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Monday, September 7, 2009

HOM: Moose V

We headed home. Jim made an executive decision to abandon all the food and non-essential items in the camp so that Gurly could carry the whole load and he'd walk/ride with Randa on the way out, giving her an easy trip. We neatly stacked all the stuff we were leaving behind in the middle of the camp, loaded the rest on Gurly and headed out. We stopped at the neighbor camp to tell them to get our discards and use them, but no one was there. We waited a while and then we headed out when no one showed up. It was a quick and uneventful trip, and Murphy's law kicked in. By the time we reached the trailhead, Randa's leg was back to normal. Apparently working her had helped her more than letting her stand around in camp had and Jim didn't even bother taking her to the vet when he got home as he had planned. In the rush out, Scarlet got a sore on her back, which did not make me feel very good with this borrowed horse. (addenda: Years later, Jon, who I had borrowed the horse from, stopped in the store looking for a hard-to-find book. I had a copy, which pleased him, and when I offered to give it to him he said he guessed he'd call it even on the horse rental. We were both pleased.) I was disappointed that my moose hunt was over -- the big bull that had been at the trailhead was long gone when we got back, but I did think Jim had made the right decision. There was a postscript to the trip. A few days after we got back, I was visited by representatives of the USFS carrying a sack of the stuff we had abandoned, along with some other junk I'd never seen before. The cook at the other camp had linked me with the book store, and that's where the uniforms came. I got a long lecture, but no citation, for leaving things in the wilderness, especially food. The fact that it wasn't my gear or my horses or my decision and that we had tried to give the supplies to the other camp didn't seem to help much, I still got chewed out and made to feel like a world-class criminal. They asked for and got Jim's name & address so they could look him up, but never did. I guess they figured they'd caught one culprit and that was enough. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)

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