post 26, Coyote in trap

Coyote in a trap, 1988. See also, posts 01, 03, 06, 10, 16, and 21. The location is at a waterhole on Oregon's High Desert. Some ranchers just set traps and then forget them for long periods--partly because distances are so great. There probably isn't a ranch, or anything else, within 30 miles of this waterhole. But all ranchers are not that way. Some of them release coyotes they find in traps just like I did.

When I walked up to the coyote, his eyes were flashing fire, his teeth were bared, and he was tensed and ready to fight to the death. I told him, "I'm not going to hurt you". The fire went out of his eyes and his body went limp. With my bare hands just inches from his mouth I took off the trap. It must have hurt, but he stoically remained calm. With the trap off, he walked a few yards away and then turned to say thank you. His leg was not badly damaged. I'm sure he recovered okay.

post 25, Testing COMPROMISE

Testing COMPROMISE, 1992. See also posts 01, 02, 05, 11 and 19. A new boat design never gets enough testing. If you tried to do a really adequate job you would spend your life playing with toy boats and never make one full size.

I didn't have any radio control apparatus for guiding the model so I just used a fishing rod and spinning reel to reel it back in after each run. That was more positive anyway. COMPROMISE was designed for extreme shoal draft river gunk holing and only occasional ocean use--primarily for changing rivers. Speed and efficiency at sailing was not really a consideration as long as she was capable of sailing. Her only engine was a ten-horse Seagull outboard. But even occasional ocean use meant she had to be able to take it--whatever "it" happened to be. The most unpleasant sailing I've ever encountered (with INTEGRITY) was just off the mouth of the Columbia River, still in view of land.

Primary causes of loss of life on the oceans are boats that turn upside down (capsize) or sink. For me, that situation is ridiculous, at least for "pleasure boats". There is nothing pleasurable involved with capsizing or sinking and without too much trouble a boat can be designed that cannot capsize or sink.

To make sure that a boat cannot possibly sink you only have to ensure that the sum of its materials has positive buoyancy. Reduce the heavy metal in the boat to the bare minimum and make sure there's a lot of light material like light wood or Styrofoam to compensate for the metal. Then to make sure the boat cannot possibly capsize, you put the light stuff on top and the heavy stuff down low. The principles are so simple and fool proof and the contemplation of drowning is so distasteful that I feel boat designers are insane to not give this matter careful consideration.

But everyone focuses on speed or comforts and conveniences, and no one imagines that their boat will ever encounter any difficulties.
The bottom of COMPROMISE was flat four-inch thick solid doug fir to withstand beaching on unknown shores. Her sides were two-inch thick spruce, a very light wood. Her large cabin top was six inch thick Styrofoam sandwiched between three-eighths inch plywood.

The heaviest permanently installed member of COMPROMISE was her diesel burning stove. She did have five anchors--you always want plenty of anchors--and there was a little anchor chain and the Seagull outboard, but the anchors, chain and outboard could have been heaved overboard in just a minute or two if that became necessary. Anchors and their chain must always be stored where they can be reached instantly.

A sailboat needs weight down low to stand up to her sail. COMPROMISE, like INTEGRITY before her, carried her ballast in about 30 five-gallon jugs, most of which held drinking water. They were all securely lashed to the very bottom of the boat. The water was heavy enough to hold the sail up to the wind, but if the boat were badly holed the water jugs, being of neutral buoyancy, would not try to sink the boat. In fact, they could be rapidly re-filled with air to ensure that the crippled boat would still ride high in the water.

post 24. Mustang

A mustang being broke to ride, 1988. See also posts 12 and 18. The wooden saddle on Maude is the one I showed being built in post 18. It looked a little odd but it functioned beautifully.

Maude was a six year old mare, mature and set in her wild ways, and she was not easy to work with. With her tied in the corral I got her to accept the saddle, and me sitting in the saddle, but when I tried working around her head she just went berserk. That isn't normal, but horses get peculiar phobias just like people do. I was afraid she might do serious damage to herself.

When you're breaking horses you want the job to keep progressing smoothly and fairly rapidly. If you get hung up on some aspect of it you may quickly do more damage then good with the horse getting the idea that they are in control.

Inventions don't just pop out of the blue. Our brain is a computer, and like any computer it can't manufacture coherent data from a vacuum. It can only process data that it newly acquires or that it holds in memory. Inventions come from observations or remembered observations.
While focused intently on this headstrong horse with a head phobia, I suddenly recalled working with a quite wild little welsh-arab filly 20 years earlier. At that time I was sincerely trying to blend into civilization. I had a full time job as Instrument Man at the U. of Idaho Physics Dept. and I was also trying to moonlight and start my own hog farm, which was a full time job. I had no time for messing with untrained equines. But when this beautiful little chocolate brown two-year-old filly pranced into the ring at the livestock auction, and it looked like she was being sold for pet food, I couldn't let that happen. I had to rescue her.

When I brought her home in the stock truck, I had to do something with her immediately because I had other pressing work to do. She had never been worked with at all before and she was as wild as a ranch-raised horse can be. I had gotten a halter and rope on her at the sale yard with the help of the crew and the chute facilities there, but I didn't dare take the rope off or I would never catch her again.

In the process of cobbling up a haywire hog set-up, I had acquired several old pea boxes. These were about four by six by three feet high and had once been made to each hold a ton of dry peas in a pea warehouse. I didn't have time to analyze the situation. I just tied the end of the filly's rope to a corner of a pea box and opened the tailgate of the truck to let her jump out. She hit the ground running and jerked the box for a yard or two when she hit the end of the rope. She fought frantically for ten minutes or so, but the box would always slide a few feet to cushion her frantic jerks and she wasn't hurting herself. The box was too heavy for her to drag very far when she was tied by the head and she soon gave up.

Sometime later I was walking past the filly doing my hog chores, and I realized that I had to do something with her. Without thinking much about what to do, I worked her up close with her chin touching the box and tied the rope like that. Then I climbed right in the box and walked right up to the filly's head. Of course she jerked around, but the box always gave a little with her jerks, so she didn't hurt herself. And she couldn't jerk away from me because I came with the box. In ten minutes she tired out and was eating hay out of my hand. (That isn't a sign of being tame. It's a nervous, compulsive, reaction all horses will do when they give up.)

When I was struggling to cope with Maude, my brain brought that memory out of long-term storage, and I knew it was the answer. I asked the ranch manager if I could build a horse-training sled out of some old three-quarter inch plywood and junk lumber I saw stacked up. He readily agreed because they also worked with horses regularly. If I remember right, the sled in the photo is about four by six by almost four feet from the ground to the top. It's built hell for stout with steel strap reinforcing at the corners and it's heavy so a wild horse can't just rip it apart. The box is on sled runners so it could be used for training draft horses to pull. The back of the box has a wide V notch so a guy can get in or out easily.

The training sled worked beautifully. After a half hour I could do anything I wanted to Maude's head and she docilely accepted it. In later posts I'll show photos of the sled with other wild mustangs being trained. The construction of the sled doesn't quite fit my Stone Age hunter-gatherer goal, but I count it as being one of my most practical inventions.

post 23, Playing Stone Age Aborigine

Playing Stone Age aborigine in the mountains of northeast Oregon, cutting a potential sarviceberry bow stave, 1976. See also posts 05, 13, 15 and 20. The axe head was tough dense basalt flaked to shape. An axe head ground smooth would last much longer before chipping to a worthless dull edge, but the grinding--with natural materials--took much too long to seem practical. At least when you needed an axe for a job you wanted to do right now, it made more sense to just flake a new head when necessary. Maybe the indigenous natives who did have ground axe heads (for status symbols?) had slaves to do the grinding. A modern commercial Carborundum sharpening stone could do the grinding in a reasonable time--even on the basalt--but that sort of flagrant cheating did not fit the spirit of the endeavor.

The axe handle was good hardwood with a natural intertwined grain around the axe head. I remember that it took me a full day, working with only stone tools, to make the hole in the handle for the head. A beaver tooth embedded in a wood handle for use as a gouge or chisel might have done the job much faster--but I didn't have a beaver tooth right then.

I have had a full and interesting life, with funky boats, wild horses and primitive wilderness camping, but I have never consciously sought thrills. I especially have never intentionally put myself in a dangerous position. I think that would be the height of stupidity. I have always carefully tried to foresee and prepare for any eventuality.

I didn't live the way I did because I wanted to have adventures. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. Ever since I was a child, snaring woodchucks in the farm woodlot, I have felt that a simple, primitive, life, as a part and parcel of nature, was the way that a person should live. At first it was purely intuitive, but as I gained more experience and insight it became a compelling philosophy. I am now convinced that it is the only moral and ethical way to live. Civilization destroys Nature whenever it touches it. We humans are Civilization, but we are also Nature. We are committing mass species destruction, of our own as well as of a great many others, with all our civilized "comforts and conveniences". I have no objection to a person killing themself, such as with cigarettes or alcohol, if that's what their personal priorities lead them to do, but the mass destruction of species, species who comprise the very structure of the living environment that we and most others depend on for our daily existence, cannot be justified by any argument.

But I am also fully aware that the only meaningful lifetime goal for any individual of any species is to reproduce their genes. Unfortunately, at the present time a man faces a big conflict between that all-important primary goal and a lifestyle as an integral symbiotic constituent of Nature. During my entire life I have never found a spouse who shared my desire to live as close to nature as possible. Because I could find no way to solve this enigma, my life has been continual compromise--one foot free in the wilderness of mountain, desert or ocean and the other foot trapped in the quagmire of civilization.

Today I find myself in the ludicrous position of sitting at a modern hi tech computer and typing an advocacy of returning to a hand-to-mouth hunter-gatherer existence. But this betrayal of principles has allowed me to father and help raise a seven-year old son who shows as much potential as any 75 year old father could hope for.

Let them scribe upon my gravestone, "He lived life the best he could".