RIDE TO A BEAR
Some dreams subside with time; others remain, prowling your soul, even though they seem as unobtainable as the fountain of youth. As a boy hunting whitetails in the Allegheny Mountains, like many Easterners I dreamed of packing into the wilds of the West on a big-game hunt. At the half-century mark I managed to drag that dream from a coal-mine-like hole of my memory and make it come true. I saddled a horse and rode into Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains with a rifle.
Ten miles from civilization, I tensed in the saddle as my mount negotiated a tight trail above Horse Creek. The terrain was so steep I could almost lean in the saddle, reach out and touch the ground on the uphill side. I felt like I was in the heart of 1800s America, in the center of everything wild. I was riding a horse, carrying a rifle and breathing possibly the cleanest air my lungs had ever consumed. And, I was coursing the watershed of
