Sadly enough, that was also what lay behind. I have never ceased to marvel at how low some apexes can be.
One of my numerous ambitions as a youngster had been to become a great outdoor photographer. No sooner had a small box camera come into my possession than I was out taking pictures of the outdoors. I remember hauling my first roll of exposed film down to Farley's drugstore to get it developed.
I supposed that Mr. Farley did the work himself in the backroom but he said, no, he "farmed it out" to a laboratory in a distant city. The film was gone so long I began to think the distant city must be Nome, the delivery service a lame sloth traveling by snowshoes.
I hounded Mr. Farley daily about the pictures. "Any word from Nome?"
I would say. "Any sign of the lame sloth?"
"Patience, my boy, patience," he would reply. Still, I began to sense that he too was awaiting the photos with an expectancy only slightly less urgent than my own.
Finally, a little yellow-and-black envelope with my name on it arrived, and as I pried up the flap with trembling fingers, Mr. Farley leaned forward and peered breathlessly over my shoulder, which was a good way to have Mr. Farley peer over your shoulder; his breath could drive ticks off a badger. I pulled out a perforated string of glossy black-and-white prints and Mr. Farley let out a long sigh of appreciation, scarcely buckling my knees in the excitement of the moment.
"Wowl Look at this!" I said to him.
"Yes, indeed," Mr. Farley said. "Uh what is it?"
"The outdoors," I told him, trying to conceal my contempt for his lack of perception. "That's what us outdoor photographers take pictures of--the outdoors."
"Oh, yes, I see that now. Some nice gray dirt and gray sky and some nice gray rocks and gray brush. Very nice, particularly if you like gray as much as I do."
We looked at another print.
"That's one of the finest shots of a flyspeck I've ever seen," Mr. Farley said.
I stared at him in disbelief. "That's a chicken hawk!"
"Of course it is. I was jist joshin' ya. Over here is the chicken, right?"
"That," I said with controlled rage, "is a flyspeck!"
After Mr. Farley mistook four ants on a paper plate for a herd of deer in a snowstorm, I folded up my pictures and went home. Although outdoor photographers are noted for their patience, they can stand only so much.
From then on I spent endless hours out in the woods photographing wildlife. Most of the shots were just your routine beautiful wildlife pictures, but every so often I would get an exceptionally fine photograph which I would honor with a title. There was, for example, "Log Leaped Over by Startled Four-Point Buck One Half-Second Before Shutter Was Snapped." Many people told me the picture was so vivid they could almost see the buck.
Another really great shot was "Tip of Tail Feather of Pheasant in Flight." My favorite was "Rings on Water After Trout jumped."
I took these photographs and others into the editor of our weekly newspaper in the hope he would have the good sense to buy them. He told me he thought I had the instincts of a great outdoor photographer but possibly my reflexes were a bit slow.
Three years slipped by almost without my noticing, and one morning I awoke @o discover I had a wife and three kids. It was a surprise I can tell you. Nobody seemed to know where they had come from. I also had a job, which was an even bigger surprise. One day I said to the wife, "How will I ever fulfill my lifelong ambition of becoming a great outdoor photographer if I have to work at that job all the time to support you and our three kids?"
"Four kids," she said. "Last year it was three, this year it's four."
I could feel Old Man Time breathing down the back of my neck. At first I thought he was Mr. Farley, but then I discovered it was actually our kindly old landlord who was fond of giving me bits of advice--"Pay da rent, fella, or else..."
It was at this juncture that I decided to quit my job and become a free-lance writer and photographer, specializing in the Great Outdoors.
"I feel so free," I shouted, after severing relations with my employer.
"No more commuting, no more kowtowing to bosses, no more compromising my principles!"
"No more eating!" my wife shouted. A comical soul, she would do just about anything for a laugh, but I thought rending her garment while pouring ashes on her head was going a bit far.
The only things a great outdoor photographer needs to set up in business are some film and a good camera outfit. Film is about $1.50 a roll, and you can pick up a good camera and accessories for not much more than you would pay for an albino elephant that can tap dance and sing in three languages. Since I blew my life savings on the roll of film, I had to borrow the money for the camera and accessories.
Fortunately I had learned of a loan company run by about the nicest people you could ever expect to do business with, even though they had to operate out of the back seat of a car while their new building was under construction.
After we had shaken hands on the deal, I told the loan officer, Louie, that it was none of my business but I thought they could get a better return on their money than 10 percent a year.
"A year? What year?" Louie said. He quickly explained that the interest was by the week, compounded hourly and that the only collateral was a pound of my flesh to be selected at random fifteen seconds after I missed the first payment. I exaggerate, of course. It wasn't fifteen seconds but nearly a day after I missed the first payment that my wife reported to me that two bulky hominoids had stopped by to inquire of my whereabouts. "I think they were carrying arms," she said nervously.
"You must have been mistaken," I said. "Maybe a few fingers or toes but not arms!" What kind of monsters did she think I would borrow money from, anyway?
Such was the incentive instilled in me by this visit that within a month I had the loan paid off. Editors couldn't resist my photographs.
"Terrific!" one of them said to me. "This is a fantastic shot of a woman and children in rags, a real tear-jerker. What's she got on her head, anyhow?"
"Ashes," I said, "but that's a portrait of my family and not for sale.
How about this great shot of the hind foot of a bear that's just walked behind a tree?"
"I'll take it, I'll take it!" the editor said.
As time went along both my photographic skills and my reflexes improved to the point where I was shooting pictures of whole animals. I still had trouble getting good shots of leaping fish, but I produced many a fine picture wherein my catch of trout dwarfed the creel and flyrod I used for props. The fish were only eight inches long, but the creel and flyrod belonged to a dwarf.
Steadily my career progressed upward until that moment I found myself steering my car down a game trail toward an appointment with a helicopter.
When I at last came ploughing out of the forest and onto the landing strip, the helicopter was still there but the pilot was nowhere to be seen. The only person around was a grizzled old packer, sitting on a log and staring at the helicopter.
"Dang things weren't meant to fly," he said to me, nodding at the chopper. "Man has to be a crazy fool to fly around these mountains in one of them eggbeaters. Give me a good mule any day."
"Don't say things like that," I told him, "because I got to go fly in that eggbeater."
"So you're the feller," he said. "Well, let's git on with it then, 'cause I'm the pilot."
The pilot's name was Lefty, and he was a pleasant but rather serious chap. "Let me explain just what we're going to do," he said, after we had climbed into the cockpit. "if you understand what's happening, you won't worry so much about us crackin' up. I always like my passengers to just relax and enjoy the ride. Hell, there's no sense in both of us being terrified."
As we lifted off and made a quick clean sweeping turn up over a wall of pine trees, I concealed my modest anxiety under an expression of disinterest and a hint of boredom.
"Nervous?" Lefty shouted at me.
"Not at all," I shouted back.
"Good," he sai
d. "Then maybe you'll let go of my leg. You're cutting off the circulation."
Once we were on our way, the pilot reached forward and patted a little statue of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, mounted on the instrument panel.
"Catholic?" I asked.
"No," he said. "Cautious."
Lefty was a good tour guide. He pointed out miniature deer far below and a herd of elk galloping along like tall ants.
"There goes a bear!" he shouted. "Look at that rascal run! Must think we're a bear hawk!"
As we pounded up over a steep, thickly forested hillside, he indicated a tiny clearing. "Last year about this time I had to put the chopper down right there."
"Gosh," I said. "That clearing doesn't look big enough to land a helicopter in."
"Shoot," he replied, "until we landed, there wasn't a clearing there at all. We mowed down trees like tall grass. Flipped plumb upside down and spun like a top. Really held our attention for a few moments. Now there you go, cutting' off the circulation in my leg again!"
"Sorry," I said. "I just became engrossed in your story."
A sheer rock cliff that seemed a mile high loomed directly in front of us, and Lefty showed every intention of flying us smack into it.
"I got to cut out the chatter now 'cause we're coming to the scary part," he said.
"The scary part?"
"Yup, we got to catch the elevator."
"Elevator?"
He quickly explained that because of the altitude and the limited power of the helicopter, he had to put the chopper right in close to the cliff so we could ride up on the strong updraft. "St. Christopher, don't fail me now!" he said.
The elevator ride was indeed an exhilarating experience. I broke the world's record for longest sustained inhale while the pilot kept mumbling something about a valley of death. In a second we came zooming up over the top of the cliff, where Lefty cut a sporty little figure eight and set us down on the mountain peak.
He wet his finger and marked up an invisible score in the air. "St. Christopher 685, Death 0."
What, you have probably asked, could have prompted me to risk life, limb, and my meager breakfast to soar up to this barren windblown pinnacle of rock?
The answer is that I was there to photograph a mountain-goat-trapping expedition. The Idaho Fish and Game department was capturing goats, ferrying them off the mountain via helicopter, and transplanting them in a goatless area of the state. The action went like this: a goat would be lured into a net trap, then two Fish and Game men would jump on him, wrestle him to the ground, and give him a shot of tranquilizer to calm him down. The goat, for his part, would try to tap dance on the heads of his molesters while simultaneously trying to spindle them on his horns. There would be this ball of furious activity, consisting of legs, arms, eyes, hooves, horns, bleats, bellows, grunts and curses, until one of the F and G men would shout, "Quick, the tranquilizer!"
A hypodermic needle would flash amid the tangle of goat and men "Got it!
How's that?"
"Great," the other man would say. "Now let's see if you can get the next one in the goat."
It was all very amusing and provided me with some fine action shots.
The one problem, as I saw it, was that the trappers tended to favor the smaller goat.
What I wanted was some photos of them tangling with a really big billy, right up on the edge of the cliff where it would be exciting, but they chose to ignore my suggestions, claiming that the small goats more than satisfied their thirst for excitement.
At last I persuaded jack McNeel, a tall, lean conservation officer, to have a go at one of the big goats. I situated myself on an outcropping of rock close to the net at the edge of the cliff, camera at the ready.
Presently, the King Kong of mountain goats came sauntering up the hill and strolled into the trap for a lick of the salt block used for bait.
When the trap closed on him, that goat went absolutely bananas. Rock, hair, and pieces of goat trap flew in all directions. As jack and another F and G man came racing toward the raging animal, I knew I was about to get the greatest action shots in the history of outdoor photography. But just as jack was about to close in, the goat got a horn under the bottom edge of the trap and sent the contraption flying ten feet in the air. Caught up in the excitement of the chase and without thinking, McNeel made a lunge and grabbed the billy by a horn.
What happened next was more than I had ever even dreamed of in my career as a wildlife photographer. I was absolutely awestruck by the sheer power of the spectacle. Perhaps you've never seen a mountain goat twirl a six-foot-four man over his head like a baton, but if you ever get the chance it's well worth the price of admission. That nifty little performance, however, was just the warm up for the grand finale.
The grand finale was where the goat made a great running leap out over the edge of the cliff, jack still clinging desperately to his horn.
I have not the slightest doubt that the conservation officer saved that goat's life, not to mention his own. As he hurtled out into space, McNeel reached down and grabbed a branch of a stunted little tree growing on the edge of the cliff. For an instant they dangled there, jack clinging to the branch with one hand and to the goat with the other. Then he dropped the billy, who landed on an inch-wide ledge twenty feet below and galloped off. It was all absolutely stunning.
jack crawled back up over the edge of the cliff and lay on the rock, panting. "I guess that must have made some picture, hunh?" he said.
"Picture?" I said. "What picture?" For the first time since the action started, I stared down at the camera clenched in my sweating hands.
I HAD FORGOTTEN TO TAKE THE PICTURE! Like the great fish that got away and the great trophy buck that was missed, the great outdoor photograph that wasn't taken leaves no proof of its existence. But jack McNeel of the Idaho Fish and Game department will swear to the absolute truth of what I have reported here. At least the last time I saw him, he was still swearing about it.
My spirit had been broken, and then and there on that windswept mile-high slab of granite I gave up my career as a great outdoor photographer. I packed my gear, shuffled up to the peak, and climbed aboard the waiting helicopter.
"Now comes the bad part," the pilot said. "Just sit back and relax."
A Fine & Pleasant Misery Page 18