Secrets of Liberty Mountain (Final)

"Alice, we need to talk. Curious minds want to know, do you want us to have sex?" I said.

My blunt question seemed to take my hunting partner by surprise as she raised her eyebrows and blinked at me. She said nothing for several moments before responding, "Do you mean right now? Can I finish lunch first? Why do you ask?"

"At the meeting this morning, you asked me if I would share your bed tonight if you asked nicely. Was that a real question or were you just flirting?" I inquired as I moved to sit at her side.

"I was serious. I wanted to know if you would make love to me." Alice's face took on a reddish tint as she blushed. "Dennis, will you make love to me tonight?"

"Be honest. You are a lesbian, and I'm an old fart. Why would you want to have sex with me?"

She looked at me in silence for the longest time before answering. "I am concerned about my daughter."

It was my turn to be surprised. "What does your daughter have to do with us having sex?"

"My home is Liberty Mountain, and I'm here because I love my sisters. My daughter has displayed no interest in sexual relations with other women, but she has shown a keen interest in getting to know you in the biblical sense. I want her to explore her sexuality, and I want her to be true to herself. Star and I have had a few long talks about you. You are the first male she's met." Alice turned to face me and looked directly into my eyes.

"I warned her one man is not all men, and I told her I might give my blessings for her to have sex with you, but I would do so only after I've had a chance to check you out." Alice glanced at my private parts.

"Your daughter is still a child. I wouldn't feel right taking advantage of her that way." I sighed and fidgeted as the conversation entered an awkward phase.

Alice frowned and gave me a sharp look. "Bullshit! How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

"I-I was fifteen, and sh-she was nineteen." I stammered as I tried to remember who seduced who.

"So fifteen is old enough for boys." She leaned back, crossed her arms and narrowed her hazel eyes. "But eighteen is too young for a girl?"

She frowned as she poked my chest with her index finger. "Sounds like a fucking double standard," she paused, "pun," pause and poke, "intended!"

The final poke hurt.

"Ouch and okay. I get it. I'm old-fashioned. However, I still don't understand why you would want your daughter to have sex with me." I studied her smoldering green eyes and searched for her answer.

"I want the best life for my daughter, and that begins with her being true to herself. If it turns out she likes men, I'm good with that. If she prefers women, I'm also good with that. If she's bisexual like her mother, that would be fine. I'll love and support her no matter who she is. Besides, I have a dream of someday being a grandmother," Alice said with an almost shy smile.

"What about you? Why is it so important that you check me out first?" I was looking for the truth behind her interest in me.

"Because if you turn out to be an asshole like her father, I won't let you near her; that's why. He was a lousy, selfish lover who cared nothing for the sexual needs of his partner," Alice concluded.

We spent the next several minutes in thoughtful silence as we finished lunch and got ready to resume our quest for fresh venison. Our vantage point on the ridge afforded us a clear view of the deer herd in the valley a thousand feet below. Under the watchful eye of a magnificent stag, a dozen does graze along the banks of the stream flowing across the glen's floor.

It would take all of Alice's driving skills to traverse the pathway to the bottom.

Chapter 13

"This is Liberty base. The National Weather Service has issued a revised winter storm warning for our area. Forecasters are calling for up to thirty-six inches of snow starting tonight at five o'clock with blizzard conditions beginning at 6:30 PM. Snow will continue throughout the evening and into late tomorrow afternoon. Winds south by southwest twenty to thirty miles per hour with gusts up to one hundred and twenty miles per hour along exposed ridges. Return home immediately. Please acknowledge."

"It's too bad we can't acknowledge a message we never received," Alice said as she turned off the radio's power.

I scanned the sky overhead. The wispy streaks of the morning had given way to a high hazy overcast. Tops of advancing clouds were beginning to appear on the western horizon. The minuscule amount of weather lore I still remembered from my days as a Tenderfoot Scout told me high, thin clouds and mare's tails were telltale signs of approaching storm systems and usually signaled that a weather front was moving in.

We left base around 9:00 AM and had been on the trail for almost four hours. If we return now, we will make it home with barely thirty minutes to spare before the storm was upon us.

"We need to turn back if we're going to beat the snow," I urged Alice.

"No fucking way! I'm not getting this close without bringing back Bambi burgers," she replied with a look of determination that could blister paint. "Besides, we can get down to the valley floor and back in less than thirty minutes. We should have time to spare. Not much, but enough. I didn't come this far to go back empty-handed."

I wasn't going to win this argument.

The thirty-degree angle of the slope and the sheer granite face of nearly treeless stone made for a treacherous descent. We had almost made it to the base of the ridge when our rocky trail abruptly narrowed before ending in a dead end at the edge of a vertical cliff. It was fucking frustrating. We were within a hundred feet of our goal. As far as we were concerned, our destination could just as well been on the dark side of the moon.

"Shit! I missed the turn, we're on the wrong trail," Alice swore as she reached for the radio and turned on the power.

Haste makes waste, but I kept my thoughts to myself as I scanned the sky.

"Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in, please. Over." Alice paused and repeated her call, "Liberty Base this is Hunter One, come in, please. Over."

It was useless. A granite slab a mile thick stood between our location and the base's radio receiver, effectively blocking out our signal. The steady hiss of static ruled the airwaves. Alice handed me the radio's microphone and instructed me to repeat the call to base every five minutes.

Backing up the steep slope was a royal pain in the ass. Reverse gears are slow, and the best speed our Mule could manage up the incline was not much faster than a slow walk. Our retreat finally paid off when we came to a wide spot on the trail after twenty minutes of travel. Alice executed a tight three-point-turn, and at last, the front of the ATV pointed in the right direction.

The trail up the side of the ridge was difficult to follow. The overcast changed the light. None of the landmarks we'd passed on the way down looked like the ones we passed on the way up the trail.

We blazed our own path and followed the contours of the slope in an ever upward journey. Slow and steady wins the race in fairy tales. In our case, we gained the ridge in an hour and thirty-six minutes and lost our race against the clock.

We used too much time backtracking, and there was no way in hell we would be able to make it home before the weather turned to shit. Unless we could find a sheltered place to hunker down and ride out the blizzard, we would both be dead before dawn.

"Do we have the time and tools we need to build a lean-to?" I asked.

"Good idea. We have the tools, but we don't have the time. We've gotta find something almost ready-made, like a cave, rock overhang, or a cluster of fallen trees," Alice said as she handed me a pair of binoculars.

We drove to an outcropping with a good overview of the eastern face of our ridgeline.

"Scan to the north, and I'll scope out the south," Alice said as she lifted her binoculars and searched our southern flank.

The heavy overcast of clouds reduced the daylight in the valley to near twilight conditions even though sunset was still forty-five minutes in the future. In a classic case of the lull before the storm, the wind died down to almost nothing. I felt a drop of wetness on my cheek and a few moments later, another on my nose. Like the advance scouts of an approaching army, the first flakes of snow explored the ground around us.

"Damn it! There's nothing to the south of us!" Alice growled in frustration.

To the north, the slope of the ridge gave way to a nearly vertical drop. Conditions were favorable to the formation of rock shelters. Over the eons, slabs of granite had broken away and tumbled to the ground. I was looking for anything resembling a natural rock lean-to or cave opening.

"Alice! I think I've got something," I shouted with more hope than conviction as I pointed to a dark shadow in a land of shadows at the base of the granite cliff.

My partner studied the rock feature with her binoculars for a moment before slamming the ATV into drive and racing forward to the possible sanctuary. Hope turned to disappointment as we got close enough to see the details of our target. We were well and truly fucked; the rock outcropping was too shallow and exposed to serve as a shelter. Daylight was nearly gone, and snow was falling as fast as the thermometer.

"Now what do we do?" Alice gripped the steering wheel, her words flavored with fear.

"Let's check that out," I said pointing to a stand of saplings about a hundred yards to the left of the useless overhang.

Maybe we could construct an emergency lean-to from the young Aspens. We drove across the dusting of snow-covered ground and dismounted our vehicle. Flashlights in hand, we inspected the thin grove of trees.

"Holy shit, there's a cave back here!" Alice shouted and pointed to a five or six foot wide opening at the base of the cliff behind the trees.

The remains of the aborted attempt at gold mining were almost hidden behind the stand of saplings. We explored the inside of the underground chamber with our flashlights. Thankfully, it was uninhabited. The dry and dusty floor of the tunnel sloped upward to a level area, which formed a low, cramped chamber about fifteen feet across and twenty feet deep. At most, we had about four feet of headroom. Whoever had been looking for gold hit a dead end, gave up, and went home. Bad for them, lucky for us.

"Unload the Mule and get our stuff inside while I cut down as many saplings as I can with our survival saw," I said as I grabbed the folding cutting tool from the ATV's cargo bay.

Our plan was as desperate as it was simple. Cut as many of the young Aspens as possible, slide the trees into the cave opening, and use the thin branches and remaining leaves to block the wind. As the storm raged, the crowns of the trees would collect snow and form an impenetrable shield against the wind. The narrow trunks of the young trees were only four or five inches in diameter, and the saw made for fast work. Fifteen minutes later I had almost a dozen saplings down on the ground.

By the time I cut the last tree, swirling snow, and falling shadows were all around us. The first night of winter arrived with a vengeance. Alice finished bringing the last of our gear into the cave, and together we hauled away at the fallen Aspens to plug the entrance as best as we could. Alice and I had no choice; the rock cavern would be either our salvation or our grave.

As I adjusted the position of the last tree, Alice screamed, "Snakes! Oh my God, look at 'em all, the fucking cave is filled with rattlesnakes!"

Chapter 14

In the confined space of the cave, Alice's distressed cry reverberated off the walls so loudly my ears hurt. I scrambled to be at her side. She sat in a fetal position with her arms wrapped around her knees: her whole body trembling like a leaf in the wind. Fear distorted her face, and her eyes closed so tightly her eyebrows twitched with the effort.

A tiny voice uttered from her lips, repeating the same word again and again: snakes. Kneeling next to Alice, I put my arm around her shoulder and held her tight until her trembling lessened to not much more than a shiver.

"Where are the snakes?" I kept my voice calm and measured.

"Uhh, everywhere," she said.

"Where is everywhere? Can you point them out?" I said as I gently pressed her for details.

"Over there," she answered as she pointed to the right-hand side of the rocky cavern, "and over there," she said gesturing to her left.

The blue-white beam of my tactical LED flashlight lit up the last place Alice indicated. I nearly let out a scream of my own. Against the rock wall, at least seventy-five fat, sleeping rattlesnakes knotted and piled together like a braided rug. Several dozens more snakes clumped and piled together against the opposite wall. She was right; hibernating snakes were all around us.

When an old-timer first told me every dry cave in the mountains contained a snake den, I laughed at him. All around us, I surveyed the living proof of his words. The old man made his living as an environmental scientist, and he was obsessed with snakes, specifically, Rocky Mountain rattlesnakes. Racking my brain, I tried to recall what else he had told me about our legless friends.

Venomous snakes, such as rattlers, hibernate when the average daytime temperatures fall below sixty degrees Fahrenheit. In the high mountains, their favorite winter quarters are caves and deep crevices. While in hibernation, snakes are lethargic, torpid, and essentially unresponsive zombies as their metabolisms slow down to the minimum necessary to sustain life.

He said not all snakes survive hibernation. A skinny snake will not live through the winter, nor will a snake with food in its stomach or intestines when they cool. The undigested meal will rot and kill them.

Other than a heavy-duty icky factor, the slumbering reptiles posed little danger to us as long as we left them alone. I shuddered to think about it, but our slumbering cavern mates might prove to be a useful source of food.

The first priority was to help Alice regain her composure. I shared and understood her fear of snakes. Fear is useful and can provide the necessary adrenaline to power us through dangerous situations. On the other hand, too much fear has the opposite effect; often paralyzing a person into inactivity. The secret was to find a healthy middle ground between terror and bravado.

While I comforted Alice, I used the beam of my flashlight to explore our shelter. The dry soil of the cavern's floor could just as well have been talcum powder. The ATV's survival gear lay scattered about where Alice tossed it when we scrambled to get everything inside the cave.

To survive the blizzard, we needed to organize ourselves. Our situation reminded me of the scene from the movie, The Martian when the stranded astronaut faced the camera and said, "To survive, I'm left with only one option. I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this."

In our case, we needed to use our heads and think the shit out of our predicament. Our biggest threat wasn't sleeping snakes, it was creeping hypothermia. The chill air drained our bodies of heat, and unless we figured out a way to keep warm in our shelter, the cave would become our tomb.

Turning to Alice, I said, "Let's collect our stuff and do an inventory. We're gonna need to come up with a plan of action."

We gathered our meager stash of supplies and arranged the gear in front of us as we huddled together for warmth. We had salvaged an odd assortment of survival items including:

?two Kimber 84M Mountain Ascent rifles and a twenty round box of ammo

?two winter sleeping bags (rated to fifteen degrees)

?two all-weather mylar space blankets (useful as ground cloths)

?one Marmot Tungsten three-person three-season tent

?folding survival saw

?four packages of Meals Ready to Eat

?First Aid Trauma Kit

?Rayovac LED lantern (one hundred fifty-hour battery life)

?one plastic vial containing twenty-five storm-proof wooden matches

?compact snap-together stainless steel hobo stove

?one gallon stainless steel cooking pot with cover

?two metal water flasks filled with nearly frozen drinking water; tin cups attached

?three-ounce bottle of Japanese sesame seed oil

?ready box containing: a mess kit, one bag of ziplock and plastic shopping bags of various sizes, pocket thermometer (zero to two hundred and twenty degrees), one deck of cards, twenty-five tea bags with twenty-five sugar packets, three energy bars, a tin of twenty-five beef bouillon cubes, a bar of Lava soap, and a SAS Survival Handbook in Spanish

Huh? Spanish? What the fuck? I shook my head in bewilderment.

I emptied the contents of my pockets and added a KitKat candy bar, a pack and a half of cigarettes, one Bic lighter, a small glass pot pipe, and an Altoids tin containing several buds of potent homegrown weed to our collection.

The branches stuffed in the entrance of the cave rattled as the blizzard's howling wind intensified and the air temperature dropped. The interior of the cave was too large to heat, and if we wanted to stay warm, we were going to need a smaller confined space. We decided to erect the tent to use as a shelter within our shelter.

Thank goodness the components of our tent were color-coded. Within a few minutes, we had all the pieces assembled. Staking our tent in place was a bit more problematic. The thin layer of dusty soil on the fifteen-by-twenty foot plateau of bedrock was not deep enough to drive a tent peg into the ground. We improvised by filling several plastic shopping bags with dirt and rocks and used them as anchors to keep the shelter in place. The finished product would have been the laugh of the neighborhood if anyone could see it. Our poor tent leaned to one side like a drunken sailor as its top was squashed and misshapen by the uneven ceiling. Oh, well! We weren't trying to win Tent of the Year in the Better Caves and Snake Dens magazine.

In addition to the practical benefits of an easier to heat space, the finished tent provided a much-needed psychological boost. At least the snakes all around us were outta sight. Once we finished zipping our sleeping bags together, I brought the rest of our gear inside our cozy little ice box.

"I don't know how long we're going to be stuck here, but if we don't want to sit around in the darkness, we're going to have to conserve our batteries," I said as I turned off our tactical flashlights and switched on the Rayovac lantern to the lowest setting. The smoky white mist of our breath glowed in the lantern's light, every time we exhaled as a visual reminder of how God-awful cold our shelter was.

"Pip pip and cheerio, my dear, would you care for a spot of hot tea before we retire for the evening?" I asked Alice as I mangled my attempt to invoke an excessively proper English accent.

"Haha, funny. It ain't nice to joke about hot tea while I'm freezing my ass off." Her body trembled and shivered as she replied between chattering teeth.

"Who's joking? We've got a hobo stove, plenty of fuel, a tea bag, water, a customer, and more time than we know what to do with, so why not?" I answered as I dug through the gear we'd salvaged from the ATV.

The hobo stove is the clever invention of some unnamed and forgotten hobo genius of days long gone. The stove's design is elegant in its simplicity. A resourceful camper could build a fully functional metal stove from scratch in five minutes or less with only a tin can and a church key can opener.

Coffee cans are the ideal raw material, but any thin metal container will do the trick. All that is necessary is to remove the top of the can while keeping the bottom in place; then a ring of evenly spaced rectangular holes are punched around the top and base of the can for ventilation. Finally, a series of randomly placed carburetor holes are punched through the sidewall of the can with the church key. Happy days! You have just built a survival stove.