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Prologue To A Dream -- First Glimpse of The Mountain |
To old day mountainmen such as John Colter, Jed Smith, Jim Bridger or Bill Sublette, what my  Brother and I were planning would have seemed not only folly, but pure fantasy. Yet for my younger sibling and me, what had started to hatch in the spring of 1974 was as real as it could get and an adventure we could not purge from our souls once we started talking of it. How it all came to be is a little foggy to this hoss these many years since, so I can only try to relate it as best I can recollect, as to let our story pass into obscurity would be a sin of the gravest sort.
 My Brother had come to visit, I was in Arizona at the time, married, with a young wife and son and feeling as trapped as a coon would ever want to find himself. We'd talked through the years of living the wild, free life of a Rocky Mountain trapper as in the past, of what it must have been to be a mountain man back a hundred and fifty years before, being footloose and unshackled to roam the wild as lords of the forest and plains. I'd always longed for such an existence, even well before I had started the brainwash of education, my brother had thought somewhat of the same, yet in spite of being two years my junior had always had a higher sense of responsibility and hadn't followed my lead when a teenager of tripping through the doors of perception, so had always been a little more mainstream then I.
 We'd been born to middle class parents, with if not silver spoons in our mouths, one could at least say silver plated and privileged, with a big, grand old house in the upper Midwest, lots of toys, family vacations, food and possessions back in the heady post World War Two 1950's. Him and me had always entertained the notion we'd had happy childhoods, it wasn't until much later in our journeys we realized how miserably botched they had been. Yet none the less by the time I was five I was hunting with my Dad and even carrying a gun, and for that I am forever grateful.
 Being the first born male I was blessed with the attention of a father that had dreamed of having a son to hunt with , but as to do it right one must instill and teach much before turning attention to another, Dad didn't take my brother Raleigh into the fold until he was eight or nine. Yeah, poor Raleigh had to be content with a BB gun and playing until I could be on my own in the field, working the other side of a draw, or out of sight through the timber. Ral never really forgave Dad, or me for that matter, for that, but none of us were aware of any such undercurrents in those young years at least I damn sure wasn't. That was just the way it was, right or wrong. But consequently being older and having started the evolution sooner I'd always believed I was far ahead of him
Needless to say, I was quite surprised that hot June day, him and me were out shoeing horses as I'd at lest gotten that far as to living my dream. He was visiting like I said, and I'd looked up, a hoof balanced on my leg, my back already killing me, the sweat running into my eyes and off my nose like a spigot when he said real matter of fact, "Hey Toby, I'm thinking about heading to the mountains and living like it's the 1830's."
 I let the hoof back to the ground, tried to straighten and let out a groan, "Hell coon, if things don't take a swing more to my liking I just might join you."
Little did we know then that a little over a year and a half latter we'd be riding out of Taos, dressed in full buckskins, Hawken Rifles across our saddles, pack horses fully loaded, our eyes scanning the mountain skyline as if we'd been born to the task all along. And so began the adventure that was to consume the better parts of our lives.
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By W.J. Lynus O'Brien
Monday, 31 January 2011
Read by 868 People, Thanks
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