Wow! My head is spinning. I'll try to answer.
Are you going to volunteer? If so, every year? For how many weeks?
My Pard has been volunteering for about fifteen years. He got me interested about five years ago, and I volunteered in 2009, but in 2010 was too laid up to get out the door, let alone climb the mountain. This year I hope to be up for about five days.
The gravestone of Indian Adams....Does the Newspaper and/or Historical Society have a copy of that picture and location? There may be a relative of his that is looking for the location....
I found that grave in 2008 quite by accident. It is on the state line between Idaho and Montana, about a mile and a half from Nez Perce Pass, which is where the Southern Nez Perce Trail took Nez Perce People to the buffalo from the Wallowa country for hundreds of years. Think of it! Men, women, and children! Thousands of them. What adventures did they have? The first white man to cross the trail was a missionary, and he wrote "For the love of God, if you have any regard for humankind, NEVER bring a woman over this trail!" Little did he know... In 1853 the route was surveyed as a potential railroad route, but it's too rough.
I happened to be in Montana when a man named Louis Adams spoke at a program at Traveler's Rest (Where Louis and Clark camped in 1805 and 1806). I guessed that he might be from the same Adams family related to the grave, so I went to the program hoping to ask him about it. As luck would have it, he told many stories, one of which was how his grand father died in 1900 on a hunting trip, and was buried on the state line. The other stories were about Salish monsters, but this one was true. I went up and talked to him, and he gave me his phone number. I'm going to call him to tell him that we visited his grandfather's grave again, and left small gifts to honor it -- as have many other passers by.
And clematis....wonder if the seeds blew and located up there...Will that become a rogue plant, or will it live comfortably with the other plant life there?
I think the clematis probably came in on some hay or straw that the outfitters bring into their camps. They are required to use only certified weed free hay, but sometimes things slip through.
Did you see many animals on this trip? Other than the little deer (was he in the trees in the dark sheltered place?
We saw quite a few deer and a couple of elk. And a bald eagle or two.
I'm happy you got a chance to go, MM...what good fun for you and your Pard....Did he work with you before? Thanks for the pictures!!!
My Pard and I have been friends since before either of us can remember, which makes it at least sixty years. In all that time we've never had a cross word. He is less than a year older than I but was always a year ahead in school. When we were both old enough to work for the Forest Service we walked into the Ranger's Office and asked for a job. The Ranger said "Which lookout do you want?" He got Hidden Peak, and I got Diablo, our first choices. He spent another summer on Hidden Peak, but I became a fire guard at Elk Summit. The third year I started working on the timber crew and he got married and moved to California. Fortunately, he came back.
His father died last November and my mother died in April. We both held each other up, which made it much easier. |
