Roland Cheek's Blog, page 8
May 19, 2013
RIGHT OF PASSAGE
Yellow blooms of skunk cabbage peeked from the nearby forest fringe as I plunked spotting scope to the hood of my Jeep wagon. A gentle breeze wafted from the woods and I paused to take a deep breath before bending to the scope's eyepiece.
He wasn't a big bear as bear's go. And he was ebony, whereas I'd hoped for one in cinnamon color phase. But he was THERE, grazing amid a mountainside meadow, not more than a half-mile away. I jerked the scope from its perch, folding it while leaping into the wagon.
The farmhouse was rustic board and batten, perched at the end of the lane, surrounded by disordered brambles and a rickety picket fence long overdue for a coat of whitewash. While hurrying through a gate hanging by only one hinge, I could see the meadow and the still-grazing bear. A worn path led to the door. One could sense more than hear or see or feel movement behind the door when I knocked. It swung open. An elderly gentleman held a newspaper in one hand, the doorknob in the other. "Yes?" he asked.
He was stooped, his hair as white as bleached muslin, thin on top but hanging an inch below the top of his ears and curling over the collar of his open-necked plaid flannel shirt. Tiny steel-rimmed glasses perched halfway down the bridge of his nose. Eyes faded with age peered up at me, over the tops of the glasses. "What is it?" he asked again.
"I'd ... I want to go bear hunting," I said. "There's a bear feeding up yonder, in a meadow. And ... and I wondered if it'd be all right if I went up and tried for him?"
The old man's forehead pinched as he stared up at me. "Do you have a gun?" he barked.
"Yes, sir." Then he smiled.
"Well, son, that's all you need."
That's the way it was in Montana forty-five years ago. The sands of time have trickled through many flips of the hour-glass since, and it's not as easy to access private land as during those halcyon days. But it's not as tough as some folks think, even now.
Most Montana landholders are motivated by the same instincts as humans everywhere: a) they want to do the right thing; b) they want to know what's in it for them?
In the "right thing" scenario, the landowner wants good relations with others sharing the Treasure State. The fact is, he needs them working with him in tandem to keep Montana the "Last Best Place" for his kids and their kids to survive on the land.
April 13, 2013
SPEAKING OF INTOLERANCE
There's a bunch of intolerance going around these days and one hardly needs a guide dog to track where it's heading. With pure cussedness on the uprise and courtesy and tolerance on the downswing, sloguneering with overtones of bigotry has become cottage industry. At least most of our intolerance isn't racial or religious. Neither is it class warfare.
Instead, ours is environmental and it's fanned by the same type of fanatics that applied the torch to tinder since time began. "Motorized snow humpers," they're called by one side. "Tree hugging vandals," is one of the more tasteful retaliations. Vandalism has occurred, and more than one observer has told me in all seriousness that they fear someone is going to be killed.
My late great editor, Bob Elman, was a keen observer who passed along many insightful messages. The following was penned after he'd heard some upright citizen from his locale proclaim that he's "certainly not a bigot--far from it--but facts are facts and you can't deny them people are not our equals; give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile."
"Them people," according to Bob, "are whatever group the proclaimer is most ignorant of--racial, religious, ethnic, political, cultural, whatever--and you can bet there's someone in the target group who's spouting the same crap about the proclaimer's group."
Here's Bob's poem:
On Logic and Tolerance In Community Relations.
When the toad was about to sell his place,
He raillied his neighbors face to face
and explained his views with regard to race
"Damn right I don't like frogs,
They're clumsy and slimy and vicious.
They defecate in our swamps and bogs
And call water bugs delicious.
Show me a frog and I'll show you a slob.
Would you want your sister to date one?
Just look at their kids, a gelatinous blob!
I'd rather die than date one.
But there's two sides to this story:
At the country club where the frog was respected
he told his friends what could be expected
if toads were not scrupulously rejected:
if toads were not scrupulously rejected:
Damn right I don't like toads,
They're lazy and dirty and crude.
They defecate all over the roads
And they eat uncivilized food.
Their skin is warty and dry as death,
Their ignorant croaks can't be understood,
And their tongues--well, talk about dragon's breath!
They move in and ruin the neighborhood.
Bob added this a the end:
"My bit of doggerel doesn't amount to any profound insight, but it was fun to do, and I enjoy sharing these trifles with you. A chuckle is mightier than a scream of rage, and it's good to have friends
February 20, 2013
mountain musing
What goes around, comes around, though. For hundreds of years writers couldn't reach readers without publishers. But today that direct link between storyteller and listener is being reforged as book publishing's middle-men are being marginalized by digital and electronic publishing.
I'm excited by the idea of me, a storyteller, sitting down with my eager reading and listening audience without having Big Apple gatekeeprs--who may have never strayed beyond the canyons of New York City--interpose his or her taste. For Roland's e-book page on Amazon's Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...
I hope what I've thus far written doesn't dismay you readers. I've met many fine folks from New York and certainly would hesitate to denigrate the species in any way. In fact I don't even bitterly detest New York editors, as one might think.
In fact, my late, great editor, Bob Elman, was raised in New York City, but he escaped to the Jersey countryside to shoot ducks and catch fish.
Nope, Big Apple-ites are okay. Maybe. But I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one.
