Regular readers will recall that beginning some 40 years ago I became enamored with our western mountains, their history, and the people, game and fish that live there. I moved my family to Colorado where we lived for six years. My love for the mountains in no way lessens my love for home, here in the Deep South. God’s outdoor blessings are scattered over many different landscapes across the country and the world. Outdoor types who travel to the western mountains and experience them and their inhabitants will likely find a large place in their hearts for that part of the world.

    A poem I wrote at a certain stage of my maturity expresses the circumstance that I must face after more years than I deserve tromping about the steep, rocky ranges, vast colorful deserts, sprawling juniper flats, snowy canyons, frozen natural lakes, all under the daytime shimmering aspen leaves or gleaming colors of rock that gave Colorado its name, or beneath the nighttime Milky Way, and its millions of stars so visible at the high altitude that indeed milky is the best portrayal.

    My ingrained affection for that part of God’s creation urges me to check with my friends there often to maintain my attachment to them and their world. Here is what I learned this week.

The report

    Brandon Beason and his dad Gary, my hunting friends, found almost 500 sheds this spring, mostly mule deer antlers. The giant bucks filter down into the Colorado River basin from the high, dark timber if the big snows come. This year the deep stuff arrived beginning during the final deer season in early November. These precious few days are the ones the Beason’s hunt. This year Brandon took his largest buck ever; a four pointer (10 points Eastern count) that scored 192 inches! One short brow tine had broken off and dropped the head just short of the record book.

    But the shocker! Gary jumped a giant from a drainage ditch. He dropped to the snow for the steadiness of a prone shot at the buck, knowing he would likely stop and look back to see what spooked him. When he stopped, Gary’s shot went just over his back; a typical miss in the West where ranges always seem farther than they are. Sadly, his next four shots were all misses as the buck gained distance and disappeared into the endless terrain.

    A spring search of the area revealed the deer’s shed which, when doubled measured 210 inches!

    My next call was to the cell phone of my friends Wanda and daughter, Dawn, way over in Brown’s Park, the Brown’s Hole of Butch Cassidy’s time. As usual the relay towers couldn’t reach their cell phones (they live 100 miles west of Craig, Colorado.) So I called the tiny store in that valley and learned that the two women were doing fine running their cattle operation, still pretty much with no regular help.

    Wanda is still the best roper around when the fall roundups come on their ranch and the neighbor’s one and most everyone in the valley pitches in to drive cattle to lower ground for the winter and for marketing the calves and branding. I learned she is “still thin as a rail but getting along with just some problems with gout.” Wanda is in her mid-eighties and works seven days a week in the saddle with a shoulder that a bull broke for her years ago that she never had fixed.

    So I am happy today, knowing things are still normal out there at the edge of Paradise.

THE OLD SHADOW

It was a cold, clear morning

When I crept into the swamp.

Was squirrels I would be hunting;

The trail was dark and damp.

 

The sun was still in hiding;

It had not yet made day.

I had no way of knowing

It something soon would say.

 

For when I turned that morning

To course back to the road,

The sun, now bright and shining

Cast shadows where I strode.

 

My shadow moved before me

And struck me very odd.

He seemed so old and stooping,

This stranger on the sod.

 

“Have shadows started lying?

Just look how old I seem!

There must be some mistaking,

I feel about eighteen.”

 

But when I thought it over

And added up my years,

I knew my shadow’s story

Confirmed my secret fears.

 

For I’ll no more climb over

The highest, roughest trail.

Instead, I’ll take the lower,

‘Lest bones and breath should fail.

 

I pray to cast more shadows;

A thousand ’til my last.

But fewer I’ll be casting

Than heretofore I’ve cast.

Yes.

Far fewer I’ll be casting

Than up ’til now I’ve cast.

— Otha Barham