"Home Field
Advantage" (11 x 14 , oil) By Leon Parson
Among my office clutter
is a small, weighty, rectangular piece of gray-white petrified wood.
It would make a good paperweight, I suppose, but I don't have it around
for any such practical purpose. I keep it simply to remind me of a special
place in my mind and heart, a wild and lonely place in the Wyoming high
country where I once passed the better part of 10 days in search of
elk. I keep it near to remind me of what I found there. Of the bull.
And more.
First of all you must understand
that just getting there is no easy matter. Unless, that is, you normally
ride seven to eight hours daily - covering some 25 up and down, beautiful
but brutal miles - on a regular basis. And unless you are on intimate
terms with a western saddle that looks like leather but sits like concrete.
And even as you ride, growing numb from the waist down, you think of
the walking to come, mostly upslope, or so it will seem, over terrain
that turns legs to lead and lungs to lumps of burning larch. Still,
you can't wait. Such is heeding the siren call of a true wilderness.
And you understand that getting there, being there, must never be easy.
If I were a better writer,
I'd paint word pictures you could see as clearly as the images I carry
in my mind. But all I can do is suggest the scent of pine and the sounds
of water splashing headlong through cool shadows beside the horse trail.
I can mention the dark, gangly moose gaping momentarily at the passing
pack string before crashing away. And there's the constant creak of
saddles, the occasional clack of steel shoes on trail rocks, causing
brief sparks to jump and die. And the sturdy mules, straining uphill
beneath balanced panniers in fits of rude flatulence, as the miles slowly
fall away. Then, finally, there's the welcome sight of dirty-white wall
tents standing against the darker backdrop of tall conifers. We are
there. Imagine all this as best you can, and you'll come close enough
to joining me.
Tim and I ride from camp
each day in predawn blackness, thrusting the horses upward. A chill
wind gnaws at our faces. An unseen limb occasionally reaches out to
tug at a hat or a sleeve as we hunch blind in the cold saddles, wishing
we were already on the high ridges. But soon enough we are, swinging
stiffly down, loosening cinches, removing headstalls, snugging halter
ropes, and leaving the patient horses behind us just as the first light
of gray dawn washes stars from the eastern sky.
For a time we crouch huddled
among the rocks above the timbered bowl, but the cold wind finds us
anyway. We could move down into the dark trees below. But no, we agree,
better to wait here. Shivering and listening for the bull we know is
below us, somewhere. But with morning light there is only the song of
coyotes, far enough away that their first wavering cries sound like
a bugling elk. It, too, is a wild song, befitting this high and lonesome
place. But it is the other music we seek. And at last we move down into
the pines.
Walking warms us. We ease
down slope, into the wind, and then upslope, and down again, and up.
We make no particular effort to be quiet. Elk are noisy animals themselves,
and we simply cow-call when a limb snaps beneath our boots - lugged
soles or a loosened rock chatters away behind us, our reassuring chirps
an all's-well signal to any wild ears marking our passing.
We rest for a time at midday,
rummaging in our packs for sandwiches and snacks, sipping cool water
from our canteens, and stretching out to doze in the warming sunshine
like contented mountain cats. We glass feeding bighorns on the stark
cliffs above us. We whisper-talk of them and the great bears and, of
course, the elk that lie and die up here, mostly away from man and his
influences. Such is the magic, the beauty, and the way of true wilderness.
 |
| Wilderness Bull - The author
rode horseback over 25 miles into the wilderness south of Yellowstone
Park to bowhunt Wyoming elk. His trophy class herd bull was arrowed
at 12 yards after being bugled into easy bow range. |
Moving on at last, we work
the shady benches and rocky draws, crossing old burns where cinquefoil
and lupine and foxglove now grow amid the clutter of charred skeleton
trees. As evening nears, we set up by a snow-fed stream beside a grassy
park that lies among a cluster of antler-slashed pines with broken limbs
and weeping, sticky-wet trunks. Our occasional bugles echo and fade
unanswered until, finally, in fast-fading light, we walk away and trudge
up the high ridge to reclaim our horses, once again in full dark. Tomorrow
we will repeat the ride and the day.
Perhaps what I liked best
of all in the wilderness was the sense of timelessness I felt there.
It was everywhere you looked. And listened. It was there in the ringing
silence of a star-flected night. It was there in the wind whispers that
stirred pines and caused aspen leaves to dance shimmering in sunshine
so sharp sometimes it hurt your eyes. It was there in the high, rocky
peaks with their shaded pockets of eternal snow beneath a sky bigger
and deeper and bluer than any you've seen. It was there in the cloud
shadows moving silently across timbered ridge and grassy park. It was
there in the cold, sweet snowmelt that gurgled among creekbed rocks,
past the gray piece of petrified wood I saw in the streamside moss and
slipped into my pack as a souvenir of this time and place. And it certainly
was there in the knowledge that you were breathing new air and walking
faint trails more familiar to hoof and moccasin than to Vibram boot
soles. It's exhilarating stuff.
One morning, just after
a surprise late-summer snowfall, a bull's sudden challenge came to us
even before the echoes of our own bugling faded. He was close, upset
at our presence or our impudence or both. I had time only to drop to
one knee, fumble an arrow from my bow quiver, and snap its fluorescent
nock into place with unsteady fingers. But the bull never came.
We later found his nearby
tracks easily enough. We could see where he'd walked toward us and then
stood listening for a time before turning away and moving on down slope.
He'd obviously had other elk business on his mind this day and was satisfied
to let us off with a stern warning. My heart was still thudding as we
walked away with only the memory of his screaming challenge and pants
wet from the knees down after crouching in the heavy snow. At the moment,
that was enough.
I still carry memories of
the camp coming awake and going to sleep in darkness. Of the scratch
of tent fly zippers, the clank of cast-iron lids, the rasp of matches,
the hiss of Coleman lanterns. You burrow deeper in your warm bag, listening
to the muffled muttering of your tentmate, waiting for the stove to
chase away the worst of the chill before worming out of downy comfort
into cold camouflage and stiff boots. The tiredness in your legs and
feet reminds you of the miles already walked. But by the time you've
quickly dressed and made your way to the cook tent you're ready, even
eager. Again. After all, this could be the day. And if not today, tomorrow
for sure. The bulls have to start bugling sometime.
Around the lamplit table,
over eggs and sausage and griddle cakes and fresh-baked bread, cold
juice and hot coffee, you talk of yesterday's almosts and today's maybes.
Amid boasting and banter mingled wit the smells of breakfast and wood
smoke, you begin another day. Meanwhile, the wranglers ride out to find
the belled horses and, shouting and swearing, drive them back from the
pasture through darkness to the corral. Soon ours are saddled and tied
waiting, breath forming ghosts in yellow lantern light. We again grab
packs and bugles and bows and begin another day. In darkness.
Our day ends in darkness,
as well. Late. We return tired, the campfire glow a welcoming beacon
winking at us through the pines. Supper is waiting, good grub the cooks
have worked at. We wash hurriedly and eat hungrily, for the most part
quieter than at breakfast, dutifully recounting who had seen and heard
what. But the long day has dulled us, and soon we drift off to our tents
and waiting cots. Snuggling in sleeping bats, hoping tomorrow will bring
the bugling of bulls, we sleep until the sudden ripping of our tent
zipper rouses us to renew the now-familiar routine.
And then comes the day,
just before noon, when the bull answers our tentative bugling. He is
at least two drainages away, but from where we sit among the jumble
of boulders, his wavering, flutelike warning drifts to us through the
crisp air as clear as the distant calling of cathedral bells. Above
the timbered bowl, we stand for a moment, looking and listening across
the green treetops before bugling again. When he answers, we nod and
step off the ridge line, slip-sliding down the cliff face in ankle-deep
loose dirt and stones.
We rock-hop a rushing stream
and claw our way up into the timber, hurrying along a tracked game trail
until the ground falls away to our left. We again plunge down slope,
digging in our heels and riding small scree avalanches into the next
basin. And then we fight our way upward again, sweat stinging our eyes,
lungs aflame, until we reach the bench and stop, gasping, to look and
listen.
I move ahead a dozen paces
and kneel beside a deadfall. Tim bugles behind me. The bull answers
just ahead. I pull an arrow free and snap it on the string. Tim bugles
again, but when the bull answers he is moving away.
I jam the arrow back into
the quiver even as I clamber to my feet. Another footrace. Sprinting
among the pine trees, dodging low-hanging branches, and hurdling blowdowns.
Down and across a sunny, boulder-strewn chute. Up into the cool trees
beyond. Finding another deadfall hiding spot even as Tim bugles again.
This time the bull's scream
is close. Indignant at being pushed, he is just ahead. Defiant. Angry.
By the time I nock my arrow for the third time, I can hear brush breaking
uphill to my left. Dark legs appear, moving. A heavy, ivory-tipped rack
floats toward me, somehow disembodied. He is 30 yards away and closing.
God, I think, awestruck,
the size, the beauty of him!
Still he moves toward me,
head-on, as noiseless now as a tan shadow. Drifting down slope, passing
behind a pine at 20 yards, he doesn't see me come to full draw, hear
my thudding heart, sense me near. He only knows the rival bull is close,
a threat to his cows waiting in the timber above. On he stalks. Closer.
Closer.
Turn, I pray, please turn!
And at last, as if by my
will alone, he does turn. Over my bow hand I watch the bull ghosting
past, broadside, huge yet silent, striding, until my arrow's red and
yellow fletching appears against his side, tight behind the shoulder,
just where I willed it to fly.
He spins and crashes through
a deadfall graveyard, down into the rocky chute. There he stands briefly
in brilliant midday sunshine, the spreading crimson patch glistening.
Then slowly he walks off into the shade beyond, perhaps wondering at
the unseen bull that had somehow hooked and hurt him. When he is out
of sight I walk weak-kneed to where his hooves tore the forest duff
as my arrow buried itself deep into his lungs. It is but a dozen short
steps. My hands are still trembling as Tim joins me. We sit together,
whispering, waiting for the sharp steel to do its work.
I could speak of the short
tracking job, the long hours of field dressing, skinning, packing, caping.
Of the long ride out, the pack mules loaded with fresh, cool meat and
the antlers of a wilderness monarch I'd met and can never forget. I
dutifully record such things in my notebook, penciling times and dates
and facts that over the years will fade like old photos. They're there
to help others who later might read my words and try to imagine what
it was like.
For me, though, there is
no true way - or need - to capture on paper what in reality cannot be
captured. Memories. I need only to glimpse the piece of petrified wood
resting amid my office's eternal clutter to pause and relive the mystery
of the Wyoming wilderness, to recall the hunt, the stalk, the shot,
and so much more. And each time I see the wood-turned-stone, touch its
waterworn smoothness, lift its surprising heft in my fingers, I dream
of returning.
The elk are still up there.
And the sheep. And the great bear. Along with a part of my soul I left
to cry for those who will never walk a wilderness trail.
Note: This article
is an excerpt from the new book, My Place by M. R. James, recently published
by Stackpole Books and now available for sale throughout the United
States and Canada.
The guide was Tim Doud,
owner of Bliss Creek Outfitters, PO Box 2776, Cody, WY 82414;
(307) 527-6103.
WILDERNESS MEMORIES
