my hands see work-lots of work these days. i like the way my hands look in the summer. they're covered in blisters, cuts, grease embedded deep into the cracks between my fingernails and skin, old scars, and the dark hue that has been cast by the rays of the sun. my hands look like books in the summer, but not written in plain english or a times new roman font. they are canvases covered in small details. each cut on the back of my hand has a different shape, perhaps from working to fast and brushing my hand across a barb on a cool morning, or from bracing against a wrench using the muscles in my shoulder and bicep to loosen a rusty bolt that gives so suddenly that my reflexes cannot harness the power that my arm was holding as it careens my knuckles into a bystanding metal object. each cut on my hand is from a specific incident, which in turn was in a specific place and time, and was part of a whole chore. and each chore was part of a plan that came from my head after instruction from another. And, when i look at my hands and find a cut that i remember, all of these other details subconciously flood my head. other people see cut and calloused hands when they look at the two i have, but i see a story etched in these hands.

Once a horse died. It was not my fault that she died, but it was my fault she suffered. One wonders if horses forgive.

jesus, it's hard for me to settle down.

I realized recently that I cannot fix everything, but I also realized that I am not someone who can watch things happen. It's a hard realization, and one that I will battle forever.

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone

by Richard Brautigan

I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don't look like any girl I've ever seen before.

I couldn't say "Well she looks just like Jane Fonda, except that she's got red hair, and her mouth is different and of course, she's not a movie star..."

I couldn't say that because you dont look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or 42, somewhere in there. I think I was seven, or eight, or six.

It was a movie about rural electrification, a perfect 1930's New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids. The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by at night, for sewing and reading, and they didn't have any appliances like toasters or washing machines, and they couldn't listen to the radio. They built a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures.

There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along. They looked ancient and modern at the same time.

Then the movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life. Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch, the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings. The farmer's family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read the newspaper by.

It was really a fantastic movie and excited me like listening to the Star Spangled Banner, or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt, or hearing him on the radio "... the President of the United States... "

I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio....

And that's how you look to me.

---

Richard Brautigan

Lonestar belt buckles and old faded Levis

And each night begins a new day



And if you don't understand him and he don't die young
You'll probably just ride away



Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys



They'll never stay home and they're always alone



Even with someone they love

I have had a hard time lately figuring out who I am, and I think this post is as much about explaining myself to me as it is for anyone else.

My favorite things:
A good song
Riding alone in the desert with a few cows (once my grandfather dropped me off several miles from the ranch to gather eleven rogue pairs. I was hungry, cold, and it rained, but i was completely happy)
The smell of horse sweat
cattle drives
My family
old timers
good stories
good books
A hard days work
old movies
being too tired to eat
building fence
building/creating
writing(when i do)
challenges
playin guitar/singing (even if my skills are limited)
lost country singers
motorcycles
open road with new music
hiding out
jam sessions with friends
Getting to know people (it's like opening presents)
camaraderie
being generous (also a downfall in college)
Fritos (my cat)
troubled kids
pushing my limits (love/hate)
the smell of a cigarette smoke in a bar or house(weird, but it reminds me of old friends of my grandpa's that i am close to)
smoking cigarettes(i am not a smoker cause it's so unhealthy, but if it wasn't i would be)
my mom
once in a while you meet someone you can visit with for hours, and you find that you are really actually intrigued by what they have to say, not just what you have to tell them. i like that.
my grandpas sentimental speeches
when my grandpa gets teared up
that my grandmother worries about me more than a grandma should
getting to grow up having different sets of parents (grandparents, parents and uncles)
camping
funny people
ranching
watching an animal give birth/be born
bringing people together
drinking out of streams, and jumping in the really cold ones
culture
exercise(climbing, running, lifting, anything really)
things not yet discovered


Things that i hate:
watching people around me hurt and not being able to fix it
watching people around me make bad decisions and not being able to stop them
drinking more than i should
hurting people i care about
being bad at things
debbie downers
getting out of sleeping bags when it's cold
ignorance
mean people, not towards me- i can handle it, but towards others
makeup on girls (a little is good at times, but wearing lots of makeup is like lying)
being treated the way i was in highschool
people who do not take care of their animals
when i don't spend enough time with my own
losing my temper with an animal
lying
watching an animal die painfully or suffer (especially if it was my fault, which has happened before, i will never forget it)
putting an animal down
people trying to take over what i'm doing, even if they are better at it, for chrissakes just lemme figure it out
worrying all the time
sitting in classrooms
when i am lazy
slow people
i don't hate people who cheat, i have good friends who do. but i myself hate the idea all together
settling



Things that hurt me:
a few people i love
my mom if she wants to (rarely, and only if i deserve it)
Myself
and someone else i haven't met yet will probably have that ability

Things i am scared of:
losing those i love
judgment
river kayaking (did it once, thought i was going to die)
disappointing certain people
losing myself
being vulnerable

The handle was cold to his palm. Cold like iron and frost. His head hurt, and sweat rolled off his temples. The room was hot, real hot. How else was he going to get out of this… if he got out. His eyes hurt, and he missed her. She wasn’t coming back though, he couldn’t make her come back. He wasn’t trying he guessed though. He looked at the gun. Jesus, it had power. A gun gives it’s owner so much power. He, right now, had a life and death choice. The sheer impact of it hit him then. The idea that when someone is killed, that’s it, they may live on somewhere else, but that they would not live to see another memory. Memories, these could be the last of his, what few he had, and wanted to keep. He remembered the cornfields back home, and remembered getting lost in the draw behind the old house hunting small game with his 22. He remembered smoking Marlboro lights with the neighbor boy and driving the back roads, counting the time in beers and watching the snakes go by in the hot sun. But, trouble had always found him it seemed. When he was young, just little things, but as men get bigger, money gets bigger and so do the consequences involved in handling things that other people don’t want you handling. This was it he guessed though. He felt his hand steady, and he lifted his eyes.

Anger in a boy isn’t natural. Boy’s chase girls, drink beer, and have a regular attendance in most general mischief; an expected scolding from a caring mother follows all of these activities, and often the subtle wrath of a father’s hand to the rear. Jake knew all this, and also knew that his life was not this. Jake’s life was anger, and it was the man that brought it down upon him.
The man was driven, and he drove those around him with a heated tongue that cracked like a bullwhip when contradicted. He had grown up on the ranch, and his father had run it before him. The man disapproved of his father, he was too soft and a sorry businessman, attributes that are worthless in the ranching world. A rancher judges those around him by their skills and honesty, most all of them talk about men in terms of what a hand he is. To be a good hand in the eye of other good hands is what every rancher strives for. The man was a hell of a hand. He was a man on fire, wheeling and dealing, working and ranting; a constructive hurricane striding forth with the foolish confidence of youth. But his growth had stunted, not physically, but internally. It was his greatest attribute, and his worst. He saw the world as if it were molded for his feet to tread upon. This gave the man an uncanny ability to convince those around him that he could light a fire in a rainstorm, without getting off his horse. But, with equal zeal, he could burn a relationship up like a wet haystack in midsummer.
The man angled much of his wrath towards his first son, Jake. The man started in after Jake when he was old enough to walk, scolding the boy with a harsh tongue for crying or whining. When Jake was 9, the man started putting Jake on “fresh” horses. They were the green-broke colts that had received only a hand full of rides in the winter months.
“I don’t wanna ride him yet Dad, last time he bucked hard and my shoulder still hurts.” Jake eyed the big sorrel colt standing in the pen. Mary had named him rocket for the white strip that ran up his nose and expanded at his forehead. He was a tall skinny colt and his withers were hardly enough for a saddle to set on.
“Jake, how do you think you’re ever gonna ride him with that attitude. Get with it boy, I ain’t got all day.”
Jake threw the blanket over the withers and looked back at the man in contempt.
“Go on boy, he’s just a goddamn colt. Them kind don’t have the strength to buck you off even if they want to.”
Jake eased the saddle on and began buckling the front cinch. He had barely finished buckling the saddle when rocket blew. The horse turned away from Jake, jerking the halter from the small boys hands he kicked his hind feet up not half a foot from Jakes chin.
“Goddamn it boy. I told you not to let go of that lead rope and what do you do? You leggo, just like a damn woman. I tell you what, you ignorant kids can’t listen to a single word of advice.”
The horse continued to buck as the man cursed the boy standing in the corral. Then Jake began to cry.
“Quit blubberin and put your chaps on, you’re gonna ride this son-of-a-bitch when I get through torturing his sorry ass.”
The man snatched his rope and leapt into the corral. Without hardly a flick of the wrist he sent it sailing into the back feet of the horse. He caught the left hind foot and pulled the rope tight. The horse bucked harder.
When Jake returned from the barn, chaps in hand, Rocket was standing in the corral shimmering in the light of midsummer. His nostrils expanded and contracted as his great body heaved. At 9, Jake thought him to be very much a monster.
“Get on boy, he’s ready.” Jake walked to the horse and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Easy boy, I’m not lookin for a fight,” Jake spoke to the horse as he lifted his foot into the stirrup. He stood up and swung his foot over the horse. As he sat and reached for his right stirrup, Rocket came alive. He dodged and weaved at first, but the movement of the figure on his back spooked the horse and sent him into a frenzy. The boy clung for all he was worth, but when the horse came down from a high leap, he hit the fence with his head and sent the boy flying high over the corral posts.
“Dammnit Jake, you gotta hold on to the bastard, he’s only gonna be worse on your next ride. Get up and get on again.”
The horse bucked Jake off twice more before he finally rode him long enough to satisfy the man. Jake hated the man for this too.
When Jake was in high school, he began helping out with the calving. In the winter/spring calving months, Jake set the Old Ben steel alarm clock for midnight, and then again at four. These nights in late winter and early spring, Jake would wake in the night and pull his coveralls and overshoes over his slight form, and start the old dodge. He didn’t wait for the truck to warm, a habit that received a solid lecture from the man, if he happened to wake to the slow churn of a diesel that hasn’t had time to warm it’s plugs. But Jake was tired, and waiting for the truck was waiting awake. Jake pulled the truck out from the carport and began the drive down to the barn, shivering in the frostbiting chill of the a.m. Jake’s fingers had numbed by the time he reached the barn and he took turns sitting on either hand as he passed the barn and drove on the feedlots. The cold didn’t make him angry, but the man that drove him out into it was always in his mind. In his mind when he reached the feedlots to find a heifer in mid-birth, struggling hopelessly to free the little creature whose protruding feet were already beginning to freeze.
The boy hurried always. Hurrying is an essential element of the working rancher, and the boys learn early. Springing from the pickup, Jake reached the prod that lay on the flatbed buried in the night’s drift of snow. He unchained the gate with the quick grace that one can only achieve in years of experience and swung it wide, pushing hard enough to send it around to the other fence, but not so hard as to create a ruckus when it arrived. Through the gate Jake transformed. He became elegant, almost catlike, losing the commotion of a hurried man. He slid through the cattle silently, but the life of the calf weighed heavily on his mind.
Jake eased the heifer towards the barn, she was slow, and in pain, and he did not rush her. Once in the barn Jake ran for the dodge to bring the man. The two would spend most of the remaining night pulling that new life form from the heifer. Usually the little ones would survive the strenuous activity, but the occasional poor soul would be extinguished before it ever saw the straw floor of the barn.
If there was time, he would return to his bed, but often he went straight to chores and returned home in time for a cup of coffee and a bite of eggs mom had prepared. Jake had learned to shower, eat and dress himself in a maximum time of about 20 minutes, often 15. He then woke his younger brother John and waited for his old sister Mary to emerge from the bathroom. Joseph was now 11, and Mary nearly grown at 16. Jake was a year younger than Mary, and Joseph was the accident. The three bundled figures piled into the ancient Oldsmobile grandma Ruby had left them and sped for the bus.
Mom was Jake’s savior, but she also was his loss. He was her first son, and like all mothers, she favored him. A first son is a mother’s masterpiece, he is part her, and part the man she married. She didn’t love him more than her other children, but she felt more through him. And, she worried for him. She brooded against the man. She loved the man more than any, but loving the man came with a heavy burden. The man didn’t listen. He was a relentless businessman, but also a spoiled youngest child with a soft-hearted father and an Irish mother. So, the relationship she had with him was hardly different than the mother’s; an exhausting battle to tame the nature of a beast.
But she didn’t do it willingly, and the stress nearly overtook her at times. Often, she would leave the bedroom to watch her children sleep. She watched over Jake the most. She could see his small figure breathing heavily under the sheets. He didn’t rest well, and talked often in his sleep; sometimes yelling and snarling, but other times whimpering and calling.

***
School was school, and all three children made good grades for the most part. Mary made A’s, Jake made B’s without touching a pencil outside of the classroom, and John made B’s and C’s, enduring frequent reprimands from the teachers for his behavior. The three loaded the bus at 3:30 and usually returned to the bus stop by the cemetery around 4:15 or 4:30 if the Johnsons were riding. In the summers the three would walk the mile and a half home, bickering often, but also playing games and trying to relish the moments they had away from work.
Before Mary and John ever had time to set down their books, Jake was upstairs changing clothes, his scrawny figure pulling on 28 in wrangler slim-fits and an old white T-shirt. His arms were sinew ridden and white from the winter clothing, and his ribs protruded, almost visible through his shirt. Weight was always a concern for Jake. At 5’8” he barley tipped a hundred and ten pounds, and it was a sore subject. The boys at school used to tease him about it, and Jake accepted it for a while, but a man can only take so much, and Jake was angry. When he was twelve, an older boy named Curtis Fields told Mary her breasts looked like mosquito bites. Jake fractured the boy’s ribs and broke his nose. Not willing to explain to the man and mother how it happened, he endured a half hour of beating with three feet of rubber hosing in the basement bent over the old pool table. It was worth it as he saw, Mary had saved him from the man more times than he could recall.
Mary was the binder. She had an uncanny ability to talk to the members of her family. She was full of fire like the man, but more importantly, Mary was wise. She was an old soul, full of compassion and understanding.
And Mary stood up to the man, never winning initially, but she wore on him down. The man once tried to get after Jake for forgetting to feed the fattening sale cattle. He had been drinking, as he did often in the evenings. A beer prior to dinner, and a double bourbon and water afterwards were a regular routine. The drinks were fun when the man and Mom had married, but when the times became stressful or cattle prices dropped, the drinks affected him differently, and he drank more of them. He could become a raging bull arguing for entertainment, or a complimentary blubbering sentimental, but never the latter with Jake. This night had become a raging bull night. Mary stood trembling between the man and her brother, as the man reddened. Saliva fell from his lips as they quivered at the height of his rage, but still Mary stood. The man was a bull, spears protruding from his sides; horns down he swayed and finally stumbled from the room in quite defeat.
Another time, the man had taken Jake and Mary out to gather two bulls from the hills. He had Jake saddle a little filly named Quick Sue, she was notorious for biting her riders and would spook at the shadows on the ground, often blowing up and bucking. Mary rode a nice old mare named Nancy, that had been her mother’s.
“Alright you two, grab your bridles.” Mary and Jake walked around the pickup to grab their tack.
“Shit,” Jake whispered.
“What?”
“I forgot my friggin bridle, the old man’s gonna kill me.”
“Use mine.” She whispered back.
“You know that wont work. He’ll notice, he always does.”
Jake saw the man eyeing him as he and Mary whispered.
“You forgot it, didn’t you? You dumb son-of-a-bitch, I’d think you were razed by cavemen. You’re ridin’ her anyways so get on.”
Jake walked to the back of the trailer, not about to argue with his fate. He grabbed the mares lead rope and brought her to were Mary and Nancy stood.
“I’m on. Hand me your lead rope and I’ll haze for you until we get the juice out of her.” Jake handed Mary the lead rope and eased gently on to the mare. The man looked at the two in disgust, but didn’t argue with Mary.
Always, Mary was there to reassure Jake when the man hurt him. But still, Jake was tortured. He was tortured with the discontentment of the man that was his father. His sides hurt at night when he felt his soul pressing against his ribs. Mary helped though; she made things better, and soothed his thoughts. And, she was on his side.
***

In January, just days away from Jake’s 16th birthday, Mary caught a sickness. She was helping mom in the kitchen when she fell for the first time. Mom helped her up into a chair and called the doctor from the phone in the utility room. Doc Acey couldn’t find any explanation for Mary’s condition, but told her to rest and drink some juice to try to increase her blood sugar. Mary rested, and drank the juice. The man was unmoved. Mary was just a woman, what she needed was a good spoon full of LA 200, an antibiotic made for cows, and some exercise.
The man rose Mary early the next morning and put her to work forking the old straw and afterbirth from the cold barn. Mary worked for most of the morning before she fell again, Jake saw her this time. He watched her slight figure tremble and drop to the floor. He ran to her and righted her body against the wall of the barn, but she did not revive. He pressed her chest and put his ear against her mouth to feel for breath. She did not breath, and he knew she wouldn’t. Mary was a buffer, and she had held Jake’s anger for several years, and saved him from the man.
The anger welled from his chest like the water spitting from an overfilled teakettle. Jake saw the man by the door, and his eyes glazed with the heat as he stood over Mary’s body. Jake rushed the man, a mere 100 pounds of fury. He was upon him before the man had time to take his hands from his coat. The two tumbled from the door and out into the snow. The man was far bigger than Jake, but the anger inside of the boy far overpowered the muscle that any man could possess.
He swung his fists like pistons, aiming at anything the man exposed.
“I’ll kill you… goddamn you. I’ll kill you.” He spoke between breaths. Jake could not be calmed and it had taken John, mother, and the Mexican hand to pull the boy from the man. The man survived, but suffered facial disfiguring, the loss of 4 teeth on his left side, and a disconnected retina.
***
Mom would have left the man, but couldn’t. A ranch wife is tied to her husband, and will cling to him no matter the circumstance, even if she must become cold in the heart. The man was reserved after the incident. He chose to let his work enslave him, and kept his whiskey company more often than he looked at his wife. He couldn’t, he had lost big in a hand that he had rigged himself. Mary may not have lived anyhow, but he had set himself up to take the blame, and the man took it.
Jake ran away. And John grew up alone.

100 Word Story
He picked out a Yamaha XS650 Special. He paid the man nine hundred in cash and rode it to Maine to meet a girl he met online. She met him at a truck stop south of town. The two drove to a motel 6 and made love to TV infomercials. She didn’t look like the pictures she’d sent, and he didn’t care. It wasn’t romantic, but truckdriver26 and barmaid087 disappeared from the Internet, along with two lonely souls that worried about money and dying alone. A neighbor couple moved in next door. They’re growing peaches and painting the house yellow.

I once read something about man being very similar to a moth and flame. The flame is hot, and yet the moth strives to be engulfed. The difference though, between man and moth, is that man knows his peril and yet he tumbles into the flame with equal zeal.
The flame resembles everything the man feels he needs or wants. He chases it, not gracefully, but rather like a street fighter careening recklessly through a glass window. The man knows not what he chases, only that there is emptiness inside of him.

Archie

I met Archie when I was 18, near the end of my fifth summer working for my grandfather on his ranch. My grandfather had hired Walter Simmons to build a fence across the Whitecreek canyon, and had offered my help to cheapen the cost. Archie was hired to cut the trees that stood in the marked fence line. I have no deep ties with the man, but I found myself fascinated by his character and uncanny way of living. And, other people in the community seemed fascinated, and growing up I heard lots of stories about the old man and his feats. Some could have been stretched, due to the lack of entertainment in small town Wyoming, but nobody could argue with the truth; Archie had run a one-man logging business for more than fifty years.
Archie ran a sawmill on my grandfather’s place, and in return gave the ranch lumber. The locals often joked at his old sawmill that consisted of a hand-built wooden shack over a rusted saw blade attached to the belt of a bedless semi. His lumberyard was riddled with homemade equipment. There was a tractor with a loader bucket rigged into the PTO, and a greasy backhoe arm rigged onto the back of a 1972 hoodless Dodge one-ton. They referred to his sideshow as Archie’s Thick and Thin lumber; ideal for leaky log cabin roof construction and hazardous uneven porch projects. But, Archie got by, and regardless, when locals needed cheap lumber, he was the man to talk to.
Archie was born on a frostbitten January day in 1939 to Harry and Ira Grisham. Ira had given birth to the boy in a log cabin at the base of the Big Horn mountains that Harry had built. Harry had logged all his life, and his father had homesteaded in Wyoming at some time in the 1890’s. Logging was a Grisham tradition.
Archie was the fifth and youngest child to Harry and Ira, and like his two older brothers, he would log. The Grishams were industrious, tough, and poor; ideal traits for a small time logger. Archie grew up riding on the back of the old logging trucks. The kids sat on the gigantic logs, swinging their feet off the back of the truck as Harry skillfully guided the Detroit diesel down the mountain at thirty five and forty miles an hour; much faster than many men will drive a modern truck down that widow-maker of a road.
When Archie was ten, he lost his brother Riley. Harry had sent Riley into a canyon to run a cable around a freshly cut log. The cable was worn, and had become hairy with rusty broken iron fibers. Riley had successfully attached the cable at the base of the log and was standing beneath the log when Harry started the wench. When the log was halfway up the canyon side, the cable snapped and sent the log careening down the hillside. Riley had tried to cover behind another standing tree, but the roots had rotted from its base and his attempt was unsuccessful.
Regardless, the Grishams were loggers, and in the midst of the worst time, men cling to what they know. A man can engulf himself in the work, and make his job of such an importance that it can overpower his feelings. Archie was still too young to understand his brother’s death. But, it isn’t the event of death that affects children at that age so much as the way the people they look up to react in it’s wake. Archie saw his father battle his sadness in work, and learned to do the same.
And so it goes; by age fifteen, Archie was the only remaining son in the Grisham family. Some men are luckier than others, not smarter, or more cautious- just lucky. A logger watches his life flash before his eyes more than a handful of times before his is an old man, if he is to become an old man. Archie had ducked under logs as big around as the wheel of a semi, he broke limbs when he should have lost them, and dodged death when she should have taken him. And he had honestly believed that God must have somehow saved him, and he wondered why.
Yet, when I met Archie, he lived with more zeal than any man I had seen before. His eyes lit up as he arched his back and took a mental measurement of the tree, and the crash it would make when he felled it. He wore an old flannel shirt and a pair oversized coveralls he had picked up at a second hand joint. He pushed his square rimmed glasses up between his eyes with one of his gnarled hands and then palmed his tobacco-stained beard in amusement. He was a funny looking old man, very hairy seeing as the Grishams were never to concerned with visual appeal. Hair protruded from his ears and nose meeting the beard that grew into his neck. He had the hunchback of a man that had lifted trees far more than his body should have allowed, and he stood on his good hip to rest the sorry one plagued with arthritis. It seemed impossible that a seventy-year-old man who had lived on poached game and Wonder-bread peanut butter sandwiches could still wield such a saw.
He took a great heave on the saw cord and set the engine afire. The old man’s entire frame shook with the weight of the saw as he notched the tree on the uphill face. Archie kept all his saws razor sharp, and the blade glided into the grain like a steak knife in soft butter. He notched the tree twice and then let the saw descend into the heart of the beast. The tree shuddered and slowly began to lean, but it’s fall was withheld by another tree below.
“Damn, I figured she’d go head an’ fall.” Archie’s English was far from perfected; his education had been stunted at the fifth grade and with very few teeth left his language was tough to distinguish. Undiscouraged, Archie sawed a limb from a nearby tree and attempted to pry the tree from its base. Scared to death, I scrambled further up the hill to stand behind another tree and pray the old man didn’t catch the base of the log with his chest.
“Jesus Christ,” Walter’s eyes were as big as chicken eggs as he paused from his work and gaped at the crazy old loon jumping up and down heaving on his homemade crowbar. The limb didn’t last long with Archie’s little frame wrenching on it like a frenzied badger in a rabbit snare. Without missing a beat, Archie picked his saw up and walked uphill, leaving Walter and I thoroughly confused as to what he had in mind.
He surveyed another large tree that was several yards uphill from his original foe.
“Good God, he’s gonna go for the bank shot,” Walter mumbled, breathing hard just from watching the man at work. The two of us leapt for cover further uphill to save ourselves from a certain violent death. And so, Archie tore into the defenseless, seemingly just excited with the whole endeavor. With the skill of an experienced demolitionist, Archie felled the tree directly into the target and sent both specimens to the floor of the canyon with a deafening crash.
Archie could barely contain himself as victory burst from his little body. Smiling he looked at the two of us.
“Well, I spect that’ll do ‘er. You boys go ahead and fence away, I’ll come back later and wench ‘em up.”
And so I met Archie Grisham in his element. I realized that men like Archie have met the edge of life, and didn’t see any other way but to live clinging to it. Most would call him lonely; his wife had left him for spending too much time with the edge of life, and his son-in-laws were too “concerned with brakes and all that safety business” to work with the wild old fool. But, Archie wasn’t lonely; he spent his time a mountain goat roaming the mountain in search of taller trees with heavier falls.
Almost a decade later, long after I had left my grandfather’s, two hunters found Archie’s truck crushed under a lodge-pole pine in the high country of the Bighorns. Archie and his beloved Husqvarna saw were nowhere in sight. Several search parties went out in search of the man, but found only a broken saw chain and a graveyard of fallen trees.