In the back country places of he Northwest USA one finds individuals that reflect their solitary world. In my book, North Cascades Highway, lived a capable construction worker whose very anatomy cried out that he was capable, familiar with the rough forest, opinionated, and yet appealing. Wxxxx was built like a forest lookout tower -- tall, angular, sparse, with a quizzical expression on his long face, his head topped by a Stetson. It was easy to believe one of his stories about his mule that fell into a mudhole so deep that it left him standing up. He loped, not walked, on those long legs, and his language in and out of the mountains could blister a pine tree. But he was a master guide, conscientious, and eminently capable. One of his clients had been the Governor of Washington State.
The children of the remote mountain country grew up on horseback and their animals were part of their families, they believed. One family adopted an abandoned sandhill crane, boss of the farmyard ." so totally that he was dubbed "Nero." When the family hitched up a team to a wagon, bound for a village to buy farm supplies, Nero went, too. With a wing spread of seven feet he walked beside he wagon, flapping his giant wings to keep up. More than one terrorized oncoming team viewed with horror such an apparition and ran away in fright, wagon and all.
It is this other world of the West that lends color to early journalists' works, hopefully including my own.
