Daily Log, September 29, 2015

Nehi and a Moon Pie

I might start with the statement, "where'd this month go anyhow?"  That is just plain absurd because I know the earth and the moon have corkscrewed around the sun for billions of years. This will continue for billions of years into the future.  Days, weeks and months pass uncounted by the cosmos.  Whether I have had a fast month or an excruciatingly slow month as I did when I was a child has no bearing on Father Time.  God knows how fast we are spinning around the galaxy and how fast the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are closing on each other.  The moon races around the earth, the earth and moon around the sun, the sun, a truly tiny pinpoint of light, rotates around the galaxy in its designated spot on some obscure arm of the Milky Way and the galaxy is speeding toward its neighboring galaxy.  All of this is happening at dizzying, gee whiz speeds.   No wonder I feel dizzy.  

As I take my last breath and the lights go out, the Black Holes of our galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy, M31, will continue to close on one another and I will be turned into the same stardust from whence I was formed. Maybe a few molecules of the star dust that made me the first time will have the good fortune of turning up in a sentient being once again.  Maybe there is life after death and just maybe the transition won't be so painful next time around.  Growing old ain’t easy.

My thoughts about science, billions of years, billions of stars and my own personal mythological beliefs are probably a fairly common social construct that many television watching folks have bought into.  I tend to believe the scientists and what they have to say about the natural world.  Carl Sagan was a very convincing fellow.  If I push myself to be honest I have to admit that I take everything on faith.  I don't have access to large telescopes and even larger and higher mathematics. If Carl Sagan and his scientist buddies tell me that the distance to M31 is two and a half million light years I tend to believe them.  When they tell me that the distance is actually very nearby I also believe that.  When I was told that Jesus went 40 days and nights without food in the desert I believed that, hook, line and sinker. (This Blog was to be about fishing.) I operate mostly on my belief system and the social constructs that society has gifted me.  There is some discernment on my part, I suspect, because I am having a hard time believing what Donald Trump is telling me.  

The bigger than a silver dollar yellow garden spider (Argiope aurantia) outside the study window weaves its lethal orb and trims it with an exquisite z ladder, day-in, day-out, day-in, day-out.  Its eight magic legs wrap its little captured honey bees in perfectly fitting funeral shrouds and sends them off, I know not where. Stardust?  Her fate may be the same as mine.

Today was a good day.  No meals out, only a bag of cashews (I thought I bought peanuts, damn) and a Coca Cola.  Coca Cola, what a perfect sound it makes rolling off my tongue.  I still like to drop peanuts into my coke bottle like my North Carolina Daddy taught me over sixty-five years ago.   A good marriage in a plastic bottle, but not quite as well consummated as it would have been in glass.  The Mexican Coca Colas are superior to ours.  They use sugar cane instead of fructose and they honor the blend with glass bottles.  

I remember Ronnie Doyle and me.  Seven years old we were, dropping our hard won nickels into a big red coke machine at the gas station near the flood wall.  Out came Nehi Sodas and we both felt cheated.  It tasted awful to two West Virginia boys raised on Coca Cola. We poured the golden liquid out onto the concrete, out back, around by the men's room.  Then we pulled out our half pint peckers and peed into the bottles.  We set them down next to the air hose and hoped someone would pick them up and mistake them for sodas and maybe even drink them.  The misbehavior was delicious, an immense feeling of power and independence.   We laughed all the way home and no one ever found out 'til just now.  

Ronnie graduated with a BS in engineering from Rensselaer Polytech and died before he hit thirty.  I hope there's more in the cards for him than stardust and my memories of Nehi Sodas.  

I passed Supermax on the Florence road and stopped at a Loaf and Jug.  The girl at the counter was worn thin by life.  She couldn't be bothered to point out where the $1.00 scratch-off cards were in the counter display case.  She couldn't be bothered to count out proper change.  She shorted me four cents.  "What the hell," I thought.  "The older I get, the more invisible I become. No one would notice if I went around the side of the building and peed in a bottle."  I dismissed the absurd thought. Besides, peeing in bottles is for little kids, not old men.   She never had a shot at really great life like Ronnie and I had.  What can you expect out of a prison town on the edge of the Great Plains?   

I stopped at a coffee shop in Canon City.  It was closed.  Disappointed I took up residence on a street bench for some long minutes.  The warm Colorado sun felt good.  I mused, Rocky Mountain High, Rocky Mountain Nehi.  An old couple, older than me, sat on a nearby bench and complained about prison work to a passerby they knew.  The young man, as bald as a billiard ball, contorted his face and its unremarkable features to say, "Hell, he pulled out a razor and told me I'd pay with my life."  

"Well that's exactly why I retired two years early, ain't it so Martha." 

Martha nodded yes.

"You know what they did?," asked the younger man.

"Hell, let me guess . . . NUTHU'N!  THEY DIDN'T DO NUTHU'N. "

"Well, that's close enough," the young man lamented, "they took away his TV for twelve hours."  

"Inmates just ain't what they used to be," the old man said.

I thought they would all laugh at this irony, but they were serious.  

His wife, a kindly looking woman, nodded her head.  She had heard a variation on the same story a hundred times before.  

They'll be stardust soon, just like me. 

I drove west up the Arkansas River and wet a few flies in the riffles.   An old fisherman happened by and said, "the fish are jumping; they just aren't biting.  Try a grasshopper, that's what I'm trying next."  A middle age woman walked up to the two of us, trying to keep her wet Labrador retriever from jumping on us.  The dog was a beauty and the woman had a taste for treating the beast with love.  I liked both of these people, the old guy and the middle age woman.  The wind kicked up and I did a few roll casts.

 Wham!  a hook in the base of my right thumb. "What the hell," I said.  I put on my spectacles and saw the barb was barely sunk into my skin.  Go ahead and tell me that a fish hook doesn't hurt a fish.  Think I'll buy barbless hooks from now on.  I yanked it out and kept talking.  

The old guy owned the best of the best fly fishing gear.  He wore the most ragged beat up undershirt I've seen in this lifetime.  I kid you not. I thought, gosh, he's awfully attached to that undershirt.  Maybe it's his lucky fly fishing undershirt, or maybe he's wearing his Mormon under-garments and his faith just isn't what it used to be.  My mind drifts.  

The pleasant woman with the black lab and the big ass Ram Dodge with duallys chatted with me for a while.  Her only son had just started college.  Her mom had just passed into the next phase of making stardust and she was free.  Oglethorpe, or Ogie for short, had helped her through her grief.   Her fifth-wheel trailer was parked at the KOA and she was seeing the country, tied to the dog and the memories of her youth.  Not much different than me thinking about Ronnie.  

There was a downpour on the way back home to Pueblo. It was a late season semi-impressive hailstorm.  The prison workers and guards, having just been released from their daytime prison shifts, were racing by each other and jockeying for a better position on the four-lane, not much different than two little boys pissing into empty Nehi bottles.  

Linda cooked a fine meal tonight.  Life is good.

Sheppard Hobgood

January 10, 2015 (transcribed from a notebook dated December, 2001)

Joshua and Shep hunt deer.

Excerpt from this journal

We looked for blood near a big ponderosa pine and then with a slight air of triumph I showed Josh the crimson red spatters in the brilliant white snow.  Crimson red blood on brilliant white snow is a striking visual image.   The impact can be described to anyone willing to listen.  But to really burn the image into your mind forever you have to see it.  The stark image produces primitive feelings in one’s mind that produce more than a few contrasting emotions.  There is triumph, blood lust and a touch of revulsion.  Fresh blood on snow is palpable. It is vitally real. It provokes a timeless twinge that sails through your body, a mild shock running stem to stern.  The feeling the image provokes has to be as ancient as our paleo diet and the group comradery that the hunt produces.

 About a hunt that I think was nearly thirteen years ago when I could still walk a ridge at 10,000 feet elevation and keep on walking. 

This seems to be a story about an elk and deer hunt. The only date I can find is December, 2001. That is 13 years ago. There is also reference to an issue of Field and Stream magazine, dated November, 2001 that I stumbled on at the library. Only article which seems to be titled “railroad elk” – you guessed it. The article was written in a style that the macho hunters like. If you want to write for an outdoor magazine you must write a macho style.

Oh, but I mentally wander too much. The first day of the hunt only teased us. Just about evening, our physical wanderings brought us to a long flat ridge at the crown of two fairly deep drainages. The North side of the hill was heavily timbered and in the first days of December also held substantial snow. The South side was bare and windblown.  The top of the ridge was covered in deer and elk tracks. We took a stand toward evening and steeled ourselves for the ever penetrating cold. Nothing – nothing. Then came “Pinkage.” That’s a funny term and neither Josh nor myself ever heard anyone else comment on pinkage. Over the years we noticed that the bottom of the scattered clouds, in the dark days of winter, always turn pink about 10 minutes after official sundown.  The times are adjusted for a baseline east or west of the official sundown or sunrise times as listed in the hunting literature provided by the state of Colorado. These daylight times are so important to the state of Colorado that they are also listed, in detail, on the back of all of the hunting licenses.  It’s uncanny. Now that we have the GPS device it proves to be right on, exactly,  because the GPS gives official sunup to sundown times adjusted for latitude and longitude.

The next morning after a comfortable night’s rest in a house in Fort Collins, we were in the right spot. We were in position at daybreak. The wind had picked up and the temperature was warming. We ascended the ridge side-by-side, each of us insight of the other. We were 30 yards apart. Conditions were perfect. Every once in a while a game trail which most of the time follows the course of least resistance would lead Josh and me together and we would pause to quietly chat. So much of the hunt is dependent on lady luck, good fortune, and providence, whatever you want to call it. Nonetheless, smarts and common sense tied the package of luck together with a nice ribbon. As we paused at one of our junctions we stood in plain sight, yet unseen and unheard by a heard of about forty magnificent Elk. They were headed our direction at a leisurely pace. We had no elk tags. We were lucky to draw deer tags. Even though we had no elk tags we felt that we had outsmarted the Wiley beasts by virtue of the fact that we were in the right place at the right time and not a one of them knew we were close enough to make a good shot. We had the right guns and ammo. Our Remmington 30.06  rifles with 180 grain bullets could easily bring down any animal we  choose to shoot. As they passed us at a slow run they caught our scents and broke into a loud crashing run straight into the nearby timber.  Josh and I had experienced something similar on a fishing trip hike on the Grand Mesa about eight or ten years earlier.  We had walked through a heard of elk that were bedded down for the day when they erupted all around us.  We were damn near run over by several of the giants.

(Couldn’t quite read my notes here, sounds like or looks like)  Fifteen minutes past as we waited for the heard to pass unmolested and unhurried. We sat down on the hillside enjoying the spectacle. Just to the south of us were the ragged peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park. Far below us on the south flank of the drainage we watched a buck deer walk into a meadow, then another, then a few does. They were all big healthy animals. No hint of wasting disease here. Josh got into position, took careful aim and ever so gently, between the beats of his heart the rifle went off. The animal was hit, but ran. By now, we both know enough to control buck fever, the overpowering stage fright – but sometimes the distance is simply too far and there is too little time to wait for the perfect shot as the animal turns to walk back into the forest.  The otherwise perfect shot at 200 yards was less than perfect. A fine line exists between taking too much time to squeeze off a round and letting the animal walk away and rushing the shot and missing altogether.

Joshua was a State finalist high jumper in high school.  He knew as well as any successful athlete that much of the success of an athletic move was in one’s own head.  An adversary the same size and strength could be bested by a man who could get his head under control when the competition got tough.  Hunting and being successful demands that everything come together at the right instant in time.  A well-executed Fosberry Flop and a smoothly pulled trigger had a few items in common.

Picture the fluid movement of taking a position, breathing deeply in and out, in and out.  Once the animal is in the crosshairs begin to pull the trigger ever so gently, then with greater and greater pressure.  You really don’t know when the firearm will go off.  The kick and noise should almost come as a surprise.  It’s all a great recipe for meat in the pot. 

If we shot an elk, the rest of them would be in the next county in a few moments.  Deer are entirely different.  They never go very far.  If you have a companion with a deer tag the remaining animals won’t be far away.  That’s mule deer anyway.  Don’t know about white tail deer. 

We walked down the side of the grassy hill knowing that another animal could appear at any moment.  I had visually marked the spot on the terrain where the Mulley was hit.  I was certain I knew where it went down.  The guy pulling the trigger often doesn’t know where he shot.  There’s too much excitement. 

“I think it’s over here somewhere,” I said.

Joshua looked at me and said, “no, I think it’s over in this direction.”

We looked for blood near a big ponderosa pine and then with a slight air of triumph I showed him the crimson red spatters in the brilliant white snow.  Crimson red blood on brilliant white snow is a striking visual image.   The impact can be described to anyone willing to listen.  But to really burn the image into your mind forever you have to see it.  The stark image produces primitive feelings in one’s mind that produce more than a few contrasting emotions.  There is triumph, blood lust and a touch of revulsion.  Fresh blood on snow is palpable. It is vitally real. It provokes a timeless twinge that sails through your body, a mild shock running stem to stern.  The feeling the image provokes has to be as ancient as our paleo diet and the group comradery that the hunt produces.

Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso take their best work from Paleo emotions. For an art gallery patron in Manhattan red on white can be visceral.  A good looking woman, a lady perhaps, dressed in a mink stole with Fee Fee the miniature poodle  tugging at its leash on Madison Ave is not as far removed from the red on white carnage as she might suppose.  

We are on the trail.  We are in pursuit of our wounded game.  The ethical duty to hunt our prey to the end has engaged.  We follow the spatters of crimson downhill into the tall timber.  Just at that moment, as the blood held our attention, another doe bounded over the edge of a hillock and just as I tried to put the scope on the animal I realized my partner was in front of me and only 30 degrees to the right.  A shot would be foolhardy and would label me as no one to hunt with in the future.  As the arc between animal and Josh widened, thirty, sixty and ninety degrees I rushed the trigger pull on my fast moving prey.  The animal would live to graze another day after it bounded deep into the forested canyon. 

Five minutes later we had the first animal and dispatched her with a knife to the jugular. Somehow we have come to praying over the animals we harvest.  I had some Indian friends once who insisted I adopt this practice. My Lakota, Dakota and Ute friends were kind enough to have me join them in a sweat lodge one sunny fall afternoon.  It was a broad daylight trip into the pitch dark underside of the world.  It was a profoundly spiritual trip built on trust and mild insanity.   I tie the images together.  Even if a person is an atheist the animal must be prayed for.  Permission must always be sought for it to enter the hunting grounds in the afterlife.  This is only common decency.  Cornmeal for the journey should always be thrown into the sky as the animal’s soul leaves the carcass.  

Josh began gutting and I backtracked to make sure the animal I had shot at was not leaving a trail of blood.  No luck for me.  I did a carefully expanding contour search and after finding no sign I returned to the site of the butchering.  The animal was a big one. 

We like to gut and skin the animals where they fall.  It takes some time, but we haven’t ruined any meat and we’re proud when we serve it up to family and friends.  Josh was a biology major and gutting and skinning an animal is always a bit of scientific enquiry for him. The process for Joshua is more than a necessary part of the kill and preservation of the meat. 

Here is where the advance in technology comes in.  I suggested to my son of twenty-five years that he mark our spot on the handheld GPS system.  Then he walked up the mountain toward the truck which was a good mile and a half from our butchering site.  I stayed behind.  I hoped the road that we passed earlier skirted somewhere near the kill site so we wouldn’t have to lug the animal over a mile to the truck.  Someone had to protect the kill from marauding bears.  Of course that was me. A smile crosses my face at the mere thought of a marauding bear.  After an hour Josh, almost as if by a miracle, walked out of the woods and directly toward the magical mark on the GPS device.  By that time I was sheltered comfortably from the wind and cold by my trusty old blue poncho tied between two aspen trees.  He came from a direction that was totally opposite the direction he had walked an hour earlier.  He handed me the GPS and I read 0.17 miles to the truck. 

Our next move may have been a mistake.  We tied the hooves together and inserted a long aspen tree snag between them.  Seems I had seen this done in an old movie and if memory serves it was about the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1806.  I could swear there was a scene with several Indians effortlessly hiking to their camp with a deer hanging from just such a pole.  It looked entirely easy-breezy. 

Well, we tried it, just like the film footage.  The long pole cut into my shoulder like a sharp implement.  The tiny 0.17 mile hike to the truck wasn’t easy at all.  We stopped several times.  That big ole doe was still heavy, even without its guts and hide. 

Christmas was just fourteen days away.  We wanted to bring the animals head into town for CWD testing by the Division of Wildlife.  We had another use for the head.  We told Bree, Josh’s wife, that we were going to bring the head home and paint it’s nose red so it might prove useful to Santa in some macabre way.  She saw no humor in this.

To the contrary.  We arrived home after dark and carefully covered the animal with a tarp so that neighborhood children wouldn’t see it. 

We butchered this one ourselves. I’m not good at this, but essentially if one just follows the musculatures natural course some nice pieces of meat can be had. 

Years ago, I shot a few mule deer around Dove Creek, Colorado in the pinto bean fields.  The lessons of proper meat preparation stuck with me.  Either do it right or the meat isn’t worth a damn. 

I hope I get to hunt for another twenty years.  But, if Josh is twenty-five years old in this hunting journal story that means I am fifty-six years old in the year of this hunt. 

Here I am at the age of sixty-nine.  I found the well preserved poorly handwritten account of this hunt in the basement just this morning.  The act of transcribing it brought all of the images, smells and the great feelings of camaraderie with my middle son back to life.  I am ever so grateful that Benjamin decided to join us in our hunts.  I hope we have a few more big game hunts together before I join the corn meal and the soul of the Mulley on the way to the Ute hunting grounds.