by Pete Fromm
I looked up at the sky, wishing I’d just buried the damn meat, but I trudged on, wondering if the outfitter would be there to watch me hang it, wondering if he’d ask if I needed a hand.
But the outfitter’s camp was another half mile beyond the Forest Service buildings at Paradise and I did not see him again. I had to dig the snow away from the tack room door with a snowshoe, but once inside the meat hung perfectly. Before I was done the room smelled of pepper and muddy red drops were beginning to stain the floor. I wondered how I could stop that, eventually decided it wouldn’t matter. Let them try to figure it out in the summer.
Instead of sticking around and chancing another run in with the outfitter, whose curiosity could have grown, I strapped on my empty pack and started the hike back to Indian Creek. It was a long march but, at the beginning anyway, relieved of the crushing weight of the soggy meat, I felt as if I could nearly fly.
It was dusk when I reached the salmon channel and found two empty snow machines parked on the road. They weren’t Fish and Game and I followed the tracks down to my fish. Inspecting the waterfall at the end of the frozen-over-channel were two snow-suited men. Their faces were still red with the cold and I knew they hadn’t been here long.
They introduced themselves and wanted to know all about what I was doing here. They let me know that they’d been in my tent, looking for me. They kept talking about how impressed they were that I’d actually spend an entire winter in here alone. It was the kind of talk I’d reveled in during the fall, but now all I could think was that these sons of bitches had just walked right into my tent, poked around in my home without an invitation, without a thought.
I asked if they were lion hunters, I asked what they were doing in here, just stopping myself before asking what the hell they were doing in here. They weren’t lion hunters, they said, but simply Sunday drivers. “Get out of Hamilton for a day,” they explained.
I nodded, as if I could understand that, and mentioned that it was getting late, nearly dark, and that they’d better be getting to wherever they were planning on spending the night. They laughed at that as we trudged up the hill to the road and their machines. They were spending the night in Hamilton, they said. Back at their houses, in bed. They said they thought my tent looked pretty nice, but sure not nice enough to spend a night in. They zippered up their black nylon snowsuits and waved goodbye. Their headlights cut a path before them as they zoomed the last forty miles of their Sunday drive.
I walked slowly back to my tent, picturing the places they were passing. Raven Creek, Magruder Crossing, Magruder itself, then up Deep Creek toward the pass, scooting by the phone at Hell’s Half Acre, then the lonely sheds at Slow Gulch and the broken old cabin of Blondie’s.
In the dark, with their headlights closing off the world beyond the brightness, they would not be able to see any of that, but I could. Easily. And, as I put a few more pieces of wood in my stove, shivering from cold and exhaustion while I waited for the heat to take hold, I realized that most of my anger at those nonchalant Sunday drivers was fueled by envy. It was just so obvious that they were doing whatever they wanted.
When the stove began to glow red I took off a few of my wool shirts and started fixing dinner. I decided on a mixed grill—deer, moose, and lion—knowing sometimes a good meal, just working on one, could pick me up.
As I butterflied my first moose steak I whispered, “Picked a hell of a weekend to cure that meat in privacy,” trying to make myself smile. I gave a tired chuckle, but it only reminded me of the aching ribs I’d had laughing with the lion hunters.
After dinner, sitting back in the murky lantern light, waiting for my tea to steep, I heard the sudden rumble of yet another snow machine. It came from downriver, Paradise, and I knew it had to be the outfitter. I sat without moving as I listened to it cross the bridge over Indian Creek and shoot through my meadow without slowing or turning, late now to be crossing the pass back to the rest of the world.
I remembered how the lion hunters had laughed at the wardens for being visitors. But the lion hunters were all gone now, too, and I was the only one who was still here, alone. I reached for my tea and for my book, but I thought of the warden’s questions and I wondered again if I’d only been used as an alibi by the lion hunters with whom I’d laughed so hard.
I didn’t have much of a heart for reading then and I carried my tea outside; as I stared up at the frozen stars I sipped at it, feeling its steam condense against my cheeks in the black night air. I was not just a visitor.
15
With everyone finally really gone I began to hike again. There was no one to miss if I wasn’t at my tent—no hunters zipping by on their snow machines—so I was out nearly every day. I spent a lot of time up high, enjoying the long-distance views and the long hours of sun after being hemmed into the tight canyon for so long. For quite a while the weather held clear . . . cold at night, but beautiful during the day. Even though it was in the twenties I’d often hike with only a shirt on, my coats tied around my waist.
I hoarded the oranges the biologist had given me, taking one a day and saving it for up top. Picking an open spot, a rock or the base of some huge old ponderosa, I’d have lunch—cold meat leftovers from dinner, saving the oranges for dessert. Just the smell of the orange could take me to places far from this frozen world. When I was done I’d suck on snow. With the flavor of the orange still bright in my mouth I could almost pretend I was a kid again, doing my paper route, sucking on a popsicle.
On the first of February the biologist returned, this time with my boss, not Old Ironsides. There was little reason for the visit, but it had been scheduled after the aborted January trip, so they came on in. The mail had been brought a few days before, so there was not even that. We walked around the channel as usual and the warden said everything still looked very good.
They stayed their normal half hour and just before leaving the biologist told me to hike down to Magruder sometime around the twelfth, to let them know who to call in Missoula to come and pick me up. He grinned, saying if everything worked out he was coming in with his wife on the fourteenth—Valentine’s day. He’d snow machine in and I’d snow machine out. Three days later we’d trade back. A long weekend he called it. My vacation.
They left around two, as the Selway’s steep walls blocked the sun for another day. After hearing about my vacation, I couldn’t sit still, and I grabbed my snowshoes and raced up Indian Ridge until I was back in the sun again. From up top I could look over the endless series of snow-covered, wind-swept ridges that surrounded me, leading in the east clear out to Montana, to the Bitterroot Valley, running straight to Missoula. I could barely believe that in two weeks I’d be riding up that valley in the Deerslayer with Rader, a visitor on the outside.
Eventually the weather broke, the skies growing overcast, spattering snow. I kept walking all day, even when the temperature began to climb and the snow, often as not, became mixed with rain. The mountains, while a little less comfortable, were just as impressive in the moodier weather. The clouds shredded on the ridge backs, torn fragments hanging on in every draw. The snow fell from the trees in great thumping clots, making walking in the woods a little spooky. And, without the trees’ bright mantle of snow, the world turned a dark, dark green, nearly black, with the gray shards of clouds hanging everywhere, the white of the snow still clinging to the ground. A black and white world. When I walked high enough I would be inside the clouds themselves, distance turning to gray nothingness, the rain beading directly onto my sodden clothes in tiny crystal spheres.
Then real snow returned—with wind—thick, wet, heavy stuff that clung to every needle. The world was once again white and I walked through all of it, returning to my tent in the evenings caked with the same soggy wind-driven layers as the trees.
Up high in the draws of Indian Creek and Sheep Creek I found giant snowslides. They were avalanches really, but I called them snowslides, which sounded less dangerous—less like something that could bury m
e without a trace. Then I found one on the Selway, a few miles down toward Paradise. It had crashed across the road, half covering the channel of the river itself. Walking home from that I was startled by a sudden whispering rush that grew instantly to a crashing roar. I whirled in time to see a huge cedar come splintering over across the river, crushed down by the great weight of the snow.
That evening I stood outside my tent, looking up through a blizzard at what I could see of the mountains. In glimpses between the waves of cloud the trunks of the trees, plastered with sticky snow, stood out starkly white. I studied the width of my meadow, trying to picture the thundering walls of snow, wondering how much of the open they could cross. I went back into my tent and stood beside the stove, my soggy clothes steaming, and I thought the avalanches would probably peter out before they reached my thin canvas walls.
Eventually the dismal weather, despite its beauty, began to wear on me. The constant dampness and the soaking wool got old. I began to spend half days in my tent, fiddling with projects, making moccasins, repairing ripped wool, oiling rifles, reading, cooking. I was working through the back sections of the moose and the cuts were so good I could hardly believe it. I had whole dinners of nothing but meat and tea. I gorged.
The closer the fourteenth drew the more I dwelt on my trip out to the world. I packed a box of things I would take with me, gifts mostly, like the ones I’d made for my family at Christmas. I also packed a rump roast the size of a three-pound coffee can. We’d have us a feast out there. Finally I’d have a chance to share at least one tiny part of my world.
On the tenth I started out for Magruder, to have the West Fork boys give Rader a call. It was a Saturday and I guessed they could catch him in our dorm room and ring me right back, letting me know he really would be waiting out there for me on the fourteenth. I could already picture that—the Deerslayer parked at the great wall of snow at the end of the plowed road, Rader leaning against the hood as I rounded the last corner of a forty-mile snow machine drive, my first ever.
The lion hunters had returned a day or two earlier, but I hadn’t seen much of them. I’d kept hiking, no longer feeling a need to be at my tent should they happen to call, not quite able to put away my suspicions that they’d used me as a tool in their game with the wardens. I only made it as far as Raven Creek when I bumped into Cary, and we stood in the road and chatted. There were more snowslides across the road and he bitched that they blocked his trails. He said the snow had sunk down so much, and had gotten so stiff and dense, he guessed lions might nearly be able to walk over the top of it. He hadn’t cut a track in two days.
As we talked Boone’s ears pricked up, and a moment later I heard more snow machines heading our way. A big train rounded the corner and I recognized the Paradise outfitter on the lead machine, followed by Brian and a couple more guys I didn’t know. The place seemed to be getting crowded.
As his machine stopped Brian stood up in the saddle and waved, pointing his mittened hand back at the other machines. I squinted against the whitish haze in the air and one of the guys stepped off his machine and threw his arms into the air. “Fucking Fromm!” he shouted.
Though for a moment more I couldn’t believe it and I stood stock still, it was true. Rader. And Sponz. My mouth dropped open and I started running as fast as I could in my snowshoes, plowing past the hunters. I caught Rader in the stomach with my shoulder and we rolled rumbling off the road, into the deep stuff covering the brush beside the river.
We got up spluttering and then I jumped Sponz. I could feel the eyes of the hunters on us and I knew this wasn’t a mountain man picture, that we must look like children playing beside their snow fort. I didn’t care.
But later, when the hunters moved on and Rader and Sponz chased after them, riding tandem on their rented machine and leaving me to walk the two miles alone, I couldn’t help looking at things through the eyes of the hunters. Rader and Sponz had left Missoula the day before with plans to get here yesterday, but they’d blown a belt on the way up to the pass and had spent the first night up there. On Saturday they’d been limping their machine back toward Montana, giving up, before the hunters came along with a spare belt, and the knowledge of how to use it.
Then they’d roared back on in, leaving the hunters and their heavily loaded machines far behind. It wasn’t until they’d turned onto the Selway that they hit the snowslide. Rader took it a full speed, Sponz hanging on for dear life. But as the machine tipped on the slide’s steep side, Sponz bailed off. Rader had stayed with it, tumbling all the way down to the river.
Somehow he wasn’t hurt, but the machine’s windshield was smashed, the fiberglass cowling cracked. And it was stuck. They’d sat there for an hour, sweating and swearing, wondering what to do. Then the Paradise outfitter had come along again, and together they’d been able to manhandle the machine back onto the road. Ever since then—even now—Rader had followed them like a shadow.
Walking along the empty road I pictured how the hunters had smiled and shaken their heads as Rader and Sponz told their story of one amateurish screw up after another. We’d all stood about in the road, laughing, and I’d wished that the hunters would just go away.
I thought of the expressions the hunters and the wardens had worn when I told the story of my father and brother’s aborted ski trip. They couldn’t imagine a more foolhardy plan. Why hadn’t they just rented snow machines? Part of the truth was that they wanted to ski, but I knew the other part, the part I never mentioned. Snow machines had never occurred to them. We’d never seen one before, never considered using one ourselves.
But I put all their doubts out of my mind and hustled the last mile downriver; Rader and Sponz and I crammed ourselves into my tent that night. I laughed through the storytelling until I couldn’t stand it any longer, laughed even harder than I had with the lion hunters.
We spent the next day poking around in the woods, looking for grouse, mooching around. The temperature hit thirty-seven and the new snow began to thump down out of the trees again. One falling clump hit me in the head, firing down my neck like a frozen bullet. Though that wasn’t the first time that had ever happened, it was the first time it was funny. Occasionally we’d hear the roar of snowslides, glancing around toward the sound of the louder ones as if we could see the rushing walls of snow through the heavy cover of the trees.
The next morning we started out early and headed for Magruder. I wanted to show them the cabin there, my ideal home. The road was covered with slides ranging from small, pure white trickles that just reached the road, to huge, muddy, boulder-strewn barriers that blocked the road and the river, bright peeled logs poking out like broken teeth. It was hard just walking over them and we wondered how we’d ever get a snow machine across.
We stopped at Cary’s camp at Magruder Crossing, but no one was in and after stopping to throw snowballs at the first open spot I’d seen in the river, we trudged on to Magruder. The slides we crossed now had a patch cut over them, a thin flat spot the width of a snow machine over the wild pitch of the slides.
Halfway to Magruder we ran into Cary, digging tiredly at yet another slide blocking the road. He swore and swore, sweat covering his face. He said he’d been shoveling for two days straight, and he was halfway to Magruder—two miles. Most of the work he’d done the first day was covered over again that night. Rader and Sponz really began to wonder how they were going to get out.
Cary began to make a plan for us. At Magruder we’d get shovels and begin to dig back toward him. He was sure Brian and the Paradise crew were digging up from downriver, and once the four of us met up we’d begin digging back toward them. “Til we can all get the hell out of here,” he said, but in my head I thought, not quite all.
Cary also asked me to use the phone at Magruder, to have them call a bunch of his friends to start digging in from that side, to call his wife and let her know he’d be out when he could. Rader and Sponz said they’d need to call their girlfriends too. Leaving Cary to his digging, we pu
shed on.
I put the call through to Montana as soon as we reached Magruder. They said they’d make the appropriate calls and, just before I hung up, I told them they might as well call the biologist in Idaho too. “It’s hopeless,” I told them to let him know. There was no way he and his wife were going to get in or out, and he might as well stay home.
I didn’t feel very good canceling all my hopes that way, but soon we were cooking the gigantic rump roast I’d packed to take out with me. It came out beautifully and Rader and Sponz didn’t stop talking about how great it was.
That night Rader and I stayed up late, talking, or chewing the fat, as he called it. He was thinking of getting married, he told me. Soon. To Lorrie. At first I was sure it was a joke, and I wanted to wake Sponz up for confirmation, but he was serious. He wanted me to come out for the wedding and I wondered how he figured that would happen. He started laying plans and then, in some wild leap of logic, he began planning how I could come out now too, as soon as we got the road cleared, how I could ride out with one of the lion hunters.
I went along with him, knowing full well it wouldn’t work. The hunters would definitely be pulling out for good now, and they’d be dragging everything their machines could handle. There wouldn’t be room for me.
In bed that night, listening to the quiet snoring around me, I could not believe Rader was getting married. The last time I’d seen him and Lorrie they hadn’t even had a date. That had only been four months ago, but now it seemed much longer—forever. I began to wonder what else was going on out there. How much was I missing?
The next day I wormed through the snow-blocked doors of the tool shed and retrieved three shovels. The digging began. We worked like slaves, the crusted boulders of packed snow nearly as hard as ice. We detoured around the rocks and tree trunks embedded in the snow and the trail snaked around the smaller slides and over the biggest, some twenty feet or deeper. By nightfall we all had blistered hands and we hadn’t yet reached Cary.