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Close Enough to Perfect: A Guest Post by Paul Vertrees
Each year my mind wanders from tenkara fly fishing to hunting. It gains intensity during September as small game season nears around the first of October. I usually sneak in an extended backpacking weekend of “Surf ‘N Turf” (mountain small game combined with tenkara trout) just prior to the start of the first big game season. I hunt mule deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk during the rifle seasons in my home state, almost exclusively in federally designated wilderness. The wilderness I hunt most often is an area just a mile from my boyhood home that I’ve been frequenting most of...
Peaceful, Easy Feeling FEBRUARY 10, 2014
It had rained all afternoon and most of the night. I was camped along a little spring fed mountain valley about 7 miles into a Colorado wilderness area at 10,250 above sea level. When I left for my morning elk hunt it looked like it was going to be a bluebird day. Before leaving I took the turnout blankets off my burros so they could dry out and not get too hot in the sun. I came back into camp around lunchtime. The sun was shining and the temps were in the upper 60’s, a beautiful day. One of my...
Nature’s Gifts
On a cloudless, moonless night in October I camped on the open prairie of northwestern South Dakota. Not far from where I pitched my tent the Lakota had conducted the last known wild bison hunt over 100 years before. I was so remote that at night there wasn’t a visible light in any direction over the rolling grassland. No lights except the millions of brilliant stars that were so bright I did not need a flashlight to see. The stars stretched from one horizon to the other. I had never seen the Milky Way in all its glory as I...
The Lowly Donkey
I was in the back-country on an archery elk hunt. (It seems like a lot of my stories start out this way.) My burros were in their portable corral when a couple of horse riders rode by my camp. I had left a few minutes before and was about 1/2 mile away headed out for my afternoon hunt. I could see them down the valley and could hear them talking but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then I heard the laughter, so loud that it echoed down the valley. It was obvious, they were laughing at my...
Jerusalem Donkey
The fact that the little donkey has been bearing humanity’s burdens for thousands of years is well documented. This Christmas season I am reminded of this humble animal’s impact on the holidays and religion. The bible says that Mary rode a donkey into Bethlehem before giving birth to the baby Jesus. We see this today in most Nativity scenes where a donkey is standing or bedded close by the manger keeping watch over the new family. Then, on Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem for the last time on a donkey. The religious significance of the donkey is expressed...
