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The Breaks of the Game - My First Overnight Canoe Trip

11/8/2022

In 1961 when I was twelve, Tom Cantwell, patriarch of the Cantwell family, invited me to go on a four-day canoe trip along with a platoon of Cantwell kids. It was memorable for a lot of reasons, not all of them good.

The trip was into what today we know as the St. Regis Canoe Area, a canoe wilderness with no motorized vehicles allowed, a place of wild character, where people love to paddle, fish, hike, and hunt. But in 1961 it had platform camps, snowmobile trails, small motorboats, and even the occasional seaplane landing on the larger ponds.

We started from the landing on Upper St. Regis Lake and paddled and portaged our way to St. Regis Pond. The portages were all relatively short and perfect for us kids.

Although my family had been motorboat and car camping for years, I’d never been overnight canoe camping. To have everything in our boats and transporting things from pond to pond was a new and exciting experience. And it was made even better because my canoe partner Franny Cantwell and I were so young, we didn’t have to haul the heaviest gear. We had daypacks with some food, water, and an extra layer. In my case, the layer was my heavy wool cardigan that my mom had knitted. It was beige with a big Newfoundland on the back and Newfie heads on each pocket. She made them for all the kids in our family and they were real works of art. It was a functional and beautiful piece of clothing that served as a coat, jacket, and heavy shirt. I wore it indoors and out, for formal dress and for work. It was my prized possession.

The trip was memorable for a number of reasons; equipment like Svea cook stoves and lightweight down sleeping bags were fascinating, but more intriguing was the sense of remoteness and primitiveness. We camped at the lean-to on the south end of the pond, but as far as I was concerned, it might as well have been in the far reaches of northern Canada.

The last day we headed out to Little Lake Clear, a canoe carry of three-quarters of a mile, the most challenging of the trip. We paddled our red-fiberglass canoe across Little Lake Clear and worked our way over to the north end of Upper Saranac Lake. The trip was to end at Indian Carry, eight miles to the south.

If you’ve ever paddled down Upper Saranac Lake you know that the winds frequently come from the southwest and can make things miserable for paddlers, especially young, inexperienced ones like me. When I was in the stern I couldn’t keep us in a straight line because I didn’t know how to steer. When I was in the bow I overpowered Franny. As a result, we zig zagged our way down the lake falling farther and farther behind.

We thought we’d been saved when two teenagers in an aluminum motorboat with a ten-horsepower motor came out to tow our canoe.

“Want a ride?” one said.

We said “YES”, and in the blink of an eye were in their boat, towing our canoe down the lake. But the wind was so strong and the waves so high that we didn’t go 100 yards before the canoe swamped.

Our young rescuers pulled the canoe up, emptied it, and I didn’t think twice as the canoe slid back into the water with my sweater and day pack in the bottom of it. They tried again to tow it to Indian Carry. By now the wind was whipping and the waves were as big as ocean rollers. We made it another 100 yards and the canoe swamped again.

This time the biggest Adirondack motorboat I’d ever seen came out and offered to take the canoe. For the Saranac Lakes it was huge. It had dual 75 horsepower outboards, the largest outboard motors of the day. The boat’s operator tied off our canoe and roared off. The boat flew down the lake with the canoe bouncing wildly behind it. Then it bounced off one of the rollers four feet into the air. As it came down it turned at an awkward angle and bounced even higher. And then, as if in slow motion, it crashed down onto a white-capped wave and snapped in two sending fiberglass splinters everywhere.

I was in shock and too stunned to speak until I suddenly thought about my sweater that I left in the canoe. My pride and joy, my mother’s pride and joy, the only article of clothing I had ever really cared about was waterlogged, out of reach, and slowly sinking.

“My sweater!” I yelled as it drifted away – down… down… down… It was too far away to save, and I watched it, helpless, as it sank into the depths of Upper Saranac Lake, where it rests to this day.

The folks in the big boat picked up the halves of the canoe and deposited them on the shore at Indian Carry and then sped off, never to be seen again. To compound things, it wasn’t even the Cantwell’s canoe – they’d borrowed it.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending, at least for Mr. Cantwell. First, his homeowner’s policy reimbursed the owner of the canoe. And second, the larger half of the broken canoe was turned into a dinghy and became the tender for the Cantwell’s family sailboat.

But as for me? My sweater, so beloved now and forever rests in the murky depths. I still mourn its loss and wonder how long wool survives in cold Adirondack lakes. Maybe someday I’ll rent some scuba gear, take a dive, and find out.

My sister and I canoeing on Lower Saranac Lake in 1957. Note how I have already mastered the art of not paddling.

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My Life of Crime

10/25/2022

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If I ever had illusions of pulling off another Brink’s robbery, I was cured of them in the spring of 1958. That’s when Eddie Berkins suggested we each steal a squirt gun from a local store.

I lived in a rural area of Locust Valley, Long Island, and Eddie lived in a post-WWII housing development called Woods Lane. We’d struck up a friendship due to proximity more than anything else. I recall hanging out with Eddie’s Leave It To Beaver-like family in their brand new split-level home. When the parents weren’t around, we’d sneak peeks at his dad’s Playboy magazines. Ultimately, Eddie was more like Eddie Haskell than Beaver Cleaver.

Occasionally we’d ride our bikes down to the village and explore the local Woolworth’s Five and Dime. In the 1950s five and dime stores were as ubiquitous as chrome on cars. Frank Winfield Woolworth, the father of five and dime stores, developed the idea in Watertown, New York in the late 1800s. By the turn of the century, he owned fifty-four stores. He kept prices low by eliminating the middleman and by 1911, the F. W. Woolworth Company became the dominant variety store chain in the United States. The stores sold toys, notions, candy, toiletries and just about everything you could think of. They frequently featured lunch counters. Think of miniature versions of today’s big-box stores, but instead of stuff stacked to the ceiling you had aisles of display counters.

Saranac Lake had two five and dime stores. Woolworth’s and J. J. Newberrys were side by side for thirty-five years until Newberrys bought out Woolworths in 1959. Good old capitalistic competition for lower prices, combined with cultural changes, doomed five and dime stores and by the mid-1970s most were gone, although Saranac Lake’s J. J. Newberry's Department Store stuck it out until 1997.

Newberry's and Woolworths, Memorial Day, 1939. Adirondack Daily Enterprise, May 25, 2002 https://localwiki.org/hsl/

One day Eddie and I bicycled into town, and at his suggestion, we went into the five and dime to case the joint for a future heist. When Eddie picked up a squirt gun from the table he said, in a stage whisper, “I don’t think we’ll buy these fine squirt guns today.”

If you think of sidekicks, I was more like Abbot’s Costello than Holmes’ Dr. Watson, because I responded in an even louder voice, “I thought we were going to steal them.” Fortunately, no one heard us and we left without incident.

A week later we returned to cop our heat. We wandered up and down the aisles inspecting various items as casually as possible. In other words, not casually at all. When we came to the squirt guns, we surreptitiously put them in our pockets and went merrily on our way.
Well, merrily for a day anyway.

It turned out Eddie couldn’t keep his mouth shut, so told his sister, who then told my sister. The next day as my sister and I were walking from the school bus up our driveway we got into a tiff and she yelled, “I’m gonna tell mom you stole a squirt gun!”

I became petrified. She repeated the threat. I froze. I didn’t know what to do. The solution finally dawned on me, and I broke out into a sprint that would have made Jesse Owens proud and ran into the house. I flew up the stairs and burst into my mother’s bedroom, where she always took an afternoon break with a cigarette, a peppermint Lifesaver, and her Time magazine.
Sobbing I blurted, “Eddie Berkins and I stole squirt guns from the five and dime store.”

With a surprised look she said, “Tell me what happened.”
I told her the whole story. Being the smart mother she was, she decided to confirm the story by calling Eddie’s mother.

The conversation with Eddie’s mother, as relayed to me by my mother, went something like this, “Jackie tells me that he and Eddie each stole a squirt gun from the five and dime. What do you think we should do?”

There was a long pause and then his mother said, “Let me talk to Eddie.”

After a bit she came back on the phone and said, “Eddie says he never stole a squirt gun, and I know Eddie would never lie to me.”

My mother hung up, turned to me and said, “Well, Eddie’s mother doesn’t want to do anything about it, but you and I will,”

The next day she gave me thirty-five cents, marched me down to the store and told me to go in and pay for my squirt gun.

I walked in, walked up to the counter to a cashier who looked like Nurse Ratched’s sister. Trying my best to avoid eye contact I put down my three dimes and a nickel.

“This is for the squirt gun that I stole,” I said in a barely audible voice, “My mother said I have to pay for it.”

With a stern look the cashier said, “Well, I hope you learned your lesson.”

And I sure did. Actually, I learned TWO lessons.

The first was, I never again stole another thing.

And the second was, I never again shared another secret with my sister.

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Ouluska Pass - October 1974

10/11/2022

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Robbie and Jack as they prepare to head into the western High Peaks

Have you ever looked at a spot on the map and said, “Now there’s a place I have to explore.”?
That’s what happened to me. I’d been studying the 1953 USGS map of the High Peaks and the pass between Seward and Seymour mountains had intrigued me. I loved the name Ouluska, the idea of a remote pass where few people traveled, and the fact that an old logging road went up through it.
I didn’t know much about the area other than twenty-three years earlier one of the Adirondacks most destructive storms had occurred there. What was known as the Big Blowdown brought heavy rains and winds in excess of 100 mph. In a single day, November 25th, 1950, more than 800,000 acres of timber were heavily damaged.
In my quest to expand my Adirondack backcountry experience, I just had to hike through Ouluska Pass.
I planned a trip from Corey’s Road along Ward Brook, then off-trail up Ouluska Pass, down to the Cold River to Noah Rondeau’s famed hermitage. The idea was to take seven days and work my way across the High Peaks and finish in Keene Valley, a total of nearly forty miles.
I even found a partner in crime. I was on the ski patrol at Mount Whitney, the Lake Placid Club’s private ski area, when I met a kid my age Robbie Stott who was the mechanic keeping the Thiokol Snowcat Groomer up and running. It didn’t take much to convince him, and that fall his mother dropped us off at the trailhead, took our photo and we headed off. I may have mentioned the distance to Robbie but am not sure I mentioned that five miles of it would be a bushwhack through one of the most rugged and remote parts of the Adirondacks.
After Robbie’s mom left, we hoisted our packs weighed down with a week's worth of food, and in Robbie’s case, a ten pound “portable” CB radio which was all the rage at the time. I thought he was crazy to bring it, but he was insistent. He said, “Up on the mountain tops we might be able to talk to folks in different states.” I was skeptical.
Not being much of a hunter at the time, I didn’t realize it was deer season. That explained all the cars in the parking lot and the men we encountered along the way. When we mentioned to two of them that we were going to bushwhack up through Ouluska Pass they thought we were crazy.
The trail hunters couldn’t imagine leaving the safety of the trail to shoot a deer, much less understand why someone would want to hike off trail just for fun.
We made good time over the five miles into the Ward Brook lean-to, where we had a simple one-pot stew for dinner topped off with a cup of hot chocolate. We then settled in for the night, anticipating the five and a half mile bushwhack through the pass down to the Cold River.
Many believe the blowdown of 1950 was particularly disastrous because the forest, whose trees had grown their root systems their entire lives fighting the prevailing winds from the west, collapsed from hurricane force winds from the opposite direction. Ouluska Pass was one of the most heavily damaged areas in the region. Most of the trees lay in disarray like giant pick-up sticks. Some were hanging on nearby trees, piled one atop the other.
As we worked our way up the pass, the forest got thicker and thicker. Branches had died, bark had rotted off, but it looked more like six months after the blowdown rather than twenty-three years. It took us five hours of climbing over, crawling under, and navigating through the most challenging terrain I’d ever experienced just to get two miles into the saddle of the pass.
Hot, sweating, with evergreen needles wedged into well-hidden areas of our body, we forged through the pass and finally started down the other side, nearly three miles from the nearest trail. The forest was just beginning to open up, that is, thicker instead of thickest, when Rob howled, “OWWW, my knee!” He’d stepped in just the wrong way to cause his knee to hyper-extend. He flopped down in obvious pain and took off his pack. With the pack off his back, he tried getting up, but could put no weight on his leg. It was late afternoon, and we knew it would be getting dark within a couple of hours. We had no choice but to set up camp, get a good night’s rest, and see what we might be able to do in the morning.
We woke early after a restless night.
“Jack, why don’t we use the CB radio to call in a helicopter?” he said.
“Are you kidding? Look at the tree canopy, a helicopter could never get in here. What we’re going to do is make you some crutches and I’ll take most of the weight out of your pack and put it in mine. We’ll be fine.”
With that I pulled out my folding saw and started to cut down the first of two young yellow birch trees. They each had a natural Y which I lined with wool sweaters, making a reasonably comfortable crutch. Rob tried them out and I ended up trimming the bottoms a bit for a perfect fit. Then I took all the food and Rob’s CB radio, which lightened his pack considerably.
With Rob leading, we started down. We worked our way through the thick forest down the steep terrain. The forest slowly transitioned from spruce/fir to northern hardwood forest composed of maple, yellow birch, beech, ash, and black cherry trees. It was an easier forest to travel through and while the fall colors were past their peak, it was still beautiful.
The terrain became less steep and suddenly we came across a pulley nearly two feet in diameter, I found out later that it was from a Barienger Braking Device, used to keep horse-drawn logging sleds under control as they went downhill.
Then we came upon a rusty two-person saw blade (also known as a “misery whip”), then an old lantern hanging in a tree. Before long we saw an ancient pot and the sole of a boot. These artifacts were signs of the Santa Clara logging Company camp, one of the two biggest logging companies in the Adirondacks in the first half of the 20th century. Despite Rob’s knee problem, we felt we were walking through history.
We moved so slowly it took us all day to get the two and a half miles to the Ouluska Pass Brook lean-to. We were happy to get back on the trail and were hopeful we’d be able to pick up speed for the next four miles up to the Duck Hole truck trail, where we thought we could get help. We spent the night at the lean-to and headed out early the next morning. Rob was a warrior. He pushed through the pain and made steady progress. None-the-less it took us nearly eight hours to get up to the truck trail.
Truck trail? What’s a truck trail doing in the middle of the wilderness?
This network of roads was built for fire protection in the 1930s during the Civil Conservation Corps days. Many of the roads had been turned into horse trails and were favorites of Nelson Rockefeller NYS Governor from 1959 until 1973. We hit the truck trail by late afternoon, and we saw a Nash Rambler driving into the Wilderness towards Duck Hole. The driver, an older, rotund gentleman, saw Robbie on his crutches and asked what was up and we explained our situation.
“I’m the caretaker at the Duck Hole Ranger Station and heading into work for the week. I tell you what, why don’t you work your way to Duck Hole. I can’t do much for you, but you could camp there, and I’ll give a call to the Ranger and maybe he’ll come in and give you a ride out tomorrow.”
Since it was one and half miles to the Ranger Cabin or nine miles to the trailhead, we opted to go to Duck Hole and hope for a ride out in the morning. At Duck Hole the caretaker pointed out a lean-to we could camp in. Then he said that he’d contacted the Ranger but didn’t know for sure if he’d come in the following morning.
We woke up early and had our standard breakfast of oatmeal and a cup of hot chocolate. Around 9:00 AM a red pick-up truck readily identifiable as a Forest Ranger’s pulled up to the caretaker’s cabin. A young man only a few years older than us got out. He wasn’t much for conversation but checked in with the caretaker and then offered us a ride out. I was happy Robbie wouldn’t have to hike the nine miles to the trailhead and possibly the six miles from the trailhead to the Route 3 highway.
The truck trail was narrow, up, and down, and slow going. The Ranger drove us to Corey's road and then another six miles to Route 3.
Imagine our surprise when the Ranger stopped at the highway, and instead of giving us a ride to the hospital, he said, “Here you go. You can hitchhike back to Saranac Lake -- I’m heading to Tupper.” Much to our chagrin we got out and waved to the ranger as he headed away. We put out our thumbs and, with Robbie’s crutches as a sympathetic prop, soon got a ride back to Saranac Lake. Dropped off at the head of Lake Street, we hiked the last half-mile to my house where I got my truck and took Robbie to the hospital. Rob was diagnosed with a hyperextended knee and prescribed the traditional RICE treatment, rest, ice, compression, and elevation.
After I dropped Rob off at home, I pondered the lessons learned. Although we didn’t get very far on our planned trip, we gained some off-trail navigation experience. I also dealt with an emergency and successfully got my good friend out of some of the most remote country in the Adirondacks. And finally, Rob and I agreed that, apart from his knee injury, we had a great adventure.
Fast forward thirty years: Robbie calls me from Colorado where he now lives to tell me that he’s getting married and wants me to be his best man. Would I come out to join him and his fiancée at the Fairmont Resort in Jasper, Alberta, for his wedding? Phyliss and I were glad to oblige, and it wasn’t long before we joined Robbie, his fiancée, and many relatives and friends.
The night before the ceremony, Robbie addressed the crowd and told them a bit about me, then he asked me to come up to the front of the crowd of about a hundred people.
“Jack and I met at a little ski area in Lake Placid, but our friendship was cemented on a hiking trip where I injured my knee. He helped me get out from deep in the wilderness by making me crutches.”
There was a pregnant pause while he reached under the table. He pulled out something that took me a few seconds to recognize. Then with a grand gesture he handed me one of the crutches he’d kept all these years.
It still hangs in the entryway to my house as a reminder of our adventure.

The infamous crutch hanging in our entry way

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The Formative Wilderness Experience Part 3 - Survival Education

9/26/2022

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For those of you who haven’t been following along, my two college buddies, Al Hendricks and Dennis Alf, and I left the University of Wyoming to hike the thirty-mile Moffit Road over the Continental Divide to Winter Park, Colorado March 15, 1968.

We spent one night in a tiny pup tent in a tunnel at 11,300 feet, followed by a day of trudging seven-miles through armpit-deep snow, where we spent the next two nights in an outhouse. After that, it was clear neither the Canadian Royal Mounted Police – nor anyone else – was going to rescue us, so we had to rescue ourselves.

Tuesday morning Dennis and I left Al behind with extra clothing and what little food we had left (Slim Jims), while the two of us headed towards civilization.

It was cold and clear when we left our outhouse domicile and started plodding through the forested terrain and deep snow. After about a mile of strenuous travel, the snow was firm enough to walk on, having been packed down by a snowcat. No more trudging through armpit deep snow. We quickly scrambled down the road, once taking a steep waist-deep short cut between switchbacks. (It turned out that we saved over a mile of walking this way.)

We took a short break when Dennis said, “My big toe has worn a hole through my sock. It’s driving me crazy. I’ve got to stop and take care of it.”

If we'd had extra socks, (which I doubt) we’d left them with Al. He took off his boot.
“What the heck?” He said, “There’s no hole in my sock?” Then, confused but eager to keep moving he put his sock and boot back on and we took off.

We made good time and arrived in the sleepy village of Winter Park by 10:00 a.m. Tuesday morning. Uncertain as to where we should go, we went to the first public building we saw, the post office. We walked in and I asked the lady at the counter, “Have you heard of any boys being lost in the mountains?”

She said, “No but I can call the forest ranger and check with him.” A few minutes later she returned and said, “Yup, the ranger said they were just starting to look for you fellas. He’ll be here momentarily to pick you up.”

While waiting for the ranger, we asked, “Do you have any water?”

She said, “Sorry no, but I have a couple of candy bars.” We politely accepted.

Have you ever tried to eat a Butterfinger candy bar without having had much water for 48 hours? We hadn’t thought how dehydrated we were though our cottonmouths should have made it clear. The Butterfinger came close to giving me a lifelong case of arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.

Overall, though, we felt fine except for Dennis’s sock that didn’t have a hole in it.

The ranger pulled up in his U.S. Forest Service truck and got out to greet us. In typical Rocky Mountain understatement, he said, “Spring must be coming ‘cause the fools are gettin out into the mountains.”

Well, that perked up our self-esteem, and we hopped into the truck to travel the short distance to the Forest Service headquarters. Thanks to our friends in our dorm finally calling the Dean of Students and reporting us missing search parties were just getting organized. The little building was humming with folks preparing to head out and look for us. The rescue team leaders told us they were planning a variety of search strategies. They had folks approaching the pass from the north and the south, and folks with ice axes, crampons and ropes were ready to scale cliffs. Like so many bureaucratic efforts, they seemed to have every route covered except the most obvious one. The one we were hiking.

One of the rescue coordinators asked, “How are you?”

I said, “Fine except for Dennis’s sock that doesn’t have a hole in it.”

Dennis said, “I thought my big toe was sticking through a hole in my sock but when I took my boot off there was no hole.”

The chief first-aid person said, “Let me take a look.”

Dennis removed his boot and sock, and his big toe was whitish gray and cold and stiff to the touch. The rescuers had just recently completed a seminar on frostbite, and they thought that might be Dennis’ problem, and sure enough, it was. It was comical to watch four adults surrounding Dennis’ toe, pointing, poking, and prodding with one exclaiming, “Yup, just like the pictures in the seminar. This here is frostbite”

They whisked Dennis off to the hospital, where he spent the night and was released, no worse for wear, after being treated for superficial frostbite of his big toe. Meanwhile, a small team of rescuers took a snowcat up the road to rescue Al, who was tired and a bit dehydrated but otherwise in good shape. Our college buddies from Laramie came down and picked up Al and me, and we headed back to campus.

Much to our chagrin, our misadventure made big headlines across the country, “Three Missing UW Students Found – One Hospitalized,” “2 Walk In, 1 Rescued of 3 UW Students in Colorado”. My favorite appeared in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, the nearest paper to my hometown of Phelps, “Phelps Youth, Friends Safe After Hike Jaunt.”

We weren’t surprised when a week later we received a bill from the Forest Service for $68.23 ($580 in today’s dollars) to repair the damage done to the outhouse.

In a letter to us after the incident, the Ranger hit the nail on the head when he said,

"It is rather foolish to attempt crossing Rollins Pass during the winter, being poorly prepared…This high country is very hostile during the winter and should not be treated lightly… All too many times weekend mountain trips have turned into disasters for college students. Most of these past cases…can be related back to poor preparation, lack of equipment, inexperience, and poor judgment in leadership of the party.”

It described us to a capital T.

In hindsight, we were extremely lucky. We did a bunch of things wrong but survived because we did a few things right. We didn’t panic, we strategized, and we problem solved. Zipping our sleeping bags together, and finally deciding to hike out on our own were smart. And of course, letting people know where we were going and when we expected to return was critical.

After my experience on Rollins Pass, I got the outdoor bug and decided I wanted to do it right, which I did. I gained a lot of outdoor leadership experience between 1968 and 1974. I took a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) wilderness course in 1970, climbed Denali with NOLS in 1971 and became a NOLS instructor in 1974. NOLS provided me with a tremendous foundation for being an outdoor leader.

My career path had been mapped. I had taken the lemon of the Moffit Road experience and turned it into lemonade.

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The Formative Wilderness Experience Part 2 - Winter Camping - 1968

9/12/2022

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A typical U.S. Forest Service "toilet" similar to the one we spent two nights in

It had been less than forty-eight hours since Al Hendricks, Dennis Alf, and I’d left the comfort of our dormitory at the University of Wyoming to hike the thirty-mile Moffit Road over the Continental Divide to Winter Park, Colorado. Once there, we’d take the train through the seven-mile long Moffit Tunnel back to our car.

At least that’s what we’d planned.

But a lot had happened in that short span. A thirteen-mile hike brought us to the Needle’s Eye tunnel where we spent a restless night in Al’s tiny two-man pup tent. The next day we trekked seven-miles through armpit-deep snow leaving us dog-tired, and still ten miles from civilization. Plus, because of the 11,000-foot altitude and dehydration due to our extreme exertion and minimal fluids headaches were constant.

Suddenly, we saw a green-shingled roof sticking up through the deep snow. We thought it was a wilderness cabin stocked with food. Instead, it was an outhouse. It was like waking up Christmas morning with no presents under the tree.

While it was only an outhouse, it was the biggest and best outhouse I’d ever seen. It was one of the Forest Service’s finest crappers, complete with a cement floor and stainless-steel throne. It didn’t take long for us to realize that even an outhouse was better than the three of us crammed into Al’s tiny tent.

The outhouse had a men’s and women’s section and, being the polite young men of the sixties that we were, using our hands, cook pot, and whatever else we could muster, we dug out the nearly five feet of snow to the men’s side and tumbled in. I’ve never been as grateful to be in a five-by-six-foot confined area as I was that late afternoon. I know it’s hard to imagine three young men crammed into an outhouse and loving it, but we thought it was heaven.

We laid out our sleeping bags around the “throne” and I suggested to Dennis, we zip our bags together, so we’d be a lot warmer. We did, and it was. It was one of the three smart things we did. Although we were jealous of Al’s goose-down-filled sleeping bag, we kept warm in our Kapok-filled bags (with the pheasant hunting scenes on the liners) by sharing our body heat.

Sunday night was a restless one. Although the temperatures were relatively mild in the teens, Dennis and I tossed around trying to keep warm. Al suffered more from headaches than Dennis and I, and none of us had much of an appetite. We were out of water, so occasionally we dipped our cups into the snow for frozen refreshment.

Monday was spent anticipating rescue. We were hopeful that we’d hear the roar of a snowmobile, our rescuers would pull up to the outhouse, we’d climb aboard, and would zoom merrily out of the wilderness. The reason for this hope was that the second smart thing we did was tell our friends where we were going and when we should return. We told them if we weren’t back by Sunday night, something was wrong. It was Sunday and something was definitely wrong. We were exhausted and stalled in armpit-deep snow with ten miles to go.

In the afternoon, partly out of boredom, partly to generate more space, and partly to cook some food, Dennis took it upon himself to expand our living quarters. It was easy for the muscle-bound guy since he was a wrestling conference champion. He punched his fist through the plywood partition separating the women’s section from the men’s. Then he tore down half the wall, allowing us to peek around the corner into the women’s section. Determined to build a fire in the women’s half of our domain he waded through the deep snow to break branches off the coniferous trees. Then with much coaxing of the toilet paper, small twigs, and lumber from the walls, he finally got the green wood burning enough to perhaps heat a can of baked beans. Unfortunately, in the process it filled our lungs with smoke. Years later I’d be reminded of the experience whenever I visited my chain-smoking in-laws.

Al and I were confident we wouldn’t end our lives in an outhouse, but Dennis wasn’t so sure. At one point while tending the fire, he took a burnt stick and wrote his fiancée Mary’s name on the wall, as if he might never see her again. He maintained his sense of humor, however, when later that night, as we lay huddled in our sleeping bags braced against the cold, he said, “You know, Mary will probably never forgive me. I told her I’d never be in anyone else’s arms.”

Dennis had apparently worked up an appetite from his construction, (or should I say DEstruction) efforts. He tossed a can of baked beans on the fire before returning to the warmth of our sleeping bags. We lay in our bags feeling sorry for ourselves, with Al serenading us with his vision to become president of the Young Democrats of Wyoming, and Dennis telling us of his undying love for Mary. Me, I was thinking, “I could go for a pepperoni pizza about now.”

Suddenly we heard a loud bang as if someone had shot a gun outside the door. But it wasn’t outside the door. It was closer, much closer. It was in the women’s toilet. I peered around the corner and saw a Jackson Pollock-like painting of baked beans decorating the wall.
Not being a connoisseur of outdoor cooking, Dennis didn’t know that when cooking baked beans in the can you must first put a hole in the lid.

That provided one of a few good chuckles, but no, we didn’t scrape the beans off the wall to eat. In hindsight I wonder why, cause it was our only real food and I had gotten sick of chewing on Slim Jims.
Early Tuesday morning Al said, “Isn’t that a plane I hear?

Sure enough, it was. Maybe it was the rescue we were waiting for!

I grabbed Al’s binoculars and scrambled out to see if it was a search plane. Peering up into the sky, I couldn’t tell for sure, but unless rescue planes were Boeing 707s searching from 35,000 feet, it wasn’t a rescue plane. It didn’t take long to figure out it was a commercial airliner heading to Denver’s Stapleton International airport.

At that point I realized, there weren’t no bugles blowing and the cavalry weren’t coming. So, we had to get out of there on our own.

We decided to leave what little food we had with Al (a handful of Slim Jims), who was still suffering from altitude sickness, and Dennis and I would try to hike out. By leaving Al alone, we’d be breaking a cardinal rule of wilderness survival ‒ never split your group. But we felt the time had come to rescue ourselves.

Little did we know that back in Laramie our friends were saying, “Oh, their car probably broke down. They’ll be back tomorrow.” They had found every reason to rationalize our absence and hadn’t reported us missing till Tuesday morning.

So, ultimately leaving Al and heading out was the third smart thing we did

Stay tuned in two weeks for the conclusion to this epic adventure

The pheasant hunting scene lining so typical of sleeping bags in the sixties

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The Formative Wilderness Experience Part 1 - Winter Camping - 1968

8/29/2022

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In the crotch deep snow. Dressed like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.

Upon arriving at the University of Wyoming in the fall of ‘67 I started to do some camping with friends. It was what I'd experienced with my family… but with more beer. Later I was introduced to backpacking, a unique idea to me at the time. I remember thinking, “You mean you carry everything you need on your back?” My first backpacking trip was more than just a little adventurous.

On the Ides of March of 1968, Al Hendricks, of Valhalla, New York; Dennis Alf, of Berlin, Wisconsin; and I started a 30-mile overnight trip over the 11,671 ft Rollins Pass in Colorado. In some parts of the world March 15th is considered spring, but in the Rocky Mountains it’s still winter.

In those days winter camping was only for relatives of explorers like Roald Amundsen, Sir Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and a few masochistic weirdos. Cross-country skiing had yet to become popular in the U.S., and snowshoeing was an activity only for hunters and trappers. So, no surprise, we were woefully unprepared. We had one backpack between the three of us, no snowshoes, and were wearing jeans. Fleece hadn’t been invented and although we wore some wool, we weren't familiar with its virtues. I looked more like Steve McQueen in 1963’s The Great Escape than an outdoorsman. Even worse, the sum of our outdoor experience was my summer family motorboat-and-car-camping experiences, and Al’s weekend hikes on the Appalachian Trail. However, we had no shortage of youthful exuberance as we took off from Laramie, Wyoming for Tolland, Colorado. We planned to hike the Moffit Road, a gently winding abandoned railroad bed, over the pass to Winter Park. Then we’d take the train through the seven-mile-long Moffat railroad tunnel back to our VW Beetle on the east side of the Continental Divide.

By late morning we hit the trail with the sun shining brightly on the snow-covered peaks of Colorado’s Front Range. There was no wind, and the temperature was just below freezing. We were confident that we’d have no trouble hiking the sixteen miles through the three-inch-deep snow up to the “Needle’s Eye” tunnel where we planned to set up Al’s two-person, nylon pup tent. Not being math majors, we figured we would make 1+1+1=2, and could all fit in.

Hiking for only a half-hour, we came around to the north side of a ridge, and to our surprise, while the weather hadn’t changed, the snow depth had. It was crotch deep. Our enthusiasm carried us through a 100-yard stretch of this until once again the going was easy through ankle-deep snow. The pace was good and finally, just before dark, we looked up and saw the tunnel along the side of the mountain above us. Scrambling a direct route up the talus slope to the tunnel, saved about a mile of hiking but broke an, unknown-to-us, cardinal rule of hiking: “Never cut across switchbacks.” (It causes erosion and the trampling of plant life)

A Night In the Tunnel
We set up the two-man tent in the tunnel, in the dark, threw in our sleeping bags, grabbed a bite to eat and crawled in. Imagine three husky college boys squeezing into a tent designed for two skinny guys, and with a ceiling so low that only the person in the middle could sit up. Al had a high-tech down sleeping bag. Dennis and I didn’t have warm down sleeping bags, but classy kapok-filled bags with pheasant-hunting scenes decorating the cotton liners. All night we tossed and turned on top of each other while the wind howled, and the snow blew outside the cocoon of the tunnel. Hearing the blustery winds, we wondered what awaited us the next day.

The morning brought single digit temperatures but gratefully, no wind. After a frigid night we eagerly crawled from our frosty tomb to a gorgeous sunrise illuminating the snowscape. We were cold and tired but were exhilarated by the views. Woodland Mountain stood over us, with 12,236-foot-high Devil’s Thumb in the distance. There were windblown cornices hanging over the ridges along the Continental Divide. The panoramic view kept our ice-cold fingers snapping photos with our Kodak Instamatic cameras and gave us confidence that we’d have no problem finishing our trip.

Without pausing for breakfast, we packed up and headed up the long-abandoned railroad bed. Soon we encountered serious snow – mile after mile of deep snow. Whoever carried the pack sank in the snow, up to his waist, and sometimes to his armpits while the others sank to their thighs. The two not carrying the pack would help the other take the next step. We trudged on all day like that, pausing to gnaw on Slim Jims, and to get an occasional sip of water from our bota bags. (Remember those cool-looking but nearly worthless leather wine flasks popular in the sixties?). Nutrition, like clothing selection, and overall winter camping awareness was not one of our strong points.

We had nearly 18 miles to hike that day to get to Winter Park, but with deep snow, cold feet, wet jeans, and the lethargy caused by the altitude, we managed a paltry seven. It was drudgery and there wasn’t much conversation until around 3:00 PM.

Al was the first to voice his thoughts, “I don’t think we’re gonna be able to get out this afternoon.” His slow pace, labored speech, and rapid breathing told us that the altitude was bothering him more than it was Dennis and me.

“You mean we’re going to miss the 4:30 p.m. train?” I said.

“No, he means we’re not going to make it out at all today.” Dennis said.

“I don’t want to get back into that tent again,” I said.

“Me neither,” said Dennis.

“I wasn’t that bad,” Al said.

“YES IT WAS,” we responded in unison.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find a wilderness cabin?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Dennis, “One well-stocked with food and a big fireplace, soft beds and thick down quilts.”

“You guys are dreaming,” said Al.

Yet fifteen minutes later we thought our wishes had come true.

“Do you see what I see up ahead?” I said.

“I don’t believe it,” said Dennis, “It can’t be.”

“It is,” I said, “It's a roof!”

And it was. A green-shingled roof was sticking up through the six-foot-deep snow.

Short of breath but with hopes higher than a hippie commune, we floundered as fast as the deep snow allowed us towards the building.

We waded through the snow toward the building, giddy with joy. We slapped each other's backs and congratulated each other on our good fortune. But once we got there, our celebration turned, first to confusion, then disappointment, and finally to resignation.

What we’d thought was a warm snug wilderness cabin, wasn’t that at all. Weirdly enough it was an outhouse. And weirdest of all, it would become our lodging for the next two nights.

(Stay tuned for part 2 in two weeks)

Click on these to see photos from my scrap book

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Newfoundland 1959

8/16/2022

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My mother loved Newfoundland dogs, almost as much as she loved her kids. She got her first Newfie when she was twelve, which started a sixty-year love affair with the breed. It began as an avocation and ended up paying for the college education for us kids and, when my father died at the age of 50, it provided her with a career as a dog judge.

She couldn’t seriously love Newfoundland dogs without making a pilgrimage to Newfoundland. My parents made two. One to the rocky, wind-blown island in 1954 and a second in 1959. Three of the five Drury children got to go on the second trip, including ten-year old me.

The trip was a month-long was epic. My mother drove our brand-new pea-green Ford station wagon, towing one of the first pop-up campers. My two older sisters and I were joined by my mom’s sister and two of our three cousins in their brand-new beige Ford station wagon. We traveled as a caravan heading for Halifax, Nova Scotia and eventually to Sydney, where we took the ferry to Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. Our fathers joined us in Halifax for two-weeks until they had to head back to work.

We pulled into Halifax excited to see our dads, but even more excited to see a parade featuring 33-year-old Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Phillip. There was pomp and circumstance befitting a queen with marching bagpipe players, local dignitaries, and high school bands. I marveled at it all, particularly when the Queen, standing in a convertible Cadillac, came passing by.

Two days later we got on the ferry for the overnight trip to Newfoundland. I bunked with my cousin Howard, called Howdy by family and friends. How are you going to call him Howard when the most popular TV show of the era was the Howdy Doody Show?

We awoke early and went out on the deck, where I learned something that has plagued me all my life. I have my father’s ocean travel genes, not my mother’s. My mother grew up racing her small sailboat off the shores of Cape Cod, while my father grew up exploring the zinc and silver mines of Mexico. She got her sea legs, and he didn’t. As we approached the Newfoundland coast there I was, cold sweats, head spinning, the world revolving around me, and doing all I could not to throw up what little breakfast I’d had.

My symptoms disappeared as we drove off the ferry onto Trans-Canada Highway 1, a beautiful newly paved highway, at least for the first two miles. After that it was gravel for the next three weeks. We worked our way up the coast through small fishing communities until we decided to spend a night at Cox’s Cove, population 700.

When we pulled into Cox’s Cove, I felt like Stanley finding Livingstone in Africa. Newfoundland, in 1959 was primitive. Indoor plumbing, television and even electricity were a luxury throughout much of the province. For example, our Polaroid camera was a big hit. Instant photos seemed like magic. The locals welcomed us warmly, encouraged us to camp near the school and even offered us the keys to the school's bathroom facilities – a three-hole outhouse.

The next morning, we went down to the docks and my dad convinced a local cod fisherman to take us for a ride out into the Bay of Islands, an extensive fjord-like series of inlets offshore of the village. The bay was twelve miles across at its mouth with a series of sixteen-mile-deep arms.
The boat was a typical cod-fishing boat of the era. Dory like, it was twenty feet long with a two-cycle engine called a “make-and-break” (because of how it started) or a “one-lunger” (because of its’ single cylinder) and was recognized by its putt…putt…bang’ sound as it chugged through the water. We putt-putted out into the middle of the bay and suddenly the engine went bang and died. Dead, kaput, nada! With no oars, no means of communication, and no life preservers, my father and uncle saved the day because of a small tarp they brought. They set sail with it, and we boated back safely.

My parents knew the Lieutenant (pronounced leftenant) Governor of Newfoundland because he and his wife raised you guessed it, Newfoundland dogs, so we were invited to have refreshments with them. It was such a very formal affair, we had to rush out and buy sport coats and ties for the boys and white gloves for the girls.

We were told a story by the Lieutenant Governor, illustrating Prince Philip’s quirky humor, that became part of Drury storytelling for years.

The Queen and Prince Phillip had recently visited the Lieutenant Governor and his wife and when the time came for an official photo, the Lieutenant Governor said to the Queen and Prince, “In Canada, when we have our photo taken, we say cheese.” To which the prince responded, “Well, I always just say bitch.” The queen indignantly said, “Oh Phillip, don’t!”

You can guess what Drurys say when their photo is taken.

The fathers soon flew home but not before they arranged for the rest of us to travel back via a Norwegian sealing boat. Friends of my parents living outside of St. Johns, who just happened to raise Newfies, (do you see a pattern here?) owned a fish-packing plant. So, we and boatload of Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks would travel by sealing boat to Gloucester, Massachusetts. Our cars and camper were hoisted onto the well deck and securely strapped down. At least we hoped they were secure, but just for extra precaution our dads increased the insurance.

There were only two problems. One, we had never lived on a Norwegian diet (think fish, fish, and more fish). And two, we didn’t speak Norwegian but even worse, none of the crew spoke English.
It was a four-day journey and, not surprisingly, I was seasick the entire time. But compared to my cousin Howdy, I had it good. We slept in the forward part of the ship and used the head (bathroom) there. We were allowed to cross the open deck only while being escorted since they didn’t want to take any chances with us sliding overboard and becoming shark bait.

We spent our days on the bridge under the watchful eye of the Captain and First Mate. We watched the open ocean, played cards, and read. The captain and his sidekick were friendly but, because of the language barrier, the conversation was limited, to say the least.

On the afternoon of day three Howdy needed to use the head. Through suggestive hand gestures and faux Norwegian, that my aunt was just sure the first mate would understand, my aunt explained my cousin’s need to be escorted to the head. The first mate said, “Ja, Ja, I understand.” and off they went through the narrow hatchway.

Thirty minutes later they hadn’t returned. I didn’t see them walk across the well deck and I couldn’t figure out why. How long does it take to go to the bathroom? Finally, after forty minutes Howdy came back through the hatchway, eyes wide open, tears streaming down his face, walking with a curious knock-kneed two step.

He walked over to his mother and looked at her with a grimace.

His mom said, “What took you so long?”

Howdy said, “I got a tour of the ship.”

“A tour of the ship?” she said. “What’d you see?”

“The engine room, the kitchen, the hole where they keep the frozen fish – everything but the head!”

“How’d you like it?”

“How’d I like it? How do you think I liked it?” He said. “I hated it.”

“Why?” she said.

“Because,” he said, “I still have to pee!”

Jack & Howdy at Cox's Cove

Jack's dad sailing up back to shore

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Ampersand Mountain Revisited

8/2/2022

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My Uncle Rad, sisters Carol and Esther, and me on Ampersand Mtn 1960

I have a long history with Ampersand Mountain. In 1960, at the age of eleven, I hiked it with my uncle and sisters. It was the start of a lifelong love affair with mountains, but if it weren’t for the photo I wouldn’t have much memory of it at all.
I jogged it in 1966 in preparation for my senior year of high school football.
In 1969 I took my college roommate and his buddies up the mountain. They thought they had climbed Everest.
In 1972 I had one of the worst no-see-um experiences of my life, on a bushwhack trip up the east slope from Flag Brook. (Before I became one with the bugs)
In 1975 I was shocked when, on the summit, I encountered 300 people from one summer camp. It looked more like a rock concert than a Wilderness. It turns out the entire camp hiked the mountain once a week for years, giving the mountain an awful beating.
I hiked it a few weeks ago for around the fiftieth or sixtieth time. It was July 4th so I anticipated that it might be crowded. I wasn’t disappointed. I’m not a fan of crowds in Wilderness Areas but I’m willing to cut the mountain some slack on the 4th. I saw over a hundred people most of whom appeared to be enjoying themselves but were woefully unprepared.
My recent experience on Ampersand got me thinking. I spent thirty years training outdoor leaders, focusing on three fundamentals: How to stay safe, How to protect the environment (now commonly called Leave No Trace) and How to research the area you are traveling in.
All of which make me wonder – are we really in the information age? Hikers’ lack of basic outdoor knowledge and skills would say otherwise. Perhaps part of the problem is that people are getting their information from social media and online mapping programs like AllTrails, GaiaGPS, or Strava. People are searching “Where to go” rather than “What do I need to do to have a safe hike?” Once you’ve learned the basics of HOW to be prepared, then search for WHERE to go given your skill and experience.
As I said, most of the hikers I encountered appeared to be having fun. And not only were they having fun, they were taking good care of the environment. Litter was hard to come by. I found two broken potato chips and a bandaid on the 5.4 mile hike. However, the vast majority of hikers were clearly unprepared, with little apparent knowledge of the outdoors.
How could I tell? Maybe the gentleman in flip flops gave it away. Or the guy who was studying the map on his phone to the point of stumbling down the trail. Perhaps it was the couple who took the wrong trail and mistakenly went to Middle Saranac Lake instead of up the mountain. Or the two women only a quarter mile from the trailhead at 4:30 PM, studying their phone clearly confused, about whether to continue on up in the dwindling daylight. The lack of preparation and knowledge certainly was evident in that fewer than half the people had day packs.
I did enjoy the two teenagers carrying a watermelon. They drew a smiley face on it and named it Paul. Perhaps they were taking Paul up all six peaks of the Saranac Lake Six. I hope they didn’t leave Paul’s rinds in the mountains. The rinds may be natural but they take way too long to decompose.
I asked a handful of people if they had flashlights. They told me that they’d be back well before dark. I said, “Do you know that every person rescued after dark tells the Ranger the same thing?”
How does a novice best prepare for a modest hike like Ampersand Mtn and not look like a novice? I’m of the school that, “It’s better to have it and not need it” and, “You should be prepared to survive the night.” (not necessarily comfortably.)
Here are three things you can do to transform from a greenhorn to British adventurer Bear Grylls.
Pack the ten essentials. I’m not going to list them here. You can Google them. There’s a reason they’re called ESSENTIALS. They’re ALL essential. You never know when you’ll need one or more of them, but when you do, they’ll save your life. Know that when you carry them you will make me and every Forest Ranger in the Adirondack Park proud.
Emergency Plan. Let friends or family members know three things: Where you’re going, when they should contact authorities if you don’t return, and who to contact. The emergency Forest Ranger dispatch in the Adirondacks is 518-891-0235. And don’t forget to use the trail register. In an emergency it will help authorities know if you hiked through.
Two extremes prove this point. There was my friend Peter who joined me on an overnight trip. I told him we’d be back by early afternoon the next day. He told his wife we’d be out by 1:00 PM. When we arrived at the parking lot at 1:30 a Forest Ranger was waiting for us. Peter failed to provide a realistic time for his wife to call for help. I typically tell loved ones to call the next morning. I have the right equipment to survive the night. You should too.
Worst of all are the stories going back decades of gentlemen who tell their wives they are going hiking “In the Adirondacks” and never say when they'd be back. In one case, the man was found months later in a LasVegas strip club, but more frequently their bones are found in the spring on the slope of a remote mountain.
First Aid – Take a basic first aid course. You can take one online through the American Red Cross or others. While not as good as a hands on course it’s a good place to start. You don’t want to be a victim but instead, want to be proactive, like the folks on the Rocky Peak Ridge a while back. A woman fell and injured her shoulder. Her hiking companions administered basic first aid and continued walking. The Forest Rangers came in to help but their job was made much easier because the hikers had already applied first aid.
Navigation –Take a basic map and compass course. Many folks can read topographic maps but few know how to use a compass. You should be able to do both. Your local outfitter, outdoor club, or scouting group will know who offers instruction. “Why should I?” you say, “I always stick to the trails.” A man this June thought the same thing but somehow got off the trail and spent three days lost. According to DEC Rangers, when he was found in a ginormous swamp, “The man’s pants were in tatters, his boots were falling apart, and his face was covered in bug bites.” He was also extremely lucky.
What wine and mead connoisseur Ken Schramm said about mead-making applies to wilderness travelers too. “A smart person learns from his mistakes, but a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others.”
But if you’re determined to learn from your own mistakes, just keep in mind that ignorance can be fatal.
Here’s a fine “Ten Essentials” list: https://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/28708.html

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The Ones That Didn't Get Away

7/19/2022

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It was July 1978, friends and I had just completed a thirty-day backpacking trip and were driving down Idaho State Highway 32 for a post-trip adventure. As we crossed Bitch Creek, a stream flowing through open farmland, I was amused to see fishermen sipping on their cans of Coors as they relaxed in lounge chairs trying to catch the elusive cutthroat trout. We were heading up into the mountains of the Jedediah Smith Wilderness for some trout fishing ourselves – sans lounge chairs.

We passed the state line into Wyoming, parked at the trailhead, and started hiking up the trail towards Hidden Corral Basin, a location, as the name indicates, complete with nineteenth-century outlaw lore. South Bitch Creek flowed through the basin, and as soon as I saw it I knew–this was A Fisherman’s Paradise. We broke out our fishing rods, me with my fly rod and my companions with their spin casting gear and got started.

Early on, in an attempt to sneak up to a hard to access portion of the brook, I quietly fought my way through the thick speckled alders lining the shore. As I finally broke through the trees in anticipation of landing a big trout, I looked up at the far side of the stream and staring directly at me was a bull moose. Carefully, very carefully, I backtracked allowing the trees to close in, shielding me from the Moose’s stare. I looked for another place to find trout.

I found it upstream at a bend in the stream with a six-foot-high boulder that had helped create a pool about forty feet across. I snuck up behind it and lay out some perfect casts. No luck. After working it hard for a half hour I finally climbed up on the boulder and looked down into the pool. I saw at least a dozen beautiful cutthroat trout hanging out without the least bit of interest in what I had been showing them. Finally, I declared the fish the winners and headed back to camp.

My three companions were having similar luck. They too hadn’t caught any fish. I suggested they look for some worms–the conquistadores of novice fishermen. They hiked a mile up and down the trail digging for worms, grubs, or anything else to put on the end of their hook that might attract fish. No luck.

Over the next three days I fished as hard as I ever had. I tried every fly in my box, working the meandering stream miles in both directions. I caught two fish.

Early on the evening of our last day before heading back to civilization, three of the four of us were at camp contemplating what we might have for dinner and feeling sorry for ourselves for Lady Luck’s absence. Suddenly, across the meadow we saw our fourth companion Chris walking slowly towards us. He had something in his hand but we couldn’t make it out. Chris was in his last year of graduate school wrapping up a PhD in chemistry and was about as straight an arrow as you’ll ever meet. Easy going, smart, and extremely likable, although he didn’t have a wealth of outdoor experience, especially with fishing. As he got closer it was clear he had a wide smile and in his hand was a stringer of eight of the most beautiful cutthroat trout I’ve ever seen. He sat down and told us a story that few believe. But I do.

Chris had found the same pool with the big boulder that I had fished and he fished it hard with his Phoebe fishing lure, but without luck. He cast into the pool at least thirty times without results. Finally he accidentally cast across the pool and caught his lure in the grasses on the far side. His pole bent hard as he pulled and pulled trying to free the lure, but trying not to not break the line. Finally the lure broke free and came sailing across the pool. He reeled it in and on the lure’s hook was a beautiful four-inch worm. Being as smart as he was, he laid the worm on a log and proceeded to cut it into half-inch pieces.

Each half-inch piece caught him a gorgeous trout.

But that’s not quite the end of the story.

Two of those trout made a great dinner for the four of us and the other six were cleaned and put in a plastic bag to be packed out the next day along with my two fish.

We packed up early the next morning and hiked out. Whenever we took a break, to keep the fish fresh, I put the bag in the wide glacier-fed stream.

At the last rest stop I sat on a rock along the shore and placed the bag of fish in a small eddy. For an extra measure of safety I put a good size rock on it as I had at the previous stops. Then I turned away in conversation and when I turned back, the bag was floating away in the middle of the stream.

I jumped in and ran out into the swift thigh-deep current to retrieve our precious catch.

I fought my way into the middle of the stream and reached for the bag, my fingers so numb I wasn’t certain they had grabbed it. Miraculously I did, and slid and slipped my way back to shore, thrilled, chilled, and triumphant.

As I stood on shore grateful I hadn’t lost our catch, I realized why I’d risked my life for eight lousy cutthroat trout: I was damned if I was going to let our Bag O’fish be caught by those Coors-drinking, lawn-chair-sittin’ fishermen down by the highway.

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The Tale of the Tail

7/5/2022

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Post-WWII was a pretty good time period in America, but there were still plenty of things to scare a kid. Alfred Hitchcock, Twilight Zone, Communism, polio, and nuclear annihilation immediately come to mind. One thing I wasn’t afraid of was dogs because my brother, three sisters, and I grew up in a house full of big friendly Newfoundland dogs.

My mom’s love of Newfoundlands, and my dad’s enthusiastic support, provided numerous doggy adventures. There were always eight or more of the friendly 150 pound behemoths around our six-acre rural Long Island homestead and it wasn’t unusual to also have a couple of litters of puppies in whelping boxes in the kitchen.

My parents traveled the dog show circuit throughout the Northeast and three or four of the Drury kids were always in tow. If a kid growing up hanging out in a gym is a gym rat, then we were dog-show rats.

My father was the classic Long Island Railroad commuter reading the New York Times on his way into the city. One day an ad for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus caught his eye. It featured a beautiful female trapeze artist and by her side was a Newfie. My parents couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet a fellow Newfie owner, so they contacted the circus and got the name of the performer. Then, before we knew it, we met Nina Karpova. Nina was born in Russia and escaped during the Russian Revolution. After World War II she escaped East Germany to the West. In 1953 Nina, her daughter Lily, and their Newfoundland came to visit us.

Nina had a trapeze act with a fixed (non swinging) trapeze. Two men held cables to keep it from swinging. She had special boots that attached to the trapeze. When the audience least expected it, she’d let go, swinging forward, and became a human pinwheel. It was a real crowd pleaser. She was to perform on the “Big Top,” a popular TV show which ran from 1950 through 1957. I remember sitting in front of the TV on Saturday waiting for her act to be introduced, but it never happened and we didn’t learn why until later that day. During rehearsal a man held one of the cables at the wrong angle and when Nina started swinging she hit the cable, causing her boots to disengage from the trapeze and she fell forty feet to a cement floor. Miraculously, she didn’t break a bone. She and Lily stayed at our house that night. When I saw her shuffle out of the bedroom the next morning, she was bruised from head to toe.

Nina’s daughter, Lily, had an impressive tumbling routine that she eventually turned into a nightclub act. After her mother retired, Lily traveled the world performing in nightclubs.

Lily also had an equestrian act. She had a wonderful horse, Kasback, that performed a form of dressage in which he executed complex maneuvers in response to imperceptible commands communicated through slight shifting in Lily’s weight, pressure exerted by her knees and legs, and her handling of the reins.

Kasback was a gorgeous horse nearly seventeen hands tall with a glossy dark nut-brown coat and a delightfully braided mane. The piece de resistance was his tail. It was a perfectly coiffed five-foot long tail that he proudly brandished as he strode through his routine.

Kasback traveled in a railroad car with some of the wild animals on the circus’ train and once rode next to a camel. Camels can be cantankerous critters. You want proof? An aggravated camel bit off its owner's head in India a few years back after the owner left the camel out in the sun for hours without water. The animal lifted the owner by the neck and threw him on the ground, chewed the body and severed the head. You don’t want to mess with Camels. In hindsight I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised when a camel ate all but six inches of Kasback’s previously alluring tail, a mere hors d’oeuvre. C’est dommage.

During the mid-fifties whenever Nina and Lily were in the Northeast with a circus, we’d visit them or they’d spend a few nights with us. I’m not sure how many times they visited but it was enough that my father, at Nina’s request, bought fifty feet of two inch manila rope to hang high up in a tree so she could practice climbing it. Her athleticism left a tremendous impression on me as I watched this beautiful blond woman climb hand over hand up the rope, her legs outstretched horizontally.

When Nina’s Newfoundland died she asked my parents where she might find a taxidermist to mount it. Though my parents found it a bit shocking, they found one. But alas, the taxidermist’s building burned down and the dog hide was lost.

After a few visits Nina asked my parents for help regarding a sticky legal situation. Nina and Lily wanted to quit the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. They were told they couldn’t because they owed the circus too much money. It turns out that Ringling Brothers had a form of indentured servitude. They paid the performers but charged them for transporting their equipment from the train station to the performance venue. They also charged for transporting the performers themselves. Because artists were charged numerous fees of this type, it was almost impossible to quit the circus. Nina understood this so she hauled her own equipment and walked to the venues. She kept track of how much money she was saving and when she knew they didn’t owe Ringling Brothers anything, they quit. Ringling Brothers didn’t believe them and wouldn’t release them from their contract. My parents found them a well-known New York City lawyer who, with one threatening letter, got them released.

From then on Nina and Lily worked for a variety of circuses throughout North America in the summer and South America in the winter. The last time we saw them in the U.S. was around 1960, but we kept in touch.

I saw Nina the last time in 1972. I’d just graduated from college and traveled around Europe for three months. I landed in Hamburg where Nina and Lily lived. Lily was on the nightclub circuit in Asia. I had a wonderful visit with Nina, but one thing stood out.

Nina had a cute little house with a loft that I slept in. The morning after my arrival, I woke up, jet lagged and disoriented. I rolled over and felt a tanned animal skin I had been sleeping on.

Was it a deer? No, it was too big and the color was wrong.

Was it a bear or a moose? No, the coat was too thin.

Was it a zebra or other exotic animal? No, the color pattern was wrong.

I looked it over carefully but couldn’t figure it out. I ran my hands up and down the dark brown hide and since there was no head, there was no help from that quarter.

Then I ran both hands down the back of the animal and suddenly something clicked. I saw and felt the animal's tail. Or should I say I felt the lack of tail. Where there had been five feet of lustrous hair, now there was only six inches. No doubt, only one animal on this planet–heck in this solar system–was this big, with a tail that small.

That’s right, you guessed it. I’d been sleeping on the mortal remains of Kasback.

Lily and Kasbak

(L-R) Lily Kohler, Nina Kapowa, Kitty Drury

Lily, Bobi (Newfoundland dog in crate), and Nina

1952 Ringling Brother Program

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I contribute a biweekly column for our local newspaper, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. It is called Bushwhack Jack's Tracts. I post them here for your reading pleasure.
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