The morning sky

Painted on still waters

Greets us

With a promise

As we push off

Through heavy cattails

“The great purpose is to set aside a reasonable part of the vanishing wilderness… it is a great spiritual experience.”

—Frank Church

When I recently learned that the Forest Service approved a request by the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association (IOGA) to use chainsaws to clear about 1,000 miles of deadfall-choked trails in Central Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area on a seasonal basis over a three-year period effective immediately, I wasn’t surprised. But I was deeply disappointed.

Although I’m not a high-level muckety-muck or any kind of wilderness guru, I did work 15 seasons as a crew leader for various conservation-based non-profits, private contractors and the US Forest Service.

Sleeping outdoors and living out of a backpack most of the time, I got to build and maintain trails in the great states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and California. This far-flung, seasonal career didn’t pay huge financial dividends, but it did afford me the opportunity to spend extended periods in 7 National Parks, 25 National Forests and over 50 different federally designated wilderness areas (including the Frank), many of them barely known and sparsely visited.

So, whatever officious capacity I may lack, at least my firsthand knowledge of the tools, labor and can-do attitude that goes into keeping trails open on our public lands is darn near irrefutable.

Call me a Professor of Earth Moving Sciences or a dirtbag par excellence, if you will. My chosen area of study is the fine art of digging, chopping, sawing, trundling and removing large obstacles like logs, stumps, boulders and avalanche debris off the trails. It might not sound like a very intellectual milieu, but I think you’d be surprised by the sheer amount of brain power (let alone, sweat equity) that grappling with physical objects necessitates on a regular basis.

But I digress.

Before I unleash my fiery diatribe, let me make it perfectly clear: I am not currently, never have been, nor ever will be anti-chainsaw. While leading trail crews for Northwest Youth Corps, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Pacific Northwest Trail Association, Wildwood Trails Inc., Whatcom County Parks and Recreation, Utah Conservation Corps and Bighorn National Forest, I practically had a hopped-up Stihl or Husqvarna glued to my hands the whole time and appreciated it immensely.

Whether I was felling trees, bucking windfall, removing logjams, decommissioning old trails and roads, notching joints or building critical trail features like bridges, crib walls, turnpikes and handrails, chainsaws (along with many other power tools) came in extremely handy for all sorts of laborious undertakings in the front country.

So, I have no beef with power tools. And I’m even OK with allowing them to be used within the sanctified bounds of our federally designated Wilderness Areas if the health and safety of trail crew workers and/or the general public becomes a concern. Admittedly, on more than several occasions in the past, I requested and received waivers to use chainsaws and other gas-powered equipment like rock drills and jackhammers in the backcountry for this very reason.

However, by granting a 3-year-long waiver for chainsaw use on 57 trails within the Payette National Forest portion of The Frank Church Wilderness Area at the behest of IOGA, the Forest Service has taken a big step in the wrong direction.

Yes. I get it:

—Due to the ravages of wildfire, disease and beetle infestation many trails leading to remote hunting camps have become impassable, buried for long stretches beneath crisscrossed jumbles of windthrown trees stacked up three or four or even more across each other (called jackpots in trail parlance).

—Providing access to the backcountry is essential to ensuring that future generations of trail users can experience the wilderness and become advocates for it.

—Losing these trails forever is completely unacceptable, not only to guides and outfitters who depend on them for their livelihoods but to the general public as well.

—Crews using chainsaws will be able to re-open these log-clogged routes much quicker than with the prescribed, non-motorized regime of axes and handsaws.

Quicker, maybe. But at what cost to the integrity of the Frank? And at what cost to the courageous crews of sawyers and buckers who will be tasked with sorting through this unholy mess?

After all, isn’t the whole point of a wilderness area to slow down human activity? To provide Americans with primordial sanctuaries where the forces of expediency, technological innovation and economic development are intentionally kept at bay? Places where we are allowed to travel and work under our own power. Places where we can meet the land on its own terms and, in doing so, forge deeper, more meaningful connections to our nation and each other?

What happens to our wilderness experience once the engines start revving, bar oil starts flying and the prevailing attitude of the entire operation all the way from upper management to the spike crews on the ground is to speed things up?

Wilderness isn’t about convenience. Wilderness is about doing things the hard way.

Wilderness isn’t an escape. Wilderness is a direct challenge.

Wilderness isn’t a business. Wilderness is chaos and, oftentimes, your worst nightmare.

In true wilderness, humans never win. In true wilderness, you are thankful just to come stumbling out of there on your own two feet, grateful to God and happy to be alive.

It’s been just over 30 years since I ventured into the Frank for the first time, spending the entire summer of 1996 leading back-to-back crews of 12 young adults on several trail reconstruction projects in this 2.37-million-acre, Yellowstone National Park-sized bastion of remote peaks, isolated canyons and forested uplands.

Our first project—a 40-day backcountry hitch re-opening the (then) long-neglected South Fork of the Salmon River Trail from Porphyry Bridge to Mackay Bar on the main stem of the Salmon River—doled out some of the gnarliest, most unforgiving, rattlesnake-infested trail conditions I or anyone else on my crew had ever encountered.

Using only primitive hand tools and a pair of vintage, forged steel crosscut saws, my crew and I bucked hundreds of windfallen logs, constructed a 40-foot-long two-stringer log bridge, rebuilt several rock crib walls and grubbed out 15 miles of deeply sloughed, badly eroded single-track trail all while being inundated by a constant stream of venomous serpents that emerged like clockwork every afternoon to bask on the rocky bench cuts where we toiled.

Although a chainsaw waiver would have helped us whip the trail back into shape much faster, nobody on my crew ever expressed the slightest inkling of doubt or distress about being forced to use only hand tools in the Frank. In fact, the harder and more difficult the terrain became, the more pride we took in doing the work the old-fashion way. Without power tools to assist us, we invested ourselves physically and mentally to the very best of our abilities and savored the opportunity we’d been given to challenge ourselves together in the backcountry, one of the most vital and truest gifts our wilderness areas can provide for current generations and all future generations of Americans to come.

The Frank doesn’t need a three-year power tool incursion to cure what ails it. The Frank needs more crews who know how to handle axes and crosscuts with proficiency, humility and an enduring sense of gratitude for such an honorable privilege. Trees will never stop falling in the wilderness. The wilderness deserves caretakers who are willing to square up with a log, read its natural bind and buck it off the trail with only the soft, sweet sound of cutter teeth and rakers singing freely in their ears.

I learned a lot of hard lessons during my first season as a trail crew leader in the Pacific Northwest. But the ordeal we went through just to grub a quarter mile of new tread through a fire-scorched beargrass meadow in Willamette National Forest during mid-July 1994 was a special kind of hell.

Beargrass. It’s the perfect name for the stuff.

We made good time rerouting the old pack trail across the burned over slope until we hit the beargrass. Those hardy, low-slung plants had survived countless winters buried beneath mounds of suffocating snow and, most recently, a 200-foot wall of flame. They weren’t about to give up the ghost for a gaggle of dirtbags like us.

Going into the fray, I felt pretty confident. But from the moment my crew and I started tackling the beargrass, it became apparent that we had a major undertaking on our hands.

Technically speaking, beargrass isn’t grass but a perennial herb that grows in dense, grass-like clumps throughout the subalpine zones of the Olympic, Cascade and Northern Rocky Mountains. And it’s extremely tenacious. Beargrass might look grassy above ground, but once you start poking around beneath the surface it’s an entirely different animal altogether.

Each mature beargrass plant is anchored stubbornly to the earth with a massive rhizomatous root system, measuring upwards of 3-4 feet thick and weighing upwards of 50 pounds or, oftentimes depending on growing conditions, double or triple that. These fibrous, super-dense root wads allow beargrass to retain lots of moisture for the drought and help make it extremely fire resistant.

This, as we soon discovered, is also what makes the beargrass shovel-proof.

By shovel-proof I mean you can’t just expect to pop a clump of beargrass out of the ground with a simple few stabs of the shovel. No, sir! Beargrass is hardly so meek or simple as that. In order to successfully uproot a clump of beargrass, you have to dig a moat around the entirety of its subterranean infrastructure first. Then and only then, once you’ve excavated a circular 1-3-foot-deep trench of no small length, can you start to chip away at the foundation. Although chipping might sound easy, let me assure you, it is most definitely not.

First, like I mentioned before, if you try to use a shovel for this, you won’t get very far. In fact, chances are good you will break your shovel at some point sooner or later and by “break” I mean snap your entire shovelhead clean off.

No, the preferred implement for excavating a beargrass root wad needs to be a short-handled digging tool, something stoutly built and heavy—a grub hoe or, even better, a pick mattock. Expect to get dirty too, very dirty, indeed, because once you put your moat in you need to get down onto your hands and knees and start undermining it.

The undermining process generally takes anywhere from 25-45 minutes to complete and then to top it off, you need to wrestle the wet, extremely slippery, root-gnarled monster out of its nice comfy hole. The wrestling, of course, is not a one-person job, either. Depending on dimensions and weight, a team or 2-3 people is generally recommended.

Last but hardly least, comes the inevitable quandary about what to do with your hard-earned prize now that it’s been heaved so laboriously out of the earth.

Ideally, there will be an old trail or trampled area nearby that needs to be restored (preferably downhill!), so you can drag the Big Beast over there and replant it. But, in the event that there are no obvious scars upon the landscape, you can just tuck the thing back in neatly amongst its buddies where deer and elk and other native ungulates will browse on its white, club-like flower stalks and the local bears can harvest its grassy plumes to insulate their winter dens for many more generations to come.

Hallelujah. Amen.

There was a bite in the air and prevailing stiffness in both of my shoulders as the three of us creaky, Gen X knuckle-draggers strapped into our snowboards beside White Salmon Day Lodge and pushed our way to the back of the line at the base of Chair 7.

Although we’d succeeded in our eternal quest to beat the morning rush to Mt. Baker Ski Area, camping overnight in the parking lot had exacted a terrible toll on our aged bodies. Nobody, even the least damaged of us, escaped unscathed.

Poor mattress quality and undersized fold-out recesses in my buddy Mikado’s all-weather conveyance precipitated severe musculoskeletal discomfort. Abominable outbursts of fitful snoring hounded us unabated through the night—we could have caught more Zs in a lumber mill for all the log-sawing that went on in that glorified tin can.

“Maybe for our next Reunion Ride we can spare ourselves the hassle and throw down for a cabin, or at least a proper-size RV,” I yawned, massaging the crick in my neck as we loaded onto the quad.

“After all,” I continued, “the van’s not getting any bigger and nobody here appears to be shrinking.”

“Remember that A-frame in Glacier we rented back in the mid-1990s for $500 a month?” Mikado chuckled as the chair lurched forward, sweeping us skyward.

“Yeah,” said our other buddy, O.T.. “I couldn’t forget that leaky, bong-water-soaked, rat-infested dump if I tried.”

“Well,” Mikado grinned as we bounced along within spitting distance of the tree tops, “It’s currently listed on Airbnb for $500 per night.”

“Does that include a hot tub?” I asked, recalling the holy mess we’d made of the place during our first, adventure-packed winter together.

“Nah,”said Mikado. “But if we piled up a few mounds of damp socks, desecrated the toilet and spilled hot wax all over the kitchen we could make it feel just like home again.”

“Ha,” O.T. clucked, clapping his gloved hands. “You’re getting nostalgic in your old age.”

“Speaking of nostalgia,” said Mikado, unfurling a stubby, purple-and-orange-speckled pipe from his jacket pocket.

“Any of you grungy geezers wanna take a turn on Floyd Pepper here?”

“Floyd Pepper?” I asked, trying to put a face to the name as I watched him pack a righteous, dank-looking bowl.

“Yeah,” Mikado said. “The mustachioed bass player of the house band on “The Muppet Show.” Remember?”

“Vaguely,” I said, taking the freshy when he offered it. “But I do recall a blue-headed saxophone player and Animal, the drummer.”

“Close enough,” Mikado said, handing me a lighter. “Just so you know, the diesel I grow runs a bit on the zonky side so you might wanna ease into it if you’ve been chaste for a while.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I said, firing one up for old time’s sake.

Things were a little wobbly when we unloaded from our chair and booted up for a quick run down Otto Bon. But as soon as I stood up and pushed off, gravity pulled me forward and all I had to do was not tip over before we reached Chair 8.

As extended aerial transport typically does, our 10-minute ride on Chair 8 provided a meditative respite that lulled us into collective quietude.

With the glaciated massif of Mt. Shuksan grinning to our east and the snow-heaped eminence of Hemispheres looming in the foreground, I watched a steady stream of skiers and snowboarders carving blissfully down Daytona and relished the hibernal resplendence of my surroundings.

“Goddamn, do you feel that?” said Mikado, spreading his arms wide open.

“Feel what?” O.T. asked, horking down his first Snickers bar of the day.

“The vibes,” bellowed Mikado, taking a deep, expansive breath. “This place is magnetic. Just think of all the fresh tracks and good times we’ve enjoyed together here over the years.”

I wasn’t about to argue. But what Mikado neglected to mention and what I couldn’t stop thinking about was how lucky we were to still be enjoying it.

Almost from the beginning—within two years of coalescing into the same orbit—our immediate circle of Mt. Baker bros started to shrink.

Proto Man Mike was the first of us to depart, back in 1997. He was shot and killed by a cracked-out meth-head while walking home from a party on Czech Road just outside of Glacier.

Hunky F.D. shuffled off this mortal coil the next winter. He and his girlfriend perished in a car accident during a whiteout on Mt. Baker Highway.

Bunkhole Bob kicked the bucket in 2003, buried in an avalanche up near Revelstoke, B.C. with seven other people while training as a mountain guide.

Nine years later, in 2012, Big Karl formally bid us adieu after falling off a cliff down at Alpental, leaving a wife and three kids.

And, last but not least, in early December 2022, D-dawgg Darwin succumbed to deep snow immersion after falling into a tree well near The Chute—a double black diamond run on the Heather Meadows side of the ski area about a mile away as the raven flies.

The first three losses were jarring and difficult to swallow, but the grieving process helped solidify us in our survival. The most recent deaths—although hardly less tragic—seemed more acceptable and yet, at once, more portentous.

We’re all going to go sooner or later. And now that our original crew of eight had dwindled down to three, later seemed sooner than it ever had before.

Nearing the top of Chair 8, I looked eastward across Shuksan Arm and contemplated the sheer enormity of the terrain. All that delicious, untracked powder. All those steep, heavenly lines.

Suddenly, clear as it was yesterday, I could see Proto Man dropping method airs off The Beast 30 years ago on his cherished Gnu Dukester and Bunkhole—looking dapper in his Helly Hansen rain gear and Elmer Fudd hat—hitting Mach 1 just to stay ahead of a slab avalanche on Hollywood Ridge.

I saw Big Karl spraying rooster tails down Pyramid just before he fractured his spine while D-Dog, O.T. and I built our customary kicker on Safety Line.

I saw Hunky dropping through trees on The Hourglass just before he guided us out to take our first epic turns on Hidden Bowl, a dream within a dream within a dream.

Years reeled. Memories and injuries blurred. I could have been making my first trip to The Arm just as easily as the dozens upon dozens I’d made since for how apprehensive I felt.

“Sweet lord,” I thought, as we sprang out of our chair at the top of Chair 8. “Do any of us really need to be doing this again?”

Mikado and O.T. paid me no mind as they stowed their boards in their packs and headed up the boot trail out beyond the gate. As I sat there watching them ascend, the urge to stay inbounds took hold with a vengeance.

“Yo, bro!” Mikado soon barked, peeved by my conspicuous absence. “Are you gonna sit there twiddling your thumbs all day or get humping?”

Mellow and diplomatic as he is in the flatlands, Mikado transforms into an alpha male once he hits the slopes. From the beginning, he has poked and prodded me, goading me to go big when all I’d rather do is retreat and feel comfortable.

So, exactly as I’ve been doing for nearly 30 years, I gave him a big thumbs up, unstrapped my board and started toiling up the boot pack toward some of the finest, out of bounds terrain that money can’t buy.

Mikado and O.T. were hunkered comfortably at the top of the traverse when I finally arrived and, as I stood surveying the long, knife-edge ridge top, I felt butterflies in my stomach.

“Safety break?” Mikado asked, proffering Floyd Pepper.

“No bueno,” I said, strapping onto my heirloom Burton. “I’m just starting to get my balance back after the initial buzz.”

The traverse was mostly tracked out and, as we swooshed speedily over packed powder, I felt the first surge of adrenaline kick in. By the time we reached the drop-in point, I was ready to shred freshies again.

However, before we could get down to business, we had to perform the time-honored ritual of busting out our whisky flasks, pouring one out to each of our dearly departed friends and raising a toast to hallowed ground.

Then, according to the established pecking order, we let Mikado take first turns.

Stoked as Mikado was, his decision to opt for the steepest, most direct line available precipitated a wipeout of epic proportions.

After watching him tomahawk downhill like a ragdoll a couple hundred feet, O.T. and I endeavored to follow a different, much mellower route entirely.

O.T. slanted in high to the right and I followed quickly behind, contouring gently across a more forgiving, convex slope.

Here, the powder grew from waist-deep to chest-deep and, almost instantly, we were snorkeling through a burial blanket of cushiony goodness.

After mobbing to the bottom of the knob, O.T. broke left and I continued rightward, gunning it far and wide across a broad, rolling flank.

In a flash, all my worries were gone and there were nothing but fresh, floaty turns to carry me forward through insular depths of crystalline resplendence.

Leaning hard on my back foot, I crouched down low, threw my arms out wide and went sailing through transcendent dimensions, hooting and hollering as I flew.

Motion subsumed me. My weightless body shuddered and danced. It felt just like the good old days again.

The HVAC crew arrived to replace our ailing, 40-year-old furnace just as I finished loading my skis in the trunk, but I didn’t stick around to watch.

The weather forecast for Northwest Washington that Monday wasn’t anything to screech about, but since my local ski area, Mt. Baker Ski Area, was currently in “mid-week operations,” I wasn’t about to miss out.

Back in the mid-1990s, when I first started skiing and snowboarding at Baker, weekend crowds and generalized craziness seldom bothered me. The urge to catch air and shred gnar far exceeded any inconvenience the teaming masses engendered. You could find me shredding the gnar just as frequently on weekends as weekdays.

However, over the years, as my patience for lift lines dwindled and ticket prices soared, I found myself gravitating almost exclusively to the mellower, far less crowded atmosphere of mid-week.

As they are wont to do, dense fog and blinding sun breaks mixed with intermittent sleet bursts harried me eastbound up Highway 542 from Bellingham. Squinting hard just to stay on the road, my eyelids grew heavier and heavier. By the time I started hugging the curves along the upper reaches of the North Fork of the Nooksack River, persistent drowsiness had taken hold.

Singing, screaming and slapping my own face helped keep me awake for the first 30 miles, but once I started nodding off I had to pull over. Whipping into the first available turnout, I nosed my front bumper tight against the shy rocks overlooking the tree-choked gorge.

Ensconced by dank shadows and cedar boughs, I cracked my window, lowered my seat into its recumbent position and killed the engine. Not a single car zoomed past as I drifted away. The echoing river was the last thing I heard.

Waking up 20 minutes later, I found myself enveloped by dense, cottony mist. The temperature had dropped significantly and my benumbed extremities were tingling.

Leaping outdoors to stimulate circulation, I hopped around the puddled gravel, kicking my feet and shaking my hands until the pins and needles subsided. Climbing back into the car, I fired up the engine, cranked the heat up and continued my pilgrimage with renewed vigor.

The mist finally dissipated about halfway up the Razor Hone switchbacks and, as the snowpack grew deeper, my sight-line grew shorter with each winding, hairpin turn.

Shuddering gusts buffeted the almost empty Heather Meadows parking area as I pulled into a spot with a panoramic view of Mt. Herman and Table Mountain. Inching open the car door, a blast of wind whipped it from my grasp so violently it nearly ripped off its hinges.

Retreating to the leeward side of my vehicle, I struggled to assemble my gear through the rear passenger side door, fighting every step of the way just to keep each piece of my kit from being blown to oblivion.

Eventually, as I carried my skis to my starting area at the bottom of Home Run trail, the tempest subsided enough so I could hear silence filling my ears.

The snow at the bottom of the trail was unapologetically crusty and wind-boarded, but as I clicked into my bindings I felt exceedingly grateful for having made it this far without incurring a heinous accident.

Kicking and gliding my way up the rock hard corduroy toward Austin Pass, I listened to the metal edges of my skis scrape against the snow and swung my poles rhythmically to generate extra momentum.

Expansive emptiness amplified the silence and every so often the muffled hoots of unseen frolickers echoed over from the White Salmon side. Except for a pair of ascending snowshoers high on the ridge above and a small posse of snowboarders mobbing their way through heavy chunder down Pan Face, I had the place to myself.

By the time I herringboned a few hundred feet uphill to the orange mesh fence delineating the ski area boundary, my wicking layers were saturated and I’d worked up a powerful thirst. Stopping just before the gate to chug some water and wolf down a Pearson’s Salted Nut Roll, I debated whether to turn left up Blueberry Cat Track for a quick groomer run back to my car or follow the snowshoe trail out of bounds toward Artist Point for a longer expedition.

Since the avalanche danger was low and the heavy winds seemed to have died down for the moment, I decided on the latter.

The afternoon sun blared brightly through an auspicious break in the clouds as I mashed my way up the knee-deep snowshoe trail, and crossing over Austin Pass I could feel the snow begin to soften.

Finally, descending through the trees on the opposite side, I veered off into untracked powder and started blazing my own route across the broad, undulating hillside.

About half an hour later, trying to negotiate a deep trough between two corniced snowdrifts, I slipped badly on an icy patch and toppled ass-end first into waist-deep snow.

Discomposed but feeling no pain, I decided to stay down there for a while and give my throbbing and increasingly wobbly legs a break.

The raven appeared like a shadow. I had no idea where it came from and I never heard it coming. It just floated up over the snowdrifts, wings fully outspread, casually riding an updraft from somewhere below.

I’ve encountered oversized corvids in the mountains before, but this specimen was truly breathtaking. With a wingspan nearly as wide as I am tall and a beak that could have cracked a coconut, it wasn’t a bird I wanted to tangle with.

So, greeting this imposing interloper with a friendly wave, I shrank differentially into the mountainside and let the cards fall where they may.

Continuing to hover about 10 feet above the snowdrift on my downhill side, the raven soon hailed me with a shrill croak followed by a genial cluck-cluck-cluck. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but it seemed like a benevolent enough utterance.

Then, after turning to examine me with each of its dark, discerning eyes, it floated rapidly upward, issued a parting caw-caw-caw and wheeled rapidly away into the ether.

Exhilarated but also relieved, I stood up, brushed the snow off my jacket and continued on my merry way.

From then on, for the remainder of the trip, I couldn’t stop thinking about that bird. What had drawn it to me? Where had it gone? Even as my thoughts wandered to other topics, I kept looking and listening for it. But even after ascending the ridge to Artist Point where panoramic, 360-degree views opened high and wide between Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan, there was still no sign of it.

A couple hours later, doubling back through the snow drifts where the raven had materialized, it occurred to me that perhaps I’d imagined the whole episode.

Although an impact crater in the snow provided indisputable evidence to the veracity of my crash site, the sudden and prolonged absence of such an ephemeral creature did little to assuage my doubts.

I was double poling through the gate back into the upper bounds of the ski area, trying to build momentum for my final descent to the car, when I heard two, rapid-fire caw-caw-caws echoing over me.

Glancing back, I saw a giant raven—possibly the one I’d been looking for or perhaps a different, even bigger one—come sailing toward me with both wings outstretched.

“Aha!” I remarked, tucking both poles under my arms as I dropped into a sustained crouch. “So I didn’t just imagine you then.”

The bird kept cawing as I went screaming downhill, crouching and bouncing and shifting my weight from one leg to the other. I thought it was over. But when I carved my first big turn, the raven dove hard and swooped in behind me.

For a second I flinched and nearly went tumbling. But catching my balance at the last second, I glanced to see the raven trailing 10 feet behind.

“What’s your game?” I thought, carving another turn the opposite way. And again, I glanced to see the raven trailing five feet behind.

So, I carved another turn and another and another. And each time I swerved, the raven stuck high and tight behind me, drafting in my slipstream.

“Unreal,” I thought, pointing both ski tips straight downhill. “This bird is gonna bomb the hill with me.”

And that’s precisely what it did all the way down onto the groomed track, where it finally sailed ahead and started tipping its wings back and forth, showing off like a true slalomer.

“All right,” I shouted, double poling to maintain my momentum across the flats. “You win. But so do I.”

Croaking and clucking, the big black bird juked left and right, climbed sharply over Bagley Creek and glided rapidly away into shimmering vastness.

Barreling alone down the wide, empty track, I leaned back, loosened my limbs and let gravity carry me past a parade of empty, unmoving chairlifts over crunchy, machine-packed snow.

Whether they’re defending the Alamo, pursuing true love, prospecting for gold or exploring the deepest reaches of outer space, the leading men of Hollywood have been subjected to a evolving gauntlet of perilous undertakings ever since moviemaking began.   

From the silent film era through the Golden Age of Hollywood and every epoch since, directors and actors of all shapes and stripes have endeavored to interpret and express masculinity through a variety of roles, mannerisms and perspectives.   

Sometimes they're heroes. Sometimes they're villains. And sometimes, they're just lucky to make it to the ending credits alive. But whether they’re tall, dark and handsome or skinny, bald and neurotic, there’s no shortage of bros to choose from.  

Recently, in an effort to flesh out the full breadth of androcentric movies that have knuckle-dragged their way across the silver screen over the decades, Beardo’s intrepid arts and entertainment intern, Holly Highbar, plunged deep into a rabbit hole of Herculean proportions and took an enlightening look around.

Here’s her detailed encapsulation of some of the hairy-chested milestones she encountered.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1955)
Long before rock star rapscallions such as Kurt Cobain and Sid Vicious became poster boys for all things smack, Frank Sinatra tracked his arms up good and proper as aspiring drummer/recovering morphine addict Frankie Machine in this Otto Preminger adaptation of Nelson Algren’s lurid tome. 

"I kicked it for keeps," Old Blue Eyes proclaims after serving a six-month prison sentence. "Part of the cure is keeping yourself busy doin' what you like."

Unfortunately, hanging out with a seedy smack peddler and dealing cards at 24-hour poker marathons isn't enough to prevent him from failing his band audition and relapsing with a vengeance.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)
In the ninth installment of the James Bond franchise, Roger Moore goes toe-to-toe with a supervillain named "Scaramanga" (Christopher Lee) who is hell-bent on subjugating the planet with a solar-powered weapon of mass destruction. 

After dashing his way through the mean streets of Bangkok in a jet-boat-assisted orgy of sex and violence, 007 eventually washes up on Scaramanga's top-secret island hideaway where he finds himself thrust into a lethal game of cat and mouse against Scaramanga and his pint-sized manservant, Nick Nack (Herve Villechaize). 

THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1941)
Withering zingers and double entendres run roughshod in this zany screwball comedy which features four live penguins, an octopus, a mummy and a tyrannical radio personality named Sheridan Whiteside (Monty  Woolley) who traumatizes an entire family to the point of hysterics. Bette Davis steals the show in one of her few but highly-lauded comedic roles as Maggie Cutler, Whiteside’s whip-smart assistant. Based on the 1939 play of the same name written by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976)
Iconic glam rocker David Bowie lends his androgynous rock star persona to the role of "Jerome Newton" — an enigmatic (and extremely androgynous) space alien who comes to earth to construct a rocket ship to rescue his family, who are stranded on a dying planet. 

Pawning his valuable space possessions to generate start-up funds and utilizing his super-advanced alien technological abilities to impress potential investors, Newton heads to New York where a big-shot named Oliver V. Farnsworth (Buck Henry) helps him start a profitable hi-tech conglomerate.

Unfortunately, before Newton can get his rescue ship launched, he falls hopelessly in love with a sultry hotel maid who introduces him to the ruinous, all-too human vices of sex, drugs, booze and television. 

THE MAN FROM LARAMIE (1955)
In his fifth and final Western collaboration with director Anthony Mann (“Winchester ’73,” “Bend of the River,” “The Naked Spur” and “The Far Country”), James Stewart stars as Will Lockhart—a retired Cavalry officer who runs afoul of a powerful ranching family and a bloodthirsty band of marauding Apaches while quietly pursuing the gunrunners who he holds responsible for his younger brother’s death.    

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock—who used a slightly altered plot from his 1934 film of the same name—this mystery thriller stars James Stewart and Doris Day as an American couple who become embroiled in an international assassination plot while vacationing in French Morocco. Containing composer Bernard Herman’s only appearance on film, it also features the chart-topping, Academy Award-winning song “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will be, Will Be)” written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (“Silver Bells”) and performed by Day.

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) 
Finally, in his third and final billing as the man, Jimmy Stewart had to share the role with John Wayne. 

In John Ford's timeless classic of lost love and frontier justice, Stewart plays "Rance Stoddard" — a bumbling, peace-loving drifter whose rise from humble busboy to United States senator is based on his widespread, but ultimately erroneous, reputation as the man who takes down a sadistic bandit named Liberty Valance.  

Wayne plays “Jon Doniphon,” the tough-guy rancher who actually shoots Valance yet allows Stoddard to claim all the glory (even though it costs him the love of his life). 

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975)
Michael Caine and Sean Connery strut their stuff in John Huston's epic interpretation of Rudyard Kipling's timeless parable of high adventure and imperial conquest.

Caine plays "Peachy" and Connery plays "Danny" — two roguish outcasts who set out to strike it rich deep in the remote Himalayan frontier. 

Utilizing their extensive geographic knowledge and military experience, this ambitious, fortune-seeking duo get a firsthand lesson in the fickle nature of fate after ascending the Khyber Pass to conquer a fortified city containing treasures untold.

THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT (1952)
A few decades before he graced the set of “Star Wars” as Obi-Wan-Kanobi, Sir Alec Guinness transformed himself into Sidney Stratton, a brilliant but obsessive young researcher who invents a glowing, slightly radioactive type of fabric that resists wear and stain— a highly lauded but corporate intrigue-inducing accomplishment for which he soon finds himself reduced to fugitive status. 

THE MAN IN THE GREY FLANNEL SUIT (1956)
Tom Rath (Gregory Peck) is a Harvard-educated World War II veteran who’s plagued by flashbacks and struggling to find contentment in the modern world. His wife, Betsy (Jennifer Jones), dutifully maintains their house and tends to their three young children. Suddenly, their idyllic life in Connecticut nearly goes off the rails when Tom takes a challenging new job and discovers that a wartime affair he had in Italy resulted in a child. Based on Sloan Wilson’s 1955 autobiographical novel, this gripping mid-century drama centers around the American search for purpose in a world dominated by business.    

 
THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS (1983)
For this darkly deadpan tour de force, Steve Martin plays Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, a lovestruck neurosurgeon who embarks upon an inane quest to consummate his affections for a disembodied lover (voiced by an uncredited Sissy Spacek) whose brain he manages to preserve in a jar.       

THE MAN WHO SKIED DOWN EVEREST (1975)
Seventeen years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay became the first humans to summit the world's tallest mountain, an accomplished though little known Japanese alpinist named Yuichiro Miura became the first person to descend it on skis. 

That Miura managed to descend 6,600 feet from the Yellow Band just below the South Col down the steep Lhtose face in two minutes and 22 seconds and also survived a perilous, 1,320-foot, out-of-control fall to the edge of a deadly crevasse seems a manly enough achievement itself. 

However, what makes this Academy Award-winning film stand out is the stunning degree to which the filmmakers manage to bring the ice-encrusted, wind-battered flanks of the world's mightiest mountain to life.

THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER (1982)
When Jim Craig (Tom Burlinson) is forced off of his family ranch to retrieve a prized colt from a band of wild horses all hell breaks loose in the Australian outback. Based on the famous poem by Banjo Paterson (1864-1941), this film features Kirk Douglas in a dual role as estranged brothers Harrison (a wealthy rancher) and Spur (a one-legged miner).  

MAN ON THE MOON (1999)
Jim Carey transforms himself into enigmatic American comedian Andy Kaufman in this penetrating biographical comedy drama directed by Milos Forman (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Amadeus”). From the early days perfecting his “Foreign Man” persona on “Saturday Night Live,” to befuddling his fellow cast members as “Latka Gravas” on the hit television show Taxi (1978-83), to making audiences squirm in their seats as sleazy, lounge singer “Tony Clifton,” Carey embodies the full range of Kaufman’s alter-egos all the way to his untimely death from lung cancer at the age of 35.

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (1929,1939,1998)
Based loosely around the final saga of “The d’Artagnan Romances” by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), this swashbuckling historical drama focuses on the exceptionally cruel fate of a pseudonymous prisoner of state during the reign of LouisXIV (1643-1715) whose true identity remains a mystery even to this day. The first big studio rendition (released in 1928) starred Douglas Fairbanks. The second (released in 1939) was directed by James Whale (“Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein”). The most recent version was released in 1998 and features Leonardo DiCaprio, John Malkovich, Jeremy Irons, Gerard Depardieu and Gabriel Byrne.

      
THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE (1993)
Starring Mel Gibson in his directorial debut, this compelling drama explores the friendship between a troubled young boy (Nick Stahl) and a mysterious recluse named McLeod (played by Gibson)—a former teacher who goes into hiding after a disfiguring accident.  

THE MAN WITH TWO FACES (1934)
Edward G. Robinson stars in a dual role as Damon Wells, a famous Broadway actor who transforms himself into a bearded theatrical producer named Jules Chautard in order to free his actress sister (Mary Astor) from the sinister clutches of her verminous husband. The film was based on the 1933 play “The Dark Tower” by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott.

A SERIOUS MAN (2009)
In this Academy Award-nominated black comedy by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a beleaguered professor of physics living in suburban Minneapolis with his wife (Sari Lennick), their two children and Larry’s homeless brother (Richard Kind) in 1967. Soon after his wife asks for a divorce so she can marry her lover (Fred Melamed), Larry gets into hot water with the tenure committee when he is blackmailed into accepting a bribe from an underperforming student. After his wife kicks him and his brother out of the house, she empties the couple’s bank accounts and takes off with her lover. Penniless, with his brother facing charges for illegal gambling, solicitation and sodomy, Larry turns to his Jewish faith for support and his situation deteriorates even more rapidly from there.      

THE MAN WHO LAUGHS (1928)
This synchronized sound, silent-film classic, based on Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel of the same name, stars Conrad Veidt as “Gwynplaine,” a heroic 17th century circus freak who doesn't let the fact that his maw has been permanently altered into a hideous, surgically-enhanced grimace stop him from holding down a steady job and attaining true love. The titular character made such an impression on the creators of “Batman” (Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson) that they incorporated his likeness into one of the caped crusader’s most enduring villains, the Joker. 

THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN (1983)
Burt Reynolds plays David Fowler, a successful and extremely hirsute sculptor whose insatiable lust for the fairer sex eventually drives him to an early grave. Written and directed by Blake Edwards (“The Pink Panther,” Breakfast at Tiffany’s”) this lusty remake of Francois Truffaut’s 1977 film of the same name features Marilu Henner as a horny aerobics instructor, Jennifer Edwards as a horny prostitute, Cynthia Sikes as a horny babysitter, Julie Andrews as a horny therapist and Kim Basinger as the horny, homicidal wife of a Texas millionaire. 

THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT (2018) 
In this far-fetched, fantasy adventure directed by Robert D. Krzykowski, an exquisitely coiffed and silver-haired Sam Elliot plays unsung American hero Calvin Barr who, decades after assassinating Adolf Hitler in World War II, is recruited by the U.S. government to hunt down an extremely dangerous, plague-infected Bigfoot intent on wiping out all humanity.

MAN ON A WIRE (2008) 
This breathtaking documentary chronicles Frenchman Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the New York Trade Center. Based on Petit’s 2002 book “To Reach the Clouds,” the film offers rare footage and still photographs of the event as it unfolded plus present-day interviews with members of Petit’s expansive support team, including several people who helped him access the buildings. A film version directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Joseph Gordon Levitt as Petit was released in 2015.

SUPERMAN (1978)
Although Superman had already gained wide popularity on radio, television and film since his DC Comics debut in 1938, it wasn’t until Christopher Reeves slipped into a phone booth as Clark Kent and came out donning the cape and tights that the Man of Steel materialized in his first big-budget movie. With a humorous screenplay co-written by Mario Puzo (“The Godfather”) and an ensemble cast including Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Terrance Stamp and Ned Beatty, the movie features a bevy of analog-era special effects that still hold up today.

BATMAN (1989-1997)
The caped crusader zooms around Gotham in a variety of sleek, high-powered conveyances facing down a rogue’s gallery of his most iconic villains in this series of four films directed by Tim Burton (“Batman,” “Batman Returns”) and Joel Schumacher (“Batman Forever,” “Batman & Robin”). Michael Keaton stars in the title role in the first two installments, followed respectively by Val Kilmer and George Clooney while the revolving cast of bad guys includes The Joker (Jack Nicholson), Penguin (Danny DeVito), Cat Woman (Michelle Pfieffer), Riddler (Jim Carrey), Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones), Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger). 

SPIDER-MAN (2002-2007)
Directed by Sam Raimi (“Evil Dead,” “A Simple Plan”), this superhero trilogy stars Tobey Maguire as the web-slinging crime fighter and Kristen Dunst as his long-suffering love interest Mary Jane Watson. When he’s not grappling with feelings of rejection, inadequacy and loneliness or freelancing for the Daily Bugle, Peter Parker dons his spider suit to subdue the likes of Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) and Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church).

IRON MAN (2008)
In the first film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Robert Downey Jr. stars as defense contractor/master engineer Tony Stark, who builds a mechanized suit of armor to escape a terrorist group called Ten Rings and decides to stop manufacturing arms much to the ire of his business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) — who, in turn, conspires to take over the company. Directed by John Favreau (“Swingers,” “The Wolf of Wall Street”), the film also features Terrance Howard as James “Rhodey” Rhodes (a U.S. Air Force liaison who allies himself with Stark) and Gwyneth Paltrow as Virginia “Peter” Potts (Stark’s personal assistant and love interest).

REPO MAN (1984)
After Otto (Emilio Estevez) gets fired from his job at grocery store he takes a job repossessing cars under the tutelage of Bud (Harry Dean Stanton). Although Otto catches on quickly, the scope of the job soon spirals out of control when he is tasked with tracking down an extraterrestrial Chevy Malibu driven by a lobotomized scientist. Directed by Alex Cox (“Sid and Nancy”) with a punk-oriented soundtrack featuring Circle Jerks, Iggy Pop and Suicidal Tendencies, this science fiction noir is both a satire on consumer culture and an anarchic paean to blue-collar workers.

THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980)
Fredrick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), a surgeon in late 19th century London, discovers John Merrick (John Hurt) in a Victorian freak show where he is kept by a brutish ringmaster named Bytes (Freddie Jones). After Treves rescues Merrick and installs him in a London hospital he is kidnapped by Bytes, leading to his demise. Directed by David Lynch and executive produced by Mel Brooks, this biographical drama earned eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best director and Best Adapted Screenplay.  

THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)
When a science experiment makes him invisible, Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) swaddles himself in bandages, throws on a pair of dark goggles and rents a room at the Lion’s Head Inn. When the innkeeper tries to evict him for making a big mess and unpaid rent he throws him downstairs, takes off all his clothes and flees into the countryside. Later, showing up at his assistant’s home, Griffin hatches a plot to dominate the world. After killing a police officer, derailing a train and throwing two volunteer searchers off a cliff, investigators finally track Dr. Griffen down and kill him — upon which his body becomes visible again. Based on H.G. Wells’ novel and directed by James Whale (“Frankenstein”) this science fiction horror film was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2008.    

THE MAN (1972)
Thirty-six years before Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States, senator Douglas Diman (James Earl Jones) assumes command of the nation after the sitting president and Speaker of the House of Representatives are killed in a building collapse and the vice president (played by Burgess Meredith) bows out due to terminal illness. Much like Obama, Diman—a moderate who takes charge with aplomb in face of increasing racism—proves more than up to the task. Directed by Joseph Sargent with a screenplay by Rod Serling (“The Twilight Zone”), this political drama provides a vivid, if unnerving, glimpse of the nation’s power hierarchies. 

Some other manly films:

THE MAN WITH TWO LIVES (1942)
THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES (1940)
THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE (1985)
THE MAN THEY COULDN’T HANG (1939)
THE MAN INSIDE (1958)
THE MAN UPSTAIRS (1958)
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E (2015)
THE MAN WHO LIVED TWICE (1936)
THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (2018) 
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE (1997)
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE (2001)
THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY (2015) 
THE MAN WHO INVENTED CHRISTMAS (2017)
THE MAN WHO TURNED TO STONE (1957)
THE MAN IN THE MOON (1991)
THE MAN IN THE DARK (1953)
THE FIRST MAN (2018)
THE BIG MAN (1990)
THE BAD MAN (1941)
THE UNDERCOVER MAN (1949)
THE WOLF MAN (1941)
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966)
OH, LUCKY MAN! (1973)
INESTRUCTABLE MAN (1956)
MAN ON FIRE (2004)
MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972)
DARKMAN (1990)
ROCKETMAN (2019)
CAVEMAN (1981)
CINDERELLA MAN (2005)
MONKEY MAN (2024)
SLENDER MAN (2018)
4D MAN (1959)
ENCINO MAN (1992)
LITTLE BIG MAN (1970) 

Nothing takes a load off Santa’s back like nestling into his easy chair with a brimming mug full of holiday nog and the Modern Library, Rockwell Kent-illustrated edition of his favorite American classic.

Presents are wrapped, the sleigh is loaded and… “There she blows!”

Ho-ho-ho

Thank ye Mrs. Claus

Hey friends, it’s your old pal Fastaar Hotwaxer coming in live and dewy fresh from C-FOG radio and boy oh boy have I got some great news to share today.

Wondering where to score a pair of reasonably priced brand-name, custom-made or gently-used hiking boots? Looking for more supportive insoles? Need a leather upper mended or replaced? Bunion pads, firmer arch support or a fresh pair of compression socks on your agenda? Pesky heel spurs, chronic hammertoe or a crippling flare-up of plantar fasciitis putting a hitch in your giddy-up?

Well, my fellow bipeds, you are in luck!

A few weeks ago—after wrapping up a long and illustrious career as lead ski/bike tech at Adventure Hut (the biggest new and secondhand gear store in upper Whipsaw valley) and tending bar at the Rusty Grommet (the only combination bar/restaurant/gift shop/ice cream parlor/barber shop/haberdashery between Antelope and Devil’s Corner)—my old ski bum buddy Johnny Hotheels, realized his lifelong dream by opening a therapeutic, full-service shoe and boot shop called Sole Man.

Operating out of a handsomely restored, solar-powered, carbon neutral storefront in historic downtown Wisdom, Sole Man is an innovative, only-of-its-kind shoe and boot shop offering a wide selection of new and gently used footwear, shoe and boot repair services, hobnailing, spit and shine shoe polishing, shoe stretching, blackening, ski/snowboard/ice skate sharpening, pedicure, foot massage, toe waxing and a full range of licensed podiatry services.  

But wait, there’s more!  

Along with a crack team of award-winning pedicurists, Mr. Hotheels also employs an accomplished team of in-house, Swiss-trained cobblers who can hook you up with a shiny new pair of custom-fit hiking boots, mountaineering boots, cowboy boots, combat boots, mud boots, snow and winter boots, climbing booties, tennis shoes, skate shoes, dancing shoes, running shoes, bowling shoes, slippers, flip-flops, roller skates, roller blades or ice skates as well.

Not only do Sole Man shoes, boots and skates offer exceptional style, comfort and quality, but they also come fully guaranteed with a three-year “comfort & durability” warranty.

Even more importantly, all the materials used to construct Sole Man products are made with sustainable, environmentally-friendly materials including but not limited to:  rubber extracted from reconstituted bicycle tires, old rain gear and roller skate wheels, fabric and metals manufactured from upcycled tent and backpack parts and leather/glue products sourced directly from the choicest local roadkill available.

 So—whether you’re looking to invigorate your tired, trail-battered dogs in a pool of warm, herbal-infused saltwater, slapping a new heel on your favorite pair of wingtips or in need of professional medical treatment—just hop, skip, limp or dodder on down to Sole Man for all and any of your needs.  

From heel to toe and halfway up your shins, they’ve got you covered.

At Sole Man, your feet come first.

I didn’t choose the lefse. The lefse chose me.

It came down from my mother’s side—a buttery, crepe-like delicacy passed from one generation of Norwegian-Americans to the next leading all the way back to the Old Country.

Every winter holiday season—usually a week before Thanksgiving and Christmas—the epic, two-day ritual began.

On the first day, grandpa (RIP) peeled and boiled a small mountain of Russet potatoes (they could only be Russets), diced them, riced them, mashed them into dough with a small mountain of butter, spread it evenly into baking pans and refrigerated it overnight.

For the second day, grandma (RIP) took over. After adding flour, salt and heavy cream to the mixture, she cut the dough into individual lefse paddies, rolled each one out on a pastry board and cooked them on a hot griddle with the aid of a thin, wooden stick.

Gradually, at the appointed hour, we younger family members started showing up to hover around their kitchen, watching and waiting for the magic to happen.

My Norwegian-American grandparents were as easy-going and fun-loving as any. But they took their lefse seriously. Grandpa preferred his lefse a little thicker with plenty of dark brown “freckles” just like his mother had always made it. But grandma liked hers on the thinner side with lighter freckles, the thinner and chewier the better.

Every time my grandparents made lefse, they argued about this. Mostly it was just peppery banter and grumbling, but occasionally there could be testiness and raised voices that precipitated a tactful switch from English to their native Norwegian.

Although neither of my grandparents were shy about expressing their opinions, they never let their personal preferences hinder the productivity of the lefse-making process itself. “Agree to disagree,” my grandma often quipped, “but never disrespect the lefse.”

It had been lefse that helped sustain the Faas (her family) and the Moens (his family) through the perilous hardships of homesteading in North Dakota during the late 19^th Century.

It was lefse that helped them bust through the sod in which the potatoes were planted to make more lefse. It was lefse that they used to trade with the Sioux Indians and their fellow homesteaders to maintain good relations and obtain critical supplies.

It had always been lefse and always would be lefse.

Lefse, lefse, lefse.

My grandma could crank out a batch of over 100 hundred lefse in two hours without breaking a sweat. And, even though she was super chill about it, she did her best to cultivate the skills and techniques that would endow her descendants with the skills and abilities to keep making lefse long after she slipped this mortal coil.

The transference of such knowledge—as could only be expected— necessitated a rigorous, hands-on rite of passage that she presided over with a singular blend of martial eminence and maternal support.

We started as potato peelers and worked our way up to mashing, dough mixing and patty making. Then came the rolling pin. Only after mastering the rolling pin, could you graduate to the griddle.

Although I peeled and mashed my way through several metric tons of potatoes easily enough, dough mixing and patty making proved far more persnickety than my fragile, teenage ego could handle. And then—after bungling my way through that unholy mess—came the rolling pin. Uff da! To this day, when I think of all the lefse dough I mangled beyond repair, I still get heebie-jeebies.

It wasn’t until the lefse-making season of 1986—after several false starts had rattled my nerves and left me feeling inadequate—that I made my first big breakthrough. When grandma called me to the kitchen this time, I almost ran away. But for some reason—compelled to vanquish so many years of failure and shame—I understood it was sink or swim at the front gate to Valhalla. There was no other choice but to roll up my sleeves and get to it.

The crowd of observers fell deathly silent and watchful eyes weighed heavily upon me as I approached that corrugated rolling pin and grabbed hold of it with tense, eager hands. Squaring up to the pastry board, I took three slow, deep breaths and let it fly.

I rolled it forward. I rolled it back. And lo and behold, after a few more rolls, a piece of lefse began to take shape.

“Flip it over,” my grandma instructed, sprinkling more flour on the pastry cloth to prevent sticking. “You need to start from the center and work outward at even intervals.”

So, just like I’d seen her do 10,000 times before, I set down the rolling pin, picked up the dough and flipped it.  “Yes,” my grandma bellowed. “That’s the way!”

Confidence surging, I grabbed the rolling pin and continued with renewed gusto. Pivoting my shoulders, I started swinging my hips. The rhythm came brisk and natural.

“Not so hard!” grandma cautioned. “Ease some weight off those handles and rock back and forth on your feet.”

So, I followed her advice. And sure enough, before I knew it, there was a legitimate (if somewhat malformed) piece of lefse waiting for me to cook. Finally, at long last, I’d done it!

“Here you go,” grandma said, handing me her lefse stick so I could perform the excruciatingly delicate, long-dreaded next step—transferring the lefse from the pastry board to the griddle.”

Concentrating carefully, I slipped the lefse stick underneath the delicate, paper-thin dough and inched it cautiously forward until, about halfway across the pastry board, it hit a sticky spot and poked through.

“Oh, crap!” I winced, stunned by my ineptitude.

“Don’t worry,” grandma said. “Just ease the stick back out a couple inches and continue from a different angle..”

Although I wound up poking two more holes in the dough and ultimately handed the reins over to grandma, the pride and elation I felt after rolling out my first lefse inspired me to keep trying which I have done, to variable degrees of success, ever since.            

A few months ago—after an unprecedentedly long pause in my personal lefse making—I busted out the Lefse Starter Kit my mother gifted me last Christmas and whipped up a fresh batch of lefse with my brother (a lapsed lefse maker in similar standing) who happened to be visiting my abode in Bellingham, Washington from Minneapolis.

Thanks to two packages of pre-made lefse mix included with the kit, we didn’t have to boil and peel a small mountain of potatoes, but we still had to roll out dough and cook each piece of lefse on a hot griddle with the aid of a thin, wooden stick.

Feeling rusty and seeking guidance, we clicked our way onto an instructional YouTube video called Let’s Make Lefse youtube.com/watch?v=9zDAOsgOt8Q that our mother and aunt (aka The Lefse Ladies) posted several years ago to provide step-by-step lefse making instructions for the general public.

Bolstered by multiple viewings, I fired up the griddle, threw my first lefse patty in way too many years onto a pastry board and started to roll. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. Within ten minutes, I was slathering butter onto a grossly misshapen but perfectly edible piece of piping-hot lefse and my brother was hard at work making the next one.

Although the lefse we produced was nowhere near our grandparent’s quality, we kept going until the dough ran out. Satisfied with our effort but barely able to lift our arms anymore, we knocked the flour off our clothes and retired to the back deck for pickled herring and cocktails.

The kitchen was still an unholy mess, but for the moment we were content to celebrate our edible heirloom that—no matter where we go or how old we get—always tastes like home. 

We’d just cut through an unfenced lawn at the bottom of a dimly lit cul-de-sac and were starting to regroup behind the swimming pool at Trail West Townhomes when our trick-or-treat expedition began to flounder.

Darth Vader and Obi-Wan were locked in a death duel but Obi Wan’s lightsaber kept blinking out and he started to cry. Chewbacca, stricken by a grass-induced asthma attack, suddenly threw his mask off and started to wheeze. Wonder Woman—who started fishing Chewie’s inhaler out of her backpack—took a cursory head count.  

“Where is R2?” Wonder Woman asked, handing the inhaler to Chewie.

“He went over there to take piss,” Han Solo said, pointing toward a cluster of monstrous, unpruned evergreen trees.

Wonder Woman shook her head and sighed.

“His costume is pretty intricate,” our fearless, thirteen-year-old chaperone surmised, rubbing Chewie’s back to comfort him. “Can one of you please go over there and see if he needs help?”

As usual, Han just snickered and made a loud, withering fart noise. Then he galavanted off to trade candy with Princess Leia.

So, more to impress Wonder Woman than out of any urgent concern for R2, I volunteered.

First, I found R2’s discarded helmet. Then I found R2’s abandoned candy bag. And finally, peering deep into the tangled understory of the nearest evergreen, I found R2.

“You OK in there?” I asked, firing up my lightsaber and waving it like a beacon.

“My pants are all wet,” R2 blubbered. “I’m stuck.”

“You’ll be OK,” I said, switching off my lightsaber and setting down my candy bag. “Just keep still and I’ll guide you out of there.”

Dropping onto all fours, I crawled through the low-slung curtain of branches and started bashing my way toward him.

Improbably, but hardly surprising for R2, he’d managed to wedge himself so immovably amid the foliage that the only way to dislodge him was to pull him out through the bottom half of his costume.      

“OK” I said, grabbing him by both ankles. “On the count of three, I’m gonna pull with all my might.”

“That won’t work,” R2 sobbed. 

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because my arms are trapped outside my armholes!”

“OK,” I said, re-strategizing my approach. “Just hang in there and I’ll come up with something.”

“Lord almighty,” I kept thinking, as I grabbed the plastic garbage can he was wearing and started wrestling it through the dense, spindly entanglement. “How did he even make it in here this far?”

Finally, only after a vicious struggle of Herculean proportions, R2 managed to wriggle free.   

Crawling out from beneath the tyrannical tree, I thought our problems were over. But just as R2 dropped his pants to start wringing them out, Han Solo showed up to gloat.      

“Well, look at that,” sneered Han, smirking contemptibly at R2 as he un-holstered his blaster pistol. “R2 PISSED HIS PANTS, EVERYONE! R2 PISSED HIS PANTS!”

“Shut up!” I scowled, grabbing my lightsaber to smote him. “Can’t you see, the poor droid is embarrassed enough.”

Dancing out of striking distance, Han leveled his blaster at me and squeezed off a couple screaming plasma bolts.

“You’re dead, Skywalker,” Han proclaimed, re-holstering his blaster cool as a cucumber as he bounded triumphantly away.

“The hell I am,” I growled, slashing my lightsaber angrily through the air.

“Where’s 3PO?” R2 asked, climbing ruefully back into his pants.

And suddenly, before I could look around, a very loud, vicious-sounding dog started snarling and barking in the parking lot directly in front of us.

“Let go of my candy, you flea-bitten fur ball!” screamed C-3PO—who was five years older but not much taller than R2. “Master Luke! Help!”

Report to Hon. Hiram M. Bitterman  

Commissioner of Lands and Survey

Skookum Chuck Mining District    

First Installment

Submitted by:  Dr. Cyril P. Bomhoffer

October 24,1910

Dear sir,

I had followed a credible lead from our northwestern field office deep into the foothills near Darrington, Washington when the whole debacle began.

According to swing shift workers at Macdougal Bros. Lumber Company, a former supervisor at their Baffle Creek Shingle Mill named Abel Abernathy was embroiled in a long-simmering feud with a local troop of carnivorous Big Foots and, now that he was retired, things were heating up.

Mr. Abernathy couldn’t be reached via telephone and directions to his cabin were patchy, but after a couple days poking around the stump ranches and back roads along Sauk River, I found him.  

It was getting on noon of a chilly, late-October day when I climbed up the porch of the Abernathy cabin and formally introduced myself. Mr. Abernathy—an exceptionally gaunt and rangy septuagenarian with an eyepatch and a deeply chiseled, clean-shaven countenance—was amenable to my solicitation and, with considerable alacrity, invited me to join him on his “daily patrol”.     

But first—while Abel finished sharpening tools out in the barn—I had to survive back-to-back platters of biscuits and gravy. I didn’t want to eat that much food, but Aunt Eunice wouldn’t take no for and answer. She claimed it was the only way to ward off The Curse.

“The beast senses weakness,” she nodded, sighing mournfully. “I seen it before—Uncle Charlie, Bonnie Lou Ellen. They got too feeble and that’s when the Beast came and took ‘em away.”

Aunt Eunice’s biscuits were flakey and huge—verging on bread loaf-size—and her gravy was meaty and thick. Bite after cursed bite I couldn’t stop shoveling. Emphatic gurgling emanated from my mid-section as the terrible dough mass expanded inside me. After polishing off portion #1, I was certain that my stomach would burst. But when I pleaded with Aunt Eunice to release me from this heedless gastronomical toil she just shook her head, cleared my empty platter and doled out portion #2. I nearly wept. Biscuits and gravy are dangerous tools in the wrong hands.

Midway through portion #2 I heard the door creak open behind me and in stepped the virtual clone of Abel Abernathy distinguished only by his prolific, shock white beard and two piercing, steel-blue eyes. This, I soon discovered, was Jim Abernathy (aka Old Jim)—Abel Abernathy’s first cousin twice removed.

Old Jim was holding a 12-gauge and a huge jug of ‘shine and hot on his heels came The Mongrol—an Irish Wolfhound of exceptional size. Old Jim leaned his gat up against the counter and, after gulping his share of the filthy poison, slammed the jug down in front of me.

“Drink!” he roared.

“I can’t” I groaned, gesturing helplessly at my strained, biscuit-laden tummy.

There came the inevitable pause as Old Jim took stock of me. Somewhere in the shadows I heard The Mongrol panting. Aunt Eunice struck a match for her pipe and kept a brisk rhythm in her rocking chair.

Old Jim leaned over my shoulder and whispered into my ear. “You ain’t no kin of mine,” he hissed. “You ain’t no kin.”

I tried to pretend he wasn’t there but the pungent bouquet of his moonshine breath walloped me so hard my eyes teared up and I started wheezing. For the first time, I noticed the huge pistol tucked in his belt and I knew right then it was do or die.

Lugubriously, and with an increasing sense of doom, I reached out for his goddamn jug and imbibed. Old Jim waited until he was satisfied with the amount I had consumed, then he grabbed me by the elbow and brought me over to the “Treasure Chest.”

The booty Old Jim pulled out of his “Treasure Chest” both thrilled and disturbed me. The molar came in a jar. It looked just like a human molar only about three times as big—golf ball-size. It was badly chipped and stained red. Clearly, it had seen plenty of action. Then came the finger. Wrapped like a sandwich in a red-checkered handkerchief—a long, hairy finger.

“There have been underground movements,” said Old Jim. This comment further unnerved me. It wasn’t until he added— “We’ve found negotiation useless, so we’ve been forced to take other measures”—that his line of thought came more appreciably into context.

“Whatever powers he’s got,” chimed in Aunt Eunice, “he won’t be easy to deal with.”

Clearly, I understood this to be a warning.

When Old Jim produced a clump of coarse black hair, I almost ran away in terror. It was a hideous thing—matted and primate-like. The Mongrol didn’t like it either. He flashed his teeth, growling.

Old Jim stared at the hair clump and spoke.

“There were three others with me that night: Johnny “Fast Fingers” Claypool, Micky “Spud” Osbourn and Willy “Coo Coo” Magee. As rough an’ ornery a crowd as any. We were camped at our still about ten miles up the Cascade River. It was dead of night when a terrible racket woke us. Nobody knew what it was or where it was coming from. It sounded like a passel of big boulders crashing through the woods.

“Coo Coo got up first. All a sudden his head was gone. His body crumpled into a heap. Something big and hairy dragged his carcass off into the brush. Coo Coo was lucky.

“Fast Fingers went for his Luger, but he had trouble with his pants. Before he could unfasten his holster, another goddamn beast was on him. First, it chomped his arm off, then it tore off a leg. Fast Fingers was screaming something awful. Jesus, I’ll never forget that scream. Poor bastard. I grabbed the Luger and emptied it point blank into the beast. But it was too little too late. The beast grabbed Fast Fingers and dragged him into the brush too.

Spud started running. About typical for Spud. It was no use, he figured. We were all goners. Spud made it about fifty feet before they got him too. They really took their time with Spud. Just swung that poor bastard around like a toy. Splattered his brains on a tree.

I grabbed my shotgun and crawled behind a root wad. It was dark and I couldn’t see a damn thing. There was snorting and grunting and wild crashing about. Those beasts were angry. They tore our camp apart.  When one of them came too close to our still, I let him have it. Guess it finally spooked ‘em cause they all turned tail and skedaddled. All I found next morning was the tooth, the finger and this tuft of hair.”

Old Jim turned the hair around in his palm and grimaced. “Aww hell,” he sniffled, fuming with rage. “Those beastly devils… they got us good.”

Suddenly, a high-pitched whistling sound came screeching through the forest followed by a series of sharp, deeply echoing chirps. Branches danced. Tree trunks swayed. The tiny cabin vibrated with power. Then, like a phantom, a large, shadowy figure passed by the window directly in front of us. The Mongrol growled. Old Jim placed the hair in the chest, seized his shotgun and ran for the door.

“Grab that ‘shine, son,” he yelped. “We’ll need that and plenty more where we’re goin’.”

To be continued….

Compared to the sequence of janky, rattletrap chainsaws that bedeviled me during my second season as a crew leader for Northwest Youth Corps, the hopped-up Stihl 044 with a 32-inch ES light bar that I dug out of purgatory in our tool cache seemed like a blessing to start with. 

When I kicked off the final six weeks of the season building and maintaining trails up in Olympic National Forest, all I had to do was continuously readjust my tensioner screw so I could fall hazard trees and buck windfall without getting mauled by a thrown chain.   

However, a couple weeks later, when we swung down to Central Oregon to help clear out a firebreak around Crater Lake National Park I found myself troubleshooting a sticky throttle control lever as well. 

Then the muffler went haywire and started belching black, sulfurous smoke.    

Fortunately, during our two-week hitch removing derelict barbed wire fences around the boundary of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, I only had to bust out my chainsaw a couple times so the noxious fumes didn’t bother me too much.

However—just when it seemed like I wouldn’t need to touch my chainsaw again—we were reassigned from a cushy tree planting project on Umpqua National Forest to an experimental timber thinning project on Siuslaw National Forest and my struggles began anew.

Native red alder trees grow like weeds in the salt-sprayed clear cuts along the Oregon coast and I got to spend ten hours each day cutting down hundreds upon hundreds of them so more “valuable” species like cedar and Douglas fir trees had more space and sunlight to grow.

Suddenly, instead of ignoring my malevolent chainsaw, the thing was glued to my hands.

To compound matters—even though I downsized to a more manageable 20-inch bar—the machine insisted on shrieking, throwing sparks and belching smoke in my face even worse than before. And, as an added development, the chain kept spinning full speed long after I engaged the hand brake.

Meanwhile—as beautiful as our coastal surroundings were—the dank, shaggy, perpetually fod-shrouded terrain became more treacherous at every turn.

If we weren’t taking diggers off slippery logs and rocks we were flailing around in a jungle full of impetuous tree branches that jabbed our eyes, poked our butts, whipped the helmets off our heads and, with increasing frequency, clawed the chainsaw right out of my hands.  

Struggling to see clearly let alone stay upright, my ability to make safe, accurate cuts became unduly compromised. Before I knew it, the toes of my boots were gruesomely dinged up and my Kevlar safety chaps were shredded beyond repair from all the glancing blows I’d inflicted. 

Paying a quick visit to a saw shop in Waldport midway through our hitch, I bought a new pair of chaps and pumped the mechanic for advice. 

“Well, for starters,” he sniffed, “your gas-oil mixture is running a little thick. You might get away with that at higher elevations, but down here along the coast we like to thin it out for a more even performance.”

“That’s great to hear,” I said. “I was starting to think I was cursed.”

The wizened old webfoot snickered knowingly.

“It’s always possible,” he winked. “But even if your saw does have the hex on it, I’ve seen worse, son. Trust me. Much, much worse.”  

Pondering the paranormal subtext of his sentiment, I let him replenish my gas cans with a new mixture, replace my muffler, clean my carburetor and switch out my spark plug before heading out to find a cheeseburger and ice cream.   

Next morning, after throwing a new chain on and topping off the bar oil, I gave the starter chord a yank and fired up my saw in one sweet, delicious pull. Sure enough, the instant I revved the engine, it felt like a whole new machine.

Growling like a dog and purring like kitten, slicing through tree trunks like butter, the Stihl 044 fused itself to my inner-sawyer and responded reflexively, without complaint for two blissful hours until an obdurate tree branch knocked it out my grasp and, lunging to retrieve it, I slipped off a precipitous outcrop and plummeted into the abyss.

Although I managed to prevent what could have been a potentially catastrophic 30-50-foot fall by bear-hugging a cluster of overhanging cedar boughs, somehow during the process the foliage of an intermediary salmonberry bush got jammed so forcefully through my chainsaw handle it engaged the throttle trigger at full speed.

So, even as I dangled belly first on the mossy, snot-slick rock face, my wildly whirring, still-running chainsaw was vibrating rapidly toward the ledge directly above.  

Unsavory as it seemed, the only way to prevent the chainsaw from tumbling onto my bare, helmetless head was to let go of the cedar boughs and try to minimize the injurious effects of a sustained, indeterminate slide.

However, even as I shot down the hillside like a missile, my chainsaw broke loose and followed close behind. Driving my elbows and boot soles into the ground to help me decelerate, I was horrified to see the wildly plummeting, out of control machine bearing down on me fast. Unable to discern if the chain was still whirring away or not, I cradled my head with both arms and braced for the worst.       

Nose in the dirt, praying for deliverance, I felt the full heft of my cartwheeling chainsaw smack me square on the back and roll lengthwise all the way onto my boot heels.

Screaming bloody murder as I kicked the thing away, I plowed feet first into a pillow-soft squirrel midden and slowed abruptly to an ignominious stop.

After not finding any serious wounds anywhere on the back of my body and responding favorably to enquiring shouts from my worried crew above, I picked myself up and started hunting down my errant chainsaw.

I could have sworn it had angled downslope somewhere off to my left but after fifteen minutes of methodical searching, I still hadn’t found the faintest trace of it.

Suddenly, as I stood there wondering where to look next, I heard it—a faint but persistent growl emanating from somewhere deep in the brushy ravine right next to me.

“You’re one, tough hombre,” I told my badly scuffed but still running chainsaw, as I bashed my way into the ravine to extricate it. “But if you ever pull a stunt like that again, I’m gonna knock the sprockets out of you and leave you rotting in the woods.”

Then I hauled it back up the hillside and finished out the workday cutting hundreds of more red alders down with minimal duress.       

Although the chainsaw performed admirably when I had control of it, once I hit the kill switch and set it on the ground to cool, things went haywire again.

Within thirty seconds—as I kneeled over a stream splashing cold water into my hot, sweaty face —the chainsaw sputtered back to life and started throwing sparks again.

Trying my best to ignore the commotion, I was soon distracted from my post-work ablution by somebody shouting, “Fire!”

“Sweet lord almighty,” I groused, dashing away to grab the extinguisher out of our van. “What next?”

By the time I got there, two quick-thinking crew members were already down on their knees scooping handfuls of gravel over my self-immolating machine. Waving them away, I unleashed a spouting geyser of chemical retardant until the fire went out.

Then—with the entire crew watching—I marched back to the van, traded out the fire extinguisher for a pick-mattock and shovel and started digging a grave.

“What are you doing, boss?” one of my crew members asked, noting the cold, methodical look in my eyes.

“I’m doing what needed to be done long ago,” I explained, handing him the shovel to join me.

The hole we excavated was big enough to bury five chainsaws in so—after kicking the scorched, still-steaming carcass of my half-melted chainsaw into it—I grabbed a big, ceremonial rock and smashed the thing to smithereens for good measure.

I don’t know if that chainsaw is resting in peace, but it’s definitely resting in pieces.          

When my direct supervisor—the executive director of the Pacific Northwest Trail Association (PNTA)—asked me to absorb three adult volunteers from the American Hiking Society (AHS) who were “stranded” in North Cascades National Park after a “volunteer vacation” they’d signed up for got canceled at the last minute into my crew of at-risk high school students, I bristled at the idea.

Although I had nothing against the AHS and was genuinely eager to have as much help as possible on my upcoming project in the Pasayten Wilderness Area, the idea of allowing three unvetted adults I’d never met before to work and camp side-by-side with a squirrley gaggle of 15- to 18-year-olds on an extended backcountry trail building hitch raised a litany of logistical and liability issues. 

“Not only isn’t there enough room in our van,” I tried to explain to the director, two days before our scheduled departure, “but half the kids on my crew are minors. If they were all 18, then camping with strangers wouldn’t be a problem but...”

“The American Hiking Society is one of our major financial partners,” the director insisted. “Can’t you just ask the adults to pitch their tents in a different part of the forest?”

“Theoretically, yes,” I said. “But from a safety management viewpoint, it would be nightmare.”

“What’s that?” the director glowered, cupping her hand to her ear. “I don’t think I’m hearing you correctly.”

“Look,” I told her. “I understand where you’re coming from, but mixing unknown adults with vulnerable kids in a backcountry setting is not something I’d be comfortable with.”

“Well, if you won’t make the necessary accommodations, then we’ll just have to hire an education coordinator who will,” the director countered, shaking her head admonishingly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“It means either do the job we hired you for or hit the road, bub,” the director huffed, jerking her thumb toward her office door.

“Thanks for clarifying,” I said, unwilling to place my principles over a steady paycheck.

So, in violation of PNTA policy and against my better judgement, I grudgingly acquiesced to the director’s demands.

Everything went swimmingly the first day. I loaded all our food and gear into the trailer, picked up all nine of my crew members, swung through park headquarters to “rescue” the volunteers, and drove 90 miles east of our headquarters in Sedro-Woolley, WA to Robinson Creek Trailhead in Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. We arrived a few hours before dusk, just in time to shoulder our backpacks and hike five miles to our camp along the Middle Fork of the Pasayten River. 

But by late afternoon the following day—after grunting and grappling through our first 10-hour shift of log turnpike construction—it was painfully clear that although two of the AHS volunteers were genial, trustworthy individuals, the third was an unmitigated question mark.

Dave and Annie (a married couple from the Pittsburgh area with three grown children and five grandchildren) interacted productively and patiently within the strictures of a youth-oriented job-training environment. But Caleb (a 30-year-old IT support specialist who hailed from a Beltway suburb just outside Washington D.C.) exhibited pronounced impatience, a caustic sense of humor and no willingness whatsoever to interact constructively as a mentor in our group.

However, as socially awkward and insecure as Caleb was, he could peel bark off logs, excavate ditches and grub new tread with a degree of mechanical fortitude that was nothing short of inspiring. So, even though he preferred to work alone far away from the kids, I accepted his inclination as provisional to maintaining good morale on the crew.

Unfortunately, instead of leveraging his eccentricities toward a higher purpose, Caleb grew even more evasive and cagey. He started taking his meals alone, refused to hang out at our campfires and spent increasing amounts of solo time in his tent.

Finally, when Dave and Annie reported hearing him singing, talking to himself and crying through the night, I decided to intervene.

“How are you doing?” I asked Caleb, catching him just before he absconded with his dinner plate again.

“Oh,” he smirked, “I suppose I could be doing better. I can’t sleep. I keep having terrible nightmares and stuff.”

“What don’t you join us around the fire tonight,” I suggested, hoping to bring him closer into the fold. “It’s talent show night. You don’t have to perform, but we’d be honored to have you be a judge.”

Noncommittal though Caleb was, it relieved me greatly when he actually showed up.

Distinguishing himself as a discerning yet humorous talent show judge, Caleb proceeded to reveal a side of himself that none of us had seen before. For three garrulous, wisecracking hours he rose to the occasion in such an emphatic, self-assured manner that I felt certain he’d rounded the bend. 

Come next morning, however, he reverted to his old, enigmatic self. And this time—along with making snide comments and avoiding conversation throughout the day—he swung his ax and pounded his digging tools into the ground with an alarming degree of violence.

“What the hell is going wrong with this guy?” I kept thinking. “Is he psychotic? Or off his meds? Or both?”

Later that evening, as I sat composing my daily progress report and pondering how to resolve an increasingly worrisome situation without offending anybody, the dinner cook arrived to inform me that our kitchen knife had gone missing. 

“When’s the last time you saw it?” I asked.

“Used it to dice onions and set it on the table half an hour ago,” he said.

“Well, would you like to borrow my Leatherman tool?”

“Sure,” the cook said, “but that only solves part of the problem.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” the cook answered, “we’re pretty certain The Creeper took it.”

“The Creeper?” I asked. “Who’s that?”

“It’s the nickname the crew gave Caleb,” the cook revealed.

“Hmm,” I mused, feeling a sinking feeling in my stomach.  “Where is The Creeper now?”

“Last anyone saw,” the cook said, pointing downriver, “he was heading out of camp alone.” 

Putting down my notebook and pen, I grabbed a pointy-nose shovel (purely for defensive purposes) and started following Caleb’s boot prints down the trail.

Eventually, about a mile later, Caleb’s tracks veered down onto the river bank and vanished into the water. Boulder-hopping my way onto the opposite bank, I picked up his boot trail ascending through heavy sagebrush. Then— after contouring across the lower slopes of a high, craggy ridge— I stopped at the edge of a massive talus field and I finally caught sight of him, sitting lotus-style atop a grinning cliff face about 300 feet directly above.

“Hello!” I shouted, waving cordially as I listened to my echo. “Soup’s on in half an hour!”

Although Caleb’s facial expression was unseeable through the distance, I took it as a positive sign when he raised his hand to acknowledge my presence and hiked back to camp with a marginal degree of hope.  

However, when we found ourselves sitting around the campfire a couple hours after finishing dinner still without any sign of Caleb, my worries commenced anew.

Leaving Dave and Annie behind to supervise the crew, I grabbed a shovel and headed down the trail again. Unfortunately, even though I hiked all the way to the top of the promontory where I’d last seen Caleb, he was nowhere to be found. 

Concerned for Caleb’s well-being, but with twilight fading, I decided to return to camp and resume the search first thing next morning.

“Does anyone have any idea what Caleb might be up to?” I asked the whole crew as we sat around making s’mores.

“If he was heading to the North Pole via Canada it wouldn’t hurt my feelings the least,” Dave said. “That dude creeps me out.” 

“Wherever he is,” said Annie, “I sure hope he’s OK.”

“Screw him,” said our cook, “It’s the knife he stole that concerns me.”

“Caleb stole a knife?” gasped Annie.

“Indeed,” our cook confirmed. “And it’s a sharp, big-ass knife too.”

“As much as The Creeper creeps me out, I hope he’s not injured,” said Kendra, an exceedingly mature and empathetic 16-year-old. “But it’s gonna be awful hard to fall asleep knowing that he’s creeping around out there with a possible murder weapon.”

“That’s exactly how I feel,” said Heather, a considerably less empathetic but no less intuitive 15-year-old. “I don’t want to sleep alone in my tent tonight.”

“Me neither,” said Cody, a normally unflappable, six-foot-four, 240-pound 18-year-old.

“Ditto,” agreed Sean, a streetwise 17-year-old ex-gang member from Tacoma.

As much as I wanted to give Caleb the benefit of the doubt, I couldn’t discount the urgency of our current predicament.  

As long as Caleb’s whereabouts remained unknown he presented a credible threat to our crew, not only to our physical safety, but to our collective peace of mind.

When I agreed to let everybody haul their sleeping bags out of their tents and sleep together on the high spot in the meadow beside our kitchen area, the whole crew breathed a sigh of relief. 

And, after dinner, to bolster our defense, I even directed a few crew members to retrieve a small arsenal of axes and Pulaskis from our tool cache along with a pole saw and rake hoe for good measure.

In all my years of crew leading I’d never felt so paranoid before, but as the moonless night grew darker I felt increasingly justified in our general course of action.

Dave and Annie took first the first two-hour watch and, as we all spread our sleeping bags and foam pads over the grass (girls on one side, boys on the other), I reminded everyone to be respectful and keep their hands to themselves.

Fortunately, the sky stayed clear, the temperature remained comfortable and—swarming far and wide through the crystalline, sub-alpine atmosphere—depthless stars engulfed us in a soothing spectacle.

Two hours later, when Cody and I took over the watch, the forest couldn’t have been quieter. However, about a half hour into our shift, just as I dozed off, Cody tapped me on the shoulder.

“Boss,” he whispered, “do you hear that?”

Sure enough, within a couple seconds, I heard a branch snap. Then another. And another. Something or someone was moving through the timber about 50 yards to our north, right in the area where Caleb’s tent was pitched.

Firing up our headlamps, we trained our light beams at the spot, but all we could see were tree trunks and branches.

“You stay here,” I told Cody, standing up to grab an ax.

“Where are you going?” Cody asked.

“I’m gonna check Caleb’s tent,” I said, walking away.

“What do you wanna do that for?” Cody whispered. 

“Because nobody ever checked it,” I whispered back.

Slasher film visions reeled through my mind as I proceeded through the darkness. Clutching my ax firmly, I steeled my nerves and got a bead on Caleb’s yellow rainfly.

“Hello?” I kept repeating, feeling my heartbeat accelerate as I made my final approach. “Caleb, is that you? Are you in there?”

Suddenly, just behind Caleb’s tent, another branch snapped.

Stopping cold, I scanned the trees with my headlamp but couldn’t see anything.

Proceeding very cautiously to within touching distance of Caleb’s vestibule, I called his name again and gave his rainfly a cursory shake.

“Caleb,” I repeated. “I’m just gonna take a peek inside to see if you’re here, OK?”

Then, counting down from three, I reached breathlessly for his zipper and pulled it wide open.

Words can’t describe how relieved I felt to find Caleb’s tent unoccupied. Not only was Caleb gone, but so were his sleeping bag and sleeping pad.

Then, just as I zipped Caleb’s tent back up, another branch snapped.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, peering worriedly into the night.

But again, all I heard was silence.

“What’s the word, boss?” Cody whispered upon my return.

“Caleb’s not there,” I said, setting my ax down and grabbing my water bottle. “I’m pretty sure he’s spending a night in the bush.” 

“What about the knife?” asked Caleb.

“Knife’s not there either,” I said, taking a couple judicious glugs. “At least that I could find.”

Suddenly, even closer than before, another branch snapped. 

“Shit!” squealed Cody, jerking his headlamp toward the sound. “What the hell is that?”

“No idea,” I said, taking a couple more glugs. “Probably just some deer or something.”

During the next half hour, all the way to the end of our shift, a lot more branches snapped all around us and, every time, they sounded a little closer.

“We don’t know what it is yet,” Cody told Sean and Heather when they took over. “But something is definitely out there.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Heather yawned, nestling into her watch spot. “Can I borrow your headlamp, please? My batteries are, like, dying.”

I fell asleep the moment my head hit the stuff sack full of clothes I used for a pillow but, even in my deepest dreams, I kept hearing something or someone moving closer to us in the night.

When I woke up next morning, the sky glowed pink in the first blush of dawn, both people who were supposed to be on watch had fallen soundly asleep and the ground was glistening with dew. Climbing out of my damp, soaking-wet sleeping bag, I threw my boots on and trotted off to our pit toilet for my customary wake-up session. 

Walking back to camp about 10 minutes later, I noticed a dark, shadowy figure moving around beneath our kitchen tarp. It was Caleb boiling water for breakfast like nothing had ever happened.

“Good morning,” I said, noting our missing cutting implement lying prominently among his assembled utensils as I approached. “We were worried. Where’d you run off to last night?”

“Oh, sorry,” Caleb smirked, ripping open a third instant oatmeal packet. “I climbed to the top of that ridge to sleep closer to the stars and brought the knife along in case a cougar or bear showed up. Generally, I feel pretty confident in my ability to defend myself—but, then again, you never know what’s out there.” 

Well, it’s official:  the days are growing shorter, the nights are getting colder and what we like to call “the high season” up here in Opportunity is officially over.

Old Bunky and his boys wrangled their cattle off the slopes of Cow Heaven and drove them down to market. Ugly Earl sealed up his fly fishing resort and shipped off to Bolivia for the winter. And, as of three days ago, Ma Jingles and her sporting ladies over at the Cuckoo Club migrated to more civilized accommodations down in Seattle.

So—except for Stumpy Chapel, Princess Trixie, The Carson Brothers and Phroso The Mysterious—my loyal canine companion Wheeler and I pretty much have the run of the place again. Can’t say I’m gonna miss all the excitement, but as we settle into slow mode for the foreseeable future the ability to keep myself productively occupied takes on renewed importance.     

Solitaire and 1,000-piece puzzles are godsends. And I’ll be hard pressed not to play Chess or even Monopoly against myself now and again. But when it comes to stimulating cognitive function and enhancing the old neural pathways, nothing beats a deep dive into a bonafide classic.

Unfortunately, ever since I upgraded from a primitive lean-to to a nice, cozy A-frame a couple years ago, I’ve been so busy trying to keep the place in order that a good portion of my book collection (much of which I inherited from Doc Snifflewhip last winter, God rest his hoary hide) seems to have gone missing.

I mean, here it is not even within a whiff of November yet and I’m already scraping the shelves for reading material!

Which is how, despite my longstanding aversion to it, I decided to kick off the
“off-season” by cradling up with Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

It’s hardly Moby-Dick or Riders of the Purple Sage, but dag-blammit, I’m taking a real shine to the gilded halls and rarified intrigues of Regency England. Say what you will about patriarchal tyranny and the laws of male primogeniture, but by gum and a kettle full of beans, if the Dashwood sisters aren’t a real kick in the pantaloons then who is?

As much as I bristled when John Dashwood and his conniving wife, Fanny, relegated Elinor, Marianne and Margaret to visitor status at Norland, I found myself cheering audibly when Sir John Middleton invited them all to live at Barton Cottage instead.

Three sisters in one cottage! Man, oh man. I’m only thirty pages in but can’t wait to read all about it.  

I only grew up with a single brother. But back when I worked as a barista at Cuppa Gold Espresso it was owned by three sisters and, while the youngest two were fairly simpatico in their sensibilities, the eldest sibling had more sense than she knew what to with.

Talk about a kettle of fish. There’s literally no end to the stories I could tell. But for now, I’ll have to shove off and wish you well. Wheeler’s outside barking up a storm and it sounds like Stumpy chapel is on his way over to “borrow” some more fair-trade Ethiopian blend and help himself to my biscotti jar (I can hear his peg leg knocking up my elevated walkway boards as we speak.)

So, for now:  goodbye, good luck and… HAPPY READING!