The day before yesterday I got this great postcard from Bob and Ethel Wilson, who I met in Braemar, then again in Montrose. They’d been backpacking in the Canadian Rockies, and dipped below the border to take in Yellowstone and these spectacular Tetons. They seem to have walked almost everywhere I want to walk, including many more places here in my own country than I’ve ever gotten to. I’m very touched that they thought of me. I can’t even begin to count how many kind, friendly, fascinating people I met during the 2008 Challenge, but if I did, Bob and Ethel would be near the top of the list. I hope they’ll come walk with me sometime in the less spectacular East, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up.
I had a friend who lived in Jackson Hole, where he could look up from his door and see something very like the Grand Teton view above. He used to tell a killer story about having skunks living under the cabin. Removing them took months of guile, wile, and stink, and he was only successful when he resorted to peanut butter, a long 2x4, and a shotgun. He laid all this out at great hysterical length for a group of us sitting around the terrace at (I think) La Fonda in Santa Fe in the early ’80s. This business of rolling around on the ground and holding your sides? It can happen. Oh, I’d sell my soul, or at least my Nellie Fox Louisville Slugger, to be able to tell a story as well as Bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment