In the summer of 1968, the year I turned 17, I visited a friend at his parent’s ranch in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. It was June or August; I am unsure which. The reason I know it was one of those two months was because they were bucking bales of hay, 85 to 95 pounds of twined grass for the following winter’s feeding of their cattle. A difficult job, throwing those scratchy, heavy and awkward bales onto the flatbed trailer, where someone else stacked them neatly in layers. The work required lots of upper body strength, leather gloves and regardless of how hot the day may have been, wearing a long sleeve shirt.
On the ground strolling next to the moving trailer were three men. They were throwing the bales up to the man on the growing stack of hay. One of these men was a shocker for me. My friend’s grandfather, and he was old! I said nothing as I watched this guy stay up with the younger men. To me he was a phenomenon. All the people I knew that were his age, the World War I generation, had retired, were drawing pensions and sitting around waiting for that last breath and the stilling of their hearts.
Not him! He was strolling on that field at about 2 miles per hour picking up those bales, throwing them, and occasionally cussing when one would penetrate his long sleeve shirt and scratch his arm. He absolutely did not belong out there and yet there he was refusing that rocking chair.
That year also marked the 50th anniversary of when the Doughboys fought in France, thereby ending the Great War. He was one of those soldiers or marine.
Watching the old man and seeing the difference, inwardly I shook my head. I figured I would be one of those who would quit; claiming old age, rather than go down like him pushing the envelope to the very end.
A year after that momentous occasion I joined the Army and went to Vietnam. Now 50 years later, I may have been wrong about me.
In a matter of hours, I will connect the sled to the backpack, slip into the snowshoe harnesses, throw the backpack on, and travel into the great and barren wilderness of the Bitterroot Range for an unknown number of weeks. This will be my longest leg yet with 52 miles to travel and 28 days of supplies to get me through 11,000 feet of ascending and descending.
Quit hell! Maybe tomorrow.
