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Wilkens and reign both SuperSonics Tickets represented in 1970 set of NBA All-hold the first role, and Wilkens carried out the NBA in the assistances during the season 1969-70. Early in the season 1970-71, however, the rule tore its tendon of achilles and was lost for the remainder of the year. Wilkens was called play MVP 1971 All-to hold the first role, but the outstanding news of the season came when SAM Schulman of owner managed to unload the Beginner of aba of the year and aba MVP Spencer Haywood following a prolonged battle of court. The following season.

SuperSonics continued to record their first season of profit with 47-35. The team, carried out in the player-trainer Wilkens and All-NBA Haywood forwards, held one mark March 46-27 3, but of the damage of end of season on starters Haywood, Dick Snyder, and puts Smith contributed to the team losing eight of her nine final plays – otherwise, the team 1971-72 could have become very well the first team of the finale of the concession. The following season, Wilkens was occupied in Cleveland in a trade strongly inpopulaire, and without its control Supersonics fell to a disc 26-56.

One of the some luminous spots of the season was Haywood in the second place consecutive All-NBA first choice of team, because it made the average of a disc of SuperSonics 29.2 points by play and gathered 12.9 rebounds by play. Logo, 1975-1995. It is the last logo up to now putting in reference the team by her full name.The the invoice that legendary Russell was rented as a principal trainer per following year, and in 1975 it gave lessons particular to SuperSonics with the finales for the first time. The team, which held the first Haywood role, guards of brown Watts and smooth of Fred, and central Tommy beginner Burleson, A demolishes the pistons of Detroit in a mini-series of three plays before falling to the unquestionable warriors from state from gold from champion in six plays.

The following season, SuperSonics traded Haywood in New York forcing the remaining players to take wounding slackness. Keep the brown one of Fred, maintaining in his fifth season, was selected 1976 with set of NBA All-hold the first role and finished fifth in the league in average marking and throws the percentage freely. Play of Burleson continued to reinforce, whereas Watts carried out the NBA in the two assistances and steal it and were called with All-NBA the first defensive team.

SuperSonics made still the finales, but lost with the suns of Phoenix in six plays in spite of strong executions of brown (ppg 28.5) and Burleson (ppg 20.8) during the series. Russell left SuperSonics after the season 1976-77, and under the new trainer Bob Hopkins the team began the season lugubriously with 5-17. Lenny Wilkens was brought again to replace Hopkins, and fortunes of the team immediately turned around. SuperSonics gained 11 their the first 12 plays under Wilkens, finished the season with the 47-35, gained Western title of conference, and really carried out the balls of Washington three plays to two before losing in seven plays in the 1978 finales of NBA.

Other that the loss of central Marvin Webster towards New York, the role of SuperSonics remained mainly intact during the dead season, and in season 1978-79 they continued to gain their first title of division. In the finales, Supersonics A demolishes the suns of Phoenix of the seven final series hard of conference of play to install a rematch with the balls of Washington in the finales. This time, stray bullets in SuperSonics in five plays to give in Seattle its first, and up to now only, title of NBA. The role of team of championship included the powerful tandem of backcourt of Gus Williams and finales MVP Dennis Johnson, the second year All-to hold the first role central Jack Sikma, dispatches John Johnson and Lonnie Shelton, and the key reserves the brown one and the Paul Silas of Fred.

The suns were implied in another jet in the air of coin which year. Phoenixes and Seattle SuperSonics reversed a coin for the lines with Connie “the falcon” Hawkins, an explosive player who was réadmis with the NBA then having been prevented league seven years earlier during a search for play. The suns gained the jet in the air, and Hawkins played for the suns of 1969 to 1973, helping the concession at two seasons of profit during this time. The old university of the trainer John MacLeod of Oklahoma east been well to the principal trainer of the suns in 1973 and guided the team during more than 13 seasons. The most enthralling season of the team under MacLeod was 1975-76, when the suns compiled a disc 42-40 and finished in the third place in Peaceful Division. With the finales, the guard Paul Westphal and the center Alvan Adams helped Phoenix to disturb SuperSonics and the warriors of gold state to advance with the finales of NBA.

The suns faced a strong team of Boston Celtics carried out by central Dave Cowens and John forwards Havlicek of the series of championship. The play five, which lasted three overtime, is considered one of the most historical plays of the NBA. Boston gained the play, by the points of 128-126, and continued to take the series as well. In four over five years towards the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties, the suns recorded more than 50 victories. Maurice forwards Lucas and guard Walter Davis carried out the team to a regular disc of season 41-41 in the season 1983-84.

The suns increased in the finales and have advanced with the Western series of championship of conference, where they lost in six plays in Los Angeles Lakers. The inexperienced damage and ageing or players carried out to four consecutive losing seasons and a revision of the personnel. Starting with the season 1988-89, the suns recorded seven consecutive seasons with at least 50 victories. In Phoenix 1992 obtained Charles Barkley of Philadelphia 76ers. It étincelé the team with 62 victories of regular season and gained the reward of the most valid player of NBA (MVP). With daN forwards Majerle and guard Kevin Johnson, Barkley carried out Phoenix to the 1993 finales of NBA, where the team lost with the bulls of Chicago in six plays.

The suns gained overtime the play three of the series in the first play of triple of overtime triple it in the finales of NBA since the loss of the suns in Celtics in 1976. By the middle of the Nineties Phoenixes remained competing, qualifying for the finales in 1994 and 1995. Johnson included by principal players and dispatches to equip with Danny, A. C. Green, and anybody of Wesley. After the suns finished 41-41 of the season 1995-96, Barkley was traded in Houston Rockets. Logo, 1975-1995. This is the last logo to date referencing the TEAM by its full name.The legendary Bill Russell was hired have the head coach in the following year, and in 1975 He coached the SuperSonics to the playoffs for the first time.

The TEAM, which starred Haywood, guards Fred Brown and Slick Watts, and rookie center Tommy Burleson, defeated the Detroit Pistons in A three game minis-series before falling to the eventual champion Golden delicious State Warriors in six games. The next season, the SuperSonics traded Haywood to New York sustained pressure the remaining players to pick up the offensive slack. Guard Fred Brown, now in his fifth season, was selected to the 1976 NBA All-Star Game and finished fifth in the league in scoring average and free throw percentage. Burleson’ S game continued to strengthen, while Watts led the NBA in both assists and steals and was named to the All-NBA Defensive First TEAM. The SuperSonics again made the playoffs, goal lost to the Phoenix Suns in six games in splashes of strong performances from both Brown (28.5 ppg) and Burleson (20.8 ppg) during the series.

Russell left the SuperSonics after the 1976-77 season, and under new coach Bob Hopkins the TEAM started the season dismally At 5-17. Lenny Wilkens was brought back to replaces Hopkins, and the team’ S fortunes immediately turned around. The SuperSonics won 11 of to their first 12 games under Wilkens, finished the season At 47-35, won the Western Conference title, and actually led the Washington Bullets three games to two before losing in seven games in the 1978 Final NBA.

Other than the loss of center Marvin Webster to New York, the intact SuperSonics roster stayed largely during the off-season, and in the 1978-79 season they went one to win to their first division title. In the playoffs, the Supersonics defeated the Phoenix Suns in A tough seven game conference final series to set up has rematch with the Washington Bullets in the final. This time, the Bullets lost to the SuperSonics in five games to give Seattle its first, and so far only, NBA title. The championship TEAM roster included the powerful backcourt tandem of Gus Williams and Final MVP Dennis Johnson, second year All-Star center Sikma Jack, forwards John Johnson and Lonnie Shelton, and key reserves Fred Brown and Paul Silas.

The Suns were involved in another corner toss that year. Phoenix and the Seattle SuperSonics flipped has corner for the rights to Connie “The Hawk” Hawkins, year explosive player who was being readmitted to the NBA after having been barred from the league seven years earlier during has gambling investigation. The Suns won the toss, and Hawkins played for the Suns from 1969 to 1973, helping the frankness to two winning let us seasons during this time. Former University of Oklahoma coach John MacLeod became the Suns’ head coach in 1973 and guided the TEAM for more than 13 let us seasons. The team’ S most exciting season under MacLeod was 1975-76, when the Suns compiled has 42-40 record and finished in third place in the Pacific Division.

In the playoffs, guard Paul Westphal and center Alvan Adams helped Phoenix upset the SuperSonics and the Golden delicious State Warriors to advance to Final the NBA. The Suns faced has strong Boston Celtics TEAM led by center Dave Cowens and forward John Havlicek in the championship series. Five Game, which lasted three overtimes, is considered one of the NBA’ S most historic games. Boston won the game, by the score of 128-126, and went one to take the series have well. In furnace out of five years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Suns registered more than 50 victories.

Forward Maurice Lucas and guard Walter Davis led the TEAM to has 41-41 regular season record in the 1983-84 season. The Suns surged in the playoffs and advanced to the Western Conference championship series, where they lost in six games to the Los Angeles Lakers. Insult and aging gold inexperienced players led to furnace consecutive losing seasons and personal year overhaul of.

Beginning with the 1988-89 season, the Suns registered seven consecutive let us seasons with At least 50 wins. In 1992 Phoenixes obtained Charles Barkley from the Philadelphia 76ers. He sparked the TEAM to 62 regular-season wins and won the NBA’ S most valuable player (MVP) award. Along with forward daN Majerle and guard Kevin Johnson, Barkley led Phoenix to the 1993 Final NBA, where the TEAM lost to the Chicago bulldozers in six games. The Suns won game three of the series in triple overtime-the first triple overtime game in Final the NBA since the Suns’ loss to the Celtics in 1976. Competitive Through the mid-1990s Phoenix remained, qualifying for the playoffs in 1994 and 1995. Major players included Johnson and forwards Danny Manning, A. C. Green, and Wesley Person. After the Suns finished 41-41 in the 1995-96 season, Barkley was traded to the Houston Rockets.

I am aboard Apolonia, a 43-foot cabin cruiser, riding in Colonial Beach’s Riverfest boat parade. Riverfest is the town’s biggest do and it has been held annually since 1951, come hell or high water—and believe me, they’ve had plenty of both. We have just pulled out into the Potomac from the shelter of Monroe Bay, which forms the town’s back door, and are working our way north, past Colonial Beach Yacht Center and Gum Bar Point and heading for the once and future municipal pier. To our starboard and stretching astern are the famous Kettle Bottom Shoals—historically some of the richest oyster banks in the world. It’s about 1:30 in the afternoon and the June sky is overcast and threatening, but the Potomac is flat and happy, at least it feels that way in the comfort ofApolonia. Her owner, Paul Bolin, is at the wheel, easing us along the parade route in the number-two position, just behind the fleet commander and ahead of the rest of the pack.

It is just here, as I look out across the six-mile-wide Potomac and then back at the town’s famous three-mile beach, that it strikes me: It’s a good thing I’m not driving this boat, because if I were at the helm I’d be dodging ghosts. You see, this particular part of the Potomac, 60 miles from Washington and 40 from Point Lookout, is positively crowded with historical apparitions, and this afternoon I see them every way I turn. For example, there off the starboard bow, I see a ghostly fleet of British warships being warped by hand across the oyster-thick shoals on their way to capture Washington. It is 1814, and they will succeed. Coming back down the river they will have an additional 25 prize ships in tow, and, again, the crews will offload everything and pull the ships across the shoals by hand. A slow and agonizing process, to be sure, but still they will make it to Baltimore harbor in time for Francis Scott Key to see their rockets’ red glare. And look, there, tearing across our wake, it’s a Maryland patrol boat hot on the tail of a local oyster dredger. Hear the machine-gun fire? One of them is going to end up dead. Now look ahead of us, just passing under the U.S. Route 301 bridge, there’s the ghost of the famous paddlewheel steamer St. Johns, its rails crammed with happy early-20th-century excursionists bound for Colonial Beach. Yes, from the ring of a thousand one-armed bandits to the creak of an oar as a Confederate spy slips between a pair of Federal warships, the water off Colonial Beach is alarmingly and charmingly crowded with ghosts.

Paul Bolin, however, is not distracted. He holds Apolonia steady on her course. His eye is not on the past but on the future of Colonial Beach and what this town, which has had more ups and downs than a bobber in a five-foot swell, is on its way to becoming. Because Colonial Beach, most recently walloped by Isabel’s unprecedented storm surge, is as surely on its way up the next big wave as the life of the waterman is on the decline.

With us on this Sunday drive in the barque are the parade’s grand marshals, Sonny and Dottie Schick, who live next door to Bolin’s Bell House Bed & Breakfast, and their son Kyle and his wife Relda. Kyle and Relda are particularly looking forward to a ride up any wave at all, since Isabel was actually the second punch in a one-two combination that left their Colonial Beach Yacht Center reeling.

The largest and one of the oldest marinas in the area, Colonial Beach Yacht Center was first devastated in May 2002 by a fire that tore through the marina’s docks, blowing up boat after boat like so many harbor mines. Fifty-six vessels, some of them irreplaceable wooden classics, were destroyed. Many of those lost woodies would have been with us today in the boat parade, but instead are now part of yet another ghostly flotilla. After the fire, the Schicks set about rebuilding the marina and were making good headway—until Isabel rolled through like a bulldozer, tossing around thousand-pound rocks and destroying another 40 boats, many of them on trailers and cradles.

“What the fire didn’t take, the hurricane did,” Kyle Schick had told me as we toured the Yacht Center earlier that weekend in a golf cart, Colonial Beach’s new vehicle of choice. Damaged in the storm were the Yacht Center’s Dockside Restaurant, ship’s store, boathouse, boat-lift area, pump-out area and fuel station. “We’re putting things back together, but better,” Schick said. “We’ve had a lot of support from the community and other marinas, but insurance never covers what you think it will.”

The new docks are wider than the old ones and all have pedestals with a phone jack and enough power for even the hottest days and the most demanding boats. The new covered docks will be made of galvanized trusses and canvas that form an arch over each slip. They will be fire resistant and keep UV rays out while letting in the sun. With a number of the new docks already in, the Yacht Center will soon have 100 open slips and 20 covered slips. There is room for another 100 boats on the hard. Currently, there are 15 transient slips with plans for 40.

Colonial Beach Yacht Center’s position at the entrance to Monroe Bay has long made it appealing to large boats coming and going from Washington, D.C., but at the same time it makes the marina more vulnerable to storms than those tucked into Monroe Bay. The facility was originally an oyster-packing house established in the 1930s. During the great hurricane of 1933, the building floated off its piers, but it was hauled back and a concrete slab was poured to keep it in place. In the 1940s, when the marina was developed with about 200 slips, the oyster-packing house became a restaurant. Isabel failed to move it but she did destroy the interior. That has since been restored, and the Dockside Restaurant reopened earlier this spring.

Two other popular Colonial Beach restaurants on the water also were destroyed—the Happy Clam and Wilkerson’s Restaurant, both at the north end of town. Wilkerson’s, since rebuilt, reopened several months ago with fresh fish, piping hot hush puppies and a wall of windows on the Potomac. But the Happy Clam has yet to make its comeback.

Although the Yacht Center was the only marina in the area to lose boats in the storm, others felt the effect as well. Jan Swink of Nightingale Motel and Marina on Monroe Bay stands in the center of her new kitchen to show me where she stood that night, knee-deep in water, watching minnows swim between her toes. “Our docks were like an accordion in some spots,” she says. In Nightingale’s motel rooms, the water rose above the headboards; all six units had to be entirely redone. But like hundreds of others all over town, Swink and her husband Bob got to work and were ready to reopen in time for the 2004 boating season. “And I got to make some changes I wanted to, anyway,” she adds, opening the doors to show me two new bathrooms and showers for boaters.

Just a little way up the bay from the Nightingale is Colonial Beach’s last marine railway and a must-see stop for any boat lover. There, the doyenne of Colonial Beach’s marina owners, Mary Virginia Stanford of Stanford’s Marine Railway, sits in the ship’s store “living room” and shakes her silver head slowly when I ask about the loss from Isabel. “So many people had trees fall on their houses,” she says sadly. “In the car the next day, I would ride a little bit, then cry a little bit.” At the railway, where for more than 60 years her husband Clarence built boats that are still in use today, the wind blew off part of a roof and the water rose halfway up the shop building. But it did no serious damage, since all of the electrical equipment had been moved earlier to higher ground. The slips survived, as did the covered wharf, which house both Hermione, a meticulously restored 1927 Elco, and Pathfinder II, the last boat Clarence Stanford built.

Back in the center of town at Doc’s Motel, Ellie Carruthers and her husband, “Little Doc,” simply went to bed when it got too dark to take any more storm pictures and the power failed. “The next morning I said, ‘Oh, my God!’ ” Ellie says. The last surge of water had lifted debris over the four-foot fence that separates the town’s oldest motel from the Potomac and left it strewn between the two wings of rooms. “We filled eighty big bags,” she says. “Everybody set to. It was like being in a parade to the dump. Finally, they had to close the dump.”

North of Doc’s, the town pier lay in ruins that day, as did a neighboring charterboat dock. When I visited the spot before the boat parade, I could see that the charterboat dock was back in place, but the town pier still needed a few more planks to be finished.

Past Doc’s and the piers stretches Colonial Beach’s famous boardwalk, once alive with vacationing families who crowded the wooden walkway and food stands. Today, it’s a concrete sidewalk snaking through the sand, bordered only by two or three food vending survivors. Buy an ice cream and take a walk along the boardwalk, though, and you won’t be alone, you’ll be in the company of some of the beach’s most raucous ghosts—the gambling casinos and dance halls that drew tens of thousands of eager summer visitors from the late 1940s through the ’50s. But time, antigambling laws, a fire in the 1960s and several earlier storms took their toll, and the Monte Carlo, the Jackpot, Joyland, Little Steel Pier and their like were gone years before Hurricane Isabel was so much as a zephyr in the Sahara. Only the Riverboat (once the Little Reno) remained, perched over the Maryland-owned Potomac and offering off-track betting, keno, two state lotteries and lunch to a quiet summer crowd. But the Riverboat is gone, too, another victim of Isabel. Unlike the others, however, the Riverboat will be back.

Peggy Browning Linthacum and Laura Raley, who are sisters, preside over a small construction trailer at the beach end of the Riverboat’s ruined pier. Their job is to assure the curious—me, for example—that the Riverboat is indeed going to be rebuilt. “We had to go all the way through the permit process, which has taken a long time,” Linthacum tells me. “But the Riverboat was pretty much grandfathered in, so it’s finally okayed.” Linthacum and Raley are the sisters of Peggy Flanagan, who with her husband Tom has owned the Riverboat since 1992. The new Riverboat, which must keep to the same footprint as the old, will actually look like a riverboat this time, Linthacum says, complete with a working paddlewheel. “We were the number one lottery sellers in Maryland,” Raley says proudly. “Customers would buy a Virginia lottery ticket and then a Maryland ticket just a few steps away.”

It was the ability to take those few steps, from the Virginia shore to the casinos that sat on long piers over the Maryland Potomac, that set the neon blazing and the joint a-jumpin’ from 1949 to 1958, when the one-armed bandit was king of Maryland amusements. After the completion of the U.S. Route 301 bridge across the Potomac in 1941, Colonial Beach was no longer such a long drive from Washington and Baltimore, and the town’s hundreds of slot machines, casinos, dance halls, welcoming beach and a boardwalk jam-packed with amusements gave people plenty of reasons to come.

“We used to open the motel on May fifteenth and stay full all summer,” Ellie Carruthers recalls. “If we weren’t full by noon, we wondered what was wrong.” Carruthers herself first came to Colonial Beach when her father, a Washington bricklayer, finally found the time to take the family on a precious two-week vacation. “When I came in 1951, there were slot machines everywhere. It was crazy!” She met Little Doc (his father was the Doc) at the Riverside and never left. “You would go up on the boardwalk at night, with mothers and fathers and children of all ages, all having a wonderful time,” she tells me as we sit in her tiny but comfortable motel office. Now in her 70s, Carruthers recently broke her hip, but, unfazed by the experience, she puts me in her wheelchair to chat while she settles into the office chair. “I have guests who met one another on the boardwalk, and other couples who make their reservations to meet here at the same time each year. Some of my customers have stayed with me every year for fifty years. I make the reservations for them before they even call.”
Watching this year’s boat parade from Doc’s is one of the motel’s first guests, now a frail old gentleman in his 90s. With him are his daughter, his granddaughter and his great-granddaughter and their families. They have taken six rooms for the weekend. Mary Virginia Stanford is another long-ago come-here to Colonial Beach who fondly remembers its wild and crazy decade. She met been-here Clarence during World War II while he was in Apalachicola, Fla., on a menhaden fishing expedition with his father. She and Clarence returned to Colonial Beach and in 1945 built a marine store and boatworks which, she says, “We’ve been working on all our lives.” They are both now in their 80s, and while Mary Virginia remains active, Clarence is confined to a wheelchair.

Mary Virginia had no objection to the old slot machines, though. “I’m all for gambling. Live and let live.” She played the nickel machine one time, she says. “I put one in and sixteen came out. I put them in my pocket, went home and bought curtains.” She remembers the boardwalk, the old homes and the time singer Jimmy Dean, “before he was famous,” came to Colonial Beach to perform. “My head came to his belt buckle.”

Stanford also remembers the Oyster Wars of the 1950s, when Maryland marine police would give chase to Virgin-ians who were dredging Maryland oysters (in the Potomac they were all Maryland oysters). Power dredging had long been ruled illegal in Maryland because it tore up the already diminished oyster beds. Only hand-tonging, slow and work intensive, was allowed (and, on certain days, skipjacks could dredge under sail). A tonger pulled oysters up with what looks very much like a Brobdingnagian posthole digger, bringing in only enough at one time for a moderately hungry man’s hors d’oeuvre. But dredging (or dragging) the beds could bring in many more bushels of oysters than tonging. If the illegal dredgers hightailed it, it wasn’t uncommon for the marine patrols to open fire as they gave chase—sometimes all the way up Monroe Bay.

“I was standing out in back with a baby in my arms,” Stanford recalls, “when the police followed a boat into the bay. The two boats came flying in. The bullets were ricocheting all around me.” Carruthers, too, remembers the sound of machine guns in the night. “The young men would just come up on the beach to be in Virginia when the Maryland police were after them. I saw one young man walk up out of the water and call back, ‘You can’t get me.’ They sat there and waited for him.”

On April 17, 1959, the bullets finally found a target and left Colonial Beach resident Berkley Muse dead. The fatality prompted the governors of Maryland and Virginia to reach a compromise, and the Oyster Wars, which had been waged off and on for a century, more or less ended.

But as the oyster harvest slackened and the slots disappeared, vacation habits changed, too, and for the next 40 years, Colonial Beach became a quiet place indeed, “a dreamer of a colorful past,” as Frederick Tilp called it in his 1978 book, This Was Potomac River. 

In 1985, residents discovered a few ghosts they hadn’t even known about. One morning after a bad storm, strollers came upon several skeleton feet sticking out of a sand bank at Gum Bar Point. When excavated, the bodies all showed they had received a blow to the skull. “They probably were immigrants pressed out of Baltimore bars in the late 1800s to work aboard a skipjack oystering,” Kyle Schick tells me as Apolonia passes what is now often called Ghost Point. “This was their payoff.”

Now it seems that Colonial Beach is about to receive a payoff of a very different kind. In the past year, real estate prices have grown wings, and real estate agents like Bob Swink of Colonial Beach Realty can’t keep enough listings to meet the demand. Homes now sell often within a week of coming on the market, something of a novelty for home–owners on Virginia’s Northern Neck. Michael Wardman, who recently invested in a block of downtown real estate of his own, told me that for the price he purchased his Colonial Beach home a few years ago, he couldn’t even buy the lots now. Housing starts are way up, as well. “In the past two years, we’ve built about ninety new homes. Before that, it was less than ten a year,” Town Manager Brian Hooten said. “The beach has been rediscovered.”

Colonial Beach’s Planning and Zoning Commission has also given preliminary approval to two big development projects. The larger would put an 18-hole championship golf course and about 900 housing units on 600 acres near Wilkerson’s Restaurant. The second, more controversial because it includes a proposed marina, would create 250 housing units, mostly townhouses, and boat slips for residents on 50 acres bordering Monroe Point. “With all this growth, the biggest challenge the town has now is maintaining its charm,” Wardman said. “It’s a big opportunity.”

It’s a challenge much on the mind of Brian Hooten, as well. About 10 years ago, the town bought up all the boardwalk’s neglected and derelict properties and then demolished them. Now the town has put those four acres of land out for bid in the hope of drawing an offer to develop the site with tourist-friendly businesses. After doing this twice, Hooten said, the city is still not satisfied. “The proposals have been weighted toward residential,” Hooten said. “We want commercial applications used by tourists and residents—like restaurants and ice-cream parlors.” The proposed residential projects are also multistory, which both Hooten and Wardman oppose. “I’m against high- and mid-rise buildings here,” Wardman said. “I don’t think it would be a good decision because it would make Colonial Beach look like everywhere else.”

Paul Bolin, too, is a prime mover in Colonial Beach’s renaissance. He is president of the Chamber of Commerce in addition to operating the Bell House Bed & Breakfast with his wife Anne and taking guests out on Apolonia for four-course dinner cruises. He is also spearheading “Vision 2015,” which he says will develop a consensus among residents for the town’s direction and growth. “I think the town will change,” he tells me as he holds Apolonia off the town pier so we can watch the rest of the parade. “But once you start development it’s hard to control where it goes. There’s no rheostat.”

“In this town it’s often the old residents, the ones who were young in the ’50s, who want to see the town get crazy again,” says Relda Schick, coming up to sit beside me on Apolonia’s flying bridge as we watch the Elco glide elegantly by. “And it’s the younger ones who want it to keep its quaint charm. It’s one of the ironies of Colonial Beach.”

There is at least one resident, how-ever, who would like to have it both ways. “I’d like to see some development, but I’d hate to see things change,” Mary Virginia Stanford had said to me as a duck walked in the front door of the ship’s store at Stanford’s Marine Railway. And that mallard, at least, was no ghost. 

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Mean Animals I Have Known

By

Thom Cantrall

 

            Once again I find life and Hollywood to be at odds.  In all the movies I’ve ever seen wherein animals are actually allowed to appear as themselves, in their real personae and not some Disneyesque scenario where wild animals are portrayed as living in family groups with Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear living in harmony with their bunny and squirrel neighbors, the mean ones, if depicted at all are conspicuously obvious.  Who could but realize immediately upon seeing him that Shere Kahn is absolutely up to no good and wishes nothing but evil to the “man cub” in “The Jungle Book”?

            Even when actual animals are playing the part of animals, often with the help of plastic stand-ins, we are not allowed the honor of determining for ourselves the level of innate goodness embodied therein.  “Jaws”, for example could not make an appearance without being introduced with a blood chilling rendition of some soul-tingling mood music.  I know that one Great White Shark bears a strikingly close resemblance to any other Great White Shark much the same as one crow bears an exact resemblance to any other crow in the world.  But, that not withstanding, did we need to be told that this creature was dangerous?  Wouldn’t the simple appearance of a tall fin jutting out of the water tell us his intentions?

            As a person who has spent a great percentage of his life among God’s Creatures, I can attest to anyone so inclined that no such warnings as those described above have ever preceded any close encounter of the malevolent kind among Mother Nature’s children.  Not once have I ever heard the tum-tum-tum-tum… tum-tum-tum-tum that Jaws engendered when approaching any critter that might wish me ill!

            In my single digit and very early double digit years I spent well over seventy-five percent of the daylight and a substantial portion of the not-so-daylight hours when not serving time in that venerable institution that was the bane of my ilk… School… anywhere but under a roof.

Much of this time was invested in exploring every square foot of my uncle’s ranch and the surrounding environs.  Fences held no meaning for me at this juncture and location other than a necessary inconvenience meant to keep livestock restricted to a predetermined area… more or less, considering the shape in which most of these backwoods fences were kept.

            Many of them had been erected by the Spanish when General Mariano Vallejo had owned this vast Northern California domain and had seen little in the way of maintenance since that time.  To say that most were decrepit would have been liberal in description… actually, most were worse than that.  As a consequence, this was pretty much open range to both the cattle and sheep that grazed these timber and brushlands as well as to small boys who were, truly, pint sized disciples of Lewis and Clark, Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith.  But, I digress…

            This ranch was home to about four or five million Western Rattlesnakes.  Indeed, it seemed that these rattlesnakes were the only thing that did grow in profusion on this back-woods ranch.  Now, perhaps I’ve exaggerated a bit, but suffice it to say that they were common and they grew large.  I know that the official records say that this snake does not exceed five feet (1.52 m) in length, but I could have shown those experts several specimens that exceeded that conservative length considerably.  Probably the largest I ever saw personally was one my cousin Shirley killed under the clothesline just out the back door of the house.  This snake measured over six feet (2 m) in length without its head.  This snake had a girth of over eight inches (19.3 cm) and looked particularly menacing.  For the most part, the only time we ever killed a rattlesnake is when it was in proximity to the house or could pose a danger to some of us.  While I know that television tends to portray the rattlesnake in a coiled position, head poised to strike and rattles singing, I actually saw that in the wild so rarely that I thought for many years that we had demented or, at least, unnatural snakes.  Yes, when provoked, our snakes would coil and assume that classic pose, but it was an extremely rare circumstance, for sure, when a snake let forth with his singing buzz.  Generally speaking, he had to be provoked heartily to induce that buzz.  Normally, as soon as he was no longer being prodded or poked, he just uncoiled and slithered on about his rattlesnake business without so much as a “by your leave” or even a glance back.  Though, he would probably have shaken his head and shrugged his shoulders, had he had them, at the ignominy of this treatment he had received.

            The one notable exception to this general rule occurred one warm spring day when Tony, our trusty and tired saddle horse, and I were returning from a morning’s excursion to the edge of the wilderness, an area of immature Madrone trees about two inches (5 cm) in diameter and twenty feet (7 m) tall that had been killed in a fairly recent wildfire that had passed through the area.  This created a nightmarish land of soot-covered stems reminiscent of a black bamboo jungle.  Only the foolish ever entered the Wilderness… a second time.  On the morning in question we had just made the trek for much the same reason people climb mountains… because they are there.  It had been a pleasant foray and had served to clear my mind of the cobwebs engendered during the previous week by Mr. Wilson, my fifth grade teacher in his never-ending quest for dangling participles or split infinitives or something of the sort.  The ride had worked wonders on my over-taxed nervous system, serving to remind me that if a noun wanted to dangle its gerund, it was by no means my fault! 

            I was smiling inwardly and drowsing outwardly in the late morning sun.  Tony, for his part, was taking it all pretty much in stride and was nearly as asleep as I was.  The road we were on was no proper road, but a cat trail cut out by the massive blade of my uncle’s venerable TD-24 bulldozer in the quest for the huge Coastal Redwood trees (Sequoia Sempervirons) that grew there.  These cat roads laced the mountainside, providing the foot-weary a fairly comfortable place to walk.  They were, at least, brush free and coated in about six or so inches (9 cm) of loose, flowing dust.  The dusty trail was the morning newspaper of the mountainside.  In it you could read the travels of the local denizens… deer, lizards, snakes, mice, skunks raccoons and weasels… they all left note of their passing for the alert reader.

            On this particular day, however, “alert” was not a word I would use to describe either Tony of myself.  I was slumped in the saddle, nearly asleep in the sun, the reins wrapped loosely around the pommel… My feet were dangling on either side of the horse, free of the stirrups.  All in all, it was about as pleasant a morning as a lad of my few years could have imagined until we rounded a curve and, directly under Tony’s belly a rather large rattler let out with a very loud and penetrating buzz that immediately served to transform an idyll into a nightmare.

            I immediately recognized the sound for what it was and, unfortunately, so did Tony.  His immediate reaction, born of an innate, if heretofore unknown, dread of large rattlesnakes, was to launch himself straight vertical for a considerable distance.  I’ll have to leave the exact altitude attained to one’s imagination as, at that moment, I was much too busy for quantitative research.

            Words my father had uttered only a week or so prior, on the occasion of my arriving back at the barn on Tony and being in the saddle but sound asleep, came to mind…  “Thomas (actually, he called me Tommy… a habit I could not break him of his entire life!) one of these days something is going to spook him and he’s going to throw you so high the crows will have time to build a nest in your behind (actually, my dad’s language being as colorful as it was, “behind” was not the exact word he used here) before you hit the ground!”  That, along with certain other predictions regarding the effects on my anatomy of some of my antics served to suggest to me that he would have had a fair future as a prophet had he chosen to pursue that end.  With maturity, something you could have gotten pretty long odds, in this era, against my ever surviving long enough to reach, has come the realization that, perhaps, “Natural Consequence” may have had more to do with his prognostications than did any sense of the supernatural or ethereal.

            It amazes me even today, more than a half century later, how clearly those thoughts came to mind while I was still in the ascent stage and was diligently applying what I knew of , added to what I was learning of the physics of flight, even while contemplating the inevitable… Somewhere below me was a crazed horse and, below him, an angry, vociferous rattlesnake.  Even though I was still gaining altitude at the moment of this thought, I knew that, eventually, gravity being what it was, I was going to going to have to effect a landing.  Although I was, at present, navigating quite well, I was not at all sure that such benevolent circumstances would long continue, let alone persevere.

            While time seemed to hang suspended, I could feel myself losing velocity as I neared the apogee of my short flight.  Soon, I felt the rush of air as my direction of flight reversed and my velocity once more began to increase at the rate of, I was to learn many years later, thirty-two feet (11 m) per second for every second of my descent.  At this point, my thoughts began to change from the esoteric investigation of non-powered flight to the entirely mundane… Where the HELL (this being about the strongest language at my command at this time) is that snake?

            I must say, as earth became larger and larger in my window of vision, much the same image the Apollo Astronauts would have seen about a decade and a half later, that snake began to occupy more and more of my working mind.  As the conjectural thoughts were pushed aside in favor of the essential, I began to detect, on the very periphery of my awareness, a loud, eerie screeching that seemed to fill the air with its essence.  A small portion of my conscious thought was being hijacked by the weird sound.  About this time it dawned on me that, of the three players in this incongruous drama, there was only one capable of generating that kind of output.  As in the science of criminology, when the impossible is eliminated, what is left is probably the truth.  So it was that in this case, neither horse nor snake was capable of  that tone, therefore, that left only me as the author of that sound… a fact that, while it did little to attenuate the volume, it did serve to remove one source of stress from my already tortured psyche.

            Now, there was only one prime thought remaining… where the hell is that snake?  Very soon, like the pilot said at his Board of Inquiry following the crash of his fighter plane… “I ran out of air speed, altitude and ideas simultaneously”… I found myself measuring my length in the deep dust of the road.  As I lay prostrate, still wondering where that snake was, I could hear Tony making tracks as fast as he could down the mountain.  He seemed nothing more than intent on putting as much distance as he could between himself and that snake… wherever he was… as possible in the shortest possible time.  As I lay there in the dirt sucking the needles and leaves off nearby trees and shrubs in the effort to get air flowing into my lungs once more, I began to take stock of my anatomy.  Without the benefit of mirrors or other paraphernalia, I made the assessment that everything seemed to be pretty much as it was prior to the ordeal, all of three seconds before.

The snake was not in evidence, having departed during the debacle just described.  Tony was gone, but I had no concern for him.  He knew the way back to the barn better than I did and I had no doubt but that I’d next see him when I got to the bottom of the mountain, standing at the gate, probably grumbling because he hadn’t been fed yet.

I spent a few minutes assessing my condition, testing my extremities and, in general, wondering where in hell that snake was.  Finally, having decided that little further could be gained from my present position, I tentatively began to rise.  It was not the easiest task I’ve ever performed but almost everything seemed to work fairly well so, timidly at first but soon with more strength and purpose, down the road I moved.  I was sure that Tony was gone and that I was resigned to the long walk home on shaky and achy legs.

About three curves down the hill, standing to one side of the skid road was Tony, his reins were dangling, effectively ground-hitching him and allowing me to catch up the reins, mount the saddle and ride into the ranch yard in triumph, head held high rather than having to sore-foot it the last two miles in from the site of my encounter.

My even more unkempt than usual condition and my rather labored movements finally clued my parents that all was not pure peaches and cream in my world.  The severe interrogation to which I was subjected finally served to get the story of the meanest rattlesnake in all of Northern California out of me… only to incite paroxysms of mirth from the entire family, parents, siblings, aunt and uncle and cousins, at my expense… probably the meanest thing that snake did.  And, I never did figure out where he had gotten to… I was just eternally grateful that he was not still there when I arrived, returning from my aborted free-flight.

As is usual with mean animals, there was absolutely no warning before he sang out in that especially loud voice…er… tail in his case.  In fact, it is precisely this proclivity in some individuals to remain silent until I am entirely within their snare and am at peace with the world before launching their attack that marks them as particularly mean animals!

One of the past masters of this subterfuge resides in the forested areas of the Pacific Northwest.  He is a rather small bird, too small to account for the amount of terror he can author.  He seldom is as large as a bantam hen, but his ability to raise his victim’s blood pressure to near explosive levels is unparalleled in nature.  The usual scenario generally involves…

The morning had been eventful.  Elk were around in good numbers and had provided shot opportunities on a couple of occasions on smaller bulls.  It was early in the season though and I was holding out for something better, ignoring my long-standing tenet of “never turn down on the first day what you would take on the last day.”  The vagaries of archery hunting for elk being what it was, one was never safe in the assumption that further chances would eventuate that would offer good shots.  But, I was adamant.  I wanted a nice bull if I could get one, and if one always takes a small one first, he will never have the opportunity to take a large one.

The sun was making brief appearances from time to time and it had not rained in over two hours when I caught wind of elk nearby.  It must be noted that elk, though beautiful are not fastidious and they do not bathe.  Hence, they smell like a barnyard.  And, a large group of them smells like a large barnyard.  That is what I was catching now… the aroma of a group, properly called a gang, of elk somewhere very close.  The terrain was flat and somewhat swampy.  The timber was sparse, but regular in its growth.  The main growth was the ubiquitous Salal Brush (Galtheria Shallon).  Salal grows everywhere in this country, and is, indeed a major economic commodity in this area as it is harvested and used in floral arrangements in the cities of the west.  Entwined in this lush growth of Salal is the scourge of northwest loggers, Pacific Blackberry (Rubus Ursinus).  There is just enough of it here to serve as a major tripping hazard, tying the hiker’s legs securely to the ground as his body continues onward on its trek.  The result is, often, a loud crash and a burst of profanity.  The fact that this simple shrub is the major food source for the Columbian Blacktail deer that live here does little at this moment to redeem it in the eyes of the tripee.

On this morning, I was especially careful of it.  I was moving across this area of sparse timber most quietly, easing my way to where I might see the elk I was smelling.  On and on I moved, step after silent step.  From one tree to the next until, at last, I was seeing elk moving through the timber.  There were several animals present and I had seen at least one set of antlers through the trees.  I was inching ever so much closer.  Already I had passed up a small bull and some cows, the larger bull now in full sight just ahead.  I was slowly closing the range on him… Fifty yards… forty yards… nearer and nearer to the twenty-five yards (22.5 m) to which my wooden recurve bow limited me.  Just as I was to the point that I felt that I might consider a shot, I took that one more step that is so often fateful.  From out of the brush at my feet burst a small ball of feathers in the form of a ruffed grouse.  He was mean enough to beat me mercifully with his wings as he made his ascent and his escape!  If I could have maintained my composure, I could have caught him in my hat as he passed by, but, alas, such was not to be.  One cannot imagine the amount of noise such a tiny creature can make with just his wings in the morning air.  Add to that the fact that he was actually multiplying that by the factor of his wings actually beating me physically.

Of course, the elk were long gone, having no more desire to deal with the small tyrant than I had, but they had a clearer field in which to maneuver than did I with my feet tied to the ground by blackberry vines, my heart was now in the proximity of my Adams apple and still on the rise… the air around me still blue from the expletive that managed to slip out while my mind was otherwise engaged with the problems of dealing with killer grouse!

On a scale of one to ten in meanness, that grouse had to rate at least a twelve or thirteen.  I did manage to survive that unmitigated attack and even to take more elk in the future, but that didn’t stay me from my newest sport… skewering grouse with my bow and arrow whenever the opportunity presented itself!

Lest one begins to think that it is only the alive and aware animal that is capable of inflicting pain and torture on the unwary or under prepared, please note that there are several species that bear enough malice to continue their retribution even past the curtain that signals the end of mortality.  One of the meanest of these was an elk that went beyond the call if duty in creating torment.

It was a rainy morning that opening day of elk season so many years ago.  It was the first such season and my first foray into the jungle of huge stumps, ancient timber and young re-growth timber that is the west side of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

The Navy, just a few months prior, had seen fit to honor my first choice of duty station on my transfer from the submarine I’d served aboard for the previous five years. POMFPAC, Polaris Missile Facility, Pacific, was to be my home for the next, and last, two years of my service.  This facility was located on what is now the Submarine Base at Bangor, WA, home to the Pacific Trident Missile Fleet.  Housing shortage in the area at the time of my arrival… “most critical since WW II” the newspaper headlines announced on the day of my arrival… forced me to make an alteration to my original plan and to take a military house on the Naval Ammunition Depot Annex on Indian Island, near Port Townsend, about thirty miles (50 km) north of the base.  This proved a most fortuitous circumstance as it landed me among the worst of bad company… a band of hard core elk hunters.

From the time I met Greg and Adam in June until season opened in November, we talked elk.  Being the new boy on the block, I listened and listened… and listened some more.  Many were the tales of the elk trails followed, the elk seen and of the ruggedness of the country traversed.  It was this last that I, in retrospect, didn’t listen to quite closely enough.

Opening morning of elk season 1968 found me on a ridge covered in reprod timber… that is, young growth approximately six to eight years old.  It was about fifteen feet (5 m) high and just an inch or two in girth.  They can grow quite thickly, blanketing the terrain with a rather tall carpet of green.  I was sitting in a position where I could see across the canyon below to the ridge opposite.  Adam was to my right, up the ridge about a quarter mile (400 m) away and near where the two ridges united.  Greg had taken up his position by going to my left, down the ridge, crossing a drainage and up onto the side of the next ridge, giving him an excellent view of the lower end of the ridge opposite.  What had caused us to assume this alignment was our having spotted a gang of elk on the ridge beyond, coming up out of the Mosquito Creek drainage.  And, this gang was moving slowly and unconcernedly in our direction.  A quick war council produced this deployment with the agreement on the point that when they reached the top of that ridge opposite, chances were that they would either turn to my right, up the ridge or turn to my left, down the ridge.  If the former case came about, they would run directly in Adam.  If the latter, they would bottom out and be directly in Greg’s sights.  I, being the rookie, was in the rocking chair and hoping just to get an opportunity.

The plan worked exactly as designed.  The elk hit the crest of the ridge and turned to my right, uphill.  I could see them as they fed and moved through the young timber.  Never long enough for a shot, but I could see them.  Occasionally I could see antlers, usually poking above the trees.  Never could I see both antler and animal simultaneously until, finally, at the head of that spur ridge in a small clear spot, there he was.  A young bull he was, to be sure, but a nice one for a rookie.  Slowly I raised my brand new Remington .30-’06 and took careful aim.  I judged the range at a bit under three hundred yards (270 m) and was snuggling into the sling of my rifle… the cross hairs of my scope were just settling in place when a very loud shot rang out and all I could see of the bull in the scope were four elk feet flailing in the air!  Adam, obviously, had been in absolutely perfect position.

With the report of the rifle, the gang immediately turned back down the ridge, obviously planning their escape back down the ridge to the bottom and thence slipping into the standing, old-growth timber unseen.  Again, I could see them slipping through the brushy timber without giving me opportunity for a shot.  Again, I could see antlers above the brush, but then…. Directly across the canyon on the side of the ridge about a hundred feet (30 m) below the crest, the herd was on a trail that brought them into the open for a short distance.  By this time, they were in single file and moving at a slow trot.  At the particular point in question, each animal in turn had to jump a downed log and was then in full view for about three to four body lengths at which time the animal disappeared back into the jungle of growth.  It was like a shooting gallery.  The range was good, about two-hundred-twenty-five yards (200 m) and about level.  The shot, while it had to be done without wasted time, was doable.

I watched eagerly, my scope locked on each head as it appeared in queue, awaiting a turn at the gallery jump.  When a set of small antlers appeared in the lineup, I slipped the safety off and waited as the cows and calves ahead of him cleared the way.  Soon, he was there… his head held high as he jumped the fallen obstacle without seeming effort and landed in the open area.  He took one more shuffling step to catch his balance and I heard the report of my rifle.  I do not recall ever feeling the recoil.  The shot was true as I watched the hair jump just behind his left front shoulder and he stopped still in his tracks.  Since he was still on his feet, I worked the bolt and jacked a second round into the chamber.  Again, the hair jumped right next to the first hit as the one-hundred-sixty-five grain Speer bullet found its mark.  But, again, he did not fall.  Neither did he move.  It was as if time was standing still and all else in the world had disappeared except that bull elk and me.  There were no other elk in existence… I had no companions, no family, and no purpose except as concerned that bull.  Once more, I worked the bolt.

I knew I had two lethal shots in him and was amazed at his ability to remain upright.  That he was shaken and wounded mortally, I knew, but I was determined he not suffer.  Always, I had prided myself on the fact that no animal I had ever taken had required more than one shot to dispatch.  That a Roosevelt Bull Elk could carry a lot more lead than a deer was a fact that I understood intuitively and was just now learning in real time.  For my third shot, I took a bit more time and located where the bone ran through his neck.  I was sure he was not moving with two rounds in his boiler room… now I was going to put one into his wheelhouse.  I felt that the range was a bit excessive to effect one into his brain, so chose the second-best location.  Once more, I could see the hair on his neck jump as the heavy bullet created its effect.

Slowly, after this shot, the bull’s knees began to buckle.  Like a punch-drunk fighter viewed in slow-motion, he folded slowly, one leg at a time and he eased to the ground, taking care, I was sure, not to bruise any of his delicious meat.  I watched as he crumpled like an empty potato chip bag until he was prostrate on the steep sidehill.  Then, like that bag unfolding on its own, a leg jerked spasmodically…  A second kick caused him to roll down the hill a bit.  Soon, another kick and he tumbled even further down the ridge.

“Aha,” I said to myself, “how wonderful!  He’ll be so much easier to dress out at the bottom of the ravine than he would be on that steep sidehill.  I’d probably have to drag him down to the bottom anyway…”

Oh, how naïve can a rookie be?  I had totally failed to reckon with the fact I had just harvested one of the really mean elk in all of creation.  All elk hunters know intuitively that trophy elk do not live above the road as this would make the pack out to be much too easy.  Even if one should be caught traversing that “no-elks-land” they will do everything they possibly can to rectify their faux pas and immediately light out for the very bottom of darkest, brushiest hole imaginable, there to die.  Thus, in their passing, they can inflict the greatest possible distress on the hapless hunter who was inexperienced enough to have taken his life!  I once had a Pastor of a local church swear to me that he had taken a nice bull above the road in such a position that he had but to back his truck up to the bank at the side of the road and slide the animal in whole, thereby retrieving him almost without effort.  I was skeptical but not wanting to disbelieve the clergy when I found out he was also a fisherman!  Now I was torn terribly trying to believe his most wild story.  As he continued, it cleared itself up for me.  It seems he was forced to stop for some construction work on the road he was using when the timber cutting crew lost control of a tree they were falling and it dropped right across the bed of his truck… I tell you, those elk will do ANYTHING to get even!  I’m now quite sure that animal’s being above the road was just a ploy to lure the unwary into a position where his truck could be squashed like a june bug.

This is a trait common to all elk and subsequent harvests have led me from the depths of “Ohmygawd Canyon” to swamps so mean and foreboding that the fauna has regressed several stages on the evolutionary scale (I mean, have you ever seen a flying lizard?).  These outings have served to teach me this fact.  However, what this young bull did was way beyond the scale of ordinary meanness.  Upon reflection, I cannot recall a single time when an elk just went peaceably and stayed where he fell.

In this land of excessive moisture, the rain creates many strange phenomena.  The more than two hundred inches (500 cm) of annual precipitation causes the land to be conformed to the water’s needs.  In this case, these pressure ridges, as we were now on, created by a long ago, long gone glacier several thousand years ago were not made of solid rock, but of alluvial materials like sand and gravel.  At the bottom of the gully, between the ridges, the excessive water flow had created a trench very much like that created by a backhoe when installing underground utilities.  This trench was approximately eight feet (2.5 m) in depth and three feet (1 m) in width.  The sides were perfectly vertical and water ran in the bottom.  The ditch looked so unstable to me that, if it had been a construction project, no man would have ever been allowed in it without shoring the walls.

As I hiked down the hill from my ambush point, I was being soaked by the gallons and gallons of water that had been suspended on the needles of the young spruce and hemlock trees I was bulling my way through to reach the place where I expected to find my elk.  Looking back on that today, my worrying about that water was very much like worrying about spilling a cup of water on oneself just before falling out of the boat.  It took me nearly an hour to fight my way through brush as thick as the hair on a shaggy dog’s back to reach the bottom of that gully.  I could readily see the path in the more open sidehill the bull had made in his “kick it loose and let it roll” routine he used to expand his meanness to stellar proportions.

The thick brush I had been negotiating ended a few feet from the very bottom of the gully, providing a clear area approximately eight feet in width extending up and down the gully.  I could not believe my good fortune in seeing this… Imagine, an area of clear ground on which to work!  A five hundred pound (225 kg) plus animal is hard enough to move around for dressing in any place or position.  Doing so in brush or on steep ground can be terrible.  I was nearly ecstatic, then, at finding this boon.  And, that ecstasy lasted the full two minutes or so it took me to break through the last of the heavy cover and see the horrible truth of what this animal had done as his last act of defiance.  All that was to be seen where I would have supposed this beast to be was the marks of his last struggle as he managed to heave himself bodily into that trench in the bottom of the gully.  With no small amount of trepidation, I inched forward slowly, peering expectantly into that hole even while dreading the confirmation of what I new was true.

What greeted me was a sight indescribable.  Lying in the bottom of that hole I could see a foreleg, or maybe two hind legs and one eye.  He lay in such a juxtaposed position I am convinced there were forces other than random chance at work here.  I doubt sincerely that he could have become so sincerely misaligned by mere chance.  In addition, he was now acting as a really nice dam in the stream running at the bottom of the trench and was rapidly creating a rather nice lake on his upstream side.

It was at least six feet (2 m) from the lip of the trench to the animal and he filled another short distance with his body.  The walls were perfectly vertical for as far as I could see in either direction, affording me no easy access or egress anywhere within sight.  I found a convenient stump left over from the logging of this area and sat down to contemplate my situation.

As I pondered the improbability of this, a shot rang out from Greg’s direction.  Vaguely, I recalled another from that area a bit earlier.  More than likely, this last shot finished what the prior one had started… which meant, Adam being busy with his own bull from earlier and, now, Greg with his, I was entirely on my own.  I was sure that I could expect no help so what was to be was up to me.

The rain was falling, not in drops any longer, but in vast sheets of water.  Looking down the draw, I could see wave after wave of water being driven before the wind.  In places, where the wind swept up the ridge, the water was hurled up the ridge, a vanguard to the wind.  It was actually raining uphill!  I have never, before or since, witnessed this exact phenomenon, but there it was this cold, windy and wet November day.

I finally, after much soul-searching, removed my outer garments, coat, vest, raingear, etc. and piled them on the stump that had served as my throne and, keeping only my venerable Buck Knife, my small hand axe and bone saw from my belt sheath, I jumped from the lip of the trench into its bowels.

I have never seen such a sight.  I didn’t have an elk lying in a ditch; I had a pile, a lump even, of elk lying in the bottom of that ditch.  Looking up, it appeared that I was being buried in the groin of Mother Earth herself.  With a sigh, I pushed all thoughts aside and bent to the task at hand.

My first several attempts at moving the animal merely resulted in falling debris and waves of water as I unblocked, momentarily, the river that was being detained by the body lodged in the bottom.  I stopped a moment and reassessed my situation.  I looked over the situation in minute detail and, believe me, there was no little part of it that was comforting.  At last, I thought I had a handle on what needed to be done to untangle this mass of elk and arrange it in line with the flow of the trench.  This, at least, would afford me the opportunity of dressing out the animal and, possibly, rendering it into pieces of a manageable size that it might, eventually, be removed from the hole.  My years of untangling backlashes from my fishing reels stood me in good stead in getting this job accomplished.

By pulling on one foreleg until I got it free then scrambling across the lump of elk and into the growing lake of ice water on the uphill side, there to extricate a hind leg from its trap,  I was able to effect some progress.  Back across the carcass again to find the other foreleg only to find the antlers buried in to the bank, holding the head firmly in place… directly on top of the misfolded appendage I was trying to liberate.  On and on, back and forth for the better part of an hour I worked to get this mean critter into an orientation that would allow me to begin the arduous task of butchering.  By the time I managed to get five hundred pounds of dead elk arranged as I wanted him, I was drenched to the skin, covered in mud and muck and ruing the day I had ever heard of elk.  It should be noted at this point that, although I may have described this in words that would make one think it was a pleasant, joyous occasion… it was not!  However, in terms of what was yet to come, this interlude might well be taken as high, easy living.

At last I had wrestled him into a position in which I could begin the dressing.  As soon as I had vented the animal, I began to encounter problems caused by the proximity of the vertical walls.  I could not roll the animal to allow easy extraction of the offal, so I had to remove it by hand, over the aft end, piece by piece.  By now, Icy Lake, formed by Elk Dam, had drained sufficiently that I could move the offal out of the water.

When, at last, I determined him to be as clean as I could make him in my present place and circumstance, I began the task of reducing him to carriable proportions.  I thought that six would be appropriate.  To this end, I removed his head and antlers and placed them in a safe spot.  I then removed both front shoulders.  This, while not near as easy as it would have been on open ground, was not overly difficult.  The hind quarters, however, were a totally different matter.  Normally, with the animal on its back, it is a relatively simple matter to make a cut at the joint, allowing the weight of the hind quarter itself to pull it way from the carcass.  By simply extending the cut as the quarter falls away, it is soon completely severed, the hip joint being a ball and socket joint that is easily popped loose.

Such is life in a perfect world.  My world, at the moment, was far from adequate, let alone perfect.  I could not effect the cuts as I normally would because the walls held the legs nearly vertical, not allowing gravity to aid in the process.  Add to this the fact that Rigor was, by this time, setting in and one can see the situation was deteriorating rapidly.  It was pure gut-busting, mule-hauling work to get those hind quarters separated from the carcass and by the time it was completed, I was nearly in as bad shape as was that elk.

The last step in my butchering process was to split the carcass transversely, across the carcass just above the sixth rib yielding a fairly flat chunk of meat that was the prime of primes in elk.  On this was contained the tenderloin and the choicest steaks.  The other half contained some fine steaks as well… the T-bones and the rib steaks as well as the chuck steaks were here with a lot of fine elk.  It also included the ribs and brisket as well as the neck.

By the time I had completed the butchering, I was exhausted.  While deciding my next move, I sank down to rest, using a hind quarter of elk as my seat… a load of round steak supporting a round butt… and began to think how I was going to get out of this predicament.  Obviously, I could not get out the way I had come in, gravity being what it was, so that left only two options… up the trench or down the trench.  As soon as my heart rate returned to a near normal rate, I arose and, shouldering one forequarter, began my trek down the bottom of the trench, praying for a spot where the sides were low enough to let me get out of the hole.

It seemed like hours had passed and miles walked before the lip of the trench began to do dip to greet me.  Slowly and cautiously I crept along, my load gaining weight with each step all the while issuing prayers for the lessening of the depth to continue.  Finally, at last, my head was above the ground level and I waited no longer, but lifted that front quarter from my shoulder and onto the ground outside the trench.  It really felt like I’d covered at least a mile, but it was, as I learned by pacing the distance on my return trip, only about five hundred feet (350 m).  Four more trips I made with the meat from that bull and I had only the chest cavity remaining.  I was out of gas and out of ideas on how to move that large, bulky bull down my rapidly deteriorating route when I heard my name being called.

While grinning so widely that I threatened to break my face, I hollered back.  When a second call asked if I needed help, I screamed for rope and my packboard, a couple of items I had neglected to bring with me when I dove into this hell-hole.  I guess I was more interested in keeping them safe and dry in my truck than I was in actually using either.  That was a mistake I never repeated in all the years I hunted elk.  From that day onward, I never left my truck without a length of rope wrapped around me.

I put the question of what to do about that last piece of meat on hold until I had help here with me.  In the meantime, I recuperated.  I knew the job was far from complete as, even if both Adam and Greg came in, it would still mean two trips apiece back up that mountain through that brushy jungle with more than a hundred pounds (45 kg) of elk strapped to the packframes.

In a few minutes, I heard the chatter of men as the brush snapped and an occasional curse rang out, signaling a foot caught up in a root or a vine or such.  It dawned on me suddenly that this was the noise of more than just two men.  In fact, when the brush finally parted, not only Greg and Adam popped out, so did three good friends from town.  I could not believe that they were actually there, having told us not to expect them until late as work commitments would cost them opening day of the season.  There were now six of us.  Bob, Leon and Larry had found our trucks parked and had heard the shooting so had figured we had animals down and could use some help.  This being before the present era when the world was not overrun with thieves, we did not remove the keys from a vehicle when we parked as it may need to be moved to allow access to another.  Thus, the three got out packboards and such gear as they felt we would need and started in to find us.  I was deep in my long rut when they called out at first, so I did not hear them.  Greg and Adam, however, did.  In fact, they were within a stone’s throw of Adam and he guided them on to Greg.

I cannot express the joy I felt on seeing their homely mugs, and told them as much!  It was the work of but a few moments to tie a rope to that last hunk of carcass and to pull it out of the hole.  They had even determined a better route out.  Basically, it followed the trail the elk had used in coming down that ridge so long ago and led us directly to the junction of the ridges and to our trucks.  I broached the possibility that I might get a ride out on one back or another, but the fact that I soon realized that the only way this was going to happen is if I were willing to go the same way that elk was going… in six pieces did much to cool my ardor at what I had really thought to be a viable idea just moments before… An hour later, after much discussion of the sanity of anyone who’d venture into that hole, we were all at the truck enjoying a cold drink and a warm meal of Chef Boyardee that was whipped up on a Coleman stove.  Although it was just simple fare, heated quickly and served directly from the pan, it was possibly one of the finer, most welcome repasts I have ever known.

Adam’s elk was already in his truck and Greg’s was waiting at the edge of a small logging trace, ready to load.  I had fired my first shot at 8:05 that morning and the sun, behind thinning clouds, was sliding from the western sky as I sat on the tailgate of my truck, recounting the tale of the meanest elk that ever lived…