Well, after procrastinating and stalling for months, I finally moved buzztail to a new home. I knew it was just a matter of time, but finally decided to get the hair pulling and head banging over with, and here it is.

I’m not going to move the whole site over here — I have over three and a half years worth of stuff on the old site and I don’t want to fill up my space here with it. Much of it is out of date anyway. I’ll manually move a handful of posts from my archives and some links and resources that I want to keep, but basically I’ll start fresh.  I’ll be able to add features and pages that I couldn’t before, and will expand this blog into other avenues as I go along.

A little patience on your part will be greatly appreciated as I rebuild this thing and begin to take it where I want to go. It’ll take me awhile. In the meantime, all the old archives and links are still live over at the old site should you want to check anything.

Thanks all, and I hope you enjoy what you find over here.

pj

I obviously believe in protecting wilderness. No question about it, and the more the better. Large, wild, protected areas. Connecting corridors. Intact ecosystems — there’s much left to fight for but little left to compromise. Nay, there’s nothing left to compromise, and as long as there is strength left in this gnarly old body of mine to fight on, and the strength in my two typing fingers to continue to peck away, continue it I will. That’s a promise, to myself as much as anybody. I can’t stand by and idly watch while the high priests of greed and profit have their way with this dear home of ours. Just can’t do it.

As important as that is, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that it’s just as important, if not more so, to get out there and partake of that glorious wildness, whether it be for recreation, or personal challenge, or to feed the spirit, or whatever reason there may be. Or for no reason at all other than to simply be there. With that in mind, I will be adding a new category of links to sites and blogs about hiking and backpacking and wilderness travel and all that good stuff. I will be adding to it as I find new and interesting ones. Go and see, and if you know of any good sites let me know. I’d be much obliged. Happy trails.

(from the archives)

Missoula’s not bad for a town. I can kick back in my old recliner, look out my window to the north, and watch the late afternoon winter sun light up the Rattlesnake Range. They give off a glow this time of year that I never tire of watching. I make a point of doing it every day. Somebody’s got to do it, somebody has to watch this stuff. I’ll gladly accept the job.

I’ve been hearing it said for years here in Montana, and it probably is said elsewhere too though I wouldn’t know, that you can’t eat the scenery. No doubt you’ve heard that one. I always have to shake my head in sorrow for the poor saps who feel that way. What a foolish, impoverished way to look at this great, big, beautiful wild world of ours. At least what’s left of it. Have we become that conditioned to a throwaway gas-powered electrified computerized pasteurized homogenized and otherwise technified and consumerized culture that we are numb to the natural world around us? Gawd I hope not — I’ll fight that until my dying breath.

I’ve lived a lucky life so far, though I know it’s only partly luck. A good bit of it has been of my own choosing. I’ve never had much in the way of money, and I’ve never worried about it much. I know how to get by. What I have had, what I feel very lucky for, is the time to wander wilderness trails both here in western Montana, and before that in the canoe country of northern Minnesota and Canada. I wouldn’t trade places with anybody for any amount of money in the world. I’ve come face to face with bears and moose and mountain goats and mountain lions. I’ve been chased off of mountains by sudden lightning storms. I’ve been caught in sudden squalls while paddling a canoe across a big lake that suddenly seemed to have gotten a whole lot bigger. I’ve slept in a tent at thirty-five below. I’ve also witnessed some mighty sunsets, some of the most magnificent country on the face of the earth, and stumbled onto canyons and lakes and creeks and waterfalls that are so gut-wrenchingly perfect that it hurts. And these are the times, all of them, when I’ve felt the most alive. And the most grateful to be alive. No, I wouldn’t trade any of it away, and I’ll fight to make sure that the generations that follow me have the same opportunities. It’s the least I can do for them.

So, I guess the point of this rambling is that no, you can’t eat the scenery. But it can feed you in ways that mere money can’t even come close to doing.

(from the archives)

Some years back I lived for a while up the East Fork of the Bitterroot in the Sapphire Mountains, a couple of miles or so off the edge of the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness. I spent about five or six summers up there, and every year around the summer solstice I would come across a band of several mountain goats. It was like clockwork — they would come down from high up in the Sapphires to where the grass and bushes were starting to green up, and then follow the new growth back up to the high country as the snow receded. Every year I would spend about a week hanging out with them. Or to be more accurate, they hung out with me. I never tried to get very close — I was content to sit in the rocks about a hundred yards or so away from them and just watch. Invariably they would gradually wander over to me and lounge around, sometimes as close as six to eight feet away. They didn’t fear me, I didn’t fear them, and we all got along great.

I met this little guy in the photo the first year I saw the goats. At first he was a little leery of me and would come over and do this tough-guy act for a moment and then run back and hide behind his mother. Curiosity would always get the best of him though, and he’d be back again, just yards away. Soon he was following me everywhere I went. Mama was a little leery of me at first too, but she soon became used to me and paid me no mind even when her little one was tagging along at my heels. The last time I saw him, five or six years later, he was growing into a fine looking billy, and though he didn’t hang with mama anymore he did hang with the band. I could always recognize him by the distinctive gait he had, impossible to explain but just as impossible to miss. And he’d remember me. He always came over to see me, and he always stayed close by.

I’ve been a lucky man. As I age I’ll have a vast store of wilderness memories to reflect on. Those times spent hanging out with a band of mountain goats will rank very high on my memory list.