Trail of Tears

I've never been what you'd call a violent person. Like the old saying goes, I'm more of a lover than a fighter. I've only been in one actual fight in my life and that was with Frank Painter in the 6th Grade. Frank had refused to become a casualty of war after I clearly riddled his body with invisible bullets from my plastic Uzi sub-machine gun during a backyard reenactment of Rambo: First Blood Part 2, and so the two of us went fisticuffs.

Since that day, I've never had any reason to fight or do bodily harm to another human being, except for the time I was tempted to shoot my Cousin Ray in cold blood after he walked me and two others to complete and utter exhaustion while on an elk hunt in Colorado.

It was 1997, my first ever elk hunt, and on the second or third day out, Dad and I heard Ray shoot several times down around Saw Mill Creek. The two of us hiked to the edge of a high ridge from which we had heard the gunshots, but there was no sign of Ray or any dead elk. But several hundred feet down below us, at the bottom of a steep, rocky gorge, we caught a faint glimpse of what appeared to be the body of a dead bull.

"Oh Dear Lord," sighed Dad shaking his head, "Ray's done went and killed an elk down in that hole. It'll be midnight before we get back to camp."

After spending the better part of an hour, maneuvering, and sometimes sliding uncontrollably, down the side of the mountain, Dad and I arrived at the bottom of the hole, where we found Ray and his son Junior gutting the elk. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already on its downward slide towards the horizon. The decision was made, after the elk was field dressed, for Dad and Ray to head back to the top of the mountain to get the horses in order to pack out the elk before nightfall. Junior and I would wait buy the elk until they got back.

In hindsight, Junior and I should have started the long process of skinning and quartering the animal in our fathers’ absence, but this was our first hunt and there was still plenty of daylight left to do some more hunting. Plus, we figured, how long could it really take to hike back and fetch the horses? This was our first experience of judging distances out in the West, where things appear much closer than they actually are.

It was close to dark by time Dad and Ray returned with the two packhorses. An hour and a half of backbreaking work later, we had the panniers loaded with elk shoulders, hams, and tenderloins.

"You boys ready to climb?" asked Ray while tying the bull’s antlers to the back of his packhorse.

I stared up at the steep grade before us. It looked as though it went up and up for eternity. Junior and I looked at each other and whispered in unison, "This is going to suck."

The word suck doesn't even begin to describe the next several hours of that night. Torture. Agony. Misery. Anguish. Those words I believe come a bit closer in defining our following ordeal.

We started up out of the gorge, which by the way since that day has been called Ray's Hole, around 7PM. I lead one of the pack horses, a buckskin quarter horse whose actual name I have long since forgotten, but who seemed determined to step on the back of my foot with other step. About an hour into the trip I quickly renamed the horse, Stupid. By the end of that night I was ready to shoot Stupid in the head. As much as I smacked, beat and jerked on his reins, that retarded animal was intent on crushing every bone in my foot.

For next several hours the four of us clawed our way up the vertical slope in the direction of the 1144 trail which would lead us back to our vehicle. Our legs and lungs were burning and screaming "Uncle". Dad and Ray were in the lead stumbling along in the darkness, followed by Stupid and myself. Junior brought up the rear. As exhausted as I was, I kept telling myself that Ray and Dad had already made this trip once today. I had to hand it to them; they were in really good shape for guys their age.

Sometime around hour number three, the slope leveled off and we topped a small ridge. We stopped for a quicker breather.

"Finally!" I thought. "We've found the 1144 Trail. I won't be long now till we're back at the truck headed for a warm meal and a soft bed."

Unfortunately, this was not going to be the case.

Dad was also leading a packhorse, walked over the Ray where I overheard these dreaded words: "You have any idea where the trail is?"

Not the words I was hoping to hear.

Although they had walked these mountains dozens of times over the years, they were now apparently having a difficult time navigating the terrain in the dark. Finding a narrow, one-foot wide walking path in the middle of the forest, was turning out to be the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack.

And so for the next several hours, similar to the Israelites exodus from Egypt, we wandered aimlessly in the wilderness. Only in our case, neither Dad nor Ray was turning out to be Moses. And what was even more frustrating was that even after we found the 114 Trail, we would still have a long and steep hike ahead of us until we reached the Promised Land, which in this case was the Bear's Ear parking lot.

After the 176 time Stupid stepped on the back of my foot was ready to kill my cousin Ray. Why on Earth did he find it so necessary to kill an elk in such a remote and steep place? Honestly, he couldn't have picked a worse place in the entire freaking state of Colorado. And the elk he shot wasn't even all that big. It was a decent 4x4, but nothing to warrant this kind of physical punishment. For a 360-class bull, yeah, I could see it, but for the rack he had tied on the back of this horse, No Way!

My thighs, calves and lungs all felt as though they were being subjected to red-hot pokers. Every fiber in my body was screaming with exhaustion, yet we continued to climb-each of us in our own private purgatory of pain and suffering. At one point, my cousin Junior, who for the last several hours had been bringing up the rear, came trudging up beside me. We was huffing and puffing like a asthmatic suffering from a collapsed lung.

Give…me…my…rifle,” he wheezed. “I’m going to kill him.”

I stepped in front of Junior as he went for the rifle scabbard strapped to my horse and prevented him from extracting his 30.06.

“No, you can’t shoot him, Junior. He’s your Daddy.” I said although the thought had crossed my mind at least a dozen times over the past couple of hours.

“Well, fine! That’s it I’m done!” Junior shouted, loud enough for us all to hear. He then slumped to the ground like a gunnysack of potatoes. “The heck with all of you! You can just come pick me up here in the morning. I’m not walking another step.

The rest of us just keep going refusing to look back, at this point is was survival of the fittest; the Law of Nature. A weaker member of our herd had fallen by the wayside, yet we simply ignored him and kept on marching.

“Fine stay here,” hollered Ray. “But you’ll freeze to death before sun-up and the coyotes will eat what’s left of you.”

I figured this would be the last time I would ever see my cousin again, yet I was too tired to say a proper “good-bye.”

“Can I have your rifle?” I puffed as I trudged onward. Junior just laid there in a crumpled heap on the forest floor, mumbling obscenities.

It was now down to just three of us. My blood sugar began to plummet to dangerous levels, I hadn’t eaten anything since noon, and I began to wonder if I would soon be joining my cousin as coyote’s cold breakfast. Then suddenly from up ahead, I heard Ray shout.

“THANK THE LORD! If it aint the 1144!”

We had found the elusive trail, our expressway back to a warm bead, food and civilization. Maybe I would live to see another sunrise after all.

Finding the trail seemed to give a much-needed boost to our morale. We now had adrenaline and hope pumping through our veins. With our spirits now lifted and a newfound spring in our step, it wasn’t long until we found the our truck at Saw Mill Creek. Glory Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. We were saved.

We stumbled to the horse trailer on what little strength we had left in our legs. I can honestly say, that never in my entire life have I been more exhausted than I was at that particular moment. Just as we were loading our equally fatigued horses into the trailer, a figure emerged from the woods, limping and cursing like a drunken sailor. It was Junior. Apparently the thought of wild coyotes scattering his frozen bones all over the mountainside was too much for him to bare and he was able to muster the strength to follow us out.

Seeing my cousin, whom I’d shared many memories with since childhood, reappear from the forest alive and well was a relief, though I was somewhat disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to keep hi rifle.

Through out my career in corporate advertising, I’ve had the privilege to travel all over this great nation and dine in some of it’s finest restaurants, but I can honestly say that the Dinty Moore Beef Stew we ate in camp that night was probably the best meal that has ever passed over my lips. After dinner, I dropped in bunk and was asleep before my head even touched the pillow. No, scratch that, I think was asleep before I even entered the tent. I think someone just pointed me in the right direction and somehow I managed to find my bunk.

I have hunted that same area around Bear’s Ears several times since that god-awful night and I have yet to shoot an elk anywhere near that hole Ray lead us into. And I have made a promise to myself that I never will; no matter how big his antlers are. I hope to never again have to endure Ray’s Trail of Tears.