The road hummed under the car tires. David Morris, Rusty Klaus, and I were on a road trip. For them it was a site-seeing tour. For me it was a small step for mankind but a major step for Herman Willie. The plan was mine. We were headed to northern Montana. The Texas Aggie spring semester was done and my buddies were taking two weeks to lollygag before spending the rest of the summer at hard labor. My personal agenda required me to leave Aggieland (TAMU) early and take a job with an oil patch lease service.
Life was in a headlong race. Notions and dreams were growing. Bobbi Wirth, from Wolf Creek, Montana, taught a horse management class at TAMU and provided me with applications to training that I’d utilize forever more. She also supplied the contact information needed to seek employment in Montana. That was the purpose of this jaunt. Rusty and David had already thought about time off in Colorado. It was easy to convince them we should go a little farther and visit Montana.
Morris’ Galaxy 500 sailed through North Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and on towards Northern Montana. While I worked on a ranch, they toured the state, abruptly were uninvited from Canada, and sought a few days employment at a Baptist Youth Ranch. The realization that I had delivered myself to the land of Charlie Russell, and A. B. Guthrie – the mountains and wild country that I had grown up reading about and longing for – didn’t dawn on me for several decades. I was too busy living. The car tires hummed on the highway and I couldn’t get there fast enough.
The truck tires sang across the pavement. The three-quarter ton Chevy was rigged with a camper and pulled a two-horse trailer. One of the ponies was a half-broke colt and the other was my brand new wife’s barrel racing steed. The previous excursion with my collegiate chums culminated with a ranch job and a cabin on Elk Creek west of Augusta, Montana. It was a glorious if short-lived beginning. The small log abode had a lean-to roof on the back under which was the tiny bedroom. A few yards behind, the creek murmured a continuous mountainlullaby.
At midnight on my 21 st birthday, I leapt from the bed as natural as the day I was born and dashed into the kitchen shouting, “There’s a man in the house!” My little darling sat up big eyed and clutching the blankets querying – where? I strode back into the bedroom hands on my hips and sassy, “Right here by God!” The greatest takeaways from that summer were the new folks that enjoined the cooping of coming adventures. In a few more years I was packing mules and guiding hunters into the most remote backcountry in North America.
The van tires bumped and rattled down the interstate. The vehicle lurched through a dazed and hazed phobic period of misdirection. Butch Couch mentored my saddle bronc endeavors; and during the late night hours when following the white stripes was sacrosanct he related stories of being overrun in firefights as a foxhole Marine in Vietnam. “Hell, the good thing about being surrounded is that you can shoot in any direction.” He propped a bad ankle on the dashboard while I drove. “The last fight was the worst. It wasn’t jungle warfare. It was wide open country and we weren’t battling Viet Cong. The forces coming at us wore uniforms.
They were Red Chinese and there were too many. But, a couple of Marine fighter pilots dropped some bombs and ended the attack.” Our conversations fluctuated from rodeo, to past transgressions, to current sins, and whatever the circumstance – Butch always saw a way to justify the actions. The miles stretched on and rodeo partners evolved. Eric Totten, and Joe Dean Weatherby had each been Texas Circuit PRCA Rookie Champions. There was also Clark Rossi, Dug Dugan, Denny Austin, Kevin Browning and legions more. We left Texas chasing pro- rodeos nationwide. All our discussions focused on bronc horses. We lived and breathed rodeo.
There was no talk wasted on emotions. We were kings of the arena living free.
The SUV’s tires moaned over the blacktop. Every first, third, and fifth weekend they made this journey from Columbus, Texas, to Ponder, Texas. It was five to five and one-half hours one-way. This trek was made religiously from 1993 to 2002. The Texas Family Code warranted that I arrive at 6:00 p.m. on Friday and again at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday. A person may make awful decisions but when my ideas negatively impacted my baby daughter it was past time for soul searching. A reckoning of sorts was drug into the daylight. And – such daylight is a cleanser.
We learn what is okay with ourselves, we see what must be discarded, and we venture into maturity. The flip side was that Sam, my daughter, was tickled to travel. The cab of the truck was our cockpit. It was our capsule to other realms. We ventured to writers conferences from West Virginia to California, and hunter’s camps from the Bob Marshal Wilderness to resort ranches in Mexico. In Moab, Utah, as the dawn broke she was sleeping against the far door and I pulled over to close my eyes. Immediately she was awake, “Daddy, keep this wagon rolling. We need to get home to Texas!” We played monopoly with the McDonald’s burger stands and laughed at our misfortunes. If we neared home and still had five dollars – we’d stop and spend it.
The Jeep tires crackled on the gravel along the Teton River Road. I parked and my girlfriend walked to the water’s edge at the Headquarters Pass Trailhead. “So these are the mountains you love so much?” I nodded. She’d never been north of the Brazos. “Wow – I see why!”
I love the open road.
