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Post by RogueWarrior1957 on Sept 6, 2006 14:37:58 GMT 12.75
Oh where has Summer gone? She was here just a moment ago, With roses and daisies, To whisper her praises, And everyone loved her so! I can feel a chill edge in the air already. Yesterday, while riding the Harley east to Chama, NM, then north to Antonito and Alamosa, CO, I noticed that there is snow on Mt. Blanca already. Summer is basically over for the most part here in the Rockies as marked by the passing of Labor Day. Finished up my vacation pretty much today. My brother goes back to work tomorrow, though I took tomorrow off to catch up on grocery shopping and bill paying. We will not put the bikes totally away and will pick warm sunny days to go for shorter rides, but today marked the last big ride of the year. We putz'ed around Durango, then down Wildcat Canyon Road to Farmington and picked up my glasses at the optometrist's office. At least I can see distance with these. I will still have to do something about not being able to see enough to read. No more bifocals...ever!!! Then we rode up to Navajo Lake and stood there at the overlook of the spillway and talked for a while. I've made it through the summer since the loss of my best friend and mentor (Mother), due to friends like my brothers, John, Mike, and Gary...and my sister, as well as all you good people. But I wonder how I will deal with the shut-in-ness of a long winter without a real escape. I know I will deal with it as I always have any tough situation. I just want to thank all you guys and gals for the loyal support. I appreciate every one of you! This is Mt. Blanca...beautiful as a regal lady...and a outdoorsman's dream: As the White Eagle of the North flies Overhead, And the Reds and the Golds and Brown of Autumn Lie in the Gutter Dead, Then Spring Birds with Wings Afire Flaying, Come to Witness Spring's New Hope Born of Leaves Decaying As New Life Shall Come from Death Then Love shall Come With Leisure; Love of Love and Love of Life And Giving Without Measure, Gives in Return a Yearning of A Promise Almost Seen... Live Hand and Hand and Together We'll Stand ...on The Threshold of a Dream. (The Moody Blues, "Threshold of a Dream" album, circa 1971) -Rogue-
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Post by Toby Benoit on Sept 6, 2006 18:11:03 GMT 12.75
Your post has kind of a maudlin theme that made me think of this piece I wrote a few years ago. It was published in Outdoor Sports In The Southeast and Rocky Mountain Game And Fish Magazine. I hope you enjoy it!
THE ONLY REGRET By Toby Benoit 02-04-04
Of course the man knew he was old, but hadn’t really begun to feel old, until only this fall. He’d seen three quarters of a century come to pass. Life had been a game for him and he had played hard and enjoyed himself completely. There had been hard times too, but none he ever let himself dwell on.
He’d seen a war in Korea, outlived a pair of pretty young wives, raised two daughters, and a son whom had been lost in Vietnam. He’d traveled about in the adventurous years after the war; Japan, Korea, Bombay, Kenya, and other distant countries of exotic sights and cherished memories. But, here in the heart of the American west was the land that he called home. “Big Sky” country as it was known; and it was too. From horizon to horizon as far as a man could see, was at most times, a sky of the deepest blue, but yet, not as blue lately as it had been thirty years ago.
He had loved the solitude of the open plains at the foot of the eastern Rockies and he had built his house on the outskirts of Bozeman, but the town had grown incredibly since then. The peace he had sought, had long ago been lost, but still he had his cabin in the hills. Heck, mountains really. The Bitterroot range of the eastern Rockies. He’d built it himself and spent at least a month of every fall there during the hunting season. Quite often in the old days, the wife and kids would stay up there with him for a while. Other times, friends would stop in for a week or so to hunt when the elk were bugling.
It’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the old saying goes, and to anybody else the old place might not be much on looks. But, to the old man, it was always a grand sight, sitting quite comfortably beneath the towering lodgepole pine in the cool evening shadows of the Bitterroots. At first it had been little more than a two-room shack with an old cast iron stove he’d salvaged from the scrap heap at the local dump. Over the years though, the place had undergone much change and evolved steadily into the awkward palace he now enjoyed.
Each year, some improvement or repair would change its character. A porch had been added complete with an assortment of rocking chairs back in the early sixties. Then two more rooms added on with extra bunks a year or two later. Glass windows had been installed sometime in the seventies and a tub for bathing a bit later.
This fall though, the little wood stove didn’t quite keep out the night chill and the bunk he’d slept in for so many autumns didn’t sleep as well as he’d remembered. He hadn’t really paid much mind to it until now. Now, he paid attention to everything it seemed. Now, since he’d had the talk with that damned doctor a few months back.
Apparently he’d already had the cancer for years or they’d have been able to do something. He’d lived with it all that time and had gone about his way as usual, but upon hearing the word from his doctor’s mouth, it seemed like all of his years had caught up with him at last. The cold had gotten colder, the grade had gotten steeper and the miles had gotten longer. He sensed that it soon would be time for him to pay for all the fun he’d had, seemingly just yesterday, back when he was young.
The mountain breeze crawled down the slopes and kissed his weathered cheek as he sat on the spongy ground beneath a giant of a pine with his back propped up against it’s rough bark. In front of him was a jumble of rocks and rotting logs that he’d drug into place years before to build a blind overlooking a small spring fed watering hole in a narrow park a mile or so above the cabin.
He’d rested only twice during his climb up earlier that evening and had taken a bit longer to catch his breath when he’d arrived, but he was glad to be there. It was a favorite spot and over the years he had collected quite a few elk and a couple of mule deer there as they came in for an evening drink.
He flexed his fingers a few times to keep the blood flowing through them and rested them again upon the decades worn stock of his rifle. The gun had been a gift from the kids one fathers day too many years ago. He’d owned many excellent rifles in his time, including a fine Italian double-rifle he’d bought from an Indian shikari in Bangladesh, but it was this old Remington that he was always drawn to when he’d reach into the gun cabinet before a hunt.
The shadows were gathering along the slopes as the sun began its descent behind the mountain’s top and his aged eyes took in the familiar view from the mountainside. The quakies had turned a bright yellow and were falling gently down with each breeze blowing through. The tall evergreen pines, so dark and stately, standing like soldiers at attention. He had never tired of the beauty of the mountains and he was glad to be seeing it again for it could be the last real look at the land he loved most.
The elk was terribly, awfully old. He had lived too long – much too long. He didn’t know how long an elk was supposed to live, but he had spent a year or two growing up, a few more fighting and breeding, a couple more teaching his wisdom to the younger bulls, and a few more yet to brood and die. To be sure, nobody could ever guess the thousands of miles he’d wandered up and down these mountain slopes growing, fighting, breeding and finally becoming an outcast of his own herd. Run off, likely by one of his own sons. His memory of the breeding years was dim now and the younger bulls no longer followed him for his council. The sky had seemed bluer back then he recalled and the winters were not as cold.
He was more than a little deaf, of course, and certainly his eyesight had been clouded by the years. The once magnificent antlers of years past, which he would lay across his back all the way to his rump when he threw back his head to scream out a thundering bugle, now grew gnarled and blunted. He carried them awkwardly, as if they were too heavy to tote in front since all the counterbalancing weight had left his behind. Now, down his neck and shoulders the once near black mane is tipped with gray and his skin clings to his thin frame.
His hooves are cracked and worn from a lifetime in the jagged rock of the upper slopes. The old gentleman’s feet always hurt. He swayed from side to side as he walked and grumbled to himself, the way that old men do, and his complaints were carried away on the mountain breeze as he came to the water hole – stepping carelessly into the open. He did not care. He’d been alone too long as if shackled by the limitations of his old age. All of the cows, yearlings and younger bulls had made off already for the lower elevations. They had tolerated him in the area all year, but had lit out at the first hint of snow on the upper peaks. Normally he’d have made the trip down as well, but this year he hadn’t felt the need. He wasn’t too feeble yet to make the trip with them, but his head was heavy and his feet hurt.
There he stood now, pathetically magnificent on the edge of the pool with the last rays of the dying sun reflecting off of him.
“Poor old fellow. I’ve waited a long time to meet you,” the old man said almost silently to himself.
He had come here to shoot an elk as he had done many times before in the glade near the spring. For a moment the old bull looked over to the old man and appeared to stare back, as if searching the man’s own soul, as he stood unmoving, in understanding and acceptance of his fate.
The rifle cracked and the old bull crumpled to the soft ground amongst the still green grasses near the waters edge. The old man raised himself on creaking knees and shuffled stiffly over to the dead monarch. He had never felt remorse for having killed. But as his leathery hands stroked the wiry hair of the bull’s brow and felt the strength in the hardness of the antler, he wept. Of course he wept, but not for the animal itself, rather for the end of the hunt. As he watched the old bull fall, much of what he had loved best of these mountains in the autumn, died with him. He knew, as the report of the rifle echoed through the thin mountain air, that this hunt would be his last.
He lay down the rifle and sat down upon the carcass of the elk and composed himself as he waited for his grandsons to arrive. They would be along soon enough he knew, called to him by the sound of the shot. There would be much celebrating and the boys would rough him up a little, out of their excitement and youth.
He would not regret taking the elk however. His only regret was that he would never do it again.
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Post by RogueWarrior1957 on Sept 7, 2006 3:03:48 GMT 12.75
Toby, That was an excellent piece of literature! I remember having read it in the magazine, but it was definitely worth reading again. The story reminds me of several older guys I know, or have known. Several of these old guys have already departed, and it is always bittersweet, the departure of a grand old man, or that of an aging monarch of the Rockies. I like your writing style of painting a picture with the words so that the reader can see the scene in his mind and almost be there as an observer. That, my friend, is the sign of a GOOD AUTHOR! Thanks for sharing that... -Bill- Here's a shot of Cumbres Pass in an area that was burned out many years ago. Has a stark beauty all it's own and the elk love the grazing left by the devastated forest. But you can see that Nature, in her infinite wisdom and beauty, is starting to reclaim the area with a multitude of young spruce and fir:
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Post by Toby Benoit on Sept 9, 2006 15:21:42 GMT 12.75
Thanks for the compliments. I'm happy you liked it.
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Post by Paws on Sept 10, 2006 3:53:03 GMT 12.75
Awsome gentlemen! ;D No doubt in my mind that what we feel in common when we such tremendous beauty that DNA has a common source. ;D
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Post by RogueWarrior1957 on Sept 11, 2006 7:08:05 GMT 12.75
The Greatest Man I Never Knew Reba McEntire Click here for MIDI: www.geocities.com/roguewarrior1957/greatestmanineverknew.midThe greatest man I never knew lived just down the hall And everyday we said hello But never touched at all He was in his paper I was in my room How was I to know he thought I hung the moon The greatest man I never knew came home late every night He never had too much to say Too much was on his mind I never really knew him And now it seems so sad Everything he gave to us took all he had Then the days turned into years And the memories to black and white He grew cold like an old winter wind blowing across my life The greatest words I never heard I guess I'll never hear The man I thought would never die has been dead almost a year He was good at business But there was business left to do He never said he loved me Guess he thought I knew Footnote: In my case he's been gone 36 years as of October 1st. Little facets of his personality remain behind, glimpsed occasionally in people I've met on this trail called life.
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Post by Two Tales on Sept 12, 2006 2:25:54 GMT 12.75
I awoke this morning , feeling the chill in the air..thinking it would be nice to have a small fire to sit next to as company while I had my morning coffee...The lonesome call of the geese on thier way to someplace reminded me that I too should be moving on soon...as I watched the twilght turn the dark sky to daylight, I could not help but to to think of the seasons long past gone and the companions that shared them with me. Some who have moved on with thier lives and some that, like the seasons have retired into memory...Finished with my coffee I hang the cup on my belt and move on down the trail. I have to wonder as I move along...is this my trail to those memories or will I fade away as did summer fade into autum.
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