The Weekend Two

There's been a decent amount of rain since Thanksgiving so good time to go around and check the fences. Pound or reset the fence posts while the ground is soft. At my first fallen post I find a family of raccoon tracks heading to the lodge. I get some grief occasionally, always from people not staying here but checking the blog or youtube who tell me it's not right to feed wild animals because once I'm gone they'll be use to being human fed and not able to fend for themselves. I've read that 50% of raccoons never reach their first birthday because they starve to death. Half of the ones they're worried about would already be dead if I hadn't fed them.

On the travel sites there are a lot of comments from city folk saying how wonderful it was that their kids got to witness wild creatures in their world. I love the look on their faces as they meet the raccoons, ringtails, skunks, and fox.

Last year during the cattle push a large cow broke it's leg(s) on rocks and laid by the road for a few days. The cowboys tried everything to get it back up but couldn't make it happen and eventually shot it to get it out of it's misery. Then dragged it back into a canyon and somehow mysteriously it showed up (dead) on the other side of the road a few hundred feet away. It probably weighed over 1,000 pounds. I heard on Facebook the theory is aliens but I would have seen them. For a month or so each time Jax and I would walk by the dead cow there would be a golden eagle walking around examining it and a bunch of ravens in a half bowl of rocks murmuring and conspiring. Whenever Jax and I would approach they would all quit gossiping and look the other way. Now, a year later the elements and most every kind of footprint have picked it over about as much as it can be picked over.

In the boonies everything that can happen is going to happen at some point in time. For example what if somebody missed the turn to Base Camp and Last Hurrah in the dark and went straight. Came across a road with a locked gate, could see a teepee and hogan up on the hill, got out to check and when Doug sold me Last Hurrah next door he took the mail box with him and set it up at his new place and the guests found a mail box that said Last Hurrah where their reservation was and carried all their stuff up the 500 feet or so from the road, then realized it was somewhere else despite the mail box saying it was Last Hurrah. Yes, it happened and realizing everything that happens can happen again, I took the Gorilla tape with me.

Stopping to hammer a couple of fence posts it was nice to see The Fingers are still closed off and the off road hill jump that somebody created and two people were hurt on is holding up from when I had the fence put up earlier in the year and a little bit of wild bush is starting to grow back. Weekend warriors are such a disgrace and I'm doing what I can to compensate for them.

I didn't see anybody on Saturday but on Sunday Michael came through doing part of the Hayduke Trail. Nobody else the whole weekend.