Keys To Survival, Intelligent Choices And A Bit Of Luck

Knarley Manners and I were packing in about twenty horses. We had enough supplies for two months and would be guiding a series of hunters for seven to ten day hunts the whole time. It seems like a lot of hunting pressure, but the area we would be guiding was about 1,800 square miles. There was lots of game and hunters would be hunting several different species elk, moose, sheep, goats, mule deer, black, and Grizzly.

We were fairly confident guides for teenagers; still, there is always that feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you wonder if the game will be in the area. Animals can quit an area without rhyme or reason and then reappear at a later date out of the blue. I’m sure these mysterious events caused famine among the indians and early settlers; especially, since there are no guarantees when it comes to survival in nature or politics.

Knarley and I moved pack horses well together, we grew up as neighbors and best friends from six miles away. Since we were boys, if we wanted to visit one another it was necessary to saddle a horse and ride over to see your neighbor, hoping your friend would be home. We grew up hunting, fishing, packing, and trapping together; consequently, we always knew what the other one was doing or would do in a tense situation.

Moving twenty seasoned pack horses through the mountains, for us, was fairly routine. The horses were all tied head to tail in two different strings of ten each, except for our saddle horses. The knots were quick release knots that came undone by pulling the end of the tail of the horse in front or by pulling the end of the lead shank of the following horse. You never tie the lead pack horse to your saddle horse’s tail or to your saddle horn; unless, you figure you need a short lease on life. With that much horse power and with the dangers inherent in the mountains and rivers, a rider must be free to move quickly. No matter how careful you are on the trail, there will be an occasional emergency. Knarley and I had seen so many we have forgotten most of them and yet, we still laugh at the ones that were funny.

On this particular trip, Knarley’s uncle would be bringing in new hunters and taking out previous hunters and their trophies with a Beaver DeHavilland float plane. Of corse we needed a base camp close to the lake with plenty of forage for the horses. They would be staying with us for the next two months for better or worse. We hoped we wouldn’t have heavy snowstorms, monsoon rains, or prolonged periods of forty below. There is a certain amount of luck involved with hunting and life, if you don’t have some luck now and then, life is a lot tougher. That’s just the way it is and there is no changing that part of the equation.

We saw a nice campsite at the North end of the lake, from a high elevation, there was a long valley with steep sides that should keep the horses content with feed for several weeks and the position would give us some exposure to all the sun and warmth the clouds let through. We had to climb down a fairly steep hill side, that was no problem, but we ran into a large rock that blocked access to the last sixty yards or so, it was a huge piece of granite sitting on about a 30 degree incline. A man could walk down it, if he were cautious, but it would be suicide for horses. It was four foot high and the lateral ends were embedded in cliff sides, if we could’ figure a way around this big rock we would need to backtrack a half day to get into our camp site. Knarley quickly rode the length of the rock and found a fissure in the rock that might have been a million years old. This huge rock was split from top to bottom with a space just wide enough for a pack horse and his panniers.

Knarley rode down the trail through the rock to make sure there were no unseen problems, while I untied all the quick release knots. The trail seemed simple, but if one horse has a problem, while they are tied, they are all involved in the problem. Knarley rode down the trail without a problem and signaled for me to follow. I led one of the lead pack horses, the type that the others look up to, and I started down with a feeling of trepidation. I was barely into the fissure when I heard the pack horses crowding the entrance to follow. I talked to them in a soothing voice to try and get them to take their time coming down this trail. The last thing I needed was a stampede of pack horses over the top of me. I heard the pack boxes being smashed against the rock walls and I could feel them bumping into my lead pack horse as they kept rushing into the fissure to avoid being left behind.

With a feeling of relief, I broke into the area at the bottom and now the pack horses were coming as fast as they could through the opening. We tied the horses to trees and laughed at how we had skated by disaster once again; except for one problem, Moose, our biggest packhorse with the oversize kitchen panniers was missing. We looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find him.

Suddenly, one of us looked up above to see Moose trying to wedge himself into the fissure. His panniers were at least four inches too wide and he didn’t like the tightness of the rock walls.

Moose came by his name honestly, for when nature designed the moose she might have been hung over. The head is overly large, the neck is short, the legs are long, but the moose can run twenty miles, swim like a fish, split a wolf’s skull with a stabbing strike from a front hoof, and run straight up a frozen cliff as easily as running on open ground. The horse Moose, looked like this most strange member of the deer family from a distance, but he didn’t have the redeeming qualities or at least we didn’t know of any. Knarley entered the fissure on foot to run up to Moose before he came on through and smashed the kitchen gear. I was supposed to talk to him from down below and prevent him from making a disastrous error.

Moose entered the fissure several times and tried to squeeze his way through, but he just didn’t like the tightness of the rock walls. I could see him looking at the top of the huge rock and I could see the slow moving gears turning in his brain.

Suddenly, with the grace of a Whitetail, he jumped up on the rock and stood looking to the bottom. Knarley was now at top speed and I was saying, “No Moose, don’t do it, wait a minute! Knarley will be there to take off the packs and you can walk right down like the rest of them. Don’t do it, Moose.”

All my life, people have told me I have the ability to communicate with horses, but it has been times like this that have kept me from believing them.

Moose took one step forward and suddenly came barreling down like a runaway locomotive with the brakes locked up. You could see the look of disbelief in his eyes as each of his four shoes made a fiery trail of sparks and he struggled to keep his weight over those four shoes. It was a terrifying ten seconds or so until he reached the bottom, if he would have fallen it would have probably been the end of old Moose, but he displayed a tremendous sense of balance. I could smell the hooves burning after the slide and he was picking up each hoof in a futile effort to cool his feet. I led him into the lake and the cooling effect on his hot hooves gave him a noticeable sense of relief.

I looked at his shoes later on. They were as thin as pie plates and the nail heads were almost completely worn away, but they were still on, maybe by inertia alone, but they would stay there until tomorrow when I would nail on another set of shoes.

Now at first glance, this seems to be the kind of story that two old hunters have retold many times to relive the days of their youth, but in a larger sense it is a reflection of the current administration and a continuous series of poor choices.

Recently, our president blamed the Republican party for failing to allow passage of immigration reform; despite controlling all three branches of government for two years. In El Paso, he asked if Republicans are going to insist on moats with alligators before they are willing to accept reform. While prodding the crowd, he managed to get them shouting, “they’re racists”. This technique is being used after playing the racial divide by telling Hispaics to be ready to punish their enemies. This use of vile rhetoric is a decision that is a poor choice of tactics and strategy. Even if President Obama manages to slide down the rock with his shoes sending out sparks, his derisive rhetoric and racism will mar his legacy forever.

President Obama was confused and bewildered over the sudden appearance of an extra $5 trillion of debt during a speech a few weeks ago. Perhaps someone should have written that it was a Democrat controlled government between 2009 and 2011. Perhaps his own debt commission that he ignored might have kept him from jumping up on that rock and embarrassing himself.

If not raising taxes was the plan in December 2010, why has it become imperative to raise them in the spring of 2011? This seems to be the moments of indecision in deciding to force your way through the fissure or to jump on the rock face.

The decision to vote against raising the debt ceiling was an example fiscal responsibility when we owed $8 trillion in 2006, but now that we owe $14 trillion it is unavoidable. Again, we could feel sorry for poor Moose’s indecision, he was but a poor dumb beast faced with difficult decisions.

We are led to believe that to become energy independent, we must give billions to a Soros oil company in Brazil to drill offshore and that act will lower the price of oil; however, it is environmentally dangerous for our companies to drill offshore and they wont affect the price of oil, besides Brazil will benefit from the jobs, but we wont. Again, we see Moose on the rock face and about to take that first step.

In the most recent presidential scolding of big business, Obama tells businesses that they need to break down and start hiring people; while the NLRB brings Boeing into court for having the audacity to build a new plant in South Carolina, a right to work state. In a manner that seems naive, our president thinks businesses make decisions like he does with little or no thought or design. In reality businesses must make decisions that are sound and will keep a business in the black. When businesses are faced with tyranny like the suit by the NLRB, they are one step closer to taking their manufacturing offshore and giving up on the antibusiness policies of Obama.

In the new age of civility prescribed by President Obama, he has the temerity to invite a faux gangster rap artist to the White House to presumably celebrate his work that edifies a cop killer and promotes violent action against former President Bush. Another example of poor decision making by the president that accomplishes nothing, but places his integrity and intelligence in question.

Obama is literally making and changing decisions daily. Drill here, drill there, oh no drilling wont affect the price of oil unless Brazil drills for the oil or we ask the Middle East to pump more oil. He has become reliant on the media to bail him out of his changing positions and ignorant decisions; unfortunately, Obama has become the ultimate hapless bureaucrat who is throwing up ideas to see if anything helps or looks good. The inevitable slide down to the 2012 election has begun. It’s too late to change direction. The policies of the last two and a half years are all he has to reflect on, it is understandable that his feet are beginning to heat up, they will get hotter as he gains momentum. He will call out that the Republicans are racists in desperate cries, but the public is becoming all too aware of Holder’s policy of “Justice for my people” and Obama saying that the Republicans should sit in the back of the bus, but he doesn’t want to listen to them. Such attitudes reflect racial animosity that is deeply rooted within Obama’s psyche, racism that is being rejected by Americans after repeated assaults on America’s attempts at goodwill. America is tired of looking for a statesman and finding someone who thinks the police did something stupid in Boston, or hearing the “Wise Latina” comments from a supreme court nominee, or listening to the Communist rants of Van Jones in a Czar position, or the aforementioned racist rapper in the White House; all of these incidents reflect divisiveness from the man who was supposed to unify the American people in a common cause.

Obama’s dealings with the SEIU and Acorn and his unprecedented favoritism toward these Communist organization tends to leave America breathless as he starts another historic or is that hysterical run down the rock face.