– What No One Does, Where No One Does It –

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“Every few days like clockwork, they go straight up the road.” I pointed toward camp. “And this is where the wolves come in.”

We stood in the broad rolling bottom of a creek that dried up centuries ago. It disrupted the road with its contours, a washout that had grown over with sage and a few dozen trees. It fanned out a quarter mile wide like a clam shell.

“We stack two or three of these little trees to make a wall. A blind. I figure we bring a couple lawn chairs from camp and sit behind them.”

Not Hunting Wolves

“We gonna hunt wolves in lawn chairs?”

“No. We’ll be calling wolves from lawn chairs while hiding behind trees. And if by some miracle they come, they’ll be huntin’ us, so you probably want to bring a shotgun. Just in case we call them in too close and freak ourselves out.”

We laughed like mischievous children.

“Wolf hunting at night.”

“Sounds like an adventure to me.”

“When do you want to do it?”

“We’re here. There’s no fresh sign so they haven’t been through lately. Let’s stack up some trees and come back tonight.”

What No One Does

“Tonight?”

“Let’s not overthink it. We got a good idea, so let’s act on it.”

My backpack saw made short work of the pole pines we needed, and we built a nice blind into the face of the hillside.  We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning our weapons and preparing a good meal before bed. I got up to pee about one o’clock, woke Maynard, and we started layering up. I brushed my teeth while water boiled for coffee.

Hermit Hygiene

“Is that your beard brush?”

“It’s my toothbrush,” I answered.

“I saw you use that brush on your beard.”

I wiped the worn bristles on my pant leg before grooming my gnarly face. Maynard was appalled.

“I rinse it afterwards, before I stir the coffee.”

“I’ll make my own coffee. Are you serious?”

“It’s a multi-purpose brush.”

He poured hot water into a metal cup that he picked up off the table.

“I pull the hairs out. But it’s not like I have germs in my mouth.”

“You don’t want anybody else to know you do that, Taylor. That can be our secret. You’re weird enough already without that floating around the top of the gossip tank.”

I put the brush in the top pocket of my bibs and licked my teeth. They felt slickier and fresh.

“Better layer up, Maynard. Clear sky on a cold February night.”

Where No One Does It

“I don’t EVEN want to know how cold it is,” he said.

“At least the wind ain’t blowin’.”

Twenty minutes later, I put the electronic call in my pack and double-checked to be sure the propane was turned off. We shouldered our weapons and turned down the trail toward the blind. The night had a feeling of adventure to it.

The bright moon lit up our snowy world. Way below freezing, maybe zero degrees, and our breath turned to ice as soon as it left our bodies. The cold took the soft out of the snow on the ground and the white crust crunched under our feet… the only sound in the air that night. The moonlight cast long shadows. Everything was silver and black.

Call to the Wild

From the shoulder at the tree break, we looked out over the drainage. Shadows and shapes, alleys of light. Someone new to Idaho, new to wild places might be preoccupied with all the perceived danger or dangerous things especially in the deepest part of night. Experience taught the opposite; there were no dangerous animals. We unfolded our lawn chairs behind the wall of trees and adjusted them for best viewing. Then I checked the call.

The device resembled a big ice scoop with a horn speaker in the front. A separate handheld controller was used to select volume, animal sounds, sequences, and timers. Hundreds of sounds from turkeys, chipmunks, foxes, dogs, wolves, and mountain lions in various moods… animals I didn’t know made any sound… stored in the handset and selectable by scrolling down a digital display.

Once the playlist was completed, I could set the speaker up to two hundred yards away and control it from my chair. I took the long way around through the shadows of the trees around the clearing and set the speaker in a pile of rocks about eighty yards from our hiding place. When I returned to the blind, I slouched down in my chair behind the wall.

“We need to sit still for a half hour and let things quiet down.”

He nodded his head and laid his weapon across his lap.

“Wake me up before you fire off that call,” Maynard said. He pulled his collar up and his hat down over his face. “’Cuz I might be dreaming of the motherfuckers and come up blasting.”

“Duly noted,” I chuckled. “Just listen for a while.”

Inevitable Reward

On that night, it was the moonlight. Sometimes it was the way the wind talked that caught my attention or, at camp, the sound of the creek and majesty of Castle Rock… but the way the moon lit the drainage up that night like a big-city parking lot was captivating. The snow gathered the light off Castle Rock and rolled it all the way down Camas Creek. It looked like it was moving, blocked by trees and boulders but washing over every flat space. Half past one in the morning when we left camp and neither of us needed a headlamp. It was easy to see our way through the cold.

That’s what I treasured; those unique experiences and events that transcended time. That made life worth living in any day or age. Those feelings were the rewards for the risks I ran and the sacrifices I made physically and socially. They were part of every worthwhile adventure if not the ultimate prize. There are things that we do in our lives, places that we visit that resonate, that vibrate deep inside us and create an awareness of being. It’s a pause in time for primal, even soulful connectivity… a source of inspiration. For me.

Maynard didn’t look particularly inspired, though. He was a mouth-breather and the beard around his air hole was dripping icicles. The rest of his head was covered and his arms were tucked across his chest.

“I’m fixin’ to fire up this call, man.”

“I’m here,” he confirmed.

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

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