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PAGOSA PAST: Father-Daughter Backpacking, Part Three |
Jerry Driesens | 3/25/09
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Read Part One
Heidi liked to go to the elk camp when the elk were bugling during the three week break the elk got between the end of archery season and the beginning of the first rifle season — during the peak of the rut.
She had learned to bugle like a bull elk in her throat and some evenings I would take the whole family out to hear the elk bugle around the foothills of Quien Sabe Mountain. I had recounted many times how the elk bugling would keep us awake most of the night as I camped with my hunting partners in our elk camp the night before opening day. So Heidi and I would pack in after school got out on Friday and get our tent set up, supper cooked over a fire, and sometimes the elk would start bugling even before dark.
 But even if they started later, they would usually still be out in a big meadow not far from our camp in the mornings when we not only could hear them, but also see them, and sometimes the herd bull chasing off interloper smaller bulls. We often got them to answer our bugles, and one rainy night with all three girls with me we called the herd bull in, in the dark. They were afraid he was going to trample us; we couldn’t see him but we could hear his hoof beats getting close - when another satellite bull called at the far end of that meadow and he then ran toward him. There were three other bulls plus us working that poor boy that evening, all at different corners of a huge meadow only a short hike from where we parked our car.
One particular night, however, the woods were silent, no bugling, nothing answering Heidi’s bugles but a coyote or two - then a chorus of coyotes. Same thing the next morning. Finally after the sun was already up and we were standing around the breakfast fire having had our oatmeal and hot chocolate - Heidi heard something running uphill through the noisy dry oak brush with the leaves already turned to rust this early October morning. “Dad, something’s coming our way!”
Sure enough, a young 4X5 bull trotted by us following one cow that he’d probably managed to cut out of some herd bull’s harem. They passed only 30 yards away. I motioned for her to bugle. She did and the bull stopped in his tracks and wheeled to face her. I whispered to her to bugle again. She did and he rolled his head back and answered her. I would give anything to have a video of the look in her eyes right then. “Once more,” I whispered to my nine year old. Once more she bugled and once more the bull answered her right back before he and the cow trotted off.
The next week our dear friend, Barry McGuire, the singer, came and spent a week at our house prior to performing in a concert I was sponsoring in Farmington.. We usually hosted his concerts in Pagosa, but his only available weekend night was the night before opening day of the first elk rifle season and I wasn’t too confident about our attendance prospects in Pagosa. Earlier in the week Chuck and Margaret Soniat had invited us all for dinner up to their home above Lost Valley of the San Juans on 35 acres at 9200 feet elevation.
We had a nice evening at their home. Barry had brought his guitar along, We shot Chuck’s .454 caliber buffalo rifle, and sang some songs when Margaret served us dessert. On the way back down Four Mile Road, I noticed my temperature gauge was rising, so we stopped at Dave and Cynthia Mitchell’s house to fill my radiator.
When Dave was the owner and publisher of the Pagosa Sun, he always had good things to write about Barry’s concerts. They found out that Barry had his guitar with him and asked if he would sing “Bullfrogs and Butterflies” (We’ve Both Been Born Again) for Drew, their young son, while I filled my radiator. Barry happily obliged but when he finished he asked what all the racket was out in the meadow behind their house. “Oh those are elk bugling, most evenings lately they’ve been coming in our meadow, probably to drink from our pond.”
Barry was intrigued and we proceeded to tell him about Heidi and her talent and our recent adventure. Heidi demonstrated her bugling prowess to her “Uncle Barry” as our girls called him. (Marrie is named after Barry’s wife.) So in the remaining days before the concert in Farmington that upcoming Friday night, Barry wrote this little song, which he then performed in three concerts, the one in Farmington, the next night in Denver and one a week later in Bozeman, Montana. It goes like this and I have a video of him doing it at our house with Heidi doing the bugling part. It is priceless!
She bugles like an elk in the dark, walking though the national park, (forest doesn’t rhyme)
Making all the doggies go bark. Bugling like an elk in the dark. And she goes...
(Heidi gives a long drawn-out bugle)
She bugles like an elk in the night, challenging the bull to a fight,
Bugling with all of her might, bugling like an elk in the night.
And she goes,…..
Well she has a lot bugling fun, she’s got the bull elk on the run,
She never goes carrying a gun, ‘cause Heidi only bugles for fun.
And she goes, …..
He tried to get her to come up on stage that Friday night when he introduced a new song that he’d written that week, but she was too bashful to go up on stage at the Farmington Civic Center. So I helped when Barry tried to screech out something, but about 60 would-be-buglers in the crowd caught on and helped us out, and the same thing occurred in Denver and Bozeman. Some friends of ours were in attendance at the Denver concert and guessed that the Heidi in the song was our Heidi and knew that we were friends of Barry. They surprised him after the concert (when he was signing one of his albums for them) when they asked him if that was Heidi Driesens in that song.
On one of our trips Heidi and I climbed Pagosa Peak via the (then) new Anderson Trail. We ended up finally heading off the trail when we got close to the NE Ridge. Pagosa Peak is kind of like a pyramid with three distinct ridges leading to the summit. Heidi beat me up it and I have had a photo on my bookshelf at my office of her at the summit with her hands raised in triumph for beating the old man up it. ( I didn’t let her, either!) So, I have been up to the top of Pagosa Peak via all three ridges, but only down the two easier ones. The NW ridge that Marrie and I took was the sportiest of all, and while going down it is certainly possible, one would need to descend backwards on all fours down one part of that route.
While I always looked forward to the trips and the one-on-one time with my daughters, I did kind of feel that I was going out of my way more than most fathers I knew to actually spend some serious quality time with each kid. But teenagers will be teenagers ( I had taught Junior High long enough to realize the conflict in the transition between the roots and wings stages. I was amused and a little hurt when I overheard one of my daughter’s phone conversations with a friend who wanted to schedule something with her and I heard her blurt out that she couldn’t because she had this father/daughter backpack trip with her dad, who would be hurt if she tried so reschedule it because something more important had come up for her. She told her friend that this was a really big deal for her Dad. But I also realized a lot of kids would have not been that sensitive to the old guy’s feelings, so I was thankful, too.
We also used to take the kids out of school for a week most springs when it was easy to get a rafting permit on the lower San Juan River, from Bluff or Mexican Hat, Utah, all the way to Clay Hills Crossing in Lake Powell (when full). We would usually go with a couple other families. One year one of our daughters asked how old she had to be before she didn’t HAVE to go on the family raft trip. Gracious, other kids would have killed to have parents who would do this. I never believed much in letting school get in the way of your education.
My answer was 16 years old, but you can bring a friend along if their parents would let them play hooky. (Our kids all went to Pagosa Christian School during the 17 years that it operated K-12 and the students all worked at their own pace so they never really had to get caught up with the rest of the class, so it wasn’t as big of a deal as with the public school students.) The friends they brought along confided in me that they wished their parents would do stuff like this with them.
One of the girls did forgo the family raft trip when she turned 16, but came back on the next one when she realized that we all had more fun than she did staying with a friend and going to school, especially when her sisters and their friends returned home regaling her with their adventures on the raft trip.
My daughters gave me a most incredible gift for my 6oth birthday in December of 2007. It is a coffee-table sized hardbound 53 page book with tributes, testimonials, recalled stories and adventures shared by friends from high school, the Coast Guard, college, current friends and relatives. Over 100 color photos accompany the stories. Each of my girls mentioned the father/daughter backpack trips in their tributes to Dad and have granted their permission for me to include quotes from them in this story. I will conclude with my daughters’ quotes from my 60th Birthday Book.
Marrie (Hibbard) ....
“I’m sure many people have looked at our family with envy as we actually enjoy and like one another and have countless adventure stories to tell. Thank you for taking us on so many one-of-a-kind trips (even if Mom cried) and making one-on-one time a priority (father/daughter backpack trips) even when we thought we had outgrown such.”
Molly (Wallace) ....
“We decided to go to Crater Lake in early summer. The adventure started on the drive there. The roads were snowy and icy in areas. There was one particular spot that was treacherous. You asked me to get out of the car and walk around while you drove just in case you went off the road and down the cliff. You are lucky I didn’t tell Mom about this part of our trip until just recently. The hike was also pretty tough because we walked through waist deep snow much of the time. You had to go first so that you could pack down the snow for me. I remember thinking that my feet would never get warm. We did make it to the lake and you built a fire to dry out our socks and shoes and my feet eventually did get warm. I don’t remember much else about the hike, but I’m sure we ate trout with the orange meat.”
Heidi ( Busch) ....
“Thank you for taking us on great father/daughter hikes. Most of our hikes included a “sporty route” which we agreed not to tell Mom about. Sometimes we would head down the mountain by a completely different trail or maybe by no trail at all. Whether we were scrambling over boulders or scaling small cliffs, we always made it to our destination. Experiencing those great adventures with you helped me become confident and possibly a little “sporty” on some of my own outdoor endeavors. I love you, Dad.” |
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