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Time Travel
The image in the photograph was a rough shanty, a hole-in-the-wall shelter, as rough as a bear's den, floor
littered with dry leaves, set deep under an overhanging rock ledge. But Red enjoyed its frontier nature. At this very spot, at least a full day's backpack from the humdrum of 20th century life's technological wonders and the stress associated with modern-day living, my perceptions were unclouded, my images clear, and I felt as close to Richard's world as he once did to Noah's. This remote spot in the "wilds" was a place to leave behind the world's clamor for the brass ring and snatch instead life's unpretentiousness.
But Red's facsimile of a frontiersman's life could not last forever.
Neither could Noah's. Both were treading on the fringe of an era.
My original plan was to sleep my final night at one of Duck Hole's lean-toe's, head downstream in the morning, check out the deep-walled
flume the surveyor Verplanck Colvin named the cold River Canyon, hit the horse trail and hoof it out. An option existed to divert from that plan if I decided to climb the Ermine Brook Slide on Santanoni.
All was thrown to the wind, however, when I reassessed why I had come.
That evening, bivouacked at the cabin site, as I sat by a crackling campfire my thoughts were only of Red. As a soft breeze flowed down Beartrap's mountainside, my mind drifted to the many conversations I'd had with Red. When the state finally destroyed his cabin, he felt as if he had lost an old friend who had served him well in comfort and joy. The Duck Hole country had held many great memories for him, and now it held memories of him for me.
In weakening health during the spring of 1994, the only way red could ever envision himself ever going back was if his ashes were
scattered there. He knew he was dying from cancer.
Certainly, that was where he always said he had spent the happiest days of his life. "I wouldn't need a lot of fancy words to send me off," he would say time and time again. "Returning would be my greatest joy. I'd just like someone to whisper a few words. The wind will pick up the news that I have returned and carry the edict down the valley and up the mountain slopes."
That fall his ashes were scattered over the land he loved so much.
Words from "Crane Mountain," his favorite poem by Jeanne Robert foster, were spoken:
"When darkness should be my home,
Eternal mountain, do not leave my heart;
Remain with me in my sleep,
In my dreams, in my resurrection."
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