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We See Eye To Eye--I Think? |
 Wild Bill and I stood there in a scene looking as if it was straight out of a history book, two men, tired of the illusion civilization offers, appearing more Indian in our values than ever the white world could flavor. The older seasoned veteran of the mountain life and a young boy of twenty-two seeing where we stood, stating our views, palavering about the wilderness life, deeds we'd done, but I don't think the local mountains were mentioned once, other than him making it clear he considered them his sole domain. "Interlopers! Pilgrims don't deserve these mountains, they belong to those as live in them. FUCKING PISS ANTS!"
I had the feeling he was including me in that statement. As if I was a monsieur de lard, a term from the old trapper lexicon of the mountain men, roughly meaning, "Mr. Bacon," a pork eater, a new recruit, as yet unproven on the frontier still eating salt pork until they hit buffalo country after leaving Saint Louis on a trapping and trading expedition--a greenhorn in other words. I felt like I was in some aberrant time-warp trapper's camp where I had to prove myself as worthy.
 Ol' Makwi Witco (Crazy Wolf) was proud of what he had going on, of that there was no doubt. I couldn't blame him. I had trouble not looking like an awestruck kid as I tried to keep my eyes on his instead of all that was around me. The earthy smell of wood smoke, chickens pecking at our feet, the North Fork of The Flathead flowing just outside his door, hides here and there in various states of the tanning process, the weathered old barn with it's pleasant fermented odors tickling my nose, beautiful rustic cabins, his horses whinnying for their night feed, the goats milling, bleating to be milked.
 It was magic, he knew it, and took great pleasure in exulting the virtues, as if he was trying to sell me on it. Hell, he didn't have to convince me.
I'd been hunting with my Dad since I was four. My Dad had me carrying my ol' .410 single shot Stevens featherweight when I was a mere six years old. I'd had to treat it as if loaded and would go through the motions of shooting each time a bird flushed, but I had no shells so would pull the trigger on an empty gun. Any mistakes as to safety and it was as if I'd committed a cardinal sin. From as far back as I could remember, I'd been more comfortable with guns and knives in the woods than ever a pencil and paper in a classroom--that's not to say I was stupid, I wasn't, I just couldn't stand the brainwash. From my first day of school it just got worse, till I graduated early with much drama, a story I'll get back to at some time. Hell, I'd told my Dad when I was eleven I would someday live in the woods. It truly was the only thing that mattered my entire life. And now I was in the presence of a man that was doing just that.
He'd broken free. He had done what I was just setting out to achieve. As we'd been talking the past hour it was apparent we saw eye to eye, although I'm not sure he realized it at the time, being used to talking to pilgrims. But besides my upbringing I'd made the mistake of reading among many other anti-utopian books, Paul Ehrlich's, The Population Bomb in '70 and Zbigniew Brzezinski's, Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era, a few years later that changed my life-view forever. Although Bill hadn't read the latter, he had the first so we definitely saw the same vision.
I know I was glad, as I think he was also, to run into someone not needing convincing. We figured it was all going to hell in a hand basket real quick. Both of us gesticulating, interrupting, talking nonstop like insane prophets, adamant that modern man in our headlong progression to the future had jumped the tracks and was heading for a big fucking crash.
I couldn't believe my good fortune of coming upon someone like him, this is what dreams are made of and such were mine. From so early an age I can't remember this was the picture my mind went to as I drifted to never-never land every night. He called it "Valhalla."
Still sizing me up he showed me around watching my reactions. This was a big place, a full section of land, a square mile, six-hundred and forty acres, four-hundred of it in hay. He didn't own the land I found out, the Doctor that did had him there as a caretaker. Laughing as if at a foolish lad, he stated it was better to let someone else play the game, have the illusion of ownership, pay the taxes and all that bullshit, and he'd do the living. Bill figured he was the rich one--he owned it more than the sap paying for it, He was the one living in paradise year-round after all.
 Besides the old cabin he lived in, there was a big log barn with a loft, a blacksmith shop, a tool shed, and a bunch of cabins he didn't use: a two-story main lodge and five guest cabins. The place had been built around the turn of the century as a hunting camp for moneyed interests back East. The North Fork of The Flathead bordered the east side of the property, across the river was Glacier national Park, what he called his private reserve. Just upstream was Alberta Canada and their Waterton Lakes National Park. What country, tall glacier gouged mountains, high alpine meadows, lakes, streams and rivers running crystal clear. Silence and peace beyond anything I'd ever experienced up till then.
As if he needed to add to his show he became even more animated with his pronouncements  when his squaw, as he kept calling her, came out to fetch some water, like it was as much to impress her as for me. Don't get me wrong, I was impressed and felt as if in a dream, yet I could tell Bill had a pretty big opinion of himself, but then I guess I did too when you get down to it. I was bound and determined hell or high water this hoss was going to know I was his equal. And she would too.
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By W.J. Lynus O'Brien
Wednesday, 06 April 2011
Read by 2341 People, Thanks
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