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Where I've Been

A man and his Toyota at Grays River Wyoming.

Big Sky Country? An understatement...

Ran into a storm of mayflies crossing the Snake River Canyon on Saturday that lasted 10 minutes. At first I thought it was raining, then decided that rain is usually not black and doesnt stick to you windshield. It literally blackened the front of the Toyota, making the headlights unusable. Even after using a truck stop car wash, The front is still covered with little tar like bodies of these suckers. Note to Toyota, follow Land Rovers lead and put wipers on the headlights...

After crossing the Norther Nevada Desert on Saturday, I was struck by a condition that closely resembled cholera or dysentery. Without going into details best left unblogged, I'm here to report that while for many hours I was absolutely certain I was about to meet my demise in a most undignified way, I'm alive and happy to report that the event has,ahem, passed. Up till now, I wasn't aware that Montezuma had even been to Northern Nevada, much less wished to see revenge enacted just for my crossing it.

I saw a real live, non-cartoon moose on Sunday in the Grand Targhee, my very first moose without a corresponding flying squirrel around as his partner. Meeting a moose in person is much like meeting a big cow with antlers. It's docile and very, very interested in vegetation, of which you are not and thus you find yourself totally ignored. My youngest sister ( the local Wyoming inhabitant - known in the family as "Calamity Jane" as her her lifes work is now a backwoods guide in the Jackson and Yellowstone Area, hence the visit to the region) says as a general rule not to expect such cooperation as this from the moose population.

As a result of my new found ability to "talk to the animals", she now calls me "Dr. Doolittle". Actually what she said was much colorful and more in taking with her well deserved nickname, but I try to keep this a family blog as much as possible. Just remember that she too was raised in the Navy, and now finds herself in career as backwoods guide for fisherman( just insert your favorite colorful F-word verb between "Doctor" and "Doolittle", and you get the idea). She is not the kind of person you meet hanging around the water cooler at CNBC Headquarters in Fort Lee New Jersey.

And maybe that explains everything that is wrong with "Teevee News" in one simple lesson.

Like my father, she has no little tolerance of "fools or easteners". I only get special dispensation from the application of this rule because "I'm family". I have evidence to support this fact, because I was there the day she came home from the hospital, a fact I never let her forget. Its exactly this sort of "family history blackmail" that keeps me alive when she's guiding me through the backwoods. I have some embarrassing pictures Calamity, and as long as I get back to the house in one piece, they'll stay hidden. If something were to happen to me, I don't think you would be able to survive the shame of the release of pictures of you when you were five on that merry-go-round horse crying you eyes out in fear while we all pointed at you laughing. Yeah, hard to be big tough backwoods guide with those embarrasing pictures out there, isnt it? You better think twice before you hit me over the head with that shovel, Ok Calamity?

Saw a dead moose on the roadside on Monday, 150 miles from the first moose I came across on Sunday. I have no idea if the two knew each other. I can't imagine any car hitting an animal that big and being drivable afterwards, but while the moose was still laying there in a very undignified way, there was no sign of the car that hit it. This showed me in very real terms what the local economy considered valuable and what was simply not worth the effort. A crushed car will get towed to a carlot and poured over by insurance adjusters, while a dead moose will just lay by the side of the road. I cant help but feel that the moose deserves a more fitting end than a Chrysler Minivan.

Somewhere in America is a husband hurredly explaining to his wife what happened to "the family van" that he took against her better judgement for a weekend of fishing with his friends in the Caribou National Forest in Eastern Idaho. She is of course, not buying "the moose story". Trust me maam, whoever you are, no matter how bad your favorite "family truckster" looks right now, the moose got the worst part of the deal.

Ok, back to work...

Posted @ May 28, 2007 10:24 PM | Current Affairs