post 31, Porcupine

Porcupine in a juniper tree, 1988. Even with a clear view of him in the center of the photo, he isn't real obvious. Porcupines are pretty much vegetarians living on bark and such, and they commonly spend their days in trees. They are remarkably agile climbers in spite of their ungainly appearance. People seldom look up, and porcupines blend in well with the bark on a branch, so most people seldom see one even where they are plentiful. At dusk a porcupine may come down and scout around for a new feeding station. If there is any snow on the ground he leaves an unmistakable trail that gives away his current tree location.

I feel empathy with them, as I do toward most wild animals, but I'm brutally pragmatic. Porkys are good food and they aren't an endangered species. I poked that porky out of the tree with a stick and I killed him with a club. A club is the weapon of choice for getting porcupines that aren't too high in a tree to reach. Porcupines are very tenacious critters and you can spoil a lot of meat shooting holes in them with bullets or arrows before you finally stop them. I'll discuss cooking them and other meat in a later post.

Porcupines have a craving for salt. They can smell its presence, such as on an axe handle that you once used with sweaty hands. They can also smell it on you. It is not uncommon for a porky to wander right into camp looking for something salt flavored to chew on. With all their loosely attached quills they make a slight rattley sound as they walk along, and I've woke up to find one quite close to my bed. I clubbed him for the next day's stew. I have heard of other people having close camp encounters with porkies.

A timid porky would never attack you, but if he was frightened by a sudden movement near him he would certainly swish that barbed tail around with considerable force. If you ever wake up with a porcupine next to you, don't panic or make any sudden movements. He won't bite and, contrary to old wives tales, he can't throw those quills. As soon as you're out of reach of that tail, roll the other way and get out of your sleeping bag. He's not going to chase you. He's going to be running the other way.

When I camped in porcupine country (even when I was playing aborigine with "only" stone tools) I always carried a small, well made, pair of long-nose pliers for pulling quills. I've pulled quills from my dogs and I've pulled quills from my burro's leg. And I've usually carried a small mirror for the possibility of attending to such things as quills or snake bites on difficult-to-see parts of myself. Quills have microscopic barbs and they sometimes require considerable force to pull out. An ordinary cosmetic tweezers probably won't be strong enough. The quills work themselves in deeper in time. My brother broke one off near his wrist once, and the broken point finally worked out near his elbow.

post 30 Testing a Saddle

Testing a Saddle, 1988. See also posts 12, 18 and 24. In post 18, where I showed a photo of a homemade wooden saddle being constructed, I mentioned that an unbroke horse could easily destroy a saddle, and I promised to discuss that subject again.

You never have a camera in hand to catch the most interesting scenes, but they are burned indelibly into the album of your mind. In the sketch above, Maude (see post 12) is testing that homemade saddle I built.

In post 06 when I was talking about training the burro brothers, I mentioned that you must anticipate possible problems and train your animals to handle them while you have plenty of time and a relaxed training atmosphere. The sketch above illustrates what can happen if you don't follow that advice. I trained the burros slowly and methodically about entering trailers, and I never had a bit of trouble with them. But I never got around to training Maude with trailers until suddenly it was time to use one.

I had ridden Maude once before, in the breaking corral. She didn't attempt to buck but she circled 'round and 'round that little corral at breakneck speed while trying to get the courage to jump the gate. Fortunately, she had more sense than to try that, and we both lived through the ordeal. Wild horses are amazingly agile and Maude kept her feet during the tight, top-speed, turns while a ranch horse might have slipped for a disastrous fall. While discussing the matter later, David, the horse-breaking cowboy, agreed that small corrals were not good for first rides on unbroke horses. He also volunteered that the irrigated meadow with its slick grass was a treacherous place where you could have a nasty, bone-breaking, horse-and-rider fall. He said that the sandy sagebrush desert was the safest place for a first ride.

The ranch manager agreed to play pick-up with a stock horse, and on the spur of the moment we saddled up our horses for the event. I reached the trailer first with Maude while the manager was attending to some other matter. Maude, like any sensible wild horse, did not want to enter that trailer.

With Maude's nose just inside the trailer, I tied the lead rope at the front of the trailer and then went around in back of Maude to encourage her to step in. Wild mustangs have incredibly quick reflexes. Maude leaped in, spun around, and leaped out again, all so fast that I had no time at all to slam the tailgate shut. But since the lead rope was tied fast, Maude did a summersault and fell heavily on top of the saddle. Miraculously, they both survived, and I managed to get her loaded and tied at the front of the trailer by the time the manager arrived with his saddled horse.
When we were out in the desert, safely far from fences, the manager unloaded his chase horse. I had a long lead rope on Maude. It was half-inch diameter synthetic fiber--maybe part nylon and part polyester. The rope was tied in a secure bowline around Maude's neck. I tied the tail of the rope securely at the back of the trailer and then, holding tightly to the rope near Maude's head, I tried to lead her out of the trailer.

Maude saw her beloved sagebrush and thought she was free. I had no more chance of holding onto that rope than a fly would have had. She bolted out of the trailer and hit the end of the lead rope at full speed. Again she did a summersault and fell heavily on top of the homemade saddle. I certainly would have expected her to break her neck and destroy the saddle. What may have saved her neck was the fact that the half-inch lead rope broke back at the trailer. Before we had a chance to move, Maude staggered to her feet and was off full speed in BLM land where fences were maybe ten miles apart.

The manager jumped on his stock horse and gave chase. He didn't follow directly behind Maude because that would have just chased her further away. Instead he rode off to one side. I had taken a box of oats along--I always try to be prepared for any sort of eventuality--and I started off on foot after them.

It had been very difficult, when first working with Maude, to get her to eat oats or even hay. She was used to eating grass that was rooted to the ground so that she could tear off bites of it. The hay wasn't anchored and she didn't know how to break it into bite-sized pieces. The oats she didn't recognize at all, and she wouldn't touch them until I painstakingly mixed a few with alfalfa leaves and gradually introduced them to her. But like a pusher getting a new addict hooked on heroine, I finally got her to like oats so that I had a little more control over her.

I finally caught up to the manager and the two horses. Maude had run at top speed until she was exhausted. The long lead rope under her feet probably caused her problems and made her realize that she wasn't really free. When she stopped to rest, the manager came close enough to get the end of the lead rope. He looped the rope around his saddle horn but Maude, the biggest mare on the ranch, was too strong to be lead.

I walked up to Maude and offered her the oats. She ate in the nervous, compulsive, manner of horses under stress, and she gradually calmed down. The moment of truth was at hand. I laid the oat box down and climbed up into the saddle. Maude was well trained for that and didn't object. Then the manager, the lead rope on his saddle horn, started toward the trailer.

We went two or three steps and Maude exploded as if she was trying to jump out from under me. I was primed for a ride and I thought we were on our way--but that wasn't the case at all. Maude had just come square up against a prickly sagebrush while being led and hadn't known yet to walk around them. So she just made a standing jump over it. Maude never, ever, tried to buck with me. Some cowboys encourage an unbroke horse to buck so they can try to prove they're boss, but I think that's exactly the wrong thing to do. Most of the horses I've trained never ever bucked with me. (But there have been a few notable exceptions.)

Maude was understandably difficult to load into the trailer for the trip home. I left her in the trailer with some good hay for the night and the next day, in a calm relaxed training atmosphere, I trained her to jump into and hop out of trailers without making a fuss.

The crude homemade saddle survived both tests with no damage at all--it was made of strong solid wood lashed together with nylon lariat rope--but if it had been an expensive saddle borrowed from a friend it probably would have been destroyed.

post 29, Jim Riggs Smoking Buckskin

Jim Riggs smoking buckskin, l976. I don't know if he had already written "Blue Mountain Buckskin", his famous bible on dry scrape brain tanning, by then or not.

He had dug sort of a posthole in the ground and started a low fire smoldering in it. (You don't want to use white fir--it imparts a urine odor to the hide.) Then he arranged the hide as kind of a teepee over the fire to smoke it. Any skin is composed of protein that turns into a high-grade wood glue if you de-hair and shred the raw hide and then simmer the shreds in a little water long enough (like 24 hours or more).

You normally want leather to be soft and pliable, but because of this inherent glue nature a raw hide glues up and gets stiff as a board every time it gets wet and then dries out. Smoking, the last stage of brain tanning, evidently coats the protein fibers with smoke chemicals that reduce this tendency for them to glue together and the tanned buckskin will still be fairly soft and flexible after it has become wet and then dried.

The general procedure for brain tanning any hide is to first scrape every bit of flesh and fat off of the freshly skinned hide. You can then spread the hide out to dry thoroughly and put it in storage for later work, or you can proceed with the brain tanning immediately, even while the hide is still wet.

Deer hair is brittle and breaks off easily so the hair is almost never left on a tanned deer hide as you might do for a sheepskin. To make it easier to remove the hair cleanly, you can sprinkle wet wood ashes on the hair, roll the wet hide up tightly, and bury it in damp soil beside the creek for a couple of days. The wood ashes have caustic alkaline chemicals (grocery store chemicals also work--but use caution--they are much more concentrated) that weaken the grain or hide coating that retains the hair. Just soaking the hide, without ashes, in the warm water of a pond or warm spring will work also. In either case you must be careful and not overdue it or the hide will rot. Check the hide once a day to see if the hair can be scrapped yet. Expect the chore to be a bit tedious. If the hair just falls out your hide is probably rotten and worthless.

Go back to post 05 of this blog and you'll see a photo of me wet-scrapping the hair from a hide with a stone scrapper. That hide was never dried out from the time it was skinned from a deer until after it was brained. I find wet scrapping easier and faster, but it doesn't produce nearly as aesthetic a final product as Jim's dry scrape method. The root of each hair is embedded in the grain, which is the very outer layer of the hide.

For nice soft and beautiful ceremonial buckskin you want to remove every bit of this grain as you scrape. But for just some serviceable leather, like for making a rough jacket or moccasins, it doesn't really matter whether you leave it on or take it off. Most commercial cowhide leather, like for shoes, still has the grain on--except suede shoes. With the grain left on the leather is a bit less soft and flexible.

After the hair is off, by either wet or dry scrape method, the hide is soaked in clean water until it is pliable and then as much water as possible is squeezed and wrong out of the skin. You then mash up the brains of the animal, they contain a special sort of oil, into some water--maybe a quart of water for a deer hide. I've generally just used raw brains, but there is some danger of contacting disease so boiled brains are safer. You then sponge up all of the brains-water mix into the damp hide.

If you just let that soggy hide dry thoroughly it would end up stiff as a board. When the hide is starting to dry, but still pliable, you start working it to keep the fibers from gluing tightly together. In an area where saplings were in profusion and could be spared I've taken a sapling, about four inches in diameter, and cut it off about six feet high and with a chisel shaped top. Then I would pull the drying hide back and forth over that chisel. When you get tired you rest and when you're rested it's time to pull some more. By the time the hide is bone dry it should be nice and flexible.

But if that hide gets wet again it will dry board hard unless you work it soft again. To make it dry reasonably soft you have to smoke it like Jim is doing in the above photo. He continually rearranged the hide, maybe every hour, to do a uniform job. The photo was taken in the backyard of Jim's La Grande, Oregon apartment. He graciously moved out somewhere and let us borrow his apartment when my daughter Jean was due to be born. Before and after that event we lived in a tent in the wooded hills out of Elgin.

post 28, Canoe Trip Tent

Canoe Trip Tent, 1987. See also posts 01, 04, 07, 13, 20, and 28. The photo doesn't look like much, but it brings back fond memories to me.

The brown canvas on the left was about an eight by ten foot tarp I bought for two dollars at a yard sale. The white canvas on the right was roughly the same size. It had been part of a teepee liner that a friend gave to me. To start constructing the tent I would stake the lower corners of those canvases to the ground. The next step was to tie the top ends of two poles (the canoe mast and the handle of the dip net) together and set them up as an A frame with the top mid point of each canvas tied to them. The canvases didn't reach the very peak of the A. They were about a foot short and this eventually created a diamond shaped smoke hole to allow for an indispensable inside fire.

At the front and rear of the tent the top corners of the canvases overlapped to keep rain out. Short doorway poles gave shape to the tent and cords (one visible) leading to stakes held the doorway poles up. Army ponchos (see post 16) closed those doorways. The white triangular canvas at the top was the lateen canoe sail, still lashed to its yard and boom, draped over a stick tied to the A apex. The sail kept rain from coming in the diamond shaped smoke hole. If there was any breeze at all the sail also created a suction (you had to adjust it for wind direction) to suck the smoke out.

That tent was one of the most comfortable dwellings that I have ever lived in. Northwest Oregon is often very wet and chilly for long periods and you really need a nice warm, drying, fire right inside your tent. A friend stayed with me for a week or so on that trip and the tent size proved large enough for the two of us.

Late one afternoon, almost at the end of that trip, I could see that a storm was building up, so I dug a substantial drainage ditch around the periphery of the tent and I pounded all stakes in firmly. I was already in bed and asleep when I was wakened by the shriek of wind and the crash of a deluge of water as if Zeus had emptied his bathtub over my tent. There was still glowing coals in the hearth, so, still in bed, I reached over and brought the fire to life again with some little twigs. The tent canvas was straining against the wind, but there was no sign that it would fail. There were no leaks. I cuddled happily in bed and enjoyed Nature's symphony until I drifted off to sleep again.

A few days later I was in Astoria studying a potential house remodel job to earn some much needed grocery money. Several pop tents, spread out on a balcony to dry, caught my attention. The lady of the house, Peggy Deveroux, noticed my interest. She explained that a few nights before, the night of my storm, her son had been on a Boy Scout outing. A terrific wind and rain came up suddenly and blew over or collapsed every one of their pop tents. The boys, clad only in their underwear, threw their camping gear in their vehicles and hurried back to town.

I said that the tent was one of the most comfortable abodes that I have ever lived in, and that is the sincere truth. I don't need a chair to sit in. I'm a lie-down person. And I do not want a soft mattress under me. They goof up my back. I need a firm bed. Good Mother Earth is ideal. I carefully feel for and throw out the rocks, sticks, roots and other lumpies and shape the earth a little with a slight depression for my hips. Then I use something like a waterproof army poncho to cover the dirt. My friends John and Sue used a thick wooly sheepskin under them, and they claimed it was ideal, but they usually hauled their house around in a Volkswagen, so the bulk and weight of the sheepskin was less of a factor.

Accustomed as we are to modern houses and conveniences, we can surprise ourselves when we contemplate what little is actually required in order to genuinely enjoy life. But we should remember that our genes are only a few percentage points away from being identical with those of a chimpanzee. And I'm sure that the truly wild chimpanzee gets great enjoyment from life, probably a lot more enjoyment then us (he doesn't have to be a slave to some obnoxious, environment destroying, job to pay for house and conveniences) even though he has no physical possessions at all.

post 27, A Mast for INTEGRITY

A mast for INTEGRITY, 1981. See also posts 03,09,17 and 22. I have mentioned several times before of people going out of their way to give assistance if you have a project you are seriously working on (and that maybe they wish they were working on). I didn't know the man in the photo who is struggling with my Handy Man jack to slide the trailer over and get it through the gate. He was a friend of Joe Pindell and he owned a small property in the hills just east of Portland, Oregon. When Joe told him about my lifeboat-cum-sailboat INTEGRITY project this guy volunteered a mast. There was a deep timbered draw on his place where the trees had to grow up skinny and tall to reach the sun. The mast we cut was 45 feet long and only 14 inches in diameter at the butt when cut. I trimmed its length and girth later. It was doug fir which is maybe only second to spruce as mast material.

There was air-dried spruce lumber available (at a horrendous price) and some would have glued up a lightweight hollow mast for INTEGRITY, especially since she was only going to use jugs of water for ballast, but I'm glad I went with the heavier solid stick. During a sudden gust of wind on the Columbia Bar I saw that mast bend like a fishing pole. I feel sure that a stiffer hollow mast would have snapped under the strain.