Walking on Water

[Patocazador]

As a former 'wannabe' outdoor writer, I can assure you that most of the 'name' outdoor writers have not personally experienced everything they write about. They listen to anecdotes, do research, borrow photos and put themselves into the stories.
I won a hunting trip to an Alabama hunting lodge years ago. One of the other guests there was an outdoor writer for Field & Stream named Buck something (I can't remember his last name). He shot at a deer about 20 minutes after legal shooting time and came back to the lodge with a tale about a monster buck he had just shot. The guide and a couple of others went back to look for the 'monster'. They found a gut-shot spike. Buck didn't say much for the rest of the weekend. The following autumn the article appeared in Field & Stream and I didn't recognize anything about it except the name of the lodge. The monster spike was there in a photo but it had turned into a 9 point that one of the other guests had shot, not Buck's spike.

There are other instances that I can name but the facts are that a lot of what we read is pure fiction. In fact, the latest American Hunter magazine has an article about eider hunting in Maine. The article has about 3 sentences actually telling about the hunt, the rest is about lobstermen and eating lobsters. I doubt that the writer got out of bed to join the eider hunters.

If one writes his experiences and the thing he knows about, others will believe the story and like it.

 

[MCgunner]

I had a previous life racing motorcycle, roadracing mostly, but some flattrack and, aside from a couple of years in the early 80s, amateur. I wrote for a couple of local Texas MC magazines. That was fun, if not profitable.

 

[Riomouse911]

I popped the names into Google Earth, you are at the start of the peninsula that almost reaches West to Russia. Your area looks like the ground solid, further West towards the coast it looks like a lot of soft ground/muskeg to navigate.

Neat stuff! I am a fan of Farley Mowatt books, he wrote a lot about the Northern peoples and the land they inhabit...and about Canada's history of very poor treatment of them as well.

Keep warm and stay safe!

 

[Art Eatman]

Mowat's "Never Cry Wolf" is definitely a worthwhile read.

https://www.amazon.com/Never-Cry-Wolf-Amazing-Arctic/dp/0316881791 Note that the used paperback is cheap.

 

[mustanger98]

It may be a little off topic, but after reading post #26, I remembered two fiction writers said they were advised to write what they actually knew... Owen Wister and Marjorie Kennon Rawlings, both of whom based their fictions in realities. Then there was Pat McManus, an outdoor writer known for mostly unbelievable comedy. Big difference contrasted with what's described.

 

[caribou]

Ive read most of Mowats books.......As a young kid/teen I read any and everything Pat McManus wrote. The back of every Fish and Game Magazine.I got him to autograph my books at a small bookstore in Kalispell, and I still have them..........Rancid Crabtree is my favorite character.
I write from my point of view, but a 'how to' type book on the ways and means of subsistence hunting would really pass the time with a lap top in a tent this coming season. Ive been thinking about an Apple laptop or something like that. Its how I got started on the internet, with homeschool laptops the school gave the kids to record their work. It would be good to 'build up' some postings and doings between filming.
Shuks, it aint hard to get a small dish and pay 160$ a month and just have the internet were ever I put it up.....

MCgunner,if you dont mind the cold, you'd definitely get a kick out of snowmachine racing. Total X country , laps and speed runs. The villages all over Alaska have dog and snowmachine races.

 

[buck460XVR]

Thanks for the good 'reviews'.......I think writing will be in my future, as Im almost 50 and theres a few storys to tell yet.

I'm guessing some of your skill with storytelling probably comes from the culture you live in. Especially in the way the stories try to educate while entertaining.

Your title "Walking on Water" brought back memories of many years of late season deer hunting in the big swamp areas just north of me. If the weather cooperated and the creeks/swamps/beaverponds froze solid enough, and the snow remained soft and quiet, the capability to walk silently and effortlessly in areas generally not easily accessible to humans, made for some memorable hunts. Knowing where the deer would bed in the daytime and being able to get within a stones throw of them in areas generally though safe by them, during other times of the year, gave me opportunities that only came a few times in my lifetime, and many never experience or even think of. Just as often as success was, was the cold reality of finding thin ice. Thankfully, it was not the ocean or anything more than a coupla feet deep. Just as real as the memories of dragging a nice late season buck back to the truck on a frozen creek are, so are those memories of getting back to the truck with pants frozen solid and fingers so frozen I couldn't hardly get the keys in the ignition to turn the heat on. Reading your stories, I realize that while I suffered miserably for a while, the risk of me losing my life is not like it would be in you and your families case. My stories do not teach the lessons of life like yours do.

 

[mustanger98]

What's the Inuit saying when somebody didn't show up... "he gone missing"?

I remember how Louis Lamour put it about wild country in general... "a million ways to die". There's wild country and there's "wilderness areas". Even in my part of the country, hypothermia can get you.

 

[Random 8]

I love this post. I've had a small taste of your lifestyle, when I guided the Boundary waters and Quetico before the days of reliable, portable GPS with mapping. Clients would get quite distraught when we were "lost," meaning I couldn't point to a specific point on a map and say "we are here." I could say we are 5-10 miles North by Northwest of this portage, and in a couple we should see the island shaped like a pair of boobs jutting out of the lake to mark the turn due South to camp. Amazing the mental map you can draw of minute details in a seemingly featureless, or in the case of the Border Lakes, mind bogglingly complex landscape to navigate by waypoint and dead reckoning with an occasional compass bearing. Even now, some 25 years later I still know my way about up there. Hope to see your part of Alaska someday, but stupid work will probably get in the way. ****ty part about life, you need money and time to travel, but grabbing enough money eats up all the time, so I'm left making the most of my own corner of the country. Should have jumped on a rigger or pipeline job up there when I was young and dumb. Fortunately I live in a pretty good place for the outdoors too, just not quite as good as yours!

 

[d2wing]

I also enjoy your stories and the things you post Caribou. I am from Northern Minnesota originally and have seen Northern lights, I have skied and snowmobiled on windswept prairies and thick woods in subzero weather so I have had a very small and milder taste of what life is like where you live. When I was younger I aspired to living up Nort but those days are behind me. If you wrote a book, especially with pictures I would read it. Maybe some kind of blog? I dunno but like many others I am a fan.