Ohhh, I’m Tired

                                                                                                                       Sept. 13, 2012

 Have you ever been really tired and worn out, like after a hard day of hunting, hiking, or working? I think we have all probably been there and experienced that feeling. When you realize how tired you are, have you ever let out a big sigh and said “Ohhh, I’m tired!”  If you’ve never done this yourself, I’m sure you have heard someone else do it. Keep the sound of that tired sigh in mind as we travel with Nate and Lindsey to the Adelman Mine.

 

 

The Adelman Mine is high up on Lucky Peak mountain east of Boise and was one of the largest producing and longest running mines in the area. People were still mining up there back in the 1970s. There is a mill on site and the building still stands and is pretty interesting to visit.

 

 

Digression:

Is the term ‘Lucky Peak Mountain’ redundant?  Lucky Peak Peak would definitely be redundant. All my life, Lucky Peak has been the reservoir for boating. I never thought of it as a Peak. So Lucky Peak Mountain is the mountain next to Lucky Peak reservoir. I’ll check in with the Department of Redundancy Department to find out before posting this.

 Further Digression:

I remember a hunting trip with Bill in the Smoky Mountains several years ago. We backpacked in about 4 miles and made camp. We ended up shooting a large Bull elk as well as a four point buck. We made 3 trips in and out of the mountains with our camping gear and loads of meat. We figure we covered about 35 miles in 3 days with significant weight. As I was walking out with the last load of meat, something kept bumping my heels as I walked. I was worn out and just tried to keep walking and ignore it. Finally the bumping grew worse and worse. I came out of my stupor, stopped and looked behind me to see what kept banging into my heels, only to realize that it was my butt dragging behind me.

End of Digressions.

 

Lindsey, her fiancé Nate, Ruby Doo and I drove up to Lucky Peak to make the hike into the Adelman Mine. It’s about a two mile hike to get to the mine, so around 4 miles round trip. Early on in the hike there is a downgrade about a quarter of a mile long which takes you to the Black Hornet mining area. This first mine is just tailings and some equipment but no structures. There are also a couple tunnels back into the hill that have not yet been closed off.  Most mining tunnels and shafts around Idaho have been caved in to keep people from going and getting into trouble.  The trail continues from the Black Hornet area to the Adelman Mine, which is up over a saddle and into the next canyon.

 

We made the hike in and wandered through the mill and other remaining structures. The mill has three levels to it. The top is where the ore is dumped in, the next level down is the crusher, and the final level has a large table where the crushed ore is shaken and separated. There is still a fair amount of equipment as well as Owl’s nests and signs of other animals living in the mill. We took pictures and poked around for a while just enjoying the sights before heading back to the truck. The hike back seemed longer than the hike in as it was the middle of the afternoon with the sun beating down on us through the smoke of the Trinity fire. When the three of us reached the beginning of the quarter mile climb from Black Hornet to the ridge where the truck was parked, Lindsey was tired of walking and had slowed down.  Nate offered to give her a piggy back ride up the hill for a ways. Lindsey accepted and climbed on. Nate and I headed up the hill at a pretty good pace. Pretty soon we were sweating and breathing hard but her getting close to the top. No one had said anything for a while.

 

Lindsey then let out a huge tired sigh signaling how tired she was as we neared the end of hike.  She just broke the silence with an “Ohhhhh, I’m tired!”

 

I finally broke the awkward pause and said to her, “Lindsey, what’s the matter? Are your arms tired from hanging on to Nate as you ride up the steep part? Is making Nate carry you wearing you out?”

 

 She obviously picked the wrong time and place to let us know how tired she was.  Nate was sweating and breathing hard as he carried her up the mountain, yet Lindsey was the tired one. I’m afraid it’s going to be awhile before we let her live this one down.

 

Steelhead Fishing 101

                                                                                                                       Sept. 1, 2012

 

A couple years ago I went Steelhead fishing with Bill in Orofino. He has a jet boat and we fished the Clearwater River. The Clearwater is a big river and a boat is almost a necessity.  I had only been steelhead fishing once before that I know of.  We fished all day long on the boat and we caught a lot of fish. We used Bill’s boat, Bill’s fishing gear and Bill’s experience to make the trip successful.

This spring we decided to go Steelhead fishing along the Little Salmon River. The river is pretty small so it’s all bank fishing.  We went to an area known as Stinky Springs. The weather was great but the fishing was slow. Bill had all the gear and set me all up with a pole and lures and technique. When I broke my line, Bill would fix it up with leader, lures and bait as needed, and then hand me the pole. Bill hooked 2 fish that day while I hooked several stumps and rocks and watched several expensive floats disappear down stream. The first fish Bill hooked was early in the day. He handed me his pole to reel it in. I felt like one of his kids as I fought with that fish. Unfortunately, I lost it and I felt like I was less than one of his kids.  Bill caught one nice fish later in the day and I took it home and ate it for him. Glad I could help in some way.

 

 

We planned to go back to the same spot the following week and invite a friend of mine from work. To prepare, I went out and bought some lures and gear so I wouldn’t have to use Bill’s stuff up, plus he was running low. Our second trip out started a little later in the day, due to a breakfast stop at the Pancake House. I didn’t mind this delay at all and began to like fishing more and more.  When we got to our fishing spot, I was able to rig up the pole myself and fix everything when I broke off. I wasn’t catching fish early on but I also wasn’t reliant on Bill for everything. I was feeling like I could do this myself. Later in the day, I saw some fish far across the river in a calm pool. I cast my line across the river and actually hooked a nice Steelhead and got it to shore. Bill grabbed it and got it up on the bank: the first catch of the day. I was feeling pretty good about myself. Bill wandered upstream after that and I stayed and managed to hook 3 other fish and I landed one big one. The other two got off, which is not unusual for Steelhead fishing.  Bill found a nice hole and caught several fish and ended up releasing some as our limit was 3 fish per person. We went home with 7 or 8 fish between the 3 of us. I felt like I was getting the hang of it, was doing well and was mostly independent. Bill had given me some advice and had gotten one fish out of the water for me but that was the extent of it. Not only did I get breakfast at the Pancake House but I could catch fish also.

 

 

A few days later I was talking to my daughter Katie and telling her about my fishing experience. I told her proudly how I was no longer Bill’s little boy like the first time out. Now, on this second trip, I was able to rig up and fish independent of Bill.  I could move up and down the river and fish where I wanted to. When I broke off a line, it was my stuff floating down the river, not Bill’s. Not only that, I hooked several fish and landed two of them all by myself.

 

 

Katie looked at me and said, “I didn’t know you had a Steelhead rod and reel.”

I looked at her quietly for a moment, swallowed my pride and said to her, “I don’t, I was using Bill’s extra rod and reel.”     

 

To which Katie said, “Well, you are a big boy aren’t you.”     

Time, Why Do You Punish Me?
April 1, 2012 No Foolin'

I haven’t written anything in the blog for several months. We did a big remodel on our house and I just couldn’t find anything funny about that. They say time will cure that and that someday I’ll be able to look back and laugh about the remodel experience. We created a new kitchen area by removing a bearing wall, tearing out an old roof, bedroom and bathroom. The new kitchen has been finished for a couple months and it is really nice, but enough time hasn’t passed for me to see any humor in the process at all.

I was out in the back pasture mowing the 3 foot tall weeds that grew last summer and fall due to me neglecting many things around the house while focusing on the remodel project. I marveled at how time has changed me, How my kids were almost all grown up and how I was feeling the aches and pains of age creeping up on me due to my recent back problems. How did I get this way? Two things immediately came to mind. First, I am obsessed with time. I have 3 songs on my IPod named ‘Time’. (Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, & Hootie & the Blowfish ) plus ‘Time in a Bottle’, Tulsa Time’, ‘100 Years’ , ‘Don’t Blink’ and ‘The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything’. The second thing that came to mind was Bill Schnupp and his emotional experience of selling an insurance product called ‘Time’ and the revealing day he tried to see what a hemorrhoid looked like.

I’ve decided I need to expound on some of my character flaws, or traits that got me to where I’m at this time in life. This new endeavor of mine is going to take up several chapters. I’m going to use my kids as examples of some of the traits they inherited from me, and I’ll mix in a couple of the Bill Schnupp anecdotes to show his kids what they have to look forward to. So here we go.


Chapter 1 - Katie

For some reason I enjoy long brutal hikes, bike rides, hunts, basketball games and such things that would wear me down to utter exhaustion. I wasn’t always like this but I learned to work hard at what I was doing to the point of sometimes wondering what I was doing and why I was doing it. I remember one hunt where Bill and I walked at approximately 32 miles in 3 days
up and down the Smokey Mountains carrying backpacks loaded with tents, sleeping bags, rifles, food, water, and finally an elk, a deer, and a meatball. I was a little leery of passing this trait on to my kids so I had to choose my opportunities carefully.

One late spring day when Katie was about 18, I asked her if she wanted to go on a mountain bike ride. She was still somewhat gullible and asked me where I wanted to go. I expounded about a trail up in the Boise foothills that wound around a big valley and finally came down near the golf course. We grabbed our bikes, helmets and some water and off we went. We parked near the elementary school at the bottom of Bogus Basin Road and pointed our bikes up the paved road. As we rode the 3 miles up the road I could see Katie starting to tire and also starting to wonder what she’d gotten herself into. Uh-oh, I thought to myself, she’s beginning to tire out and she’s starting to question going on this outing with me. I quickly explained that the dirt trail turn off was just ahead of us. She powered up the last of the pavement and seemed a bit relieved for the moment. We reached the dirt and headed out the trail. It took her another few minutes to realize that the dirt trail continued climbing up the mountain and didn’t show any signs of leveling off. I could see her anger build as we kept pedaling up the hill as the sweat poured off of us. Finally, the trail leveled off and wound around a big valley over to a creek running with cold water from the snow melting high above. I hoped the gentle ride around the valley gave her some rest because the trail was about to turn and follow the creek up the canyon, after that we were going to hit the steep part. The ride up the creek bottom was rocky and wet as we got to cross the creek two or three times. Luckily, it was spring and the creek was running high and we got our shoes wet trying to stay upright in the raging current. After a mile or so of pedaling up the creek bottom, I could see the switchback where the trail left the bottom of the canyon and climbed steeply up the canyon wall to where it crossed a pass into the next drainage. “We’re almost to the top”, I cheerily said as she glared at me with disbelief in her eyes after seeing the trail crawling up the canyon wall. After pushing her bike up the last quarter mile of the grade, Katie tossed her bike to side of the trail at the summit. She was sweating profusely and had drunk all the water in sight. She lay in the dirt at the side of the trail, the sand sticking to her sweaty skin. She looked pretty beat with the hot sun glaring on her. I knew I’d better say something quick or she would never want to go on an adventure with me again. She looked at me like I must be crazy but I was breathing so hard I couldn’t speak. After a few minutes curled up on the ground in a fetal position I was able to talk.

“It’s all downhill from here” I lied, hoping that she might
not hate me forever.

Then for a little motivation I added. “Laying here in the
hot sun isn’t gonna get you home”.

Katie stood up, brushed off the sticky sand and got on her bike. I climbed on my bike and we headed down the hill into the next canyon. We rode down some great terrain and through gullies and whoop tee dos. We rounded a ridge and suddenly rode straight into a herd of grazing sheep. There must have been a thousand of them. They were everywhere and we had to slow down and go through them slowly. We saw the sheepherder sitting in the shade of a big sage brush holding a rifle. Katie gave me a look that said, “This better not be private property you’re dragging me through,” after seeing the rifle. We made it through the sheep and past the man with a rifle and headed down the next draw. There was a dribble of water running in it to make things slick. The last stretch was a bit of a rock garden and we zipped down the trail dodging rocks and brush. We made the last stretch wreck free, which is a bit unusual for me, and we popped out on a paved road above the golf course. We zipped down the steep road with the wind drying our sweat and cooling our bodies. We came to the truck and loaded the bikes in and headed for home. I was sweaty, dirty, sunburned, tired, thirsty, and had scratches running up and down my legs. Four hours round trip, almost a record. It had been a good day. I was a bit worried about Katie though. I wondered if she’d ever want to do anything with me again. I’m can’t remember when the last time I’d seen her that mad at me; maybe when I made her go to basketball practice with a broken finger. I taped it up.

As we neared the house she hadn’t said anything to me for a long time. I was relieved when she finally spoke. She said, “I can’t wait to take Lori on that ride”.

That’s my girl.


Chapter 2 - Lindsey

This character trait is not necessarily a good one, but it can be in certain situations. (This isn’t one of them).

Lindsey was about 5 years old when I decided I needed to take the kids fishing for the day. I heard the catfish were biting near the dam on Lake Lowell. We had a couple extra neighborhood kids with us that wanted to go also. It was a hot summer day and we were all wearing shorts and flip flops.

Digression:
When I was a kid flip flops were referred to as thongs, but time has a way of changing even this. Now, when I tell me kids I’m going to wear my thongs, they refuse to go anywhere with me. I always thought I lookedin thongs.
End of Digression

We parked near the dam and it was a short walk to the reservoir. I had to carry a cooler and fishing poles so the kids had to walk. Brayden was not yet 2 so I also had to stick by him as we walked towards the water. We had to cross a dry weedy area and as I entered it, I could see lots of goat head weeds. They were so thick we couldn’t avoid them and soon our flips flops bottoms were covered with them. They stuck in the soles and wouldn’t come off. We tried dragging out feet to get them off. We made it to the beach and found a good fishing spot and sandy area. We cleaned off the shoes and did some fishing. The kids played in the sand and water. The fishing proved to be decent.

After a few hours, everyone was hot and tired and it was time to go home. We loaded up the cooler and fishing poles and got ready to go. I told Lindsey to put her flip flops on a couple times but she didn’t want to. Her feet were sandy. When we started out for the car she was carrying a flip flop in each hand. I told her to put them on right now, it was time to go. She gave me a look of defiance and said nothing. I recognized a streak of stubbornness in her demeanor. Rather than confront her right then and there, I said she could barefoot until the weeds and then she had to put them on. She gave me her “we’ll see about that” look so I backed down knowing how difficult she could be if I crossed her. We walked a while and approached the weed patch. I said as nicely as I could to her. “OK, it’s time to put your flip flops on Lindsey”. Another look of defiance flashed on her face. What a stubborn kid, I thought to myself. Where’d she get that from. I knew I could take her in a physical altercation (I’d had to do on a few occasions prior to this) and force the flip flops on her feet. It would mean several trips across the weeds for me; once with the cooler and fishing poles, once with Brayden and the other kids, and then once with a screaming, kicking maniac in flip flops. I stood there looking and Lindsey and decided that I wasn’t up to the battle with her that day. I told myself that there are some things in life one learns by doing and maybe this is one of them for Lindsey. I asked if everyone was ready to cross the weeds and we headed out into the patch. Everybody made it across with tons of goat heads stuck to the bottom of their flip flops. Everyone except Lindsey, she was standing almost in the middle of the weeds holding back her tears, and holding a flip flop in each hand. I went out and carefully picked her up and carried her over to the truck. Her feet were bleeding heavily and I pulled several goat heads out of each foot. We then wrapped them in napkins we found in the truck and set her on the seat. The napkins bled through and her blood started dripping on the floor mat. I rewrapped her feet with more napkins and one of the kids held them down tight on her feet until the blood quit dripping. I don’t remember her saying anything or even crying. She just sat there and looked a bit defeated and a bit defiant. We were finally able to leave and we made it home without much being said. During the drive home, I wondered if Lindsey learned anything that day. I wondered if her stubbornness would be lessened by the experience and if she might realize that some of the things she had to do were for her own good. Some people can learn things from the experiences of others and some people have to experience certain for themselves to learn some of life’s lessons. I know she never walked through a patch of goat heads barefoot again, but that daywasn’t the end of the stubborn streak that runs in the family.