– New Friends, New Life –

In November, the water level was too low for boating on the upper part of the river, so late season rafters flew in to the short dirt airstrip at the confluence of Loon Creek and the Middle Fork to begin their trips. It was pretty easy to charter a couple planes with a service out of Salmon or Challis for the 45-minute flight.

The rubber rafts had metal frames that broke down for transportation. We could load everything for the trip into the aircraft and fly it over the mountains to the river. Todd told me to meet them at the airstrip at Lower Loon on November 9^th to unload gear, assemble rafts, and ramble down the river for nine or ten days. It could be done in half that time, but they were hunting and camping at strategic stops along the way. I was excited to meet my new friends, to experience the Middle Fork on a raft, and be part of a group adventure.

It had been a very long time since I adventured with other people. My books were written about solo travel. I was obsessed with exploring my personal capabilities and limitations. There was a group of like-minded thrill seekers that vacationed together when I worked the oilfields of the world, but that was thirty years earlier. Not many of my 60-year old friends were looking for adventure. The Idaho experience that I’d indulged in for the last six years was a little offbeat for most people; no one had the time or desire to participate in extreme recreations of early mountain man life. There was an endless stream of verbal agreement on the value of living free but no takers of the invitations I issued. I learned to adventure alone and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

City Boy

I wasn’t born a mountain man and had never heard of The Frank until I moved there. Growing up in apartments and suburban tract homes, I did not trust farm animals and was afraid of horses. I was a city boy and it showed, which was part of the reason I didn’t fit well in the Idaho social scene. The backcountry embraced me, but not too many of the people. I worked with a few at Middle Fork Outfitters and enjoyed the comradery but spent most of my time alone.

I would write the final chapter of my Idaho experience during the upcoming winter in a wall tent in the wilderness. But there wasn’t much left to write about the backcountry. I felt the need to refresh my story. I couldn’t explain it – not even to myself – but there was a directional change in the current of my life and experience had taught me not to resist. The trip with Todd and his buddies down the river was symbolic because I was moving on to a new chapter soon.

Trail Puppy

Those thoughts had me smiling as I sauntered along Camas Creek trail. The puppy, too; she was a constant source of amusement and had been absolutely no trouble to date. She was a gift from someone in Challis who thought I needed a companion for the winter adventure. I didn’t need or want her, but she was waiting for me when I returned from the summer book-selling tour.

I named her Greer which meant ‘watchful guardian’. She was a Border Collie cow dog born in July; ten weeks old when I got her in September and only five months old when we’d leave for a winter to track predators in the wilderness. We would live in a wall tent by the creek in the shadow of Castle Rock, ski and snowshoe everywhere, and huddle around a wood stove at night to stay warm. If I broke her in early, she wouldn’t think those conditions a hardship.

So there we were… bouncing through The Frank together on our way to a week or more of whitewater after a month in the mountains and a month in the desert. Wild places were just homes to Greer. She went where I went, slept where I slept, ate some of what I ate with a handful of kibble. We were on the move almost all the time but never apart. There alongside Camas Creek, she knew that her job was to find the trail, easy enough even at four months of age.

There were not a whole lot of places on the river to make a good camp and fewer still on the feeder creeks. The steep slopes were earthy enough to support a forest but there was very little flat ground. It was rocky and inhospitable except for little pockets of paradise and I knew where some of those pockets were hidden. One of my favorite camps on Camas Creek was a cave high above the trail. We had to scramble up a steep rocky slope to get there. Greer was hesitant to enter but I coaxed her inside. She ate a handful of kibble and curled up on my sleeping bag to recover. I built a fire in the stone ring at the entrance and settled in for a night of remembering.

Time Alone

That’s what you do when you spend extended periods of time alone; you remember. Not just to review the past but to purge it by letting go of memories that don’t matter anymore. Like a good librarian, you keep the shelves full of books worth reading and toss the trashy stuff into the bin. There are no people to influence you, to tell you what you should like or do.

The best kind of alone is when the only conversations you have are with your dog or your cat or your Jesus… mostly yourself. Sometimes I thought out loud because I needed to talk, to hear a voice. In time, however, with the stimulus of city life removed, the noisy thinking dissipated and my thought stream calmed from boiling geyser to bubbles but it never stopped. And lots of those slow lingering thoughts from the deep were memories. I had time to review other chapters in my life, looking at them from different angles and attitudes, slowly but surely forgetting the parts I didn’t like and looping the good memories. And that’s how being alone for a long time can be healing.

New Friends, New Life

For me, the sabbatical was an important experience although I probably played it out too long. Old enough to collect Social Security, my career as a packer and backcountry hermit was coming to an end. I went to Idaho to escape my old life and maybe the world. As memories of my old life faded, however, I remembered aspects of the world I enjoyed. People were the source of great pain in my life but the connectedness found in good relationships was profound. My years in the wilderness showed me the connectedness of all things. Maybe I was feeling a need to apply those lessons to living in the world again.

I didn’t need to overthink it… down deep, I knew it was time for a change.

---

(excerpt from “Lost & Found” due for publication Spring 2024)

---