Today (7/18) is the first time I’ve had access to the internet in a week and a half. I wrote some “posts” while in camps, and I could post them separately, but I’m going to be lazy and do them all here.
7/10/07 evening
Stoddard Creek Campground, Targhee National Forrest, Idaho
We are officially out of the Southwest. We drove north on I-15 most of the day, and are only a short way from the Montana-Idaho border. The campsite is lovely—if I could let the dogs roam, I’d be tempted to stay here a few days. Though I suspect it would be too warm for comfort during the afternoon. It’s still green here, with quite a few wildflowers still blooming. I’m watching the light change on the hillside across the valley through an opening in the trees. (Later: This picture doesn’t quite show it–but the hillside I was talking about is the darker blue bit between the trees.)
Altogether very nice for an overnight stay. I set up the car for sleeping—we’ll see which dogs want to be in and which out tonight (any out will be securely tied, I assure you.)
(Later: Here’s a shot of the campsite. All 4 dogs opted for in the car–or to be more accurate, I opted for all dogs in the car 🙂 )
Idaho has a much gentler feel to it than Arizona, New Mexico, or Utah. And I don’t think it feels that way just because I spent my childhood in Idaho. The geography is softer, the hills more rolling, less stark. They don’t have the magnificence of the red cliffs of the southwest, but driving through them in the evening, with the sun lowering toward the horizon, the play of golden light and shadow is beautiful. From an air-conditioned car, anyway—we still haven’t escaped the daytime heat. Though I’ll take the low 90s (which it was here today) over the low 100s (Utah) any day.
Took the dogs for a short walk. It had to be on leash, but better than nothing. The Shiba boy is pretty shaky on his pins—I’m not sure if he’s weaker after his little adventure (whatever it was) in Utah or not. He was already shaky and listing to one side before. Sometimes he seems unable to walk any further—sometimes (like tonight) he just paces along and seems OK. The heat definitely seems to make a difference—he’s much more likely to give out if it’s hot. It’s cooling off nicely now—I have on levis and T-shirt and am comfortable (yay!) We’ll do another, longer walk in the morning, post-tea, before it heats up in the morning—it’s part of the camping routine.
The puppy (I seem to be settling on CJ, short for Miss Coyote Jane—though I keep forgetting what the CJ is for and thinking of three other C—– J—– combination before hitting on the right one)—anyway, CJ has become quite a pest. She loves to harass the other dogs, who don’t like it at all. The Shiba girl is coping rather well—she’ll give CJ what-for, occasionally putting her onto her back and really letting her know who is the bigger bitch. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to make any lasting impression on CJ, who slinks off and then comes right back for more.
(I don’t know what’s up, but the Shiba girl was whining earlier, so I tied her to the table on which I’m typing this, and she’s hopped up beside me and is trying to get me to pet her. She’s not usually so clingy, though she does like her pets. Blame any typos on her cold wet nose thrusting itself under my hands as a reminder of their true purpose in life.)
The sun has faded off the hill now, and though it won’t be full dark for some time yet, I think I’ll close up shop and read awhile. Tomorrow we seek the 3-day camp-site. Here’s hoping. . .
7/13/07 Beaverhead National Forest, Dinner Station Campground, outside Dillon, Montana
Well, we found our 3-4 day camping spot. Here’s a view of the road on the way up to the campground:
It’s not perfect, but then no camping spot is. I tell myself that if I ever find the perfect spot, there’ll be no reason to look for camping spots anymore. But this one is pretty good. It’s a no-fee National Forest campground, which in this case means it has tables and privies and even water, but no dumpster—strictly haul out your own trash. I was the first one here, and picked a spot by the creek, which is maybe 50 feet from where I’m writing. The main flaw with the spot is that I was the first one here, and am no longer the only one here. Which means I can’t let the dogs roam as much as I’d like, and three of them insist barking when they hear people (the Shiba boy almost never barks.)
This deer–I assume it’s a doe (no antlers), but I’m no expert–checked us out very thoroughly last night shortly after we arrived. She was more curious than afraid–I hope she gets more cautious before hunting season commences.
Both tents are up, and performing as advertised:
This time it only took me 35 minutes to get the big tent up (over the campsite table), if you don’t count deploying the awnings. I have all four of them out now—the extra shade is nice. Yesterday it rained for several hours, at times heavily, so I put the fly up on the Kelty. Got it up just in time—I’d been debating whether or not to put it up for about 20 minutes, and just as I started getting it put together, it started raining. Of course, it stopped by the time I had it all the way on—but then it resumed, and kept it up until sometime during the night, so it was good to have it. I sat for 2-3 hours under the big tent while it rained, with three awnings out, and it was lovely. I felt snug as a bug—of which there were none in the tent.
Today was a lazy day—walk the dogs, nap, lunch, nap, walk the dogs, read, supper, walk the dogs. I was feeling guilty about being such a slug, but then realized this is the first opportunity for a do-nothing day in at least two months. Yesterday would have been, but I had to go back into Dillon to buy a new camp stove—I discovered mine was leaking badly. Badly enough that the fumes were affecting me even in the openness of the big tent. But today I had no must-do’s at all (other than the basics of keeping body and soul together). So I did almost nothing.
Here a are a couple of pictures from the morning walk. You may notice a certain theme. . .
CJ loves to hop up on logs–gives her a better view. Is she cute, or what? But she’s not the only one (see below)
Whereas the Shiba boy looks best festooned in greenery:
CJ has been severely chastised by both Shibas now—the boy last night, and the girl this morning. Both drew a bit of blood. I have the feeling it was going to take something like that for her to learn her place in the pack—she is amazingly persistent in her pestering of the big dogs. But they seem to be accepting her—the Shiba girl has even played with her several times now, and the poodle played with her for a few minutes this morning. Which surprised me—he’d been avoiding her like the plague up to then. But he was clearly soliciting the play this morning.
It was two weeks ago today that I picked CJ up off the road. What are her accomplishments in that time? She has learned her name. She has learned to walk on a leash. Sort of—I don’t teach my dogs to heel, I let them run on extensible leashes. Cesar the Dog Whisperer would disapprove, but then we aren’t going to tell him, are we? She has learned that her crate is an OK place to be—she eats and sleeps in it and is fine with that as long as I’m in the room with her. She is beginning to learn to chew on her toys rather than shoes, labels, bedding, dog beds, tents, etc. She has learned to go up and down stairs.
She keeps up well on walks, and has learned what “CJ, c’mon” and “dis way” mean when we’re out. She has learned to drink from a stream (she would never have seen a flowing stream on the reservation), and today she swam across the creek. I had carried her across, thinking we’d continue our mid-day walk on the other side, but then decided the stream was just too swift for me to carry all the dogs across, and much to swift for them to wade—which, sensible dogs that they are, they weren’t attempting to do. I waded back across thinking to pick up another and bring it across, which was when I decided that would be foolhardy, so I headed back across to get CJ. Who was nowhere to be seen. I called her a few times, then looked across—to see her sitting, dripping wet, on the other side. She must have swum after me when I waded back, and been swept a bit downstream, and run back up to where we were. I didn’t see her do it, which is a good thing, because I would have been terrified for her. As it was, I was just proud of her.
Probably more of the same tomorrow. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll leave Sunday or Monday—we’ll see how I feel at the time.
Oh, yeah—the Shiba boy is doing very well. He too is keeping up well on the walks, even uphill. I had to help him over a couple of logs this morning, but most of them he managed on his own. I’ve been fluctuating between letting him roam and keeping him tied up. He’s reverted to his former patterns—when he’s loose, he stays fairly close, checks back in camp periodically, and comes when called. Which is very reassuring. But I still feel the need to know where he is a good deal of the time, and I also don’t want him wandering into other camps looking for admiration or a handout, so I don’t let him roam all the time.
I still think about what happened at the camp in Utah, and I still have no clue. He may have gone looking for water. He may have heard voices and gone after them. The coyote may have scared him, and he took off running and it took him all that time to find his way back. He may have been lurking near camp the whole time, but didn’t want to come in until he saw me packing up. I’ll never know. Unless I find out when I die. (As a child, I used to say to myself “I’ll find out when I die” whenever something was a mystery, or Mom wouldn’t let me watch the end of a TV show. I have no idea where I got that idea from, but until I was 10-12 years old I simply took it for granted that all our questions would be answered—we’d know everything—when we die. Sometimes now I wonder—what if I was right? What if, being newly entered into this world, I still had some knowledge of the world before birth and after death? Fanciful, I know, but not an unpleasant thought.)
What still gives me chills about the incident is that if he had returned as little as 90 minutes later, I would have been gone. There’s no way he could have survived out there on his own for very long, and he’d have thought I had deserted him. I wouldn’t have known—I would have thought he was already dead, having convinced myself he’d been killed by the coyote—but that only makes the whole scenario worse. Talk about dodging a bullet. Way too close for comfort.
7/14/07
Not quite as lazy a day as yesterday, but close. We drove up to the “end of the road”—which was really only the end of the maintained road—and took an all-morning walk through the woods. The forest was almost too quiet—very few birds, very few chirps from indignant squirrels. But it was lovely. We hiked about half a mile down to this lake,
and then headed for another that was supposed to be a mile further on. Either it was more than a mile, or my sense of how far a mile is is off, but we turned back before reaching the second lake. Still, the whole walk was two and a half hours. Both CJ and the Shiba boy kept up well—in fact, I continue to be amazed at how well Mr. Shiba is doing. Here’s a shot of him crossing a creek by means of some logs felled for that purpose. No particular trick for the other dogs, but for him with his unreliable back legs, it was a bit of a challenge–but he did it, twice–once going and once coming).
It’s gotta be the weather—he seemed much weaker when we were in the southwest. Here, he just plugs along, and I suspect could have gone further, even though the last half mile back to the car was all uphill.
Last night there was a thunderstorm that lasted 2-3 hours and woke us all up. Shiba boy didn’t like it one bit—he was pacing restlessly around the tent (which given the size of the tent and the number of bodies was rather disruptive.) I ended up hauling him into my bed (a 30” wide cot), and he actually was OK with that—normally he tolerates that kind of cuddling for about 30 seconds. He had some trouble deciding where to put his nose, but eventually he settled down, and we all got some more sleep. When the rain—and the thunder and lightening—stopped, he hopped down and went back to his own spot on the floor. We may be in for another such night tonight—we’ve already had one bout of rain, and it looks to be building up for another.
The other productive part of the day was that I managed a bath, and boy did it feel good. I had gotten to the point that I just couldn’t stand myself any longer (and I have a high tolerance for my own dirt, so just imagine.) I filled my 5-gallon bucket with creek water, heated a teakettle full of water, put the sides of the big tent down and a tarp over the dirt on the downhill side, and used what I remember from bucket baths in the Peace Corps. Managed to wash the body, and the hair—two sudsings on the hair, no less, and had about a gallon of water left over. Not bad, if I do say so myself. But if I’m going to continue with this camping stuff, I definitely want an enclosure designed for showers—using the big tent is just not going to cut it in the long run.
I’ve decided to head for Hamilton tomorrow—I’m getting low on palatable food, and very low on ice. I could make a run into Dillon and stay one more night, but it hardly seems worth it. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get packed and loaded. For one thing, I’ll probably have to wait until the hot part of the day to strike the tents—I don’t want to put them away wet, and as I said it looks like more rain tonight. And since I’ve been here a couple of full days, virtually everything is out, so everything has to be sorted out and repacked.
Time to stop and feed the dogs. Maybe I’ll be able to post this stuff from Hamilton—we’ll see just how far the wifi magic has spread.
Very enjoyable reading–I envy you. Looking forward to more updates.
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