Friday, March 21, 2014

Well it has been a long tough winter away from the water....
I just want to write and share the beauty that surrounds
Us here.I just heard some birds.i have spent the last 3
Months on top of a mountain at 9200 ft.there was a spell
Of 21 days without sunlight .hard to get reception even
With texting. It was hard mentally. It made me finally realize
That I need outdoors and water daily!
It's all good now; we finished on Sunday afternoon. I quickly grabbed a snowmobile
And tow behind tote, loaded my dog and gear and headed down.... about a mile down,
I spotted a car on the snowmobile trail !? I stopped and sure enough a young couple from the U
Driving a little AWD Equinox; it was an impressive feat! I came back a bit later with a shovel, having
Exchanged my dog and gear. As I approached from the south, another group with shovels approached from the north.we all quickly dug them out and pushed them back along their way. I rode out and down the highway, back to the sun and painted canyons of the Wind river valley, and a long slow evening thanks to daylight savings ...

Thursday, March 13, 2014

   I really like the movie "Jeremiah Johnson" with Robert Redford and Will Geer. Geer's character is the wizened old trapper and he addresses Redford (Johnson) as "tenderfoot", meaning rookie essentially. That's where my blog name comes from. I highly recommend the movie. I identify with the idea of being a tenderfoot in the outdoors. But in my case actually tender of foot. I constantly find myself in awe of something in the sky, something I see, some off the wall experience that just happens... I can't figure out how to change the name anyway!
   When I first started out in this land, we would go to a hot spring quite often and soak. We had to hike an easy trail a couple miles by starlight, mostly. As you walked, guided by the light from the Milky Way, you could see a slough, wetland type of area down below. One night I looked down on a pond and saw the reflection of the Big Dipper. It was something A) I had never even thought of before and B) is certainly never seen it before.  Just the other night I was heading up to Brooks Lake Lodge via snowmobile. It was late, maybe midnight and as I started my 6 mile journey, I was pretty freaked out. It's scary out there at night, and everything is so still.Anyway, a little ways up, I see something in the road--yikes! Turned out to be a juvenile moose running down the middle of the road like a cow would do.It was silly because it wasn't like I had high beams on; I had a flashlight taped to the handlebars! After running behind this poor thing for probably a mile, I finally rode up beside it and slapped it on the shoulder and yelled, "GIT!!".It jumped off the road!
 Just a day in the life is what I'm saying.                  . The river is coming back to life, the rocks receive a much needed scouring..Bugs hitting windshields is a ways off but as the Spring Solstice draws near, aquatic bugs are emerging, animals are moving, fish are thinking; thinking about the journey