During the terrible winter of 1886-1887, Charles M. Russel worked as a cowhand in the Judith Basin. The owners of the cattle outfit were living in Helena but had heard rumors of how rough the winter conditions were for cattle in other parts of Montana. Curious to see how their cattle were doing, the owners wrote a letter to the ranch foreman. Instead of the foreman responding with a letter, Russel sketched a starving bull in the snow surrounded by wolves, titled “Waiting on a Chinook-(Last of the 5,000).” Russels’s art career boomed from that one sketch. Montana natives say that Chinook translates to “snow eater”.
The first month of every new year delivers all manner of expectations and resolute demands. Some full of hope (hope is not a plan) and on occasion, depending on the year, a sometimes fleeting new sense of doom.
Maybe the negativity is excavated by the cold. Cold that drags the month by your leaky door jam.
When January spills ice and frigid rains and arthritic leaching winds from the Northwest, I find it difficult not to scrunch the fat chair nearer the slow burning hickory log. Hugging a coffee cup half full of aiming fluid and pretending to read an old book is simply a fine position to be in on a wet day in the first month of any new year.
It’s right difficult to get absorbed in any book worthy of the challenge at eliminating thoughts that we ought to be sitting in that tree where the tall racked buck gave up a glimpse of his backside back in November. Back when it was relatively still warm.
Perched in that one particular pine now would take almost the last remaining reserve of confidence. A simple belief that the big one made it through December.
The early weeks of January were considered cold by most standards. But, that particular temperature gauge got destroyed by the later weeks. The last few weeks definitely brought the thoughts that there just weren’t enough warm clothes in the old hunting bag to function comfortably invisible. Invisible, frozen and having lost all contact with dead, frost bitten fingers, for a good shot at a survivor chasing one last nervous young doe.
When one begins to inventory cold, all manner of descriptors flood the balance sheets. There’s; 1. Bone Chilling, 2. Cold where snot freezes on your hairy upper lip, 3. For the seafaring man, there’s something to do with the reproductive anatomy of brass monkeys. And, for good measure, there’s; 4. Colder than a mother-in-law’s kiss. Let’s not omit a well diggers hind end. (I never met any well diggers anyway.)
The list of phrases that describe cold in the month goes on and on. Surely you can remember your coldest brush with frozen death from hypothermia in January. (Insert your most apt descriptive phrase here.)
Oh! I left out, cold, so cold, you couldn’t get a tent stake in the ground without a jack hammer.
I know there are still ducks in the creeks and out on the river, somewhere. Grouse in the laurels and a few lucky rabbits in the briars. But, somehow January makes me long for fresh fish. Not the frozen fish in the big ugly freezer. Now I know it’s cold, but fish can be caught if you really put your back into it.
Mr. Gordon MacQuarrie writes; “The straight-up leap of a rainbow, leaving his natural element for the air, is one of the noblest acrobatics any fisherman ever sees. The pointed head and the earmine stripped side of this rainbow were as sharp as a knife against dark water. How animated a beautiful pool becomes when a fighting fish surges to it’s surface to do or die! The energy of the rainbow leaps carried him a foot above the surface each time, and so powerful were they, that there seems to come a moment when, at the height of the ascent, he was immovable in the aura.”
This cold month is for the pondering soul. Toss another slab of hickory on the coals and drift off to some lonely stretch of fish filled fantasy.
Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Wishing away time for more warm days ahead with a leaping rainbow, acrobats extroaidinare. We’ve surely, already, experienced cold enough for one new year!
On strange occasions I’ve even pondered learning the art of ice fishing, squatting in some cold and cramped shack, staring, gaping endlessly, down a small hole in some frozen lake, far north of here. But alas, the plunge is never to come. The full plunge would unfortunately entail arduous travel in some northernly direction. I just can’t make myself do it. Ice fishing will have to wait for more desperate times. Cohabitating in some icy hut, that resembles my grandfathers out-house, with beer swilling Yankees, in January, sounds disturbing on too many uncomfortable levels.
So, I guess January is really the month for the hardiest of souls. And, for the fool-hardy, if there really happens to be such a word as fool-hardy.
Maybe when the cup of old aiming fluid now is empty, I’ll drift listlessly down to the barn and check on the horses. They don’t seem to care much for this month either. Maybe I’ll check the weather report for Key West.
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WOMR Note: When this diatribe above was started, earlier in the new year, while deer were still in season, I was bad cold. Life got in the way, as life often does, until the warmer rains finally came. The chinook arrived, (thankfully) but I still haven’t located that leaping big rainbow. But, things are looking up. The sand hill cranes are clattering by in ragged waves, the Canadas are slowly pairing up and the robins have returned. Those are strong signs. Strong even with today's new snow. Hope they are looking up for you too. Send comments to witeoakmtnranger@gmail.com