Buckle up on the river

The body of a Sheridan, Wyo., man who fell off a dock at Tongue River Reservoir during a recent storm was recovered earlier this week.
The body of a woman caught in the same storm in a 14-foot boat that capsized had already been recovered.
There but for the grace of God …
I never thought the Tongue was a very scary body of water. A fairly narrow body lake that sits just north of the Wyoming state line near Decker, Mt., it offers plenty of places to escape the wind.
Unless you’re not paying attention.
Or the bite is too good and you’ve just got to make one more cast.
A few years ago my wife and I got caught in a storm on the Tongue because we couldn’t stop fishing. We watched the sky darken and felt the wind building before we decided to take refuge. I couldn’t make the run back to camp across the lake so we pulled into one of the many bays on the lake and I ran the boat into the shallows, jumped out and dragged it up on shore, waves breaking over the stern
We sat out the maelstrom under a pine tree and when the wind ceased I bailed out the boat and we headed back to camp none the worse for wear.
We’d survived closer calls on Yellowstone Lake, a big body of water where the afternoon breeze can turn a slight chop into four-foot waves in minutes.
But it’s the cold water there that will kill you. The Tongue in July won’t even take your breath away when you dive in.
So I’m guessing the two victims of the recent storm on the Tongue weren’t wearing life jackets.
I seldom do. And who but a child wears a life jacket on the dock?
But when the wind kicks up and the waves begin to build it might be a good time to strap one on, especially if you’re alone in the boat – or on the dock.
A rafting guide on the Yellowstone River once told me she had never heard of anyone wearing a life jacket who had drowned in the river.
That’s probably true on most waters.
We’re required by law to have life jackets in the boat, yet we seldom feel the need to wear them – even though they’ll save us.
It’s hot. The water’s warm. The fish are biting.
But keep an eye on the sky. Storms build fast and move quickly this time of year.
Like buckling your seatbelt when you get into the car, pulling on a life jacket when the water gets rough should be a habit, not an afterthought.
By then it may already be too late.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

I'm not quite ready for the couch

A year ago I was recovering from a backpacking trip through the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
The eight-day, 90-mile trek took a toll on my aging carcass.
My knees still ache.
I realize, however, that aches and pain won’t dissipate with age, and whether I remain active or not, I’ll still hurt.
So I’m hoping to at least have something to show for my pain, like blistered feet, a sunburned neck or sore shoulders from hauling in fish.
My father quit hunting and fishing 15 years before he died. He had bad knees and an aching back. I think he thought retiring to the couch would alleviate the pain.
It didn’t. He hurt as much in his inactivity as when he used to stay busy.
But he never caught another fish or shot another bird out of the sky.
His was not a generation that worked out to stay in shape. He had survived the Great Depression, fought in a world war and never ever considered joining a health club. He worked to raise a family, not to tighten up his abs.
My generation has had it considerably easier. We’ve suffered little hardship and now find ourselves bewildered with the pain aging brings.
There’s a pill, it seems, for every ailment -- no matter how minor -- and a surgery for every worn out joint. Fly fishermen get rotator cuff surgery, joggers have their knees replaced and bird watchers, unable to tolerate the inconvenience of eye glass any longer, seek relief with Lasix surgery.
I suppose it all beats going to the couch, but being a bit a skeptic, I doubt there’s really much a cure for what ails me, or most of us, other than the grave.
And who wants to accept that?
So we pop our pills and ride our stationary bicycles, schedule appointments with the doctor to discuss surgery and wonder how our parents lived so long living they way they did.
I doubt I’ll live any longer than my folks. Mom died at 83 and Dad, who smoked, drank and got his only aerobic exercise while mowing the lawn, lived to be 90.
I simply hope to hunt and fish until the end. Heading to the couch isn’t one of the options I’m considering.
For the time being, I’m just going to suck it up, learn to cast right-handed, walk with a limp and squint to clear my vision.
Hopefully I’ve got a few years left to consider the modern wonder of pills and surgery.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

My wife's becoming a fish snob

My wife’s becoming a fish snob.
It started last spring in Florida when she hooked a sting ray and handed me the pole.
“It’s just a ray,” she said disappointedly.
“What do you mean just a ray?” I thought to myself as I tightened the drag and began reeling. “It’s a big ray.”
Fifteen minutes later I had the creature alongside the boat and snipped the leader.
Barb wasn’t even watching. She’d picked up my pole and was casting off the bow.
I’ve seen it before – a lack of interest in the fish that happen to be biting. On the Yellowstone River it’s mountain whitefish the fish snobs find so disgusting. While a whitie may rise to the same fly as a trout, if hooked and landed, it’s a sure bet he won’t receive the same careful release.
This morning it was small northern pike that Barb found particularly distasteful. The walleye weren’t biting and the big northerns had made themselves scarce, but the hammer handles were willing and eager.
“Should I get the net?” I asked as Barb’s rod bowed and the monofilament cut through the water.
“No,” she answered, her voice dripping with disappointment. “It’s just another little pike.”
It may be that I’ve spent too many fishless days on the water to be disappointed in whatever decides to bite my hook. Or perhaps my sights aren’t set high enough.
Whatever.
If it wasn’t for whitefish, I’d often have no fish at all. Juvenile northerns beat nothing hands down and I figure big rays are good practice for big anything.
I no longer keep everything I catch anyway, so what does it matter?
Sure, a whitefish won’t fight like a trout, a little pike has the same teeth and slime as a monster and the Crocodile Hunter was killed by a ray, but I’m a needy enough angler to appreciate them all.
Barb isn’t.
She sets the bar a bit higher than I do.
Pike must be at least as long as your arm to interest my wife, whitefish are unceremoniously returned to the river as quickly as she can extract her fly and rays aren’t even worth Barb’s bother.
Consequently she usually catches more fish than me. I’m too easily distracted by the small, the ordinary and the mundane.
Bite my hook and I’m flattered.
Like a wink from a pretty girl, who’s simply humoring an old man, the bite of a less-than-stellar species is much appreciated.
Especially when fishing is slow.
Barb’s not so easily impressed.
She’s becoming a bit of a snob.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

You'll find me out here and gone

What? Me worry?
As gas prices head toward $5 a gallon, real estate prices plummet, and global warming threatens to turn much of the West into a desert, I find myself just where I want to be – out here and gone.

The little northeastern Montana town my wife and I now call home is small enough we can ride our bikes wherever we need to go, there are plenty of critters to hunt within a few miles of town and the lake we fish is only 20 miles from the house.

My crop of sweet corn will be knee high by the Fourth of July and the tomato plants have already set fruit. Lately I’ve been spending the cool of the mornings fishing for walleye and pike, the afternoons fixing up our old stone house, the evenings counting my blessings.

An old hippie who for years longed to get back to the land, I’ve gotten back to a small town instead where the grocery, lumberyard and hardware store are but a few blocks away.
My Hutterite friends, from whom I stole the term “out here and gone,” keep us supplied with baked goods, the bounty of their garden and provide a shining example of “the simple life,” minus Paris Hilton.

No longer able to work my hoops magic because of aching knees, I joined the local gun club and shoot trap a couple times a week at a range north of town. I’m humbled there just like I was on the basketball court, but belonging to the gun club is considerably cheaper than my old health club membership.

It’s a very good life, however it’s not perfect. I miss the mountains. My daughters and grandchildren live farther away than I would like. I don’t see enough of my old friends.
The mosquitoes up here are legendary and the rattlesnakes can be an annoyance at times. But hey, they keep out the riff-raff.

And I’m certainly not recommending this lifestyle. No, you’re far better off staying where you are, commuting to those no-longer-so-high-paying jobs, shopping with everyone else at the air-conditioned mall and sitting in line at the fast-food drive-thru.

But please, come for a visit when you’ve saved up enough cash for a couple tanks of gas. We’ll go fishing out at the lake, come home and eat fresh sweet corn and turn in shortly after the curfew siren goes off at 9:30 p.m.
It’s a pretty simple life.
Paris Hilton would be bored to tears.
Thank goodness.

Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net
Selected columns are available at parkerheinlein.blogspot.com/

Newspaper reading dogs a problem

The commotion in the kitchen caught my attention.
One of the dogs was in the garbage.
But before I could get to my feet, Jem wandered back into the living room licking his chops.
“Don’t do it,” he mouthed as I raised my arm to give him a smack.
Spot awoke from her slumber at my feet. “Better listen to him,” she said. “He’s been reading the newspaper again.”
Spot was referring to a story out of Great Falls concerning the arrest of an illegal immigrant from Mexico on drug charges. Sheriff’s deputies responding to a report of dog abuse found a pit bull lying atop $30,000 cash along with 20 pounds of marijuana.
Two Cascade County deputies had gone to the house to check out a report that a man was beating a dog there.
“So what’s that got to do with me,” I asked Spot.
“Jem says he knows where your stash is,” the bitch responded.
“My stash? What are you talking about?
“The money and the drugs,” Jem blurted out, ham fat glistening on his lips. “On the nightstand next to your bed.”
“You mean the coin jar and the Extra-strength Tylenol?” I asked him.
“If that’s what you want to call it,” he answered defiantly. “Smack me and we’ll let the sheriff decide what it is.”
Spot closed her eyes again. “Go ahead and hit him,” she said. “Nobody’s going to call the cops.”
According to the Great Falls Tribune, Salvador Orodnez-Maldonado faces up to 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. His bond was set at $100,000. The pit bull was taken to an animal shelter.
“So you think you’d be happier in a shelter?” I asked Jem.
“No, just safer,” he told me.
“I doubt they’d let you run loose and get into the garbage,” I told him.
“Yeah, and they’d fix you for sure,” Spot chimed in.
“Huh?” Jem queried.
“Snip, snip,” Spot replied.
“Snip what?” Jem asked her.
“You figure it out,” she told him.
Jem turned and looked back into the kitchen.
“Don’t think about it,” I cautioned.
“Snip, snip,” Spot whispered.
“Tylenol, eh?” Jem asked. “And a coin jar?”
“Uh huh,” I told him. “Go ahead and turn me in.”
Jem licked the last of the ham fat off his lips and sat down.
I rolled up the newspaper and slapped it against my palm.
“You’re no pit bull,” I told him. “I’m not an illegal alien. So just stay out of the garbage, OK?
”And quit reading the newspaper.”
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

Sage grouse hunting may be thing of the past

It may not be long before we count sage grouse among the species of birds we used to hunt.
Concern that West Nile virus is hurting sage grouse populations has prompted the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to consider cutting in half the hunting season for the state’s oldest grouse.
Not that it would matter much to most bird hunters, who seldom target sage grouse anyway, but eliminating the season completely is probably on the horizon.
And that would matter to my friend Dallas.
Sage grouse are his favorite game bird both in the field and on the table.
He opens the upland bird season each fall with a family hunting trip for sage grouse and pursues them with the same passion he does elk.
Sage grouse, Dallas tells me, are Montana’s original game bird, so ancient they don’t even have gizzards.
Properly handled in the field, the big birds are unequaled on the table. Or so my friend claims. I would beg to differ, but perhaps it’s simply a case of improper handling on my part.
I may not have too many more chances to improve my handling of them.
There’s already a two-bird daily limit on sage grouse and the season on them closes two months earlier than it does for most other upland birds in Montana. Now FWP is considering cutting the season to 31 days.
Deadline for public comment on the issue is June 27 and the FWP Commission will take final action on game bird seasons July 17.
Although hunting pressure has been shown to have little effect on game bird populations, bird hunters are easy targets. Instead of addressing loss of habitat and energy development, wildlife managers too often punish instead the only folks who give a damn about the birds.
Like Dallas.
And there’s seldom any going back.
The daily mountain grouse limit was reduced from five birds to three in the 1980s because an FWP commissioner didn’t see as many blue grouse on his ranch one fall as he had in the past. Twenty-some years later, the limit is still three.
The daily limit on sage grouse was recently reduced from three and now there’s talk of halving the season.
The writing is on the wall.
While wildlife managers admit that hunters aren’t the problem, hunters are most easily removed from the equation. Then the only people who care will be those who are paid to care and people who care because of a paycheck don’t care like Dallas does.
Remove the hunter and you’ve turned the sage grouse into another spotted owl. And while they may both taste like chicken, no one will ever know.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net

It looks like we'll need The Rainmaker

The Yellowstone River’s running high and muddy. Flood warnings have been posted for the Flathead. It’s still snowing in Great Falls.
But in northeast Montana drought persists.
Across much of the region less than an inch of rain had fallen this year through April.
Time to bring in the rainmaker.
An ad that ran in the Phillips County News two weeks ago said Matt Ryan was planning a return to Northeast Montana in late May and sought support for his work.
Then it began to rain.
Not a lot, but enough for Ryan to cancel his plans to travel to Montana.
Apparently the mere suggestion of a rainmaker was enough to prompt a change in the weather.
Ryan insists he doesn’t make it rain.
“Only God can do that,” he said recently from his home in Mt. Shasta, Calif. “I just know how to influence the weather.”
Ryan uses a combination of science and faith in a higher power to reorder the jet stream.
The process involves erecting steel pipes grounded in water that work as antenna to redirect energy flows.
He also relies on what “Christian people call prayer.”
The 55-year-old New York native has been influencing the weather for nearly 25 years. In 1984 – “on a wild hair,” he said – he sought out an Indian rainmaker.
“He was a prophet,” said Ryan, who studied under the Indian for 10 years.
Ryan doesn’t come cheap.
“For $15,000 I’d come up there,” he said.
The price, however, pales in comparison to the results.
“An inch of rain in Valley County is worth a million dollars,” he said.
And Ryan claims he always gets results
He can’t afford not to.
“You take hard-earned greenbacks from those Montana ranchers and don’t make it rain and they’ll hang your ass,” he said.
Ryan said precipitation in the first month following his rainmaking is usually above average and at least normal for the rest of the year.
While Ryan was glad to hear a half inch of rain had fallen across northeast Montana in early May cancelling his visit, he wanted folks there to know that if the drought persists, his services are still available.
“I just want to keep the consciousness going,” he said.
Like water witchers and faith healers, rainmakers have their skeptics. But when drought perists, desperate and expensive measures are sometimes called for.
So the call goes out to the rainmaker.
“We sometimes need to reach out in some way we’ve never reached out before,” Ryan said.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net