The Song

     Christmas season came fast and furious out on the line this year.  And we had vacation plans.  Fortunately  the the outcome wasn't planned.
     The beautiful Brenda had time planned in Cody, Wyoming.  Our plan was to spend six days there and visit her kids and take in the sights, and laugh celebrate Christmas, and listen to the bumps and bruises of grand kids, and eat good food,  and then say goodbye, and plan for it again.
    Then we were going to spend about the same time up in Penguin Lodge via Middle River, MN.  And spend some time in the woods, and play with the kids, and fish, and eat and laugh and have a little gift exchange, you know the whole Christmas new years shebang!
   But my work had different plans and i had to cut Wyoming short by a few days, zip up to Minnesota for only a few days, and head back out on the line near Tioga, ND on the 29th. Listened to lots of holiday music  in the 25 hours on the road.   It could have been worse.
   So during our time in Cody, we took in the Cody Museum.  Wow!  I enjoyed the gun collection and the Buffalo Bill stuff.  Then I heard the song of the wolf and was particularly drawn to the museum of natural history and the wolves in the Yellowstone section.   It seems the debate in the mountains is the same as the one in Minnesota.   The wolves (designed to hunt and kill) are struggling to share space with sportsmen and ranchers.    The wolves actually don't get a say in the situation.  It;s actually people (naturalists and conservationists) taking the side of the wolf claiming they restore balance in pristine wild places fighting with sportsmen and and ranchers trying to raise livestock for profit and hunters claiming not enough game to hunt creating a polarizing debate.
     So the news in the Rockies is the same as it is in the flat lands.  But that's not the good news.   Better news came later in the week when my daughter Gracei came out west to the Patch to spend the rest of her vacation with us.  Hunter and Mom came out on Friday to spend the weekend with us too.   And it all worked out better than I could have planned it, and perhaps even better than Brenda the planner could have planned.
     I got to spend a day on the lake with my Thomas and Dakota, and they claim the fishing is good, and will keep an eye out on my fish shack for me.  Skylar and Haley came for dinner too.  What a blessing.   All good news from the line.  Still no word from Jose Jimenez, last I heard he was on a project in Africa. I did see him in the background of a reporter coming off a plane  in a Fox News Ebola scare story.  Passing news.
      But I can't top the Good News, the reason for the season.  And Yes! Joy to the world!  And even with all the sacred and secular joys and songs I attempt to sing during the holidays,  nothing more moves me than the song of the wolf.  Nothing more stands the hair on my arms and neck or gives me goosebumps than their songs and harmonies.   First one, then another then the others.  In the pines and over the next hill and river valley,  heard and not seen, like us designed for a reason.  Perhaps they were here before us, like it says in the Bible, maybe; the evolutionists claim is true then the wolves did come first. Another polarizing debate which unarguably come to the same conclusion that they did come before man,  And if that is true, I can not help but emphatically add that the wolf was like man was designed to make a joyful noise and lift their voice to Heaven. Man thinks. Animals just do what they are designed to do.  And perhaps maybe it was the wolf who taught man to sing.  For the song of the wolf is so beautiful and deep and has stood the test of time,  and in its song words and melodies so intense that the snowy headwaters of the the Mississippi weep, the invisible walls of the arctic tundra not fathom, nor the Rockies baffle thier resonance.   Of all the creatures whomelse's song is worthy of imitating?  Perhaps that howl was first song. Maybe we stole their song and are too jealous and prideful to give something back or share credit? The Good news is we are who we are and all belong to God.  And the only question is what would God have us do about it.

Unsensible

     Sometimes when Jupiter is in-line with Mars, and when the moon is in the third phase crazy events shape and mold our lives in obscure ways.   I often wonder what puppet master is controlling the Universe to his egotistical delight.  Superstitious as that line of thought is, it is also insensible.  A person of the scientific natue may agree with that statement, but I am not scientific, for science hasn't cured anything with my crazy life, or made anything alright.  So only spiritual reasonings can justify the things that make sense in mhy life today.  For me life changing events are in overdrive, but in my life lately they seem to be on cruise control.

     I made it back out on the line last week.   What a change it has been from the world of my home.  No more sleeping in.  Putting gas in the tank more often.   Dealing with co-workers.  I even get to see my fiancé more often.  Also, I don't get to see the kids as much, and that is a big change, even though we talk as much as they want to, and often.

     Nevertheless, the biggest change that I see is the one of recognition of myself as one of God's children.  I had a hard time describing or putting into words what I was feeling with all this change.  It wasn't a bad thing.   I just felt a need to acknowledge it, to pin it down, to name it, perhaps to own it, or at least apprehend it so that I could comprehend it.
     Then today it happened, or actually it began yesterday.   I was at the Roosevelt Park zoo in Minot with Brenda on Thursday.  what a great place to go and just hang out, and talk about things.   Yes, we have even more to talk about lately.  Yep, that's right... getting hitched. 
     Anyway, two exhibits really caught my attention.   The giraffes and zebras and huge cats were way so cool, but it was the North American animals that  captivated my interests.    First stop was the wolves.   It was neat to see how shy they were, yet in the the presence of full awareness.  they constantly paced the boundaries of their fence, and when seemingly frustrated, they crawled into their den. It wasn't like watching wolves in the wild, and I have been blessed to see them play in the wild and watch them play, and wished I had that wild freedom.
     The second stop that grabbed me were the bears.  Grizzly Bears.  They seemed so much like beggars, and selfish fighting for theirs space.     Just longing to be on the outside.   To me,  they were wild animals and shouldn't be in a cage, yet they were provided for, in good health,  and , yet just not happy.    It  seems that people have the tendency to project their emotions onto animals, and we want to think they were not happy, when as far as a wolf or bear goes, they had all the could need.
     Today out on the line, we were working through some rancher's cow pasture.   Low and behold, fences seemed to keep getting in our way.   We have to open them to get out machines through, and close them right away behind us to make sure the farmer's cow's don't get out through the hole we make.  You would think it wouldn't make a difference when half the calves are running outside the fence anyway it seems.  Some of the critters  spend half their day trying to get back in like this one calf who paced back and forth for three hours trying to get his way back into the fence to be with the others.  
    It is all part of the job and we do it anyway.   Then it dawned on me.  Psalm 23 says, "He leads me to green pastures."   Before  I was like a wild animal,  resenting boundaries and seeing myself as a caged wolf or bear.  One who did not belong with others of domesticated variety.  Now  that I define myself as a child of God, I see myself as more like that stray calf, having tested the realm of the world outside the fence.  I long to get back in with others like me, a member of the human-race, the Beloved.  And it is within these boundaries that one finds true freedom and happiness.  As a wild animal the thought of it all would seem unsensible.
     Today  I got up early, went to work,  paid my bills, drove the speed limit for the most part, helped others around me,  I gave thanks for what I had,  I told the people that mean the most to me that I loved them.     I kept myself clean,  and I am grateful that I  see 44 when I never believed that I would live to see 30.  Thank you God for making me your child, and for the pain and scars of the barbed wire when I slipped back underneath the fence.
    

       

The Call

     I got a call from Jose Jimenez on Saturday.  "Hola, Tomas.  I goin' back to workm but its not a good deal."  He explained how we wouldn't be staying in a mancamp this season, but a hotel...
     Not a good deal?  I guess I could think of so many people that have not had a good deal.  I myself have been down that road of not thinking I was having a good deal at the moment: fend for my own meals, more miles to drive.  About that time I begin to think exactly how spoiled rotten I am and have been over the last few months and truly blessed.  I think of all the people who have lived out West and not had such a good deal.
     On Saturday I visitied Fort Buford and Fort Union near Williston, North Dakota.  I attended these sites of historic profoundness in awe and wonder with my beautiful companion Brenda.  She being more familiar with the area acted as my guide.  At Ft. Union an old fashioned Rendezvouz was happening.  Furs, old tools and dress, harsh living quarters, with a hint of Bourgoise presence and human refinedness made me reflect on this idea of human dignity in in the harshest primitive conditions in a time period when nothing was certain.  I particulary let my ear wander to the sound of a a drum and a Lakota story-teller.  The man spoke and sang in a small crowded room in the corner of the fort opposite the Bourgoise house.  How fitting and contrasting the two ideas of richness.  Yet I felt at ease in either setting.
     After some time at Ft. Union, we moved down the road to Ft. Buford.     More military than fur-trade historics, it hit me and I felt the presence of something much greater than the happenings of the Bakken.  I imagined what it would have been like to be doing about my business one day when over the hill came a band of 168 Lakota people, warriors and families, hen hearing an order to disarm them and take their horses. 
     I imagined Sitting Bull the leader of these people handing his 5 year old son his rifle and explaining to the commander and the press that the buffalo were gone, the nomadic way of life was gone and it was the responsibility of people like the commander to teach this boy something, to educate him because as far as sitting Bull was concerned, he only knew one way to educate a child and from that day forward, it would be pointless to try and teach him the ways of survival in the new way.   He only knew his way.  On Saturday, June 15, 2013  I walked where Sitting Bull walked,  and I sat in the room where he surrendered his rifle.   I looked out the same window where Crows Foot gave the commander his father's rifle.
     The Bakken, invaders, manifest destiny, imminent domain, mineral rights, land owner rights,  expansion,  progress, technology.... Change!
     I wonder in great awesome thought, what has really changed over the last 130 years.  Men all the time wonder what it is that they should educate their children in.  It beguiles me to think of what an education is today and what it should be, what kind of society we are building for our children?   Should it be the path of secular humanism, college, new age scientific dynamics? What path should I point them down. God knows how often I have stood where where the two roads diverge.  Then as I reflect on the changes in my life it hits me so simple so precise.  What if we just teach our children  to walk, to walk where Jesus walks.
     "I'll see you out there on the line my friend Jose, if not this one maybe the next one."

Of Beavers and Wolves

     In 1996, -97, and -98  I was living an outdoors-man's dream.  A typical day I would wake up at the crack of dawn, and journey out to tend my muskrat and beaver sets.  I would come home at dark and spend hours in a fur skinning shed.   Once a week or sometimes more depending on my catch I would visit the fur man and get a nice check.   I loved the smell of the swamp, the trees, the exhaust from a warm vehicle.  I was subsidized by an unemployment check.  My bills were paid, and I felt I had a purpose in life- to catch and kill and skin and stretch as much fur as a human could.  By most trappers accounts, I was considered good.  I took over 3500 muskrats and nearly a 600 beaver in those years. Foxes, coyotes, badgers, fishers, bobcats, and I even had a wolf in a trap one time, but got it loosed.  I struggled over the idea of trying to smuggle the hide into Canada.  But I turned him loose.
      I remember picking up one of my children just born from the hospital in a pickup loaded with beavers in the round and some put up and hauling them and my family to the fur man Ordean Sunrud in Fosston, MN.  My boys tasted a freshly cooked beaver there, and it was good.
     Life moved on for me, I had a couple of career changes, markets dropped and I sold my traps and some supplies to another guy who wanted to make a go at it.  I was raising turkeys.  One night something got into my turkey shed and killed about 600 birds outright, while the rest piled up in the four corners of the shed.  Tracks left in the mud led certain evidence plus the fact in my alfalfa field I had seen a pair of wolves earlier that summer.  I was angry, financially devastated.  I became consumed with the spirit of vengeance and within a couple days I had settled the score. I encouraged others to do the same , and got on the anti wolf bandwagon.
     A couple years later after moving on from ranching and settling in to another chapter of my life, I was driving around one day.  In a distant meadow I saw two wolves playing around a bale.  My instinct was to grab the gun, but instead I grabbed the binoculars... it changed my heart and my life.
     I saw that the pair were actually hunting mice.  In the grass I could see smaller wolves, pups.  The pair was teaching them how to hunt and feed.  The pups would play and wrestle around. It reminded me of my boys.  When the wrestling got a little rough, the mom would intervene and they would snap back and pay attention again.  They were just doing what wolves do.  They were being a family not much different than mine.
     They were just being the way God created them.  They play and sleep together, hunt together, they encourage each other to grow and become stronger.  They keep each other in line so that their family can function together as a unit.
     Same with the beaver, building a home together, gathering food.   So it is then I realized that as we are brother and sisters in Christ, so too are we brothers and sisters to the furry four legs in Creation.     I will not take any of my fur legged brothers or sisters nor teach the ways of it no more...forever.  This does not mean that I will not hunt or trap again. It means doing only these things for me to provide a meal, or clothe myself.  After all, who can turn down a plate of well prepared venison.
     Who am I to judge one of God's families.  It was on that day, and although possibly distorted at the time, I began my journey back on the Red Road.  A road that has led me back to God's family,  their have been struggles and victories.  We are more alike than different.
     Of wolves and beavers,  I hold nothing against the man who takes the fur as a part of his journey of existence on his life.  I hold nothing against the farmer protecting his crops and livestock.  But I hold in the least regard for men who were takers as I once was "sportsmen" satisfying an ego, .  Using greed as their creed and giving nothing back.  I hold even less regard for a government or bureau profiting from the control of these creatures.        
     Worse are those who wantonly waste the creatures of Creation in the name of satisfying a void in their heart with  the excitement of hearing the crack of a firearm and the satisfaction of an aimed shot.  It matters not what others do though.  And if because of my beliefs the retelling of these exploits brings joy to their hearts to see mine sad;  then... Amen.    I know that it is what they have to do as part of their journey to find their own center.   I will pray to live in the spirit of forgiveness so that I may forgive.
Mitakuye Oyasin