Evasion Can Have Its Own Dangers and Demons [Reader Post]

We often employ different evasions to escape the realities of life; often to be faced with even more grim circumstances.

I was trapping up the Cold Stream, a minor creek feeding into the Pine River, it was a small spur of a much larger government purchased trap line in the Peace River drainage. I had traps set on both banks for five miles from where I parked my 1981 F350, a truck I still own.

The creek had steep banks about twenty feet high; but the water was rarely over a foot or two deep at the bottom; except where the beaver made their damns, there the water might be 6 to 10 feet deep above the damn and a mere trickle down stream.

The ranchers in the area were pestering me to thin out the beaver, because their habits can flood good grazing land and disrupt water flow; but the truth was, I wasn’t a very good beaver trapper. Although I knew lots of techniques, I always asked older trappers about trapping beaver and they volunteered information, but I was rarely successful with beaver. It was much easier for me to shoot them in the spring, but the fur is only worth 20% of under the ice winter beaver. I had an unnatural ability for wolves, coyotes, and lynx; the old trappers asked me about my techniques with these animals, but I didn’t have or do anything special. I figure it is either mystical or else some animals like your scent or they don‘t. Some trappers spend a lifetime trapping and never get a wolf or coyote and I could get 4 or 5 in a night: without the ritual preparation of traps and snares. Pine Marten are so easy that children trap them. Fisher is an art and wolverine is war, but that is another story.

In the far North country, extremes of weather are the norm. This particular year in the early-eighties, we had a monsoon of rain in the middle of December. For ranchers and trappers this was a low level disaster. Hay that is normally left outside in the winter was being soaked and destroyed, creeks were overflowing their banks and the water was not being absorbed so run off was destroying cultivated fields. The trappers couldn’t cross the flooding rivers so traps weren’t checked and many beaver sets were washed away with the flood.

The beaver doesn’t live in his damn, the damn provides a decent pool of water so that he can carry on with his semi-aquatic life style. His home will be a burrow in the bank or a castle of sticks and mud in the pond he has created. They are semi-communal animals that only cooperate up to a point. Normally, a mating pair will set up house keeping and have a litter of little beaver or kits. The beaver like many humans likes to think of himself as a Communist, however the forces of nature often test their Marxist creed to the limit; when a beaver home is destroyed in winter, it is imperative that he and his family move in with another family who posess better design and construction skills. That’s when the brotherhood of Communism begins to break down and the animals fight. These are not wrestling matches like the wrestling federation matches on TV, they fight for real and savage each other with their two enormous rodent incisors that are as big as your two index fingers placed side by side. Thus they end up with deep cuts and scars and I have to listen to the fur buyer explain how the international monetary system is going to fail because of beaver fighting, damn those Communists to Hell anyway.

Right after the winter monsoon stopped, the temperature dropped to forty below for two days and then warmed up to a comfortable twenty below. This caused all the water and mud to turn to ice with no snow, a dangerous situation for horses and cows. If their hind legs spread laterally they break their pelvis and a bullet is the kindest thing you can do or them.

I used my Husquvarna 480 chainsaw to cut a trail for the horses and cows. The trail was actually ice chips from running the saw along the ice, leaving a gravel-like path that would provide a foundation for manure that would soon freeze and left-over feed to accumulate eventually providing a safe area for the livestock. That’s a lot of saw work for two hundred cows and eight horses.

After taking care of my livestock, I headed out to the trap line to see what disasters had befallen out there. My closest run was the Coldstream. There was no snow, so a snowmobile was out of the question, I would check the line at a fast walk, these are the foot hills, but the country is still rough and steep. The creek had frozen at the top of its banks and since it flowed down from the high mountains, I could only imagine the raging torrent that boiled beneath the ice. Walking on river ice is risky business, if the ice breaks and the current carries you away, there is no reason to be overly concerned, because the bears will have you for dinner in the spring. Consequently, I try to stay off river ice as much as possible, especially if the river is over a few feet deep. The Coldstream looked to be about twenty foot deep because of the flood. Ice can give you nightmares if you know what can go wrong.

I decided to make this run with my rifle, a thirty inch ax on my belt and some traps, pliers, matches, a tarp, emergency rations, and snare wire all stowed in a back pack.

I would almost jog the whole distance, since I could rest at each set to freshen it up and hopefully retrieve fur. The catch was pretty good under the circumstances and my pack was getting heavier, nearly all my beaver sets were under the ice so they were probably in the Peace river by now. I reached the last set on the North side of the river and a big boar beaver was in a 330 Connibear across the river next to his burrow hole. I used the ax and fell a twelve inch diameter Poplar across the river and walked over to receive my bounty. There was one problem, he had fought hard before giving up the ghost and died on his back with the valuable guard hairs that command the highest prices, frozen into the mud. He was huge, if I just picked him up and ripped out the guard hairs he would lose over half his value.

With resignation I built a fire to help thaw his fat carcass out of its frozen trap, but at twenty below it was going to take all night to get melt the ice that held him. I decided to use my less than superior skills with an ax and chop through the frozen mud and take him home to my fur shack with a block of mud frozen to his back.

If a large man were to make a circle with his arms so that his fingers don’t quite touch, that would be the approximate size of this beaver that was frozen to the earth. I chopped and chopped sat down, boiled some tea had a biscuit and moose jerky, and chopped some more. I was beginning to wish I had never caught this beaver.

I was sweated up pretty well by the time I laced him unto my pack, doubling the weight I was now carrying as darkness settled around me. A few minutes after starting back to the truck, I heard an unearthly noise up on the hill above me.

A female mountain lion was in heat and she was agitated. Every hair on my body stood up. This was no joking matter. She sounded like she was out of her mind with desire and was not getting the attention she craved; coincidentally, I was carrying the boar beaver with the castors that have been the main component of the perfumes that have driven men and women alike into lust and acts of perversion for hundreds of years. It never did much for me, but I wasn’t the main issue here. This big cat that is all hot and bothered is the issue, and she is fast coming down the mountain. I tried to hurry my pace while analyzing the situation. I couldn’t move fast in the dark and she was gaining on me, I was already tired from chopping the beaver out of the ice, the weight of the beaver was slowing me down, the moon and stars were hidden behind cloud cover and there was no snow to provide light and the big cat was getting closer. I thought of my best friend and hunting partner Knarley Manners, he caught a big male lion in a wolf snare by accident and had it on his living room wall. It didn’t look that much smaller than an African Lion.

It was so dark now, that the scope on my rifle made the weapon almost useless and now the cat was close enough to attack, if she was romantically inclined, it was for sure she would be mad when she found out I wasn’t the handsome cat she was seeking. She was close enough now that she could rush me and take me down without me being able to see her. I had no choice, I walked out on the ice to at least have a little bit of light from the ice. I stepped lightly and carefully walking at an angle trying to keep a watch downstream towards the truck and behind me for the big cat. I had three miles to go and figured that either me or the cat was going to die in the next few minutes. Then it dawned on me, throw the pack on the bank and head for the truck with just the rifle. I should have done it when I first heard the cat. I laid the rifle on the ice and went through the contortions to get the pack off, I have wide shoulders and pack aren’t really designed for people like me, thus it is hard to unload a pack. Needless to say, I was in a hurry.

Finally, I got the pack off and took a step toward the bank to toss the pack and CRACK! The ice broke and I felt myself falling, I closed my eyes and waited for the freezing water to envelop me and sweep me away to a cold watery death.

There was a lightening bolt of pain that shot through my brain as I landed on a boulder with my tail bone and heard it crack, I rolled to my right in pain and fell off the boulder and my ax head encased in its sheath caught in the graon my belt broke two ribs on the right side and knocked the air out of me. I was in pain but alert enough to grasp the situation.

The river had frozen in flood stage when the temperature dropped to forty below, then the water ran out and eft this unbelievable ceiling of ice marking the crest of the river.

I was beneath a river of ice, maybe a million tons of ice, ice that can break into huge slabs the size of a truck and as sharp as a razor with a mountain lion walking on it that might weigh 250 to 300 pounds. A lion that might jump down here with me laying in 4 inches of water with a broken tail bone, at least one broken rib and no weapon except for a very dull ax. I stood up and backed up against the North bank, if she came for me at least it wouldn’t be from behind and I’d have at least one good swing with the ax.

With my rifle on top of the ice I waited, realizing that the ice had no support beneath it and it was only a matter of time until the whole ceiling of ice came crashing down, crushing anything in its way.

The cat came up to the hole I had just fallen through with its half cry and half growl; I thought the ice might give way from her noise alone. In the mean time, I was breathing through clenched teeth as quietly as possible because of the pain. The moon came out and illuminated the cat’s silhouette through the ice, she smelled the rifle and sent it skidding across the ice with her paw. She walked over to my pack and turned it over, she gave it a good slap and sent it spinning down the ice, she leaped and chased it across the ice, while I held my breath and watched her flex the ice ceiling with each stride. When she caught up to the pack, she picked it up and walked out of my life, not even offering a thank you for the big beaver and several other fur bearers in the pack along with a biscuit and a little moose jerky, all that meat would provide her a very tasty winter meal.

Although the big cat was gone, my problems were far from over; if you can imagine being under a building that is about to collapse, that is what it felt like. Now, I had to plan my escape.

Chopping a hole near the bank might mean bring all the ice down on me and digging a cave in the bank might have the same effect. There was a solution, I just had to figure it out.

I sat there for a couple of hours before I heard footsteps in the gravel of the stream bed. Could there be someone else trapped under the ice? Not likely, there isn’t another human being for thirty miles. This guy was big or else the sound was being amplified by the natural amphitheater of the ice ceiling, he sounded like he must be twelve feet tall. I still had my back to the wall and the slow heavy footsteps continued to get closer and closer. It had to be the devil himself, nothing walked down here under the ice and nothing was that big, then I saw the eyes they were glowing red like two bright embers with the light from the moon. I gripped the ax with both hands, I was going to go down swinging, this demon or devil would know he had been in a fight, I was not going down easy. Still he came with the crunching noises louder and louder until he stopped in front of me and stood up.

It was another beaver, he looked at me as if to ask what was I doing under the ice and then combed the hair on his head and face backwards with the scent oils he carries on his belly, shrugged his shoulder and continued down stream, I laughed but my ribs hurt so much I had to quit. Right then, I knew how to get out; the beaver gave me the idea, he would just build a platform out of what ever was available and climb up through the hole and walk away.

I built my tower out of logs and large rocks until I could climb out on the ice, this time I crawled on all fours to dissipate my weight, I crawled over to my rifle and then off of that deadly trap of a river. The night sky was beautiful, my truck started right away and I drove home a much more humble man.

Just as I was evading the very real danger of a mountain lion acting in an unpredictable manner, President Obama is evading his responsibilities as a
War Time President. I was alone and if luck would have turned against me whether I acted in a cowardly manner or not would have been debated if someone had found my remains. Obama is in front of the world and considered to be acting in a cowardly and reprehensible manner. Evasion of responsibilities while our military is watching for the lion behind them is beyond cowardice; it is being irresponsible and flippant with other people’s lives.

Obama may feel safe under the ceiling of ice, but hiding from danger and responsibility while waiting for the roof to cave in is perhaps the most dangerous position of all not necessarily for the President but for America. There are no more places to hide, President Obama must live up to his oath of office, there is no Affirmative Action Free Pass with a military involved in two wars and a country’s economic well being at stake. This is not a pretend political science class in college, there is no room for a personal political agenda of Socialism. Young patriots have their very lives at stake, our citizenry is in danger of losing their economic wealth and President Obama dithers over his image in the public eye and takes international excursions that do nothing more than weaken America’s international presence and prestige with no discernable purpose other than giving President Obama time to dither and pose.

The world is waiting Mr. Obama, stand up and take responsibility for leadership or let someone with the courage of their convictions lead this country.