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<\/p>\nAnd all three of them involved birds and wildlife in some way.<\/p>\n
Fair warning, today’s edition of Feathered Photography will be a huge change of pace. No photos of birds or other wildlife are included and it’s all quite personal but for me at least it does have a connection to my interest in and passion for animals and some of the things I include make me feel introspective and extremely aware of my mortality. I think you’ll see why.<\/p>\n
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Despite that sweet smile I was a terror as a little kid. I was constantly on the go, getting into trouble at every turn and I wouldn’t nap so my mother never had a break. This photo was taken professionally in town (Cut Bank, Montana) probably in 1948 when I was about 2 years old. I simply refused to cooperate for the photographer so my dad, knowing I was fascinated by hand tools even at that age, ran out to the car and grabbed a pair of needle-nosed pliars for me to play with while the photographer snapped away.<\/p>\n
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At the time we lived in a very small house on the family farm. As you see it had a fence around the yard but it was mostly intended to keep the Indian cattle out of our yard during winter when they run free (our farm is on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation). But during summer the fence had no gates and there’s a creek nearby just out of frame to the right that posed a huge danger for someone like me.<\/p>\n
So my folks rigged up a fail-safe system to keep me safe in the yard and out of the creek. They put me in a harness with what we always called “clothesline rope” attached to the harness at one end and to something else at the other end to keep me from wandering. That’s me on the left with my little friend Jimmy Hill playing with a lawn sprinkler. Jimmy was my age and his folks liked the idea so well they copied it and bought him his own harness.<\/p>\n
Not long after this photo was taken my folks and I along with some family friends including their young son my age (Robbie Humes I believe but it could have been Jimmy) drove to the nearby mountains to spend a pleasant day at Table Bay on Flathead Lake. The put both of us in harnesses and tied the ropes to trees to keep us out of the water as we endlessly threw rocks into the lake which fascinated us immensely. When it began to rain lightly all four adults retreated to the car very close to the water so they could keep an eye on us as we continued to play near the water.<\/p>\n
Suddenly one of our parents in the car looked up to see an adult black bear that had come out of the thick trees and was so close to us little kids that mom thought we were already doomed – the bear was within just a few feet of us. My dad honked the horn and then both fathers scrambled out of the car and without thinking rushed the bear as they hollered. Thankfully the bear retreated and we were rescued but it could have gone either way.<\/p>\n
That was my first experience with bears, the first of quite a few. I was too young to remember the incident now but I sure heard the story a lot growing up. My mom often reminded me of how delicious two little toddlers must have looked to a hungry bear.<\/p>\n
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A couple of years later when this photo was taken in my favorite cowboy outfit I was still a little terror. They weren’t putting me in the harness anymore but I was still supposed to stay in the yard and I was old enough that I should have been able to be (mostly) trusted to do so.<\/p>\n
But that early summer when the creek was flooded by runoff migrating ducks flocked to it in fairly large numbers and I was absolutely fascinated by those quackers. So, you guessed it, one day I sneaked out of the yard and went down to the widest part of the creek where the ducks congregated to check them out. It was still pretty cold (after all, this is Montana) so I had fairly heavy clothes on. I have no memory of the incident but somehow I ended up in the creek and floundering. At that age I didn’t even know how to dog paddle and all those heavy clothes were dragging me down.<\/p>\n
By chance (a very, very long chance way out in the country like that) a friend of the family, Harvey Ehlert, happened to be driving down the hill on the dirt road to our house and noticed me face down in the water. In a panic he parked his car on the road, ran down the slope to the creek and pulled me out of the water by the scruff of the neck. I recovered quickly so apparently I didn’t swallow much water but my mom kept an eagle eye on me after that, for much too long if you had asked me while I was growing up.<\/p>\n
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Photo by Dany Boutin in Public Domain\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n This is Waterton Lakes National Park, a Canadian park just over the border in Alberta and adjacent to Glacier National Park (the mountains in the far distance are actually in GNP). Like Glacier, this park was almost like a second home to me because my mother was Canadian and grew up in the small town of Glenwood just a few miles away from Waterton. If you’re familiar with Waterton this photo was taken from the iconic Prince of Wales Hotel.<\/p>\n One summer soon after the Fourth of July when I was perhaps 10-11 years old a small group of us cousins and friends of about the same age hiked the relatively short Bear’s Hump Trail just out of frame to the right. On our way back down we spotted a mama black bear with at least one cub in the thick vegetation perhaps 100′ below us at the bottom of a steep incline. By this age I’d seen a good number of bears in both Glacier and Waterton so I was familiar with them and none of us were particularly concerned because to us the steep incline seemed like an effective barrier between us and the bears and they weren’t paying any attention to us anyway. We thought.<\/p>\n But then things got ugly. One of the kids on the group (I honestly can’t remember who it was) pulled a firecracker out of their pocket, lit it and threw it down the incline toward the bears. When the firecracker went off mama bear charged us in an instant, coming up that incline so fast it seemed like it must be downhill instead of steeply up. Seeing her coming at us that fast scared the poop out of all of us. In a panic everyone took off running down the narrow trail but I started out behind everyone else so I was the bear’s obvious target. I looked back only twice. The first time mama bear was on the trail directly behind me and coming fast so I was literally scared to death and turned on whatever afterburner I had as a runner. I was in such a panic I was extremely lucky I didn’t stumble and fall on the rough trail.<\/p>\n The second time I looked back she was nowhere to be seen. Apparently she’d abandoned the chase and returned to her cub(s). All of us made it back to the Waterton township safely but it was a long time before we ever told any adults about it. Damn, kids can be stupid.<\/p>\n So there you have it, my three brushes with death as a young boy. As an adult I often think of them and how close I came to not having a future. And all three of them involved birds and wildlife in some manner, the very things that sustain me today.<\/p>\n I find that ironic.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And all three of them involved birds and wildlife in some way.<\/p>\n