CUTTING THE RIBBON ON ADVENTURE

With all the duties like wood collection or winter prep on deck, those first few days were about savoring the moment. The incubating idea that we had been talking about for months and that I had been envisioning for years was biting through the shell and hatching. All those “responsible” tasks were going to get back in line and take a number. This was a grand opening ceremony to celebrate and get to know the surroundings of an area we would be a denizen of indefinitely.

With the cabin stocked of many needs to include fishing supplies, our celebration would kick off with fishing at the lake we had passed about a mile back. Murray Lake. A decent-sized body of water in the mold of an upside-down foam “number 1” hand that is a popular sell at sporting events. The marshy finger pointed towards Kalispell. The access road traveled alongside the eastern portion with some great casting locations on the east, north, and northwest shores. An aesthetic rock formation highlighted the northern tip. A southern section was appealing for fishing also but requested an off-trail trek around the finger of marshland. Behind was a stiff hill that came to be known as “Forgotten Pole’s Ridge” and housed as quality a view available for that wooded section of state forest land. A tranquil place to forget whatever I engaged in previously.

As purebred City Slickers, we thought little about the situation we were putting ourselves through. We strolled to the lake with our poles and nothing else. No container to put the fish. No protection. We were in bear country. Daylight would guide us walking towards the lake, so the idea seemed brilliant. Once seated lakeside in wait of aquatic creatures biting the line, thinking a little, and watching the sun set, we realized how poorly planned our outing had become. We had much to learn about this new way of life that we “smokejumped” into. What if we actually caught a fish? Where would we put it? We would have to carry it by hand a mile back to the cabin.

The darkness arrived before we could be ready. We did not catch fish, but we smelled like bait. At dark. In bear country. The course home seemed like an eternity. I have known females named “Eternity” and always wondered if that would be an association one would want. We tend to reference “eternity” to something long and awful. The bear was mauling me; seemed like an eternity. It took an eternity for the medevac to arrive. It must have seemed like an eternity for my parents waiting for the doctor to come out and let them know if I’d ever have use of my sexy abs again from the ferocious bear-attack. I’d thereafter need an eternity of medical procedures. The writer had an eternity of overused and abused references to “eternity.”

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After the eternity, we found safe passage at the cabin which by definition isn’t possible. We made it out to Montana and proved that eternity could be a finite noun. We were alive, and the sky looked peculiar. Very distinct from Toledo or Nashville. There was an eternity of stars in the sky. A positive use of eternity. We had proved that eternity was both finite and positive. What an amazing start to the journey! We started a fire and sat on top of “The Aloha” just overwhelmed by what was up above. I had been out in deserts and countrysides that were comparatively remote with little light pollution. Many of those moments stick out, but this occasion was a cut above the rest. This was home.

We roved around the property those first few days to get a feel for the area. We ascended Kim’s Peak to survey the land and inspected the skeet shooting site with its stash of clay pigeons and the metallic launcher. We found where the family was building a small cabin. An occasional train sound passed in the distance. And then there was the discovery and acquaintance to the stockpile of unprocessed firewood.

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GETTING THE HEAT

The ideal location to gather wood was near the skeet shooting site. A short downhill hike off the two-track was a patch of twenty or more dead trees. They had been felled a few years before with just enough time to season to proper firewood conditions. We sawed them into five- or six-foot lengths and hauled them up the hill to the back of my truck. The favored method for hauling was by using a rope tied on one end with a smooth drag up the hill. Other times, with less grace and common sense, we “shotputted” the logs at six feet a thrust up to the finish line. The involuntary and emasculated grunt that accompanied each toss worked seamlessly in keeping away bears and single women.

Nearly a whole cord of wood fit in the back of the vehicle at a time, but typically we kept the stack to a more manageable weight of half that capacity. From there, we would take them to the yard and process them into eighteen-inch portions. Select logs were thus split into quarters or smaller for fire starting.

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The process was tiresome, yet gratifying knowing the heat we needed was coming from our own sweat, blood, and emasculated grunts. A man who cuts his own wood heats himself twice and gets many splinters (or however that saying goes by whoever said it). Almost every day comprised focus time for wood processing. We knew the days were limited before the snow would continually fall. The home for all this lumber was underneath the porch and before too long, that whole porch underside would be full. Tarps covered the inventory to protect from moisture because the porch had some gaps in the flooring.

It was eerie out there today. The trees were slowly swaying as the wind whistled through them. It really sounded like somebody whistling in the distance. While I was cutting, I was startled to see Brad collecting logs I had cut. We didn’t acknowledge each other and when I had finished cutting, he was gone. I did the usual log toss relay to get the rest of the logs to the truck that was nearly 100 yards away. When I got there, I was glad to see that Brad had loaded the logs he had gathered. Back at the cabin, he had the fire going in the pit to aid his bread creation. I thanked him for coming out and helping. He looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about. I had the chilling realization that maybe I was just seeing things when I saw him in the creepy woods. If so, then who or what loaded those logs? (Calmes, 10/7/99)

Those initial nights were cool, but not cold. The estimation of how much wood we would use with the wood-burning stove on a nightly basis proved adequate. Sitting around the wood-burning stove as though it were a television set became a familiar routine. Especially on the nights with no bonfire outside. Something about a warm, glowing source that puts a busy mind to rest.

When we got back, we cut wood until the chainsaw nearly burned out. I hope we have the proper gas in it. We’ll probably need a lot more wood than we think. I don’t want to underestimate that. We run out of wood during the winter, we freeze. (Calmes, 9/29/99)

The fire outside did not happen as often as it should. A glaring reason was for wood supply concerns as each bonfire prescribed a minimum of six logs. The early, few months before winter hit were very conservative. As part of making the area more like home, we had built up a rock wall on one side to catch the heat and reflect it back towards us. With little luck proving the efficacy of the structure, it remained a tribute to the many survivalists that swear by it.

Ultimate wood day! Holy crap! Two overfilled truckloads! Under the deck is basically filled. I don’t need to say how exhausting today was, but I did. I am not in the least bit cold tonight. The wood burner can really kick out heat! I just burned a hole in the back of my right hand by accidentally touching it to the door of the stove. I planned on working on my drawing today, but the wood adventure took all day. Brad did most of the sawing while I did most of the tossing. It feels great having all of this wood, but it is all just going to end up burned up someday. Brad pointed out that it is kind of like money. You get it just to lose it. I ate a million s’mores around the fire this evening after stacking the last of the wood in the dark. I’ve been thinking, and I hope Brad doesn’t read this, but I’m becoming a little attracted to him. No, I’ve been thinking that I’m probably going to want to leave in January when my aunt and uncle leave. They are coming here for a week after Christmas. It just doesn’t feel right living so easily. We are using Uncle Hal’s cabin. though we did stain it... and using his wood… though we did cut it… but that doesn’t make it ours. I think Uncle Hal would like it if we leave when he does so he can do all the things that need to be done... like turning off the water and power and whatever. I hope Brad is okay with that. Maybe we can come back out here next summer for a few weeks. I’ll definitely be ready to leave in January. So far this has been the most enjoyable experience of my life, but I don’t want to overdo it. (Calmes, 10/20/99)

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EARNING OUR KEEP WITH SEPTEMBER STAIN

A unique focus was also front and center. There was a shoddy feeling from settling in someone else’s amazing cabin with no real contributions; rent payments, electric bills, maintenance cost performed against the wood-burning stove. Such a selfless act to allow us to stay there with no expectation of reimbursement. To soften the burden of our mere existence, we came up with hopeful ways to leave the cabin better than how we found it. Not enough to cover the price of admission, but anything was better than nothing.

Job “numero uno” was staining the cabin. The biggest need of the property by far as Andy’s relatives were fully intending to have their cabin stained either by professionals or by themselves. The cabin was made of wood and wood decays without the proper treatment. Our arrival at the beginning of September meant fall was formally on the doorstep. The sunny days would become the minority, bringing in much rain and possibly snow. We had to take advantage of every nice day there was, almost immediately. The challenge was that neither of us had stained a cabin before. Previous shop classes allowed for small wooden projects, but nothing commensurate to a nearly two-story cabin. I had also painted interiors, but even that action was limited. With apprenticeship-level experience painting houses combined with Andy’s skill and peaceful patience in artistic paintings, the task at hand was going to be a piece of cake.

We began the process of staining the cabin today. Today also marks the one-week anniversary of our arrival here. Staining will be a little more work than anticipated. We only finished one side of the cabin. When we were through, we were covered in stain... well at least I was. Brad was more careful. I had to shower twice today to get the stain out of my hair. I got a very small sense of accomplishment from our work today. I can’t wait to finish… then I will feel pretty good… if I haven’t drowned in wood stain that is. (Calmes 9/15/99)

The project hastily turned out to be no trivial task. Staining was long, finicky, and made a gigantic mess. The mess was unavoidable without the proper outfit; a hazmat suit. We learned that stain was far more invasive than paint, and paint was deeply invasive.

The back of the cabin was much harder to stain than the side. The peak goes up so high we had to extend the brush by taping a stick to it. I got impatient and started spraying like mad, and it all began to drip on my head before I could smooth it out. Some got in my hair... some in my mouth... That sucked. I finally decided to take a lunch break when Brad called me to the back of the cabin. When I got there, I noticed the difference in consistency between what I had done and what he was currently spraying. He was using stuff from the bottom of the can and guess what… we forgot to stir the stain and the stuff on the bottom was all thick and syrupy. We opened the second can and stirred it, only to find that it was much darker than all of the unstirred stain we have been using. Two days’ work down the drain. We decided to take a couple days off because we pretty much have to start over. Not very encouraging. (Calmes, 9/16/99)

The planning required a reasonable understanding of future weather, and a weather forecast for that area was a broad statement. Being near mountains causes localized weather events. The reason that weather was so important was that once stained, the drying process requires enough time to settle or risk becoming susceptible to warping and run-off. Our estimation was one entire day of clear weather following the work to absorb properly and become impervious.

Two weeks since leaving Toledo. Probably the longest two weeks of my life… a good kind of long. Woke up ready to stain and stain we did. We finished the side facing the road, and it looks great! It is not too much different than the back, but we still have to do the far side over. We may need to buy more stain. We listened to some tapes that were in my Uncle’s Jeep... Allman Brothers, Elton John, The Beatles. Staining takes a loooong time. We should finish by Wednesday. Fingers crossed. They don’t call this stuff stain for no reason. No matter how hard I scrub, it will not leave my skin, or my clothing! I look at it as battle scars. (Calmes, 9/19/99)

The ultimate battle with the stain took place this afternoon. I took it upon myself to stain above the deck. Two rolls of masking tape were vanquished while taping the windows so I won’t get stain on the edges. Well, that was successful. I didn’t get stain on the edges of the windows. I got stain everywhere else on them, however. The tin roof I was standing on became soaked with stain and impossible to walk on. After many tears from fumes and looking directly into the blinding sun, I regained my eyesight and saw that I had won. The top is finished! Meanwhile, Brad did the bottom of the front. We aren’t going to redo the first side we did. It doesn’t look too light compared to the front. The back is just going to have to be darker than the rest of the sides. (Calmes 9/20/99)

The task consumed every level of our consciousness. An inescapable clock winded down; the window closing. With so many diversions at our disposal, nothing else would receive the full enjoyment deserved with the thought of finishing the stain and getting those oppressive chains unlocked. A full day, utterly mesmerized by the beauty of northwest Montana, could be deflated by walking back to an unfinished stain job that growled like a rabid dog. The photo alone tells the story well about how badly we wanted the project done.

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What happened to Tuesday? That’s right! We finished staining the cabin!!! It took all day, but we actually did it. We finished the deck, only leaving a few footprint spaces empty and just enough stain to fill them. We gathered everything we need to camp out, and I filled in the footprints. Oh, what a feeling! Next step: cleaning. (Calmes, 9/29/99)

The work was finally done. In looking back, there was some unnecessary “perfectionism” that prevented an earlier finale. Sure, there was a shade difference and if there was a wand to be waived that could merge the differences, we would have opted for the “wand wave.” We had finished the unfinishable and felt marginally better about living inside its walls, though not enough to feel fully like we had earned our right to be there. We cut that invisible line that was pulling at us to finish, leaving the fun and adventure to become unleashed.

FREE TO ROAM AT LAST

I had already scouted out favorite spots, giving names to some. Boyle Lake was just north of our invisible boundaries. Relatively small in both size and depth, what drew my attraction to it was the openness that it allowed with the tracks near its southern tip. The open feel invited sunlight to the area as downed trees all around gave way to bursts of wind from the loose, muddy soil. On the northeast corner, a small hill rose beyond the marshland that provided an unobstructed vantage point of the lake and trees to block the wind, rain, and sunlight exposure overhead.

I tried to clean the sprayer this morning, but it is too drenched in stain to ever work again. Then I got my camera and headed out with Brad to destination unknown. After we passed my easel and went over the mountain, we were basically lost the rest of the day. We eventually stumbled upon Boyle Lake, so Brad knew the way from there. When we were on the train tracks, we heard some voices in the distance that sounded like girls, so we journeyed down the steep rock hill to investigate. We realized we were on private property when we came across a lady walking her dog. She was nice but seemed annoyed that we were on her property. The sun was setting, so we headed in. Good workout! (Calmes, 10/10/99)

Woods Lake was directly east of the property beyond Kim’s Peak. Another shallow lake, but with its own personality that seduced me by its high volume of cattails and virtually no bare shoreline as its name would suggest. Nearly the entire surface area was of that popular aquatic plant. Thornburg Lake lay a half-mile northeast from there, with much of the same sense on a slighter scale. Almost to the point where the lake itself was easy to miss altogether.

Brad had the idea to hike to Woods Lake today. We took the backwoods hoping to find an animal trail that I know of, but I calculated wrong and we ended up a little south of it. Beautiful hike! So many different views. We found the lake easily, then headed north through a marsh area. We began to walk through the cattails until Brad sunk to his knee in the mud. We quickly exited the marsh and headed for Thornburg Lake, but walked a half-hour in the wrong direction. When we finally made it there, we found a half-built, run-down cabin. It was really old lookin’. Then we set our sights on Whitefish Lake. When we reached the train tracks, we knew we had made it. The sun was getting ready to set, and we were nearly two hours from the cabin, so we headed in. All of this without seeing any wild animals besides birds and squirrels. There was a cool hawk at Thornburg Lake. It flew along the mountain on the opposite side of the lake, casting its shadow on the trees. Just when I was sure we weren’t going to see anything else, Brad noticed deer down the tracks. I quickly took a photo just in time to watch their white tails leap off into the woods. Brad was sure there would be deer, maybe Elk in a field that we were soon to be at. He was right… about the deer. Three more white tails running off into the woods. The sunset was brilliant! Too bad we couldn’t see it because we were deep in the thick woods. I could see just enough color through the trees to tell that it looked awesome. While I was paying attention to the sky, we unknowingly walked by two deer that were only ten yards away from us... or less. After we passed, they jumped up and we watched their white tails. I missed what could’ve been a very close-up shot of two deer looking at the camera! Oh well, they’re just deer. I’d be pissed if I missed a shot of a bear like that… actually, I’d probably be dead. We got back to the cabin just as darkness had completely settled. (Calmes, 10/16/99)

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INTRODUCTION TO THE AREA

You may have heard of Montana. You may have seen movies featuring Montana. You may have been to Montana. You might even live in Montana. By now, there is not much context of where we situated. Like any other state, the regions within the state will vary. The eastern half is flat. A mere extension of North Dakota. Heading westward, the Rocky Mountains begin with fury. Being that we were in the northwestern part of the state, we were getting into some elevations on the other side of the continental divide, but still in a valley. Not as high as Colorado, but unmistakably hiked up from the sea levels.

The cabin rested at an elevation of 3,600 ft. The property hugged some train tracks on the northern tip and comprised level ground that gave way to around two hundred acres of rolling hills. Apparently, the trees were planted back in the late 1960s/early 1970s after the land was clear cut, so the growth meant those trees competed for resources. The result was those trees were not as healthy as naturally occurring forest growth and required “thinning” to promote a proper balance. This health is a major factor in forest fires, which is why the state justified giving out a stipend to the property owner to thin a large section.

The skeet shooting site in the southeast corner provided a nice overlook of the northern edge of the valley. There was an unobstructed view of the sky with minimal risk of shooting bystanders or wandering hikers with the short range of a shotgun. Going further up the two-track was a cleared hill with a width of nearly twenty yards that would later be used for skiing and tubing. At the top was another view, Kim’s Peak (named after the owner’s good friend); a field general’s view that revealed the entire property. With plenty of sprawling out to be done on two-hundred acres, that amount of room was amplified by the fact that just south was approximately sixteen square miles of Stillwater State Forest. There were primitive roads and two-tracks throughout that area, making most of the prominent lakes accessible during the non-winter seasons. This land was a potent mix of pine and tamarack, along with some deciduous trees.

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The town of Whitefish rested beyond the forest land to the south, squatting at the bottommost tip of a fairly sizable and serene lake, Whitefish Lake. The community would also be known as Stumptown because of its history of being clear cut and seemed to have all of your basic needs. The layout would be best described by five sections that mattered most to us. The southern end afforded a single entrance or exit to most of the rest of the world. This highway slows to a commercially zoned crawl once the pavement meets the city limits. A grocery store and bowling alley featured most saliently on this lay of the land. The bowling alley appeared noteworthy. Could it be more than just a bowling alley?

The northern tip boasted the library, train station, and beach. A quaint downtown nestled close by showcasing a breathtaking view of the distant mountains. Yet the shops, restaurants, and bars were well beyond our budget to pay much attention to. A post office, bank, photo lab, and laundromat were clustered two blocks away, serving as perhaps the most utilized area. A remaining northwest section allowed the highway to speed back up and steer us homeward. Though we did not have much to do with the town itself, it was our lifeline to the outside world and seemed fixed to boom at the turn of the millennium.

East of Whitefish Lake lay a vast mountain chain. The Whitefish Range. A few exposed peaks commanded attention from day one. Such views they must provide. To the right boasted Big Mountain, which hosted fairly world-class skiing. We had absolutely nothing to do with that. At that stage in my life, I had only tried skiing once. We did not have much money so, to be honest, it acted as just another spot on the map for us. Nothing more. Beyond those peaks was Glacier National Park, with less than an hour’s drive to get there. We had arrived in the autumn with a lot of work front-loaded, so traveling to the park while it remained accessible was never a plan either.

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To the north of the property, beyond the tracks, mixed intermittent private property and more undeveloped state land. Moving northeast, extending past the tip of Whitefish Lake, comprised more of the same. Marshy lands and more private property. Often problematic to discern between the two. About an hour’s drive up Highway 93 would have taken us to the border with British Columbia. West of Highway 93 possessed nothing that we would concern ourselves with much. There was the Stillwater River, where we would try fishing once or twice.

The cabin itself revealed a beautiful one and a half story fixture with two bedrooms, a large living area, kitchen, huge porch, and a loft with stairs leading up to it. She housed many amenities; running water, electric, septic, baseboard heaters, and wood-burning stove. We were not straight out of the 1800s as my childhood envisioned, but we did not care. The loft covered almost half of the cabin, so the floor space had plenty more room for beds and a vantage point that looked down over the first floor. Such a location would also provide a porthole to Flathead valley out the large bay windows in front.

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There were bedrooms for each of us, with a blanket to provide some privacy and insulation. Buried within one bedroom, which would become Andy’s room, unearthed a crawl space for lightly used overflow items. The living area owned a couch and a lazy boy catered to surround the stove which became our beloved television set. The kitchen provided a dinner table, sink, and surface area that fit a hot plate for cooking. A half-height fridge/freezer cooled our perishables.

What more do you really need? Well, if you want a yard area with a fire pit, then you have that too. Walking out the front door and past the beautiful porch, displays an open mixture of grass and rock, centered by a fire pit. Hunching underneath the porch revealed an empty space that would consume a large part of the fall months. What the space missed was firewood, save a couple of cords that the owner and family had already harvested and processed.

Northwest Montana was to become my playground.

WHAT WERE THE NEEDS OF THE CABIN?

With a roof over our heads accounted for, the second-most item of importance was food. Most of the money saved accounted for food expenses. I tucked money aside at Glacier National Bank upon arrival. With a fuzzy sense of how long we would be staying, through part of winter appeared like a reasonable minimum estimation. The treachery of the back roads we relied on in wintertime were unknown. We had no snowmobile, so preparing for at least a month of self-sustenance fit the reality. Ideally, we would be supplied for much longer than that. We demanded a lot of non-perishable food such as powdered milk, canned foods, noodles, sugar, oatmeal, peanut butter, and powdered juice. I shopped for raw materials to make some foods from scratch. In anticipation of excessive amounts of time once winter hit, making homemade bread or even hunting seemed ideal and primordial.

Should there be a desperate need to resupply, we soon discovered that there were neighbors a third of a mile away. By no stretch were we so remote that we would have to make life or death decisions. Yet, reaching out for help would be self-defeating. A failure in the experiment of self-reliance. Embracing the lifestyle meant avoiding reliance on others at almost all costs.

With non-perishables quickly accounted for, we could focus on some more desired foods. Unsure of how stable the electric would be, we had to acknowledge the potentiality for food spoilage. Yet, once temperatures went below forty degrees, we could even buy perishable foods with no concern for that. We had a miniature fridge, but an option to keep food safely stored underground outside fell within reach should the need ever arrive. The cooler temperatures would hinder any spoiling.

There was an ample supply of water stored, but this would never be much of a concern either. Before snowfall, we had a bounty of lakes that, once purified, could wet our whistles as necessary. Once those froze over, we would have the snow gift-wrapped right on our doorstep, requiring only some heat to make potable.

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We did not drink or do drugs, thus avoiding that expense to account for. We would not allow such an easy escape to the beautiful boredoms that we were soon up against. Only our minds, or absence of them, would entertain the slowest and most upturned moments of “cabin fever.”

I did not know exactly how cold northwest Montana would be, but from experience in northern Ohio, the climate had to be at least considerably colder. Our heating situation provided baseboard heaters in the two bedrooms and probably elsewhere. Being that we were trying to be good denizens and minimizing the electric costs that someone else was paying for, we decided they only could be used sparingly at a baseline setting. Basically, to keep the cabin from getting close to freezing. The critical thing to consider about electric heat was that at any point, that option could be unavailable. We did not have a generator. Our principal source of reliable warmth came from a wood-burning stove. This was the only genuine sense of survival needs.

Having never lived through a winter in Montana in a cabin, we had absolutely no idea how much wood we would burn through. If we ran out of wood and the electricity proved unreliable, we would potentially freeze to death. It might sound ridiculous to say that we could run out of wood while living among tall trees, but there was much work and preparation that must be considered. Gathering and chopping wood in deep snow is not for the faint at heart. That is also assuming that the wood is properly cured and free of moisture, which is tough to guarantee the further past summer we waited. We surmised with blindfolds as to how reliable the stove would be. From some reading, chimneys risk getting plugged and require maintenance from time to time. Some things could be done to prolong the usefulness, but eventually, even the best-maintained systems require maintenance. The plan was to use it only at night or on special occasions. During the day meant dressing warmer with slight use of baseboard heaters for localized heating as needed. By rudimentary estimation, only three logs a night would do the trick. Ninety logs per month. Presumably double that, once the mercury dropped. The average low bottomed out around fifteen degrees in January. Not Antarctica, but cold. We may even have to triple that if nights plunged below zero. One thing was for certain. We needed a lot more wood. We had a chainsaw, an ax, and an unshakable fear that what we have stored away was still not enough.

We had no desire to have phones in the cabin, nor did we seek cell phone coverage. A relatively new option in those days. Looking back at the moment, we may have rudely shunned the notion of facilitating the installation of landline services. If we did, then that would be wrong, but make no mistake, we did not want a phone. At all. A phone represented civilization and with such youth, we did not process the probability of emergencies as one would once older.

There was no real computer and certainly no internet at our disposal. While internet service emerged swiftly and began to take hold as residential service in an urban area, this was not an option at the cabin. Even if we wanted the connectivity, such an amenity would not have been available without phone service. Satellite internet needed years to pass in being ready on a consumer basis.

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There was no means to watch television. With no television, opportunities for gaming systems vanished. There was a radio. I brought a word processor. We hauled out books. A wood-burning stove served as the master of ceremony. That became the television. Being a gigantic movie buff, we had some foresight and recorded a healthy handful of movies on audiotape. They were great for road trips, and they were better fireside.

The actual communication from the cabin as it would play out was reading and writing letters. An event that is difficult to process nowadays, even for me. We will get into this later.

SIMPLER LIVING

Keep it simple. What better way to exemplify that than by having a heading with only two sentences?

Unfortunately, further explanation is needed. The topic of being simple is a complicated matter. And by making a goal about keeping things simple, that goal was unattainable. By simple living, there can be many facets of life that are benefited by simplicity. To me, it is just identifying what I need to do and then identifying what I want to do. The list of “needs” should be brief. The shorter the better. In understanding needs, it is saying that by taking away this need, the sustainability of that chosen lifestyle is significantly degraded. The cabin arrangement was not completely self-sufficient by any means with both electricity and running water. Civilization was not markedly far away. Yet, the property was close enough to living remotely and homesteading as I would likely ever know, and I wanted to take full advantage.

Rustic needs versus needs in the city are as much different as they are the same. As already touched on, living in a cabin in northern Montana, we needed to stay warm. Not much different from residing in a house in some northern city. We did not need electricity to keep ourselves warm, but we had it and were comforted by it. We needed firewood because at no point would it matter what external circumstances occurred to remain warm by the fire. Firewood meant warmth no matter what unless the roof blew off in some nasty storm.

The more efficient we were, the less we would need. Saving more time for fun. I later learned that I was so efficient at smelling good, that I only needed to shower every few weeks. Well, the smelling good part was probably untrue, but the shower frequency was exact. We were hermit wannabe’s and there were no ladies or management to impress. No customer’s ass to kiss. Shaving and haircuts were done for. Hygiene was still important enough though that a warm cloth and baby wipes would achieve most of the sanitation requirements. Laundry was conducted each trip to town we made, though a wash basin would have been a preferred way to clean clothing. A plastic storage tub filled with soapy water would be attempted, but could not quite do the trick to satisfaction.

Almost every day, I made my own meals. Sometimes even from scratch. I made bread a few times by devising a makeshift oven out of hanger frames and foil. I then set it above the wood-burning stove. The result would turn out ok but was way too much work and messy for what it was worth to me.

I found out quickly how much time there is in cabin living. An awakening occurred for someone who already thought he was good at keeping busy. A positive kind of awakening. Time seemed to go much, much slower. A kid-waiting-for-Christmas-morning-to-finally-arrive-slow. To fill many mornings, several hours would pass just sitting in a comfortable chair with coffee on the upper deck of the cabin while peering out into the valley through the large bay windows. The cabin would cool down just enough at dawn after the wood-burning stove’s beautiful warmth faded from the night before so that a warm drink balanced out the coziness. The options and distractions were curbed with no television to soak up filler time and no nauseous phone ring to break the peace and solitude of living. Even the thought of the sound was traumatic. Landline phone calls would have a significant role in moderation, but that was what the payphones in town were for. To have no contact in the cabin meant we were untouchable. There were letters to replace the use of phones. Especially once the might of cabin fever cast its ominous shadow on the beloved cabin.

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1998 arrived, and I had just moved to Nashville not long before. Residing with those same two friends that I fled out west with in 1995. While they pursued careers in music, I was still struggling to figure out where I was going with my life. I picked up a job as a zookeeper at the Nashville Zoo, succeeding an internship that lasted for a few months. A relatively seamless next-step being that I had a place to live. An end goal looked for something wilder; a national park job, perhaps. But this sufficed in the interim. The job became fun and fulfilling, escorted by the freedom of being on my own. Serving as a zookeeper was not a lifelong ambition, but animals were often more interesting to me than many people. A rowdy zebra named “Sharpie” was no exception. What an illustrious name for a white stallion with an assortment of odd black markings all over it, by-the-way. Well done to whoever came up with that name. As fun as the job was while being part of a budding institution, to have a career meant moving the needle a little more to fill the rest of a meaningful work life. I had mixed feelings concerning the idea of animals in captivity while praising the importance that zoos play in conservation, endangered animal breeding, and education. To me, a perfect world comprises no demand for such a thing with nothing more gratifying than seeing wild animals, in the wild. We do not live in a perfect world, so we must make compromises.

My friend Andy had come back from a vacation in Montana during the summer to visit his relatives and their property. We reviewed pictures. Some scenery. Some of whitewater adventures. Even a picture of a bear in a tree. They were elegant and looked exciting, yet made no deep impression other than reminding me of the first visit to Montana. Finally, there was mention of his Uncle’s cabin and the property he stayed at. The cabin itself looked grand and home to many modern amenities, though foreign to many others. It resided outside of the ski town of Whitefish, Montana, adjacent to Glacier National Park. Over two hours of driving north of Missoula, where Vice and I had been before cutting over to Idaho. The conversations led to revelations it stood vacated most of the year. I pondered endlessly about what such a life would be. Yet, that life was still quite out of reach.

By the time 1999 came around, that bubble inside my head felt ready to pop. The self-assigned pressure to figure things out beat rapidly like an adrenalized heart. I needed to figure out my next move. Nashville entranced as a wonderful place, circled by even more beauty, but not for me. The atmosphere reflected far too city-centric a setting with a hefty dose of show business persona. It was not home.

The internet, in large part, remained a work in progress and so networking opportunities were sporadic. Opportunities for research were scarce. Not enough information surfaced to make intelligent decisions (assuming I was capable of such). I lacked a small beachfront to make landfall out west. Thinking about the cabin in Montana came up more and more. That still was not possible. I did not know the landowner, and surely Andy would not be up for deferring his music aspirations to go hole up in a cabin in the woods for a while.

Light conversations went on between us. To my surprise, he seemed very interested in the idea. This arose as a shock to me. Not only did he have his music to stand rooted with, but I did not see him exactly so fond of the outdoors that he would want to live it daily as a lifestyle. Was I overlooking something? The trip out west right after high school included many outdoor adventures, and we seemed to have the time of our lives. We took advantage of Nashville and the surrounding lake for cliff jumping and tiny islands to swim out to. A precedent bloomed into a revelation that a journey west could work.

There existed no apprehension that Andy would find a wealth of hobbies to stay enriched by during the wintertime. He was an artist and musician, who would already stay up throughout the night to work on a drawing or mix songs, along with hundreds of other ways to stay busy. Such certain idleness, free of distraction, could serve him well in sharpening his skills in those musical endeavors. We were already great friends and shared an appreciation for weird humor, so there birthed not a doubt that we would have frequent bouts of ridiculous laughter living in a fairly isolated setting. He was, after all, one of the funniest people I had come across. Before ever knowing much of Andy, he had already made a name for himself by shaving his head to look like “Burns” from The Simpsons in our large high school. He had the lanky frame and towering nose that made the impression work brilliantly. Still better, he interrupted my “mock-karaoking” of Bust a Move during senior year After-Prom by shooting through a crowd and then up on stage. Just as soon as he arrived, he had vanished out of sight with the frenzied pace of a professional wrestler inciting the audience. He bore only his “tighty-red” undies to the horror and outrage of many high school girls. Bold move!

He had an uncanny ability to recognize shock-humor. Immediately after high school at the age of eighteen, we visited Toys R’ Us and noted how expensive Legos had become. One such set on display hosted a disturbing price tag of $75. Space-tech Legos. We stood next to a mom and her prying son, desperately wanting that very same overpriced toy. In fact, our attention to it may have drawn the interest of the boy. The mother remained remarkably calm and patient. The child reminded me of myself at the volcanic age of eight; very much the same unreasonable brat. She spent nearly five minutes lovingly explaining to the boy why he could not have it, and her mannerisms worked to my amazement. Her voice had soothed her son and seemingly soothed me as well. My mother had many of those same moments, and after years of patience, I was proud of the mature man that I had become because of her. No longer a spaz begging for expensive toys. I felt at peace.

Abruptly, Andy reached for the toy and said, “Hey Brad, let’s get this one.” The mother’s jaw dropped, and he bolted down the aisle to escape with a straight face. I tried to keep up with him, desperate to not make a sound or show the disbelief that consumed my soul. My heart raced. I could hear the child behind now pleading frantically for Spacetech Legos. The entire store could. His mother’s consolation was no match for Andy’s parental sabotage. The incident that unfolded in aisle 7 of the Toys R’ Us in Toledo became one of the biggest shocks I witnessed in my entire life. Of course, he did not purchase the Legos and left the box prominently by the single exit in hopes that the boy’s outrage would have an encore.

I found the pulse that belonged to a migration out west. We had enough hope and interest to put the wheels in motion.

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GIVING A CRAZY IDEA LIFE IN JUNE

To turn this wish into reality, a few things needed to happen. I needed more money, a better vehicle, to quit our jobs, and we needed a plan. Most notably, we needed permission from his Uncle to stay at that cabin. Something I worried a lot more about than Andy. As plans matured and evolved, the permission concern lingered. That simmering detail fixed entirely out of my control.

The time came up hastily to let people know my stay in Nashville will soon end. With no expectation for staying in Tennessee as a long-term thing, almost two years had passed by quickly. Much longer than expected. Letting the zoo know of the departure felt awkward. Not to say I was overly valuable, but my coworkers and the many personalities of the animals had grown on me. With the uncertainty of whether we could actually live in the cabin of my friend’s uncle, telling everyone about the plan proved not a simple thing to do either. There remained a chance that I would never see the plan through.

Telling family, friends, and coworkers passed smoothly and void of much backlash. By backlash, I mean folks openly expressing that they thought I was completely nuts. Completely off the deep end. They were most likely just being extremely tight-lipped and polite, Canadian style. I was nuts, and the plan was absolutely unorthodox. How can one possibly explain a move like that and not sound like they are hearing voices in an Iowa cornfield? A stark contrast to what normal city folk do in their early twenties. The status quo of prime bachelor years meant parties, promiscuity, drugs, and alcohol. To purposefully go stay in the woods showed an act of randomness so unprecedented by anyone I knew for that age. If that evidence fell short of inciting ridicule, then the poor publicity of cabin-living in Montana during the late 1990s surely closed the case.

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JULY’S PREPARATION

To address the money situation, the last five weeks before departure meant getting rid of the duplex we lived in. Andy chose to move back in with his parents in Toledo to save money and work, but I stayed with my friends Ross, Matt, and Wayne. I finished out the time at the zoo and picked up a second job part-time with a company loading freight in cargo planes at the airport. The work was tough as we rolled pre-packaged freight weighing up to a ton onto a portable conveyor belt that hoisted the cargo up to the plane. From there we would push the freight as far back on the plane as possible before securing the load. Repeat that twenty times and call it quits for the night. They did not know I intended to stay only a month and my boss became a little peeved when I eventually told him, but we hugged it out. Not actually.

My first time working seven days a week routinely required some pain tolerance, and I found no shortage of exhaustion on the three days that called for working both jobs consecutively. To make an insane move across the country attainable, short-term sacrifice required absolute homage. It helped to know that willful unemployment awaited me on the other side. A small price to pay. Many of the normal concerns over expenditures were already taken care of, leaving only a few remaining to pay mind to. We needed money for food, insurance, gas, and ample cash set aside to withstand unexpected expenses. All else became slightly extra and unnecessary.

The next step meant acquiring a better vehicle for the winter and back roads. The Mercury Sable ran reliably, but the situation called for some storage and 4WD. I traded it in for a dark silver 1990 Isuzu Trooper boasting relatively high mileage. The vehicle seemed up to the tasks of cross-country and winter travel with its boxed shape, 4WD, and accessible snow chains. I added some window tint in the back to discourage onlookers should we have to sleep there during our journey out. This would later become known as “The Aloha” for its participation in saying so many “hellos” and “goodbyes” in such a brief window of time. The name seemed to fit remarkably.

Andy was back in Toledo with two weeks before our expected departure to Montana, and he still did not have verbal permission. Knowing how kind and selfless his family is now, it is much easier to understand why he was so nonchalant about it. Yet, that single detail loomed as a game-changer for me back then. The detail kept me up at night. Part of me questioned the reason for his being so lackadaisical towards securing approval. Was this a reflection of wavering reluctance to go? Had I been too pushy? When I heard that his Uncle was already discussing with Andy how to open the cabin, there brought a revitalizing sense of relief. Not quite a full-blown permission, but sufficient to keep the plans drifting down the assembly line towards a finished product.

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METHODICAL MADNESS

The trip set itself up to be a “once-in-a-lifetime” moment of almost limitless freedom. A wonderful sense of shedding off the burdensome tuxedo of responsibility, like a molting snake to embrace and succeed at a cabin lifestyle. To experience cabin fever, have fun while doing so, and gracelessly teeter the tightrope of not going completely nuts in seclusion. To simplify living and earn the right to be staying on someone else’s property. There needed to be more than just relishing the chance of living life in a cabin, though. Guided challenges must lay in the path to making the time all worthwhile and fulfilling. To seek once-in-a-lifetime adventures meant immersing with as much unique Montana fauna as possible.

Precautions were to be honored and balanced with the risk of overthinking. Guided efficiency with milestones was a must, or else the time would come and go with no sense of accomplishment. As a kid, summer vacations were great, but at some point each year, an idle burnout came from not having enough goals or tasks. Later in high school, I prepared for that and combated that lack of fulfillment by trying to make sure I read books, poked around at some skills, produced some comical movies, composed stories, played baseball, and even sent off on a few memorable adventures. The experience now before me hatched into one long “summer vacation” and journaling would be a way of documenting the experience while developing some writing skills to attribute towards story-writing. Reading, becoming smarter, getting handier, and finding enrichment with hobbies such as wilderness survival appeared on the menu. A way to take advantage of the flexibility that I did not have during the “school year.”

Once Nashville could only be seen through a rear-view mirror, the goals would shift and become refreshed. Reborn. The abrupt change demanded a roadmap or composer to help orchestrate the autonomy. With any luck, the essence of the “summer vacation” could last beyond the cabin stay with opportunities to linger out west somewhere and somehow.

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LOADING UP THE COVERED WAGON IN AUGUST

I left Tennessee at the end of August and headed 470 miles north to regroup with Andy in Toledo, where our families lived. I devoted a few days to say those “hellos” and “goodbyes” with my mom and dad, along with other loved ones. It was their first chance to square me in the eye and hear about the levels of caution and meticulous planning that would be deployed. There were a few awkward “are you sure about this?” scenarios as the family was getting almost used to my ludicrous ideas. Almost.

I capitalized on a chance to earn extra money working for my brother-in-law, Kevin, one day. My dad then shuttled me out to the sporting goods store and purchased a GPS to stall the odds of getting lost, which I had a knack for doing. With their 60s fast-approaching, saying “being lost is all relative” to my parents would not have been a comforting send-off, and so those words stayed tucked in the vault.

Next up brought forth Michigan to visit Andy’s Uncle and iron over all the details of the property and cabin. There were many details. He stood noticeably tall, seemed excited by our ambitions, and could not have been more warm and friendly throughout our entire conversation. Both he and his friend had done somewhat the same thing in his younger years, which is how he ended up buying the property. In the 1970s, the property sold for relatively cheap because it was clear-cut and replanted with mostly pines and tamaracks. We discussed ways to help earn our keep in the cabin and then said goodbye.

The plan had fully manifested with some masterful space management packing up “The Aloha.” We were soon on the turnpike. We had a fair idea of how long it would take to get to the cabin and all the while, we would bed down in “The Aloha” or a tent if feasible. Approximately 1,900 miles in total. Our first real noteworthy stop became Mt. Rushmore. A tourist spot veered off the highway with lots of elevation gained. “The Aloha” with its four cylinders seemed to handle fine but pushed hard with all the weight that we brought with us. That vehicle would be our lifeline during our stay as we would be miles from town, so I worried plenty about its partially unproven reliability while heading out.

Mount Rushmore itself revealed a rather boring destination. Just an enormous mountain with presidents carved on the face. Surely a monument of considerable human achievement with a significant tribute, yet something of that scale could have been produced on a hilltop made of artificial resources on the outskirts of our fine nation’s capital. Ruining a majestic rock face seemed excessively arbitrary.

The sightseers were the genuine attraction. Many of them were foreigners that knew only what the signs, gift shops, and word-of-mouth had told them about the phenomenon. Once enough foreigners with broken English discussed the significance amongst their circles, we decided they would need proper guidance. Let’s be real. Would Americans know the presidents or leaders of some other country? Probably not. Though we had the knowledge to give them, it was not the information a history teacher would approve of. No attentive history student would either. The accuracy of the monument’s identities may have been altered to other famous figures whom I do not recall. Let’s just say it was Robert DeNiro, Martin Short, Arsenio Hall, and Archy Wonkle. I am sure they appreciated our warm American hospitality.

As a group of people were passing us, I said to Brad in a loud, argumentative manner, “If that’s not Gorbachev then why is it called Mt. Russian?” (Calmes, 9/13/99)

Funny guy. It is worth explaining that Andy possessed the talent of an experienced Nashville drummer with USO tour experience and understood how to play to a crowd. I learned this in 1995 when we visited the Albuquerque Zoo, admiring the flamingos. He crept up next to a person holding a camcorder and abruptly started shrieking like a dying crow, or worse. When everyone glanced at him in horror, he replied, “It’s their mating call” in a manner that downplayed the absurdity of what he had just done. He managed a tone that lived up to his last name. It’s comforting knowing that footage from the mid-90s may remain as someone’s shocking climax of their Albuquerque Zoo visit.

We rolled on to the next leg of our trip. Beautiful Bozeman, Montana. We crossed the borders of Montana! The state that would be home indefinitely. This time around, we quickly learned that there were max speed limits again. Apparently, the federal government threatened to withhold funding if the state did not restore daytime speed limits. What a disappointment. We hung out briefly with my friend Vice, whom I had come out to Montana with on the previous occasion. He attended Montana State University. Proof that it is always a good idea to mimic a shower before visiting a school you might end up enrolling in.

We visited some distant relatives from my Uncle Dave’s side. His niece lived there, and she had a lot of property where she cared for horses and trained others to ride. I had never ridden a horse freely, and she taught us a few essentials. The experience stirred me by both the grace of the horse I rode, but also the proficiency of her horsemanship. We stayed the night there with her husband and mom. The husband did not say much to us, nor did he seem very pleased we were there, but we did not care much. Perhaps he was just disinterested. We discussed what winters were like and from the sounds of it, we were in for buckets of snow upcoming. I absorbed as much advice as she could give, checked my email one last time, and drove toward the ultimate destination circled on the map the next day.

On September 8th, 1999, we arrived at the unpaved driveway to the cabin. It was actually happening, and I could not believe the excitement. With so many past road adventures, an alarming majority of them featured catastrophe. The car handled the trip void of failure. The logistical plan to get us there executed absent of any flaws that came to mind. Those jagged grooves on the keys altered the pins of the cabin's front door lock successfully, allowing unbarred entry. Everything had all gone so smoothly.

We decided on rooms, which were partitioned off with a blanket covering the entrances, and unpacked a bit. The task at hand was so overpowering. We knew that we had to get ourselves and the place fit for winter with the potential of being snowed in for weeks at a time. Having now seen the area and stepped foot inside the cabin, such planning became clearer. We were working with an empty mat on the easel.

Unfortunately, I have lost my activity journal from the fall/winter of 1999 that chronicled the majority of my wanderings in great detail. A missing link that would have made portraying a memoir much easier had it not been lost. There is a silver lining to that misfortune. Twenty years have passed and having to fully recall some hazy events at times paves a better trail for embellishment and sensationalism. Boring facts can be exonerated from their rusted-out cages of veracity. Those literary freedoms are kept in check by a second journal that detailed the second half of the stay; though, by that time, some journal fatigue had plagued the writing.

This account will lean heavily on the published “Daily Letters to Myself” of Big Sky to Big City, by Andy Calmes, as a reference point to many murky details. My friend’s recap of his own experiences during that time with me in Montana, in journal format. Those journal entries, in many ways, are my journal entries and capture the individual moments much better than I can with a “twenty years later” memory rotten with fuzz. This became a major reason I chose to write about my Montana experience above all else. Someone else had already done most of the work. Just the way I prefer. Also, writing a memoir for others to read is less nerve-racking when it includes only a few people. Those people become characters, and those characters can be weird about how an all-powerful memoir author depicts them. I doubt anyone would like me writing about them either. Especially if those characters still owe me money, as those descriptions could get salty. “Joe Schmo (and the fifty bucks that he still owes me over the Browns/Bengals game) and I walked down the trail in search of moose.” The whole memoir might even turn into one giant smear campaign; whose sole aim is to get that money back or procure some other hidden vengeance. Contents would turn downright nasty to castigate those people I still owe money to. I would go after their credibility and reputation, full scale. Many disqualifying adjectives. Luckily, the time in Montana did not have an extravagant cast of characters. The only other human around me mostly already wrote about those times and represented me as a crazed madman in the woods, disappearing sporadically to feed on lost souls.

The writings will desperately beg for an occasional chuckle, though not in response to humor. Instead, just some salvageable sympathy. A measure of merciful goodwill. Through careful analysis, I have estimated there will be a minimum of 76.5 eye rolls and nearly twice that amount in uncontrollable “What the hell?” outbursts while reading. Turning each page might feel like a rep at the gym with many burning sensations. Do not be alarmed by this, as the awfulness of the content is by design. It might burn, more and more, page after page, but you will feel much better once it is all over. The physiological response to pride in the reading the final pages of a book is exceptionally comparable to the sense of relief that you no longer have to endure any more misery. I have engineered 81 of the pages to hope that the next page might be where things finally get enjoyable. 93 of those next pages will make you wonder the exact same thing as the pages before. The additional 12 pages assume that you end up skipping some pages to aid in wading through the memoir towards the finish line at a quicker rate. Events will become dots connected to one another, after the fact that have no business ever being correlated. Timelines will be blurred and readjusted to fit the readability requirements. And why not? It is my account. Most actions end up as better memories than the real-time events they portray. If you find yourself at some point enjoying yourself or thinking the things we did were “good ideas”, then DO NOT CONTINUE. It is for your own safety and well-being. And please never lose sight that this memoir stretches back to dates from over twenty years ago. Who can be judged by their “twenty-years-ago” old self? Cabin fever bears a judgment-free statute of limitations, after all.

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A FEVER FOR CABIN FEVER

I always wanted to live for an extended period of time in a cabin in the woods. Spending many days at Pokagon State Park where my family often camped or lodged revealed a shelter off of one of the trails I frequented. The structure was not much, and I am quite sure I would be disappointed by both the features and location if I visited it today (assuming it is still there). As a wandering kid, I felt like it was in the middle of nowhere; barely touched by the hustles of modern civilization. I could walk inside and stare mindlessly off into the woods. A “natural” spring flowed from the ground right past the cabin. Without hesitation, I would summon pioneer-like techniques of cupping the water with my hands, drinking straight from the source. That was probably a terrible idea, though to a young boy, that water had never flowed past another living soul. It surely had to have been clean. It appeared pure, and it made me feel wild. I would lie around the area imagining that I lived there for hours. This would be my first experience that brought about a desire to discover living beyond the confines of a city.

 There was always an urge to get out into the woods and explore, but growing up where I did, the pickings drew slim; slim and getting slimmer. So much so, that simply digging a hole in the ground with some wood around the base would have to do for brief periods to escape the city life. A make-shift fort. Small sections of woods remained adjacent to my neighborhood, but they were not without their own sets of problems. The older kids also enjoyed these territories, so I required caution and awareness. To them, it was just a means to get away from their parents, to smoke and drink with no one knowing. An ideal location to stash and safeguard their “nudey mags.” Those had extreme bartering value in those days. In the best-case scenario, wandering out in the woods and being discovered by troves of older kids would bring on ridicule. That was the best-case scenario. In other areas, the pollution and vivid rumors of “angry, salt-gun toting farmers” kept the adventures at bay. The ponds became a reservoir for the inbred to dump their chemicals, resulting in chemical burns to any youth that yearned for a habitable place to swim. Those problems eventually took care of themselves by the expansion of subdivisions and golf courses. The rustic stomping grounds that I had access to would become “developed.”

In 1986, we stayed with friends of my parents in cabins out in Colorado. At the foothills of the Rockies. The property seemed to go on forever, but surely there were limits. Streams teamed with trout. Horses scattered throughout the open areas. To a nine-year-old boy, they were wild horses roaming free. Drifting up into the hills where the fields ended, and the forest began, I would explore and find all sorts of multi-colored rocks and fossils. The place illuminated as a piece of heaven and I did not want to leave. A place that set the tone of what I wanted for a few years to come. Until the memory faded in the teenage years.

 Some years later, immediately after my high school graduation, my friends Matt and Andy would take a trip out west with me. Many exciting details would transpire warranting perhaps another memoir, but skipping towards the tail-end of our journey, we hiked through the Pecos Mountain with my Uncle Dave in northern New Mexico. This hike morphed into a picturesque wilderness novel that required maniacal off-road driving just to get in and out of the trailhead. Part of which transpired through heavy rain. We moved through remote terrain; rolling hills or steep muddy climbs, over large streams, and through wild fields. At one point, we stopped for a break, allowing for a chance to gaze upon a field with a stream knifing right through. The setting was truly breathtaking and serene. Back when film photography was something more deliberate, I decided to take a picture of this scene to preserve a sense of how it cleansed my soul being there. A spot just fifty yards off the waterfront could sit a cabin with me living inside. Freshwater sources. Available fish and game to subsist on, to be sure. A powerful reminder of how much of my childhood was spent trying to capture that moment in the mountains. A resurrection to the desired endeavor that would not burn dry any time soon.

The return home hosted an agonizing thirty-six-hour Greyhound ride from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Toledo, Ohio to reflect. Thirty-six straight hours unfettered by sleep because my seat positioned in the last row of the bus for a harrowing majority of the trip. A section that was meant only to seat two people. Instead, there were three of us. A mother and her child, speaking endlessly in Spanish. When enough “sheep” had been enumerated to drift into a slumber, I would be hastily awakened by nature... or nature calling rather. Sitting in the back meant sitting right next to the disinfectant-emanating bathroom. My legs partly blocked the door from opening so passengers, amidst their potty-dance, would need to wake me up. My legs blocked their ability to enter. The rest of the time, I sat next to unbathed hippies that smelled worse than the bathroom disinfectant on a contrasting spectrum of funk.

I still had the most enjoyable experience between the three of us. Matt had a nearly fractured tailbone from falling while rock-climbing, and Andy had a lobster-like sunburn that he acquired at the waterpark the day before our departure. Steering back to the point meant thirty-six semi-delirious hours to reflect on the trip as well as where to be going with my life after high school.

As a fresh graduate, I had no idea what I would do specifically. I wanted something rugged and fulfilling. Throughout high school, there emerged only one desired path forward after graduation. Trying out for special forces, traveling the world, and feeding on some wanderlust was all that I could see myself doing in that next phase. The catalyst to drive those endeavors no longer splayed out on the table. I had been rejected by the Army less than a year earlier because I could not pass the hearing tests. The rejection crushed me. For the first time, I was told that I could not do something. But what else is there for someone like me? I had no desires for wealth or a normal life by any stretch of the imagination. College seemed like a prison, as I generally did well in school when I wanted to, but at the opportunity cost of pursuing what my actual interests were. Those interests were always outside any classroom.

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MONTANA APPETIZER, 1997

I knew very little of Montana, but more than many. Like others, it came on my map after watching the movie A River Runs Through It whereas I was curious about what a life such as that would look like. In 1997, I took a long road trip with my friend Vice. He was a blond-haired man nearly the same age as me, with a perpetually bitter frown on his face that reflected the bulk of his personality. It became my 5th extensive trip out west and the first in the northwest. Our mission was to investigate potential universities, as he was looking to go to school out west and I was tentatively considering education beyond the Associate’s Degree that I would soon have. We packed up his Dad’s blue minivan full of canned food, granola bars, cheese crackers, and a comically large barrel-o-pretzels.

The first stop was just outside of Chicago to visit some relatives of his. We ended up learning how to play an obscure card game to which we deliberately sabotaged the integrity of the outcome. The reason? Because we were jerks. They were so passionate that it was the greatest game ever, and WE determined to prove to them of fundamental flaws in its design. Albeit manufactured flaws we invoked. Because we were jerks. It is important to understand that we were the type who would make use of our time by having fun at any cost. One such instance from the past consisted of meandering throughout the large music building of Bowling Green State University while we were waiting for friends to finish their band practice. After exploring EVERY room, a group of students summoned us to audition for the university play to which, somehow, we immediately earned some key roles. How that actually happened remains a mystery, as we were not even students there.

Hours into the practice, we blazed through the script, saying our lines to get the rhythm of the play. Vice and I had decided that we needed to excuse ourselves before we got in too deep. As honorary gentlemen and guests of BGSU, we needed to show our kindness and consideration, to be sure. After some scheming during a quick break, we had a plan that included the same dramatics needed to flourish in the final showing of said play. The dramatics? While having another go of seated script rehearsals, I thickened the plot by standing up in front of everyone and protested both my lines and the role they selected me for; despite being the play’s frontman. Vice followed suit. Those lines, as I recall, cellared beneath me as a brilliant, aspiring Thespian and that Broadway could wait no longer. We then stormed out of that room, leaving behind a cast and crew of the confused. Because we were jerks.

Back to the trip. From there we veered up to Duluth, Minnesota, for no other reason than to visit what supposed to be the safest city in the US. At least at the time. It also served to fill up gas en route to the actual destination; Chisholm, Minnesota. The location where the movie Field of Dreams’ Dr. Archibald Graham lived and later died. We soon discovered that they did not film there, which was disappointing, but it was a bucket list item to cross off for me. Mission accomplished.

From there, a stop in North Dakota. Theodore Roosevelt National Park gave us a quick little hike to some vistas. That later took us to our first official destination, which was Bozeman, MT. Montana State University. We were sleeping in the back of the van the last few nights, and this provided the first-time chance to be amongst normal people in an enclosed capacity. We found a public bathroom for a mild clean up. No showers came available, so scrubbing ourselves in the sink would have to do. We freshened up and toured the campus. Two years later, this would be Vice’s school of choice. Luckily for him, he cleaned up for this tour.

Somewhere along the way in Montana, we discovered the speed limit signs on the interstate said “Night limit 65” with a black backdrop. Curious to understand what that meant, we stopped at a local gas station and queried the attendant. She advised us there was no speed limit, except at night. She cautioned to keep it under 90 mph, but there was no real speed limit on stretches of Montana interstate. Truly the wild west, I thought.

We visited Missoula, which obliged the basis for the aforementioned movie A River Runs Through It. We visited the University of Montana and moseyed around downtown a bit. The next day, up in the Blue Mountains in some random spot off the road, we hiked our packs up to the top of a hill. We discovered a perfect open space of about one hundred square yards to lounge around, have a fire, and spread out. On a wooded hilltop, surrounded by towering evergreens gave no views or prominent features, but invited a fresh quietude of beautiful Montana. We spent most of the day just unwinding a bit as this allowed the first prospect to avoid sleeping in the back of the van since Chicago. And we already developed a distinct sickness of each other’s company and aroma.

That night, after properly packing away our food supply fifty yards away, suspended from a tree as trained to do, we settled into our sleeping bags in the tent. It was a glorious night’s sleep until it wasn’t. I woke to loud steps. I froze to grunts. The telltale sounds of a bear emerged just outside the tent. I shook Vice. “Bear. Bear,” I whisper-screamed. He apparently did not feel it was noteworthy and mumbled himself back to sleep.

The night turned quiet. I thought to myself, “He’s not interested in us. Just the food.” And that food hung high, fifty yards away from the tent. In that silence, I reached down to my pocket, hoping what I had was a knife or flamethrower. Something to defend in the event of an attack. For we were defenseless inside that gift-wrapping paper of a tent. This was, after all, Grizzly Bear country. What I discovered in my pocket was not a knife. Or bear spray. Or a Glock with a round already in the chamber. It was a half-eaten package of cheese crackers. I had failed to sanitize the inside of the tent of food particles.

The steps started back up again. The grunts started back up again. I shook Vice again. “Wake up! It’s a f*#$ing bear!” The steps got louder. So did the grunts. Closer. Then quiet. At any moment, I could visualize the tent collapsing. Armed only with cheese crackers, I lay ready. Vice was not ready because he remained dead asleep, perhaps dreaming about gummy bears.

The silence continued. I slowly displaced another cheese cracker. One for each hand to steady my fortification. The steps resumed, this time getting quieter and quieter. The steps vanished. Until that point in my life, I had no idea that cheese crackers would mean life or death in bravely thwarting off an imminent bear attack. I felt invincible. No survival manual paid any mention to the value of cheese crackers. What the hell do they know, after all? If that worked, then imagine what a comically large “barrel-o-pretzels” could defend against.

Those moments were the extent of my first-ever Montana visit, but later on, we ventured through Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. We visited the University of Idaho, the University of Utah, and Colorado State University. These states provided opportunities for some salty lake swimming, few showers, getting lost in the desert without water, and many beef stews consumed over a portable stove.

And then there was an incident in Moab. The town appeared quaint. Enjoyable, actually. Whilst walking down the lone strip, literally everyone greeted us. This was also going to be our only expenditure aside from purchasing gas and tickets to a discount movie theater for the entire trip. We were actually going to sit in a diner and eat. There was not anything particularly noteworthy about the place or the food variety. The seating could have hosted many stereotypical movie diner scenes. The staff seemed equally and universally reminiscent of hardworking, no-nonsense restaurant workers that had seen and heard far more than what they got paid for. In the kitchen was a bearded cook, flipping a burger and smiling at us intently. He appeared to have some teeth missing.

Unfortunately, upon receiving our menus and ordering drinks, my co-traveler had pooped in their restroom with no ability to flush. The toilet was broken, and the materials were overflowing. They would surely know it was us. The smell would leak through the hinged barrier in a matter of minutes. The risk rose too high. We ditched the restaurant before our waitress could bring back our drinks and before they could contact the authorities to investigate “Poopgate.” We saved ourselves $15 worth of prepared meal but still left a generous “tip” for whomever was tasked to clear excrement from the toilet bowl.

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A fun goal, while being out in Montana, was picking up some helpful survival skills. Not so much a situation of necessity as I rested in a welcoming cabin with many conveniences at my disposal. Yet, this perched a far better opportunity than any other stage in my life to try out techniques. Preparing for the unknowns simply made sense in our case. While “prepper” shops with overpriced solutions were popping up throughout the nation in anticipation of the threat of Y2K and the impending nuclear winter that would trail behind, I merely wanted a steady and simplistic self-reliance for any juncture of hardship heading my way. Becoming as adept as someone like Matt Graham would never happen, nor was that complete lifestyle ever desired. Only an appeal to become less clumsy and paralyzed in the wild with some practical tools to keep in the tool bag.

Survival stories were always fascinating. Stories of overcoming adversity, perseverance, using ingenuity. With enough enthusiasm for enjoying wild places beyond the reaches of immediate help, it is an easy sell for one to have a firm base of skill to help oneself and others stay alive until aid arrives. I picked up a few survival manuals; Tom Brown’s The Tracker, Tom Brown Field Guide–Wilderness Survival, Nature Observation and Tracking, and the US Army Survival Guide.

EAT LIKE A BEAR

I also picked up some books on wild edibles of Montana and the Rocky Mountains. I enjoyed eating. I loved picking wild berries and other munchies. Back in Ohio or Tennessee, there were some mulberries, raspberries, blackberries, wild strawberries, apple, persimmon, sumac, and wild onion. Sassafras tea and dandelion coffee were delightful beverage additions. I had even eaten stinging nettle after several changes of boiling water. Foraging is ancestral. There is some strange satisfaction in eating while wandering around. Similar to going over to a friend’s house as a kid and foraging through their cabinets and refrigerator without permission.

In Montana, I wished to eat like a bear. Without so much of the hankering for dumpster diving or fear of cheese crackers. Being that we were already well into the fall, the wild edibles were speedily becoming unavailable. I scouted the fields almost daily. What I really sought after was the almighty huckleberry, but that window had passed, regrettably. The window had also passed for chokecherry, gooseberry, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, salmonberry, thimbleberry, and mountain sorrel. Yet some remained. The two berries that I became most acquainted with were bunchberries and bearberries (Kinnikinnick). They were scattered all over the area, both on the property and surrounding state forest land. Neither of them tasted overly delicious, but their abundance made them a tough item to ignore. A popular property of bearberries is that the leaves are alleged to pass for a tobacco substitute. I did not smoke, though some try for the sake of naturalistic discovery. It is based on flavor, as there is no nicotine or other stimulants that I am aware of.

Another concoction that filled my glass occasionally was pine needle tea. Not sought after for its taste either, but exceptionally healthy as an excellent source of Vitamin C. Within the same vitamin realm were rose hips. There were plenty of rose hips and juniper berries that persisted throughout the winter. Rose hips have been everywhere I roamed previously in the continental U.S. so that proved an easy find.

Woods Lake provided some marshy sections, home to another common favorite. Cattail. While the down became a suitable filler for a stocking cap in the colder months, the real payoff nestled below. Digging into the muck, there is a pleasant tuber full of starch with shoots bearing the taste of cucumber. The chances to collect this quickly faded though as the water and mud became something to avoid after Halloween.

FISHING

The fish stocked in those waters were largemouth bass, cutthroat trout, rainbow trout, brown trout, bull trout, yellow perch, and northern pike. There were whitefish, but much too massive for our inexperienced, amateur endeavors. We devoted most of our time to Murray Lake. We tried shore-casting. We tested out the tubes. Ice fishing never really appealed much. Ice fishing sounds very frozen.

Brad and I drove down to Murray Lake with the tubes and wet suits. I kicked out to the same spot that I had caught the fish last week, only this time I came back with less than I went out with. After some amazing 40-yard casts, I finally cast my hook off the line, and being that I didn’t take any tackle out with me I was done for the evening. Brad didn’t catch anything either at the opposite end of the lake, though fish were jumping all over the place just to mess with us. The sun had set by the time I got to shore, but the moon lit up the lake. Even though Brad and I were probably 200 yards apart, we could communicate simply by talking in regular tones. The voice just carries across the water, I guess. It’s pretty cool. (Calmes, 9/20/99)

Several attempts were made at Beaver Lake; the largest lake in that area, aside from Whitefish Lake. Its shape was that of a wax “W” that had melted in the sun with stretches on each end extending almost a half-mile. The south section which was the base of the malformed letter, appeared the most accessible for parking and launching by raft, whereas the other side was marshy and had a gentle stream. This stream led to a lesser body of water; the Little Beaver Lake. Shaped like a human molar. The results of our fishing at Beaver Lake were terrible, but we had two divergent stories to tell.

When we got to Beaver Lake, we were on the opposite end from Uncle Hal’s favorite spot, so I figured we could kick our way over there in the tubes… and we did! It took a long time but was very enjoyable. Once there, I loaded my weapon with a worm only to have it backfire… the dang pole was sticking again! I put a fake worm on, put the hook in the water, and manually extended the line as I kicked away. There were so many fish, but none were hungry. Well, at least they weren’t hungry for a plastic worm and I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want a real worm either, but that is their preference I suppose. On the way back across the lake, my pole was casting fine. Moody, I guess. That journey ate up the daylight quickly. (Calmes, 9/21/99)

This entry was incomplete. Though comprehensive in expressing the recurring failures of angling, the entry fell short of going in depth about the coffee and water that I had just consumed. His reflections failed to acknowledge my irresponsibility of not urinating before putting on waders for a journey through water and time. His words offered no mention of my bladder. Why would he write about my bladder? Because I damn near lost it in the line of fishing. I lived to tell the tale, and so I must take you back to where this fishing story began.

It would be a delightful start to the young afternoon. The sun peeked through the windows of the cabin, spurring a revolution of motivation. A cold passing dawn meant a noble time for the second round of scalding water sifting through fresh coffee grounds and a white filter. Sounds of near-boiling temperatures percolated a coffee pot that would nearly seal one man’s fate.

I opened the cabinets to find the right lure. Two pinches of sugar. Two drips of cream. I weighed in on cinnamon, but the sun was out molding a shadow already. No cinnamon. Nutmeg was needed for this time of day.

I sat in the Lazy Boy with my steaming coffee. The coffee first cooled with a steady breath at its surface to a manageable 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, the contents poured down my throat in anticipation of repelling some surfacing tiredness. MMMHHHMM. Further down the coffee dropped through the esophagus. Though some absorption would occur, most of the liquids were not so fortuitous.

Andy was now awake and fit for a dramatic day at the lake. We had counted on a showing at Beaver Lake for quite some time, and today would be that day. Armed with fishing poles and tubes, he remained ill-informed about the status of coffee racing through my body. He had no idea that I had even drunk coffee. The liquids were now in my stomach facing the doomsday, hell-like, acidy conditions reminiscent of the Tarawa invasion.

We loaded up “The Aloha” with our gear and headed down the bumpy road. The vibrations seemed to expedite the fluid’s momentum like a jigged bait for attracting bass. I took several finishing drinks from my thermos, full of the second cup of coffee, followed by a liter of water to remain hydrated. There would now be two fronts of fluid processing inward.

We arrived at a dirt parking spot at Beaver Lake and dressed in impermeable waders. Little did I realize I was putting on a casket tailored to the burial and preservation of any unplanned call to nature. The original wave of coffee had seen enough processing in the stomach and thus flowed through twenty feet of turbulence in the small intestines. The second wave of fluids had newly reached the stomach and jumped around like the fish at the surface, risking suffocation for thirsty insects.

Getting far out on a lake with a tube, waders, and fins was amazing. To be in frigid water without being wet felt free and exciting, like a duck. Inaccessible spots from shore became prime targets. Sometimes, a tube can even go where boats cannot. Andy ventured off to his own location, just as some coffee trolled off to my large intestines. As for the majority of fluids, they would smile upon the kidneys with great relief. One ultimate chance for salvation.

The drawback to fishing in a tube is that it takes an eternity to get where you want to be. And much longer to get back. But I wanted the big fish. By the time I reached a location of near perfection, I sensed another nibble. The digestive system had fully mined that first wave of consumed fluids. I felt the abrupt coffee strike on my bladder. At least 12 ounces, but possibly more. The fight commenced. “Coffee on!” I yelled.

The duck paddling began. The shore seemed so far. Perhaps two-hundred yards away. Staggered fishermen throughout the waterfronts were tiny figurines. So distant and small. The invisible speedometer showed five yards gained per minute. No duck would ever boast of such a pathetic velocity. The second cup of coffee and the liter of water had finished their joyride with much greater velocity and were putting up a marvelous fight. This had to be more than 12 ounces. This was a whopper.

To relieve myself now would mean another thirty minutes swimming in 16 ounces of pee. To go now with no change of clothes would mean a drive back to the cabin soaked with urine. I entered those waters with a catch and release permit only. The aches in my abdomen worsened as shore approached like a glacier. A glacier going uphill against hurricane-force wind.

The stronger I paddled, the worse my bladder expanded. Too much tension and it would break. But that coffee continued to fight tenaciously while I boldly reeled in that shoreline by the pedaling of my fins every chance possible. Thirty feet away. Twenty-five. The theme song to Chariots of Fire played in my mind as my feet kept kicking. Twenty. Fifteen. There would be no squirts of anticipation.

The fishermen at the beach erupted with glee and waved me in, akin to flight deck attendants on an aircraft carrier. Ten. The music intensified. Three! Two! One! I rolled onto mother earth and somehow crawled and walked forward toward the bushes. Two large lumberjacks stood with arms crossed in my path, but once they witnessed my determination quickly gave way as would club bouncers allowing a VIP through. I unzipped. I showered the first bush found. My hands would not hold and aim. No. They were held high like the dramatic scene from Platoon.

I fell to my knees after all the strain vanished. Arms still in the air. The outputs weighed in at a new Beaver Lake record of 19 ounces. There was no concern for onlookers as they were still cheering. For I had averted a medical emergency amidst the biggest battle of my angling career. No medevac needed. The coffee and water had just begun a new circle of life.

Fade scene to black. [This fishing story was inspired by true events].

HUNTING

There was a mild appeal to live off the meat we provided. I did not have a hunting license, knew absolutely nothing about hunting, and had no idea what the seasons were. I did not care to know about the seasons either. As a twenty-two-year-old in 1999, the mere idea of having to have a license to hunt or fish seemed to go against what living in the woods was all about. I understood the “why”, but enjoyed the conception of being “off the grid.” There is no license for someone living off the land.

There were deer, moose, elk, grouse, bear, squirrel, and duck. Hunting was not something I wanted to do on the property either. The passing wildlife breathed life to the woods while rambling around, leaving senses of joy. I feared ruining the balance. Surely the land could have sustained some harvests from time to time, but such a concept never felt proper. We were on someone else’s property to add to the moral dilemma. The situation was a bit of a catch-22 because had I gone anywhere else, I would have had to abide by the laws and permits and so forth.

Doing some heavy reading from Tom Brown’s books inspired me to want to break out and hunt. Not in a stand. Not using dogs. The art was about studying the animal, finding its patterns, tracking, and stalking. Stalking is a shunned word; both in the city and in the hunting community. There is still a certain segment of that community that believes in the primordial process of hunting and not just drinking beers, sitting in a stand, and waiting to take pictures of a carcass to show off. Stalking an animal was about being in concert with the surroundings and understanding how the animal perceives a predator as a threat. Wind direction, movement, scent, sound, camouflage, ground vibration.

To be silent in the woods meant adjusting the footwear. Boots in the forest are a tough entity to suppress. The contour of the ground cannot be sensed. The touch awareness to know that twig will snap when too much pressure is focused on it. Boots make rolling the foot to distribute weight nearly unthinkable. Watching a house cat sneak upon another cat or a bird provides a lesson in perfection. Their feet and the gradual smoothness of their overall balance. That was what stalking was about. I have no experience stalking anyone, but I am sure the same principles apply. Just kidding! I am ashamed that you would need me to put “Just Kidding.” If you’re a red squirrel and you’re somehow reading this in the fall of 1999, then I am not kidding. Your day of reckoning is coming.

In early October, I left the cabin before daybreak, armed solely with my bowie knife for personal protection and bear spray. Time to scout out a hunting site. Quail or squirrel was the potential target down in the lower depths of the north side of the property. A place I have been through a few times already. The region was perhaps the most densely inhabited on all the property as there were open areas close by and dense pine. Still enough underbrush to cover small game. There were bunchberries on the forest floor and bears loved bunchberries. Being on high alert was the strategy in silent hunting. A contradiction to the guidance for trekking in bear country. Bears dislike surprises and making plenty of noises helps them decide ahead of time if you are worth eating or not.

I instantly found squirrels that were busily feeding and stockpiling for the upcoming winter. Within a 250 square meter range, there must have been at least six with intermittent chatters and disagreements to my presence. I lay in the brush for several hours just observing how they moved. Watching how they somehow seemed to keep a check and balance between their territories as one would freak out the moment another squirrel crossed that invisible border. Frequent feeding branches could be discerned by the shell piles beneath them on the forest floor. Oftentimes, there were clipped branch tips on the ground. Most likely from the squirrels, but I could never catch them red-handed in the act. I slowly recessed from the area, confident that this would be where I would find the most success.

That evening, I packed up my gear and the shotgun and headed down to my primitive shelter (more on that later). The next day, I would hunt squirrel and I wanted to feel close to the whole process. Sure, the cabin was only a quarter-mile away, but sleeping outdoors in the cold quenched the intimacy of the moment. Not even a fire for fear of smelling like smoke. Some survival experts state that the odor exists in nature and therefore is not bad to smell like it while hunting. I maintained skepticism as I could not imagine animals ever think fire smoke would be something they should ignore, but what did I know? Warmth came only by natural insulation stuffed inside the shelter to preserve body heat. The contents included leaves, evergreen, and cattail down. My insulation worked a little as I did not die of hypothermia.

Before dawn arrived, the hunt began. I broke the day frozen. Not quite, but close as the stars were out and all heat preservation surrendered. I returned to the plot I had scouted the day before. The birds were out. The squirrels were out. I passed a deer en route to the location. I had my shotgun ready and crouched down, just as I had done the day before. I felt more in tune. If there was a chance, I was going to take it.

Practicing splatter-vision that I had picked up from the tracking book softened my focus on any singular object. The technique collectively recognizes the tiniest movements of all surroundings better. All senses seemed more attentive than ever before. Area conifers smelled better. The wind felt more pronounced despite being deep in the timbers. I wholly became a part of the moment for perhaps the first time in my entire life.

I zeroed in on one squirrel as I had a clear, but covered passage to close width for a shot. I wanted to be close, but not too close with a shotgun. Too close would be disastrous, as having a shotgun for hunting squirrel was already overkill. I slowly stalked closer as my freezing bare feet felt every twig, every needle, every THORN. Ouch. The stop and go probably lasted for two hours, but to be honest, all constructs of time fled my senses. It was just my consciousness and the prey… and a bottle of wine… Not really.

The squirrel made its forage runs again, and I feared that it might scamper away. But like the previous pattern would suggest, the squirrel retreated to the same branch and began eating. I slithered close enough this time and eased my arms into position, using the brush to distort my outline. I froze my breath, squeezed the trigger, and with the kick of the shotgun fell the lifeless squirrel twenty feet to the ground. I dashed up where it lay motionless. Luckily it was dead because I had no clue what to do if the shot only wounded it. I had my knife but was not quite ready to be that primal. I felt superb and terrible at the same time.

I sat there for a while just thinking about why I felt the way I did. I swelled with immense pride. This was my first hunt, and I would not let it go to waste as I had no kinship to trophy-hunting. The gathering moments allowed enough mindfulness to realize how in-tune with my surroundings that hunt made me. I also felt remorse. Not as if something was wrong, but the kill felt unnecessary and excessive. The hunt stationed too close to the cabin, voiding any sensation of earning the kill. The moment did not feel like survival, but it was. That method of sustenance availed for thousands of years, whether by club or spear or firearm. Perhaps an expedition-level hunt with a license and guides that could show me what to do would have felt more appropriate, after all.

I woke up today to a shotgun blast. I figured that Brad went to shoot skeet without me, then I remembered that he mentioned that he was planning on hunting squirrels one of these days. I was right... he got one! He skinned it and hung it from a tree right outside my window. It was quite gruesome, but he’s trying to learn how to clean them properly. As far as I can tell he did a good job. He cooked it over the fire and ate it this evening. (Calmes, 10/10/99)

I had taken the appropriate care of skinning the squirrel, based on some guides on how to do it and what to watch out for. I was not aware prior to those readings, that improper care could result in contaminating the meat. Quite a strange thought, since there seemed to be some randomness to how predators eat their prey in the wild. Working at the zoo, raccoons or opossums commonly embarked on hapless ventures where the cougars, bears, tigers, and wolves slept. Driven by the aroma of what we were feeding them. I would only know this happened because I found the remains of only their intestines. Fascinating how animals know what they can and cannot eat. Pelicans just eat the whole damn fish, spiny fins and all. Never could I quite grasp that one.

The squirrel hung to help drain any blood. Yes, I pinned it up outside Andy’s window, and there may have been a “Lord of the Flies” statement to be made from that given we had been stuck in the area long enough to feel the onsets of cabin fever. The other reason for the location picked was because it rested near an accessible tree far off the ground.

I cooked the squirrel by basting it over a fire with a stick going through. Rodents have plenty of parasites, so cooking thoroughly was a necessity. Calling one small squirrel a meal was imprecise. A red squirrel only carries one-hundred calories. I expended double that amount by walking back to the cabin from where I had bagged the squirrel. Would there have been more small game hunts, the meals probably would have been better served as a stew, allowing for the bone broth to add value to the overall meal. The cooked meat was not noteworthy. It tasted generic, so we will just say it tasted like snake. Apparently, snake tastes like lizard. Apparently, lizard tastes like chicken. Apparently, chicken tastes like grasshoppers.

An absolute quandary of a mind-bender is the grasshopper. Maybe not the grasshopper itself, but the doctrine of consuming them. This was an element of survival foraging that I had been wishing to try after studying how easy the task is. Why it is no big deal to eat grasshoppers on the property, but not feel positive about eating larger animals is beyond me. The act is quite the same thing. So why did it not trouble me, whereas hunting the squirrel did? My apologies. Grasshoppers bring out my philosophical side. If only that were true, that’d be a hell of a come-on line at the bar. Two lines that command a damsel’s regard. “Hey, sugar” and “Grasshoppers make me philosophical.” Do try it.

 I frequented a field on the northern face of the tracks. I named the clearing “Saltamontes Field” (Grasshopper Field in Spanglish) where, on sunny days above forty degrees, the grasses came to life by a bounty of bugs. Many of which were grasshoppers. The field had no canopy from trees or brush, so the sun could shine down at full force. On those sunny days, the floor seemed ten degrees warmer than other locations, and the spot became a favorite to bask when the conditions were right. Laying back to do some cloud watching proved the preferred operation, but not this time. This time, I had an empty stomach. This time, I would betray the trust that my hemimetabolous friends had galvanized. This time, mighty Godzilla roved the fields of terror in search of meals.

Terror pounced upon that bustling metropolis of a field of grasshoppers, while they jumped in all directions to evade capture. The pickings were easy, and they were unable to scream, luckily. Their futile attempts of fighting back in giant swarms to gouge out my eyes were quickly stifled. I may have beaten my chest a few times with a harrowing roar to incite panic, but no fire would pour out from my mouth.

By removing their heads, most of the guts come with it. Sadly, the reflexive bodies did not stop moving around, so the satchel had to remain closed or headless escapes would be attempted. Gruesome, but no nymphae were harmed in the hunt. Only grasshoppers after their fifth molt with a maximum year of life remaining, anyway. Close to thirty or forty were snatched in a very short slice of time.

Hopefully, you’re not a grasshopper reading this with a clear ancestry tree, a willing legal team, and a 60 Minutes crew on standby. In the unfortunate event that happens, I gave full-disclosure that some events of this memoir were vastly exaggerated, so by no means is this a confession. I have a rock-solid alibi written in Big Sky to Big City that puts me in Whitefish, posing for ridiculous Halloween pictures at the time of this infraction. What an awkward courtroom scenario indeed.

I walked back to my primitive camp close by and started a fire. A perfectly flat rock would offer an ideal surface for grilling grasshoppers. The idea is, prop the rock up over the fire, and it becomes a Bigfoot Barbecue. There are mixed theories about whether Bigfoot uses fire. Probably not. Once the structure is adequately heated, the grasshoppers are thrown onto the makeshift skillet until they are thoroughly cooked. Such as the case of the squirrel roast or most wild meats, the heat is needed to kill off parasites. From there, they are ready to be consumed by popping them in the mouth like pumpkin seeds. The taste was mostly char, but in a survival situation, this would be an excellent tool in the tool bag. Apparently, they are nutritious. Having no USDA guidelines written on their exoskeletons, I exorcised faith in the survivor dudes’ bold claims.

NAVIGATION

In all honesty, little concern emerged about getting lost. To the north, less than a mile away, were the railroad tracks. To the east were both railroad tracks and the big Whitefish Lake. Westward, if we skirted the property of the neighbors somehow, bestrode a major road. The south owned the sole direction to feel slightly disoriented as nine or ten square miles of State Forest land could be underfoot before residences were reached. Straying beyond those boundaries increased the risk and involved more attention, yet any peak with a view would repair the bearings. In most cases, no map was carried, but on the chance that travels would take me beyond comfort levels, a topographical map might be carried. The partnership seemed foolproof in that area.

Making the experience more personable meant creating a hand-written map. This stamped the key landmarks I had come to enjoy and applying names gave so much more flavor. “Forgotten Pole’s Ridge” emerged on the southern margin of Murray Lake, where I had left my fishing pole to get a splendid view. “Kick-My-Ass-Peak” was just beyond the property line to the southeast and proved another tough but excellent view made available from an exposed hilltop with a steep, rocky climb to reach. “Saltamontes Field” hosted the scene for many terrorized grasshoppers. The “Butt Squeeze” resembled a butt near Boyle lake with hills on both sides of a stretch of train track. “Suicide Squeeze” resembled “Butt Squeeze” but boasted dangerously tighter hills on each side of a stretch of tracks closer to town. The lakes were lucky to preserve their original names, and there was a plethora of them to make excellent landmarks/reference points.

I still needed to implement the GPS unit that my dad had purchased just before the trip. To that point, most wanderings were done without even a map as stated, so trials were postponed for the Magellan GPS. There were some tepid trial runs to become acquainted with the new technology. The year was 1999 and GPS was still a very untrusted technology, particularly at the consumer level. A few waypoints between hills proved to be smooth, well-guided trekking.

November brought a chance to immerse fully into the human trials with a waypoint set to a spot on the property. Before long, thick conifers surrounded. The scenery blended with many other places previously explored. After twenty minutes of heading towards the waypoint through thick brush and marshy forest floor, a return to the cabin was due. Twenty more minutes passed, and all looked so very familiar.

Another twenty minutes cycled. Disorientation prevailed as the GPS kept hanging, displaying an azimuth of west when I must assuredly be traveling east. The first waypoint came into view. I was progressing in circles somehow. I pressed forward with guidance for another twenty minutes. That point meant abandoning the recommendation of technology to head in the direction that I assumed to be east. I could not know for certain as visibility in the thick forest was zero. I met a two-track within fifty yards and scaled uphill. It was not until I heard Andy wood chopping that I knew precisely where I stood. Only another fifty yards away from the cabin! From that moment, the GPS had to be held back as a supplement until further testing could be performed.

When the sun shined prominently, the stick method of directional navigation became viable. The technique was reasonably effective, except in a northern region during winter months. The procedure starts with a stick in the ground. Next, take a rock to record the tip of the shadow. Wait fifteen minutes (doing push-ups or solo techno dancing works great for waiting) and then notate the edge of the shadow once again. Lay down a stick that passes through the rocks. This is the west/east Axis. The original point is west, and the second is east because shadows move the opposite of the sun. Fancy stuff. From there, take another stick perpendicular indicating north and south. This is more of a desert trick, but applicable anywhere in the northern hemisphere with ample sun to cast a shadow. Perhaps in the southern hemisphere as well.

SHELTER

I wanted a bit of a forward operating base for nights I did not feel like sleeping in a bed, or rather when I felt like cozying up next to a fire. Something to scratch the primitive pioneer lifestyle itch. I had built several shelters over the years, most of them not even worthy of mention, but one stood out while living in Nelsonville, OH. My friends Matt, Vice, and Andy came down to visit. Someone had a relative in the area with several acres of land, so we decided we would camp out in the woodlands. We built an encircled colony of lean-tos with a fire pit in the middle. We had a busy day of amassing the materials and the fire was helpful at warming the sleeping areas but seemed inefficient.

In Montana, I had visions of some elaborate shelter structure that would be expanded over time. Something that could be almost morphed into a rustic cabin and lived in often. I started with a basic A-frame. The A-frame style is probably the easiest and most common. The area at the north side was the flattest spot, yet not marshy or at risk of any flooding. There opened enough of a clearing to allow the safe buffering of a small firepit. I gathered one long beam to bolster the length of the shelter and then two short, but sturdy logs to hold up the long beam, creating my entrance. I then found varied length branches to support the roof on either side of the long beam. From there, the focal point was all about insulation efficiency as there were plenty of evergreens to choose from to coat the roof. Surprisingly, those evergreens were skinny and required some time-consuming modifications to pack in the greenery. The objective of insulation is trapping air. As much as possible. Think of your body as a heat prison. The heat’s on jailbreak, shanking its way through levels of confinement. With many chambers, the escape is delayed and chambers fill with body heat or some other heat source.

With the basic design complete, the fire pit would need to be built. Close by to allow the hot air to push into the structure, yet properly distanced for the avoidance of slight breezes tossing sparks into the shelter. This scenario was not overly critical since I lay only a half-mile from the cabin, but still not on my bucket list either. Nor did I want to start a forest fire. A heat reflector was added, with similar dimensions and size as the cabin pit.

With all of that work performed, there could be no better time to realize that I had built everything amidst a bunchberry patch. A truly prominent patch that leaked well beyond my clearing and into the forest floor in all directions. Bear scat and bear scratches on neighboring trees would add to the disappointment. What a stupid mistake! But there sat about five hours of hard labor. The calculated risk was that the bears would go to bed soon and the structure remained.

There were areas that were like quicksand. I had to be careful where I stepped. My fishing pole was giving me hell again. Brad showed me the site where he is building a shelter. I was in a negative mood and couldn’t see the point in building one, I’m a jerk! It started to hail, and it was really cold, but it felt good. I decided to kick my negative attitude and start building my own shelter. I had a great time. (Calmes 9/26/99)

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I had already scouted out favorite spots, giving names to some. Boyle Lake was just north of our invisible boundaries. Relatively small in both size and depth, what drew my attraction to it was the openness that it allowed with the tracks near its southern tip. The open feel invited sunlight to the area as downed trees all around gave way to bursts of wind from the loose, muddy soil. On the northeast corner, a small hill rose beyond the marshland that provided an unobstructed vantage point of the lake and trees to block the wind, rain, and sunlight exposure overhead.

I tried to clean the sprayer this morning, but it is too drenched in stain to ever work again. Then I got my camera and headed out with Brad to destination unknown. After we passed my easel and went over the mountain, we were basically lost the rest of the day. We eventually stumbled upon Boyle Lake, so Brad knew the way from there. When we were on the train tracks, we heard some voices in the distance that sounded like girls, so we journeyed down the steep rock hill to investigate. We realized we were on private property when we came across a lady walking her dog. She was nice but seemed annoyed that we were on her property. The sun was setting, so we headed in. Good workout! (Calmes, 10/10/99)

Woods Lake was directly east of the property beyond Kim’s Peak. Another shallow lake, but with its own personality that seduced me by its high volume of cattails and virtually no bare shoreline as its name would suggest. Nearly the entire surface area was of that popular aquatic plant. Thornburg Lake lay a half-mile northeast from there, with much of the same sense on a slighter scale. Almost to the point where the lake itself was easy to miss altogether.

Brad had the idea to hike to Woods Lake today. We took the backwoods hoping to find an animal trail that I know of, but I calculated wrong and we ended up a little south of it. Beautiful hike! So many different views. We found the lake easily, then headed north through a marsh area. We began to walk through the cattails until Brad sunk to his knee in the mud. We quickly exited the marsh and headed for Thornburg Lake, but walked a half-hour in the wrong direction. When we finally made it there, we found a half-built, run-down cabin. It was really old lookin’. Then we set our sights on Whitefish Lake. When we reached the train tracks, we knew we had made it. The sun was getting ready to set, and we were nearly two hours from the cabin, so we headed in. All of this without seeing any wild animals besides birds and squirrels. There was a cool hawk at Thornburg Lake. It flew along the mountain on the opposite side of the lake, casting its shadow on the trees. Just when I was sure we weren’t going to see anything else, Brad noticed deer down the tracks. I quickly took a photo just in time to watch their white tails leap off into the woods. Brad was sure there would be deer, maybe Elk in a field that we were soon to be at. He was right… about the deer. Three more white tails running off into the woods. The sunset was brilliant! Too bad we couldn’t see it because we were deep in the thick woods. I could see just enough color through the trees to tell that it looked awesome. While I was paying attention to the sky, we unknowingly walked by two deer that were only ten yards away from us... or less. After we passed, they jumped up and we watched their white tails. I missed what could’ve been a very close-up shot of two deer looking at the camera! Oh well, they’re just deer. I’d be pissed if I missed a shot of a bear like that… actually, I’d probably be dead. We got back to the cabin just as darkness had completely settled. (Calmes, 10/16/99)