The Vacation
Driving into Council I was amazed at the local Shell gas station’s price of 2.42 per gallon of mid-grade gasoline. The same stuff in Salt Lake was 2.28. Supply and demand my ass. Tell me, how can the demand be higher in a town of just over 900 people than it is in a metro area of over a million?
Anyway, I digress.
One of the highlights of the vacation was our camping trip with a couple of friends; Rob and his wife Kim. We drove up to an area out of McCall, Goose lake road to be exact. We went above Hazard Lake, kept to the right heading towards Little French Creek towards the Hershey Point Lookout, and found a great camping spot over an area called Elk Meadows.
On the way we stopped in a little antique shop/coffee house for what I believe to be the best damn cappuccino in Central Idaho. For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place. When I get my credit card statements back I’ll be sure and make note and mention them. Anyway, we stopped and got our cappuccino and I struck up a conversation with the proprietor. He mentioned that he’d just read in the local paper that the Fish and Game department was bragging about dumping a bunch of tiger muskies—a beast that is a cross between a northern pike and a muskellunge—into many of the backcountry lakes in an attempt to deplete the eastern brook trout population. See, the eastern brook trout is not indigenous to Idaho. Some time in the 1930’s they were planted in a few streams and took off like gangbusters. As a result they’ve practically chased out the native rainbow. Sure, in the streams like the Salmon River and Snake, you can catch rainbows like nobody’s business, but in many of the backcountry lakes the brookie is what you are most likely to catch. They are so plentiful that the limit is 25. Yes, 25 freakin’ brookies. Stop by the gas n go, grab a bunch of worms, then go to almost any high mountain lake, and you can catch a shit-load of brookies and have one hell of a fish fry.
The Fish and Game department stated in the article that they wanted to kill off most of the brookies with the tiger muskies then gill the tiger muskies out of the lakes. Then they planned on planting rainbow trout back into the lakes because that’s what anglers wanted. This was much to the chagrin of the coffee house proprietor. He, like most locals, prefers the brookies to the rainbow simply because they taste better. The Fish and Game, however, is interested in catering to the pompous catch and release crowd who live in the cities and come in from other states. They spend lots of money buying fishing licenses and then lots of gas money to drive into the mountains, commune with nature, catch a rainbow and then throw it back. This is something that to most locals is patently absurd. They sure as hell aren’t going to go traipsing about the wilds to catch a fish simply to throw it back. It’s fuckin’ goofy. And, most of the locals prefer the taste of a brookie over a rainbow.
Just mere days before we left for this camping trip my dad was reminiscing about all the brookies in those lakes and how it was such a pleasure to eat them right out of the lake; roasted on an open flame and how he hated catching rainbows because they taste like shit. I actually began to struggle with how I was going to inform him that that was all about to change.
When we got to Hazard Lake we stopped for a little break and I was amazed at how things had changed since the last time I’d been to Hazard Lake proper some three decades prior. Then it was truly a back-country lake requiring what seemed an eternity on rough road to get to. Once there you could find a secluded, shady camping spot pretty easy in and among the thick timber that surrounded the lake. The road is still a bit slow-going in spots, but now there are developed camping spots around the lake that require a fee. I’m talking paved pads and a handicapped equipped hand-crank water pump. The place had a few campers parked like a small city in the making and I saw at least two people carrying what appeared to be thousand-dollar fly rods. Also, the lake was just shy of a moonscape in that most of the trees had been burned back in—I believe—1993 when 330,000 acres went up in the Corral Complex fire. That was the one where then President Clinton dropped in via helicopter to give a pep talk to the thousands of firefighters and National Guardsmen. The fire burned until the snow fell.
We continued past Hazard Lake and towards Hershey Point, to the head waters of Little French Creek, traveling through what seemed an endless landscape of burned forest. The scope of the burn is almost incomprehensible. Intermittently among the vast acreage of carnage there would be an inexplicable patch of forest that had somehow survived the inferno; a gray, dead sea of burned landscape speckled with an occasional patch of pristine beauty. Just off the road we found just such a spot along side of a creek coming from the snowmelt in the mountains above. It appeared to be a hunting camp with an ample stock of split wood. Rob and I agreed that this place would be perfect to set up camp. Besides, everyone, with the exception of my son, had a strong hankering for a beer which could only happen once camp was set up.
Ok, I’m lying. The beer didn’t wait until after camp was set up. By the time we got there, I’d already put away three. New Castles if I must admit; the best damned beer God ever created.
After we set up camp and put back a few more beers we decided to load up in the truck and do some exploring to see how far the road might take us. The biggest impediment was the prospect of wind-fallen burned trees that had landed across the road. Since we’d managed to forget to bring the chainsaw with us, it was a concern. About two miles up the road from the camp we saw 7 wolf pups in the middle of the road. They were romping about, playing grab-ass and then stopped and gawked at our appearance. I figured them to be around 8 to 10 weeks of age and they didn’t seem overly concerned with our presence. As we got within 40 yards or so they split up; 4 going up the hill from the road, and 3 heading down the hill. Over the last ten years or so, since the reintroduction of wolves to this part of the country, they have done quite well. Better, in fact, than I think anyone had anticipated. So good in fact that they have become a bit of a nuisance to the point that there will be a hunting season on them to thin them out. Seeing 7 pups made me understand their voracious appetite for reproduction. You will very rarely, if ever, see that many coyote pups. The most I’ve ever seen are three and coyote pups have a much larger mortality rate than wolves. Think about that and than consider that coyotes are almost always shot on sight, and then realize that there are more coyotes there than there are crooked politicians and you get an idea of just how well the wolves have done since reintroduction. Ask the cattle and sheep rancher too. Especially the one who lost 30 calves to a pack just outside of Council.
Don’t get me wrong. Unlike most people in that area, I’m not of the mindset that wolves should be exterminated like they almost were over the last century. Notice I said almost. That’s because it’s a myth that the wolves were exterminated from Central Idaho. Oh, they tried to exterminate them for sure, but there have always been wolves there. Not many, but they were there. Now, after the so called reintroduction, they are rampant. Love it or hate it, the fact is that people live there now and always will until some global catastrophe or meteor or whatever occurs. It will never be like it was before humans come around. That’s the reality. Since that’s the reality, it means that there has to be some middle ground. In fact there will be middle ground no matter what some government lackey tries to do or say. I guarantee it. The thinning has already begun.
Anyway, I did rather enjoy seeing those wolf pups. The next morning when we woke up and crawled from our tents, we noticed two sets of adult wolf tracks that had paid a cautious visit to the parameters of our campsite. Something, we aren’t sure because we couldn’t verify with immediate tracks, pissed all over Rob’s tent. I can’t imagine a wolf coming in our camp to do it, but because Rob is a rancher and there is a natural hatred of wolves in him, well, hell, maybe the wolf thought to itself, I’m going to piss all over this asshole’s tent. Ok, I’m starting to sound like Shirley McLean.