
because we started dropping into another canyon and this was
different than what we’d been told. However, at the bottom of the
valley we could see a thin stream of smoke not far away.
“Fire!”
was all I could muster and we both knew we’d go for it. We found a
road and followed it toward the smoke. “Why is there a road, the
Old Man never said anything about a road?” I asked with a bit of
fear gnawing at my gut.
We
arrived at a campfire where two other hunters had made their late
lunch. “Hello?”
500 more words tomorrow
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