“Range after range of mountains. Year after year after year. I am still in love.”
– Gary Snyder
Spring break this year, we drove across the West and past many, many mountain ranges in Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Montana. I didn’t dare sleep in the car or stare at my phone while being a passenger moving past them because I’d miss them. Instead, I gazed across the landscapes or would read my tattered paper road maps splayed across my lap and try to find out the elevation of the highest peak that I could see in the distance or the next little town coming up. On one particular mountain in Nevada, I tried to imagine the route I’d take to the top. Looking out the back window as we drove past it, Bob asked what I was doing and I told him I was trying to figure out a good route to the top. He asked if I was planning on doing that anytime soon. I told him no, but anything is possible.
The western United States is blessed with vast areas of public lands in the middle of nowhere that rarely get stepped on by a human foot, but it doesn’t make them any less special or less valuable. If anything, it’s the opposite.
It wasn’t until spending time the past few years hiking around the chukar hills that I realized how important they were to me. On our road trip across the West, I started reflecting back on all the many hundreds of miles hiking up and down these mountains and back to the beginning. I felt like talking about it in the video (below).
I almost didn’t go on a blind date with him but I ended up meeting him anyway and it was because of a bird dog. That was 18 years ago this month. Before agreeing to meet him in person for the first time, I saw a photograph of him kneeling next to his 6-month-old puppy. “What’s not to like about a single guy who has a cute dog? He can’t be too bad,” a good friend of mine said as she was encouraging me not to back out of giving him my phone number. At the time, I didn’t know much about Brittanys, but I agreed they were both cute.
Glenna Skye and a couple of ruffed grouse.
We spoke on the phone, a landline, before meeting in person for the first time. We talked about the basic stuff and it seemed like everything was going well but he insisted on knowing what I looked like first. I found out later that he’d been burned before or set-up on false pretenses by a woman that said she looked exactly like Mariah Carey. He said, “Mariah Carey’s second cousin, four times removed, if that,” or something like that. I’m a firm believer that looks aren’t everything, but it was only fair that he had the option of backing out if he didn’t like what he saw.
These were the early days of the Internet, the AOL and dial-up years. Online presence wasn’t so easy to come by. Today if you want to find out what someone looks like it’s easy to just Google their name or Facebook or Instagram search them. The only photo that I could come up with was from the webpage of the bicycle team that I was racing on. It was group postcard photo but it was better than nothing. I told him where to find the photo online.
I’m the tall one in the back, fifth from the right.
We agreed on a public meeting place, a brewpub in downtown Boise. He came straight from work and got there first. I came straight from the gym, and when I walked in the door he was expecting someone in workout clothes and he didn’t recognize me at first. The funny or ironic thing about our first meeting was that his co-worker in the cubicle next to his had the same photo posted next to his computer because his wife was also on my cycling team. My blind date had seen the photo of me almost every day for a year without knowing he’d eventually meet the one fifth from the right.
After good beer, dinner, and conversation he invited me over to his house because he was anxious to check on his young dog that had been home alone all day. I agreed to go to this strange man’s home to meet his dog Glenna, and I didn’t even think twice about doing it. It was getting late and I stayed for just a few minutes before I drove back across town to my own home. I liked him. I think his bird dog liked me.
Bob proposed on top of an Idaho mountain inside an old decommissioned Forest Service lookout about 1- 1/2 years later. The following year, on a clear sunny day in August, in-between wildfires that had blanketed the skies with smoke most of the late summer, we got hitched on the top of a different mountain, and after the ceremony rode our mountain bikes down to the bottom on a fun and narrow single-track with family and friends.
Happy Valentines Day to all you lovers of mountain tops and bird dogs out there!
We’re hunkered down again today. It was a blizzard this morning when we woke up. Bob and I really wanted to know the wind chill but our weather station anemometer stopped spinning due it to being caked with snow and ice from the cold winds. I’m not complaining one bit about the snow drift that was pushed against our front door when I went outside to get wood for the stove this morning; snow is needed for water this summer. I’m sure later while I’m out there pushing around the snow blower up and down our long gravel driveway that I might complain and utter a couple of choice words, especially if I break another shear pin from the big sticks and branches Peat manages to find from who knows where and leave scattered randomly on the driveway now buried in snow.
Today is the day for doing those indoor projects you love and hate. After having papers and receipts spread all over our kitchen bar, Bob just finished doing our taxes and is now dreaming of a summer of fly-fishing in Montana and he’s doing research on Montana rivers and what kind of flies to tie. He also has a lot of school work to do today like grading papers, figuring out assignments, then practicing the bagpipes. He loves it.
I’m waiting for the winds to stop. It’s pointless blowing snow when it will blow right back in my face. Bob’s recovery from his spine surgery is going well but he’s still not able to lift or move heavy things (or so he claims). Shoveling snow and snow blowing is my project today. In the meantime, I’ve been going through hunting photos from this season and finding the ones that represent just a small taste of our season spent with good people and better dogs.
I almost didn’t go hunting on the last day of the season. I woke up tired.
The day before, I’d gone out with the dogs for my fifth hunt in seven days. Overwhelmed by the dread of the looming last day and already missing it, I wanted to take advantage of the unusually pleasant weather we’d been having in this part of Idaho, plus a schedule — or shall I say a lack of schedule — that allows me to hunt in the middle of the week. When I took early retirement from my employer last year, someone told me “The worst thing about being retired is that you never have a day off.” It’s true.
My second to the last hunt of the season was also my 52nd hunt. I know this, because back in September on opening day, as I’d done the previous season, I started keeping track with data off my GPS watch, if I could remember to turn it on. I like to know where I hunted, my distance hiked, how long the hunt was, and elevation gained. When I got back home I’d write it all down with a ball point pen in my hunting journal which is hand lined with a ruler on a paper notebook. Nothing fancy, just the old fashioned way. Bob, who I’ve dubbed the king of gadgets and who one of the UPS guys a couple of years ago called the king of Amazon Prime because of an almost daily delivery of books or some type of high tech gadget, keeps meticulous detailed records of all his hunts on an Excel spread sheet. Besides all the stuff that I like to keep track of he, likes to record how many shots fired, how many killed and bagged, lost birds, shooting percentage, how far each dog ran, averages and totals for each category, and a barrage of other miscellaneous notes.
After losing all the elevation in the truck driving deep down into the canyon and finding the place I wanted to hunt the second to the last day of the season, a place unoccupied and not near anyone else, I parked and left on foot with the dogs heading back up uphill for about an hour to the middle of a ridge. Angus and then Peat bolted in a direction that I didn’t want to go but I followed anyway. A couple of minutes later, my Garmin beeped that Angus was on point 127 yards away. Whenever Angus points, it’s almost always legit. Peat, on the other hand, has a collar that’s so ultra sensitive to him stopping for just a second to pee or to smell something that I’ve found myself often ignoring it when it signals me that he’s on point. I picked up the pace through the deep snow drifts that were tucked between forests of sagebrush, and zigzagged my way down to Angus. Once I found him, Peat soon arrived to back him up. I slowly and quietly inched my way in front of Angus, and the birds busted. One shot, and one chukar went down as we also watched the rest of the covey fly downhill changing direction and then disappearing behind a ridge near us instead of flying across valley and to the opposite ridge.
Not much snow for the end of January.
It took a few minutes for Peat to find the downed bird and we had no plans to give up on it because the day before I’d winged one that flew down hill into a some bunch grass and rocks and the dogs couldn’t find after 30 minutes of searching. While Peat was retrieving the bird, Angus continued to hunt. It was almost like they had an agreement between them that one would stay looking for the one that I shot and retrieve it while the other continued on searching for the scattered covey.
On a bed of the terrible noxious weed, medusahead.
We continued in the direction of where the covey flew, traversing the rocky and muddy sagebrush and medusahead-covered slope. Angus below me with Peat working above me, my Alpha beeped that both dogs were pointing at the same time, on a different covey and not the ones that had just busted. Stopping to stare down at the screen to figure out which dog was closer, Peat flew past me heading towards Angus with a fairly fresh 3-foot-long mule deer leg in his mouth. This was no surprise because one of his many affectionate nicknames I’ve given him over his life time besides “Little F*#ker,” “Little Dummy,” “Crazy Eyes,” “Precious,” or “Sweet Pea,” is the “Garbage Man.” He has this uncanny knack of finding the stinkiest, nastiest, usually dead thing, and either rolling in it or running around with it in his mouth, unwilling to give it up for anything. Our current UPS delivery person last spring, a guy named Sail, was walking up to our house doing a delivery to support bibliophile Bob’s habit that I yelled at the top of my lungs to “STAY CLEAR” while I was hosing off and scrubbing Peat with a skunk concoction remedy for the fourth time after he rolled on a dead skunk near our house.
The big question of the day was whether Peat would drop the deer leg when he got up to Angus. As I fought my way through the sagebrush, I pulled out my phone and was actually hoping to capture what might possibly be the first photograph of a dog pointing with a deer leg in his mouth. To my disappointment, when I got up to both dogs, Peat backing up Angus again, Peat didn’t have the leg in his mouth anymore. He had actually dropped it.
The spooky birds busted below Angus flying downhill before I could get into position in front or to the side of Angus to shoot. This has been the theme for most of January where it’s hard to get near chukar before they bust wild. The dogs and I continued into the direction of both scattered coveys before my Garmin again beeped both dogs on point. Again, both dogs were located in different directions. Peat was closer but I could see him above me pointing downhill below a rocky outcropping so I headed uphill. One single busted from the rocks, and I shot once as the quick flying bird disappeared behind the rocks so fast that I didn’t know if I’d hit it or not. My Garmin beeped again, Angus was still pointing 180 yards below. “You have to always honor the point” was something Bob stressed to me last year, so I headed downhill towards Angus. Wondering where Peat was, I stopped and looked behind me uphill just as I saw him running downhill with a chukar in his mouth. I was so thrilled and surprised at the same time that I’d actually hit that one. Angus who held the bird or birds as long as he could before they probably eventually busted returned to check up on me wondering why I didn’t go down to his point.
Not a tailgate shot but a rock shot.Double day: my first ever.
The following day, the 31st, closing day, we went one final time. My goal was to head uphill and find a place with views of the surrounding valley. I wasn’t worried whether we’d find more chukar, I just wanted to take it all in. The plants, trees, rocks, and other kinds of birds and animals define my place in this ecosystem.
A treasure and a treasure.
We headed up a narrow and snowy two-track in a deep valley lined with trees and bushes. Peat in his usual fashion found an animal bone and wouldn’t give it up. I forced it out of his mouth and flung it as far away as possible. I continued on looking at the ground at elk and deer tracks plus Peat and Angus’s tracks in the patches of snow. A paw print that I didn’t recognize at first caught my eye. It was a big cougar track, fairly fresh probably from that morning and heading the same direction. Peat’s body language and routine changed. Instead of running up the trail out of sight a ways and coming back like he normally does he was sticking close to me, running a few feet ahead, stopping and smelling the ground, and continuing on another few feet before repeating smelling the ground again. I watched Angus down by the creek; he wasn’t acting differently, but he’s older and wiser and not the big chicken of the two dogs.
Still, the cat track and Peat’s behavior was a bit unnerving. We continued up the road and I kept Angus closer to me and instead of carrying my gun on my shoulder, I kept my gun in the ready position and carefully listened and looked behind frequently. I could never willfully or ethically kill an animal like a wolf, coyote, or this cougar that I wasn’t planning on using for food but I actually thought about having to kill something to protect myself or the dogs, and this was the first time I felt the dogs or myself might be the prey.
Roles reversed. I now know how the chukar must feel.
On the final climb. 63,755 feet in elevation gain for the season. Peat and Angus way more.Upland Peat.Angus on the decent.Chukar hills.One last point.Taking it all in.Last photo of the 2018/2019 season.
Once again, I’m seeking advice from my more erudite and experienced readers…
Peat, and sometimes Angus, but always at least one of them wakes us about 4 a.m. wanting to be fed. This has been going on for more than two years. Peat’s the ring-leader, and most aggressive. He’ll start by pacing and softly whining, which ultimately crescendoes to a series of Bo Jackson-esque runs at the foot of the bed, and a spin-bounce off it back onto the floor. Brittany body-slam. He’ll do this until we feed him.
We’ve tried lots of things: totally ignoring it until the alarm rings (our latest, failed strategy); shutting them out once they get off of the bed (which leads to them scratching at the door at odd intervals like some horror film scenario); making them get back on the bed and ordering a stay (never works for long). Until very recently, we’d been doing what I’m sure is the absolute wrong and worst thing: giving in and feeding them so we can at least get another hour of sleep before the alarm rings at 6 a.m. Last night I wondered if the e-collar might be worth a try, but didn’t get up because I thought it would be another victory for far smarter Peat.
So, if anyone has advice that might nip this well-developed habit in the bud, we’d love to hear it. The dogs will continue to sleep with us, so that’s not negotiable, which I realize might seal our fate on this as losers (of sleep, of dignity, of probably years of life caused by bad sleep).
On an up note: Leslie had a great day yesterday, the penultimate day of the season. Maybe she’ll tell you about it. She’s planning to go out again today for the win while I slave away with dangling modifiers.
