101 Ways

The days since the last post have been exciting. Again, much of the excitement centered on Tipper, who is having a most eventful dotage. Let me explain: On Saturday morning, with Tipper as my lookout, I piloted Nystrom's Pride the two miles or so to where the alpine reaches of the Nez Perce road have been blocked off to car traffic for the winter by a towering snowbank. I strapped on my snowshoes and put Tipper on a lead. We walked through a cut in the snowbank made for snowmobiles and foot traffic. She pattered eagerly up the road. I had made the mistake of wearing only jeans for my undercarriage. The snowshoes kicked up slushy snow that spattered and soaked the flimsy denim with every step. To say nothing of Tipper, whose entire shaggy eminence was soon buried beneath a thick accumulation of the white stuff. My legs numbed. Tipper accepted her new mantle of white. We forged on. After maybe a half hour a snowmobiler zipped up the road behind us. I pulled Tipper out of the way. The man stopped. "What ye got there? Piece of wolf bait?" I explained that Tipper, old city dog though she may be, was not scared of anything. He conceded that between her bravado and my gun, Tipper's chances weren't so bad, and crozzled away. Another snowmobiler passed later. About an hour into the walk I heard a sound coming up from the rear. I turned to see a sled being pulled by five huskies, closing fast. There was little time to react. I fetched Tipper up in my arms and tried to step out of the trail. The dogs were upon us in no time. Disoriented, Tipper squirmed out of my embrace and landed in the jaws of the lead husky. The other sled dogs snarled and snapped as their leader thrashed poor old Tipper about by the neck. Within a few seconds the dog musher, a woman, was able to intervene and get the big dog to let go. Tipper tore back down the way we had come, howling in pain. The woman looked at me. "There's another team coming. They'll be on her any minute." Sprinting in snowshoes is a cumbersome and difficult business, but it can be done, and it's what I had to do to save Tipper. I set off in pursuit, begging her to stop. After maybe 45 seconds at a dead run I managed to tackle her and roll out of the road. The next team cantered by no more than 10 seconds later, pausing to snarl and bare their teeth at my fragile charge. If not exactly wolf bait, then Tipper had become the plaything of the wolf's closest domestic cousin. To her credit, once the sleds were out of sight, Tipper's enthusiasm for our outing had diminished not one bit. She may be 17, half blind, half deaf, and more than a little stupid, but she's not scared of anything.

Let me close with a preview of posts to come:

a)I bought a book on trapping, and aim to offer you some excerpts. One method, for instance, calls for a lure to me made from the decomposed glands of five house cats.
b)While trudging around on the mountain, I sometimes become acutely aware of the risks inherent to the undertaking. After due analysis, I aim to offer you "101 ways to die on the mountain."