Pete Fromm - The Names of the Stars: A Life in the Wilds

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

FOR MY PARENTS, for opening the doors and letting me slip through

Many thanks to Oliver Gallmeister, who, over many campfires and on many rivers, worked with me on shaping this story, making me decide what it really was all about. And thanks, too, to Peter Wolverton, who pushed me to make it even more.

And to Sage, Pancoast, Rader, and all the other characters, named here and not, whom Ive met along the way and who have each played their own far-beyond-supporting roles in my life. And, of course, to my families: my first, parents and siblings, and my second, Rose, Nolan, and Aidan, who bring me back from the wilderness.

Stories, stories, stories. A world and a land and even a river full of the damn slippery things.

RICHARD FLANAGAN, DEATH OF A RIVER GUIDE

Kiss me goodnight and say my prayers

Leave the light on at the top of the stairs

Tell me the names of the stars up in the sky

A tree taps on the window pane

That feeling smothers me again

Daddy, is it true that we all have to die?

BILLY BRAGG, TANK PARK SALUTE

North Fork of the Sun River

Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana

May 2004

The storm seems, for a bit, to settle, a monotony of squalls, the rain no longer quite streaming down as if the sky itself were nothing but water. I dip low, peering out the cabin window, studying the overcast, the thermometers red column straining toward forty, the gusts cutting across the meadow grass in waves. The lulls leave almost silence, just the occasional pop of fir in the stove. Then the rising beat of wind batters the cabin logs, and the drum of rain skitters across the cedar shingles. Already after nine, and weather regardless, still the ten-mile loop to check the grayling eggs progress, my daily chore. I shrug into the tired rain gear, top and bottom both, adjust the jackets hip zippers to leave the bear spray free, the handgun.

Out in the wind, the spray lashes in under the eaves, stinging my cheeks, trickling into the start of my beard as I walk around the cabin, raising each of the bear-proof shutters, battening the hatches. All the routine. Then up the muddy track, over the hump and into the trees, toward the opening of the burn, the turn down toward the North Fork. Plodding, working up some heat, I watch the water bead off the oil Id worked into my boots last night, watch my walking stick pock the mud, the cowbell Id tied to its top all but silent with the easy rhythm. Its hood-up, head-down weather, little more than just the trail before my feet, until I start following bear tracks, last nights traffic, a reminder to keep my eyes up, to tuck the deafening hood behind my ears, to start making some noise. I sing, the only way Ive thought of to constantly announce my presence, belting out The noble Duke of York, he had ten thousand men as I enter the darker woods.

The rain, it turns out, instead of easing off, had only been warming up, and as I cross the pack bridge over the roiling brown North Fork, it comes down sideways, stupendously, stupidly hard, lashing the surface of the river to a froth. I lunge up the ridge toward the Spruce Creek eggs, laughing at just the wildness of it. Already soaked through, toes turned out in the mud as if herringboning up a ski trail, I make the ridge and cross the mile of recent burn, forgetting to sing to the bears, the blackened spear points of the trees easy enough to see through.

Until I reach the Hansel and Gretel stretch. Here the trail cuts into an older burn, dog-haired with fifteen-year-old lodgepole pine. Twelve feet tall and only inches apart, theyre furred so tight to both sides of the trailtheir needled branches threaded together, crowding in from both sides, whispering and shushing in the windits more a green-walled tunnel than path. Even so, unable to see more than a few feet, unable to hear anything over the sighing and moaning of the trees, I dont muster up much more than a murmur myself, the pissing-down rain just too much, too loud. Who on earth would be out in this mess?

The sodden, impenetrable wall of pines an arms reach to each side, I thump my walking stick against the occasional rock, rattling the cowbell, keeping time with Burl Ives, the Big Rock Candy Mountains, mumbling out Oh, the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees, the soda water fountain. Working my way, again, through my old bedtime repertoire for the boys, the lyrics hammered into me through endless repetition.

I swing through the corkscrew bend near the drop down to the river, where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings, and there, two steps in front of me, lies a half-eaten elk calf. Half- eaten.

I stumble over myself, yanking off my hood. The calf lies spread-eagled on its back, gutted, a portion of the hams torn off from the inside, strings of meat limp against the ivory line of bone. Staggering back, I pull out my bear spray, push away the safety catch. With my other hand I unsnap my revolvers holster, wrap my fingers around its grip.

Another step back, another, rain running down my neck. No day-old calf can be more than a snack for a grizzly. Not something theyd eat part of and come back to. And even if it were, theres nothing scraped up over the kill, nothing hiding it as if the bear means to return.

Ive chased it off. With the Big Rock Candy Mountains. Still stepping backward, I scan the trees, their dank, blank walls, seeing no more than four or five feet.

Rounding backward through the bend, bear spray out front, the calf disappearing behind the trees, I turn and walk, fast, back the way Id come. I pound my stick, try shouting, Coming through, make a hole, make a hole, what my dad said they were always shouting in the navy, barreling along the ships tight corridors. At first my voice is hardly more than a squeak. I try again.

The Spruce Creek eggs are on their own today. And tomorrow.

I break out of the trees, glance down for tracks, finding only my own. Moving fast, able to see again, I look everywhere: across the short grass, the blackened rocks, up into the sooty burned snags, across the rivers steep cut, up onto the burned clear face of the other sides cliff. I all but ski down the mud to the pack bridge and run up the opposite side, slowing for the dark timber of that bear highway. Shouting, Kiss me goodnight and say my prayers!one song I never sang to the boysI step carefully over the same tracks Id walked over this morning, the rain drumming.

Rounding the cabin, I open the shutters, letting the gray murk leak in through the windows. Under the porch roof, the nesting robin blasts off by my face, and I let out a quick Jaysis! as if Id been charged by a winged grizzly. Catching my breath, I unzip my rain gear, shake off what mud I can. Then I unlock the door and step inside as if my return had always been in doubt, lean back against it and take a long, deep breath. Boys! I call to the single, empty room. Im home!

The bear had done me a favor, no doubt about it, slipping back into the pines, watching maybe, instead of challenging me for its kill. Or adding me to it. All its choice. I shake my head, the heat from the stoves banked fire taking away the chill, but not the shiver that runs through me.