“You got lot of rattlesnakes up there!”

To my amusement the area where our ranch is at has been blessed or rumored to have an abundance of rattlesnakes.  I have on more than one occasion been asked or told that.  I sort of have problems with sentence structure in this case.  I have to ask you the reader am I missing something.  Both sound a lot alike to me.

“You got lot of rattlesnakes up there!”

“You got lot of rattlesnakes up there?”

To which I usually reply, “Depends what is a lot of snakes.  To some people one is a whole bunch.”  Then I study their eyes and their voice.  If they reply, “No I mean, you got lot of rattlesnakes up there!”  I take that as being a statement.  The person has been there and made an assessment and determined to the best of his or her ability on their own snake-o-meter that there is indeed a bunch around.

However if they sort of quiver and look confused then I understand at that point it was a question.  And I may try to qualify an answer, however I figure I have already answered their question.  Or they may feel zero snakes of any kind is worlds of plenty.  Or if they quiz me more like on how do you avoid being bitten.  I just tell them only step where you can see, walk on top the rocks, and avoid walking through the brush.  Besides the brush and long grass has ticks in it.  Ticks cause more harm than the snakes with their Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever that killed my great grandfather (Mom’s side of the family) and lyme disease that for few years had one of my best buddies pretty well laid up.  (The guy that owns the lumber yard.)  And I do not know a soul that has been killed by a rattlesnake.  I do know on fellow that was sickened badly by one.  I know that talk of snakes and ticks does little to attract tourists to my small piece of Heaven and sort of makes me wonder if my little piece of Heaven is really Heaven.  But then I discovered a long time ago, not to be rude.  But I really don’t care if anyone discovers it up there or not.          

About snakes, driving those dirt roads now and then I will see a bull snake sunning itself.  I stop, get out, grab my shovel and walk up to it.  By now nine chances out of ten it is trying to act like a rattlesnake it has coiled and is hissing.  I take my shovel and sort of scoop it up and fling it off the road into the grass or the bush so it can live another day and harvest more ground squirrels and mice.  I sort of think people really do not take time to think of nature and the way it was set up to control pests.  They kill all the snakes, coyotes and badgers from an area and then are over run by mice and ground squirrels.  Then they complain about it!  Yet I do agree some need to be thinned, culled, or popped now and then when they become a nuisance.   

To be truthful even the rattlesnake population during our drought years took a tremendous hit in population.  In fact I went several years without seeing any.   Not that I really missed them.  During those years the one I did see was in the middle of the road on the Dawes Grade in the South Fork of the Boise canyon.  It was right after a freaky down pour and had been washed most likely off the steep hillside above and ended up in the road.  I stopped, got out and grabbed my shovel out of the back end of my pick up.  I found it to be dazed, confused and a tad bit upset sort of like when you have been caught in a down pour.

About half way up the Dawes Grade.  It was cloudier and wetter that day.......

 If I would have been a ‘kid’ again I would have chopped its head off.  Cut the rattles off and flipped the remains into the barrow pit and been on my way.  The rattles would have went into where ever I was keeping them at that point in time.  However this time I asked myself why kill this reptile especially where it was at especially when their number are dwindling.  No horses, cattle, kids or fishermen nor trails around these part.  It is a half mile or better to the river and mostly very steep down to the water and fishermen never frequent there that I have seen.  So I placed my shovel under this coiled rattling leviathan of the land and gave him a flip off the road.  I felt good.  I guess the older I get the less I like to harm creatures that do not really pose a problem at the time to myself nor others nor property.

Where the coiled rattling leviathan of the land went over the edge......

This euphoria continued through to a rattlesnake I chanced upon in the Willow Creek grade there at the switchback below the Kesl Place.   He was sort of short but big around. True to most rattlesnakes I have seen like that, he really wanted to hold his ground and struck my shovel several times before I tossed him over the edge.  Each time he struck my shovel would sort of thump.  This was the same type of place as in the canyon.  Once again I patted myself on the back……

Switchback below the Old Kesl Place

Then coming out in the evening a couple years ago I ran across one that was not in a good spot.  Cattle are prone to shade up there, there is a ditch close by that carries irrigation water to the Dement Place.  People frequent here.  They stop and take photos of the canyon, let their dogs go for runs or let the kids jump in the ditch.

The ditch to the Dement Place.

  So I decided after I ran the data I was going to whack this one.   I grabbed my trusty shovel and walked back to where I had spotted him.  He was missing, no where to be found, oh such an allusive reptile. Twas a pizzlement of the moment, yet me being the tracker that I am.  (Tracking a snake in road dust is not hard nor a great feat.)  I seen where this mighty reptile had scurried himself into the brush.  I started in after it, I shall not be denied.  Then it dawned on me as if a light shown down from above.  The shovel was not the right caliber for snake fighting in the brush.  So I bid retreat to the pick up and chose my 45 caliber wheel gun.  A revolver copied and patterned after the instrument that won the West.  (It, the railroads, barb wire and lot of hard working no nonsense people actually.)  ((The stupid dumb ones came later when they had passed enough laws they figured they could survive in this harsh environ.))  (((That is a later installment.)))   My wife and dogs did not offer any assistance in this effort.  My dogs do not like any of my guns and my wife has been suckered into too many of these to fall for another one. 

As I returned to the spot I looked into the bush and the rock.  I held my 45 Single Action Long Colt in my left hand.  (I’m left handed.)  I trembled not as I studied intently on my path of entry into this beasts den.  I studied where to place each foot and where each hand hold was.  I wondered why I was making this into a Peter H. Chapstick hunt in my mind.  His book Death in the Long Grass ran through my mind.  Yes, why pass up even a small chance at some drama.  So as I proceeded into in to this thicket of willows and rocks.  As I enter the thicket I hear nary a rattlesnake rattle.  Maybe he is old and crafty with wisdom beyond his years.  He most likely is laying in ambush under a rock.  Then at that point I decide to change from Capstick’s book Death in the Long Grass to Death in Silent Places another good read.  And I jumped a top of a rock.   As I studied the rocks below and the dense small willows growing in this thicket, the floor of which was carpeted with leaves and branches.  Knowing the craftiness and skill of natures camouflage, I felt myself dropping into a weakened state or condition.

The willows then were bigger, they have to 'clean' them out every so often or the ditch would plug up.

  Then I reasoned if I did get a shot off, most likely the ricocheting lead bouncing off the rocks would have had a good chance wounding me or worse.  Still faltering I could not help from thinking of the one on the switchback by the Old Kesl place and how it thumped my shovel with a thump, thump, thump.  Only to discover the thump, thump, thump - that was my Atrial Fibrillation with Rapid Ventricular Response which normally does little to bother me.  However with this anomaly I came to the stark realization,  just what the heck am I doing here.  None of the cows here are mine, and if people let their dogs and kids out there they ought to know:  “You got lot of rattlesnakes up there!”                         

The Ferry to Bella Bella


Another writer and I were sort of trading things back and forth a while back.  This trip Ellen, Cheri and I made up the Inland Passage of Canada came to mind.  Cheri was still in high school then I think.....


The Ferry to Bella Bella

I know not the name of the Canadian ferry we rode between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert.  I know not even the year.  I do know that we had to put in at Bella Bella a first nations village on the Inland Passage.  A First Nations person or native indian explained to me as we stood leaning on the rail of the ship watching the world go by.  We for some reason came together there on the rail he a little older than I and we spent hours talking about his world of logging and fishing, and mine as a locomotive engineer,  livestock and ranch.  Exchanging our worlds as we talked, we pointed out eagles and osprey.  Seals and what might be an orca now and then to each other.  He explained Bella Bella was only a flag stop on the route up and down the Inland Passage.  Meaning if there were passengers or freight for there they  would put in.  I do not think at the time there was a place to off load autos.  Little reason as there are no real roads into nor out of Bella Bella from what he told me.  In fact it is on an island.  Campbell Island I found out later.

As the ferry put into the dock we were greeted by one of the most wonderful adventures I have ever over looked.  On the dock there was a huge metal stair way sitting there on the dock.   The back ground was village and Canadian Pacific green.  The foreground was not ground but  rather inland passage water.  Though I am sure there was play ground equipment some where at a school or park in the village however this was the happening at the moment place for the kids.  After all the big ferry was  coming to town, momma or dad or aunts or uncles, may be grandmother from Victoria would be getting off.  Indian children were hanging off the stairway.  Some hung up side down knees locked around pipes and iron supports.  Looking at the world up side down.  Coats and sweater and shirts hung down over there heads as they looked at the upside down wold.  Shouting and waving at us as we approached.  Some of the most daring boys and a girl or two climbed high up underneath almost to the top.

Dogs that had apparently accompanied the children and the adults to the dock were backing excitedly.   Some too excitedly for some of the other dogs and soon several dog fights started on the dock as if by command.  No one seemed overly concerned about the dog fights and the dogs seemed to be able too by nature sort out  their differences very well on their own.  With a few sharp bites and tugs and growls, yollows and whimpers it was all over with.  No one came running to defend their dog.  If any were really their dogs or they might belong to the village.  Dogs might like it as well when the ferry comes to town.  This seemed to be a raw real world.  One where one lived only because you were able to live life there.

Amid the kids waving and laughing, a few adults standing around chatting and the dogs barking and fighting.  A 1978 or so Ford pickup made its appearance.  You could only tell that this was a 1978 Ford pickup because of the general out line of rust.  It was rusted through in more spots than it seemed to be held together with.   Slowly it drove up to the stairway and the kids shimmied and slid down off the stairway with the expertise of a high steel worker or firemen coming down a fire-pole.  They mostly hid from the driver.  He was shouting something at them in some tongue we could not understand.  He got out of the rusty pick up he seemed to be the boss.  He too was First Nations as were the deck hands.  They wore jackets or uniforms from the Canadian Ferry Line I guess to look official.  No one seemed all that impressed and more a job requirement.     

Ropes were heaved to the dock from the ferry.   After tying the ferry off to the dock, the deckhands all joined together in the ritual of shoving the huge metal stairway to the boat.  And the pilgrimage ended for some.  As a few men and ladies all seemed to be First Nations People or indians where I am from.  They made their way down the stairs.  Most carried boxes.  Kids and adults were shouting and waving at friends and relatives as they made their way down the huge stairway.  On the dock there were kisses and hugs and handshakes and nods and grins.  There was a ocean going  kayak expedition that off loaded as well.  Brightly colored yellow kayaks and fancy bags and grips and water-tights and dry boxes and on and on was carried down the stairs.  They so looked out of place in this place.  A place of wool mackinaws, blue jeans and stout leather work boots.  It was a place of fishing clothes and rubber boots.  Not plastic boats and synthetic carry ons.  It was a place where people lived in nature as part of it.  It hardly seemed to be a place to be attended for a week or two by outsiders.  Their presence there almost seemed to profane the place.   It was a place that nature begrudgingly let the hardy stay and let a few really live there.   

When all the ceremonial colonial off loading from the sea going expedition was accomplished.  Then the pilgrimage started for others up to Prince Rupert.  All carrying boxes tied with rope, there seemed to be an absence of American Touristor luggage, soft sides, or rollabouts.  This was real travel in the real world for these people.  A place you left only if you have to.  It was Sunkist Navel Orange boxes from Florida and Ruby Red Grapefruit boxes from Texas, it was apple boxes from Winanachee. Washington.  All tied  with rope.  Half inch hemp or line from a fishing boat, or twine from some ones unpacking.    How many wives here would even think of going some where, anywhere without at least a matching set of Costco soft sides?  Oh the embarrassment here in the states if men were seeing their women off and women were seeing their men off with Sunkist Orange and Grapefruit boxes.

The lines soon were hauled in, huge doors on the ship slid shut and we were started to pull away from the dock.  I could not take my eyes of this picture of real kids, and real people and their real world.  Then suddenly something else started to unfold on the dock.  The rusty pick up as starting to leave and drive back up the dock to the island.  The kayak expedition was still taking up most of the dock.  One had its bow or stern turned to the pickup.  Hard to tell kayaks especially when you do not know them.    The pick up ran over the projecting kayak and just kept right on going.  Someone from the expedition now was running after the pickup as hard as he could run, shouting and waving his fist.  The pick up never deviated its speed but clearly was winning the foot race....

I have often wondered the outcome of that accident.  Do kids still climb and hang from the stairs at Bella Bella?  Do dogs still fight on the docks?   Does drugs and alcohol take it tole on the First Nations peoples in Bella Bella as it does across this whole continent and the countries with-in?  Or are they lucky enough to have missed it?  I do not know what the soul connection was to Bella Bella that day.  I do know I would not fit there if I were to return.  I am not a First Nations person.  But oh how it stuck to me.  Stuck deep in my heart.  Oh how at times have I wanted to return?  Something in me wants to get off that ship in my work boots, blue jeans, flannel shirt and a wool mackinaw, pull a wool cap watch cap down over my head and yes carrying a Sunkist Grapefruit box on my shoulder.

I step on that dock turn and walk up the dock to the streets and roads of Bella Bella.  I nod politely at the ladies, stop and joke with the kids and teens.  Talk to the men asking about their families.  You still married?   How was the hunt?  The catch - what is running?  No halibut; still early yet; yes?   Your working in the timber where?  Wow your are lucky fellow, thats good job!  Man hang on to it!  You here for just your days off?   When you due to be back?  How are the kids?  Any chance we play some cards and drink some coffee?  When the Sockeye return this year we go fishing then okay?  Any crab jobs on up the coast?  Early winter?  Damn chilly wind for now!

Yep!!  Damn chilly wind for now!

String Trimmers, Global Warming and Cow Pies


Right after dad passed away I posted this to a forum on CountryPlans.Com  http://www.countryplans.com/ If you go there there, on the banner there is forum.  We are a loose knit family from all over.  We share our dreams.  There are a few very knowledgeable people there in the build trades.  There are some who never really will drive a nail yet we all dream.....


I hope you enjoy......
String Trimmers, Global Warming and Cow Pies

Because of certain events in the last week or two like a death in the family, then before that there was rain, rain then hot temps and high winds.  More trips up to the ranch than I think I really did.  So in other words we were far behind.

I woke up to the fact that the weeds were about to take over in couple places we cannot spray or do not spray.  No!  Strike that thought!  No, not about spraying, but the weeds.  They had taken over.  So after we finally got our garden in.  We plant mainly anymore  just a salsa garden.  With lots and lots of tomatoes and peppers then some the summer squash and cucumbers.  I decided it was time to attack the weeds.

I first had to run to the gas station and with a 2.5 gallon gas can for two gallons of gas to mix with two cycle oil.  Not really a can, I do remember those however.  Just old verbiage and nouns are hard to.......  Anyway this one is plastic and it does have the old spout.  Once again thank you Mr. Government for making life safer and simpler.  Have you actually tried to fill a chainsaw from one of those new gas cans?  It is sort of like needing someone to help you tinkle when you have both arms broke at the same time.  These new spouts and cans are a far worse danger than the old ones were ever made out to be.  They are going to spill more fuel and cause more fires than any of the old ones.

Two gallons of gas and two cycle oil worked out to about $10.00.  Remember when you could..........?  Actually two gallons of two cycle gas for most people is like a whole summer and fall with a normal sized city lot and dispose of some when snow flies in the winter.  Rick and Ellen go through that fairly quickly with two acres here and the ranch up there.  We heat mostly with wood.  Last year was 100% with wood.  So I very seldom let the fuel get old and stale. 

So it was time to unbury the string trimmer from the corner in the tool shed.  The head was full of line and there was even a fresh spool hang on the wall.  I think Ellen was outfitting me for action.  Can you remember when you got string trimmer line next to something and it would snap off.  Then you had to pull the head all apart and find the end of the string and rethread it and on and on!  Well that was aggravating.  However it at least gave you a break.  One to stop, rest your back and re-thread.  Not so with the new lines today.  You run them wide open and for a whole tank of fuel and the head just happily spins and dispenses line whistling and humming and thumping and a line never breaks.

I filled it with fresh fuel and gave the rope a pull.  Half hoping that the starter rope would not pull.  But the big old Husky-var-na trimmer roared to life.  And I commenced the spring ritual of mass string trimming.  Plus this gives me an opportunity to make my carbon footprint larger.  That seems important to me right now as I struggle with who am I?  This after the loss of my father.  Strange at 60 years old I now seem to be wondering just who the heck I am.  He was always there, even though the last couple years his short term memory was gone most the time.  He was still dad and my mentor and the family leader.   Now it is just me, well there is Ellen, but she is a girl.
 
I started in the Idaho Power easement, a wasteland of cheatgrass and foxtail this time of year.  It is most likely 25 foot wide and 120 foot long of which we really can not do anything with.  I own it, I pay taxes on it.  However I really cannot put a shed on it, I really can not landscape it.  It is just a dry part of my lot.  Idaho Power has to be able to get in there in the event of line or transformer repair.  It does serve as a good no mans land between me and my neighbor to the west.  Strange as I think of it. I have my yard fence there.  (Chain link, tall and stout.)  Then there is the easement, twenty five feet of no man's land.  Then there is the fence on the property line.  Then when the neighbor built his house he also installed a chain link corral for his five or six kids and growing family.  Plus this time of the year with all the foliage there is in my yard.  Landscaping which would make a landscape architect pass out, hardly with envy.  That, as well as the neighbors landscaping which looks a little more professionally done.  So if you are in my yard do not try to escape to the west.  I spent a day there string trimming the easement  Well it seemed like a day but closer to an hour.  Well long enough to run out of both fuel and string.  I stopped for a cool glass of water and to check my e-mail before I went out to conquer a few thistles and wild ash trees with the sprayer and the Agent Orange.  When I had finished defoliating my little portion of the world, and before protestors arrived on the scene, next on the agenda was string trimming a cattle corral.

The cattle corral where also there was an an over abundance of cheatgrass and foxtail grass and hidden down in them were these carefully disguised cow pies.  The weather being warm and if you have ever or never been around cow pies or the leavings after a cow does it’s thing.  I might need to explain cow feces is thin not watery thin but a little thicker than.....well if you are a concrete guy lets say about a eight or ten inch slump.  If you are a cook it it is sort of like a thick cake batter or pie filling.  The hot sun and weather sort of crusts it over.  It looks hard yet the inside remains remarkably fresh.

If you were in a pasture environment when you were a kid.  (There were more of us then, than now by a long shot.)  Spring arrived and off came the shoes.  As a kid the first thing you figured out do not step on the honey bees with bare feet!   They will sting you and somehow get their stinger into the most calloused feet.  The next thing is just because cow pie looks hard does not mean it is.  Just because the top may be brown and hard looking, it is a trick do not go there.  That is insulating that soft gooey center.  I am sure that universities have studied the time it takes to set up firm.  Those findings would be set into a step chart table with humidity and ambient temperatures.

I do not think anything pulls your mind back into reality of the moment, as when you sort of have your mind in coast.  You do not have the Agricultural University’s chart in hand.  No, you are just doing a mundane thing of weed whacking or string trimming.  You think you are in full control, the motor is running at a full open.  Fittingly making the largest carbon footprint it and you can possibly produce.  The trimmer's head is happily spinning and dispensing line, whistling and humming and thumping.  Suddenly your safety glasses are green and you can not see.  Your hands and face are moist and green, you and your clothes now smell like cow pooo-pooo.  You cannot believe it, and true to human nature you have to look and then take a second look. Like what caused that?  Did I hit a cow pie?  No silly, remember if cows could fly.  It was just a good thing you were not looking up.  Or your mouth was not open!

Then another thought came to my mind.  What if dad in his passing and he and his old cowboy and mischief friend.  My great uncle Bob Simmons just dropped in for the moment.  Not that I think stuff like that occurs.  However I could not help from thinking of Dad and Uncle Bob standing in the yard watching and laughing and Uncle Bob saying,  “By golly Dord he did it.”