Wild Trails & Tall Tales
- by Roland Cheek
TO MY VALENTINEAn open letter to my sweetheart:
"Honey, I've loved you for longer than most people are old. You were the girl next door as we entered our teens; our first date was when you were in the seventh grade and I the ninth. We walked to a corner drugstore on a Sunday afternoon for milkshakes and we drank them through straws as we talked of all the important questions of life.
"Though not so elevated in America's consciousness back in those post-World War II days, I was already leaning body and soul toward the outdoors. You accepted it, though you'd been exposed to no more than an occasional picnic in a park
."Our love, however, was hardly a blinding flash of light on the way to Damascus, but embryonic, germinating beneath the surface as you passed through a succession of beaus and I fell madly in love with other girls.
"We rekindled the old flame late in life: I had already escaped high school and you were a heady sixteen. Many of our subsequent dates were drives through the country as I regaled you of fishing and hunting adventure. We hiked. You sat on stream banks while I fished. There were some in your family who gave scant chance for our marriage to endure, believing I'd robbed their cradle.. which was ridiculous, of course--I was but nineteen.
"As with most marriages, ours had its bumps. We had children early and while we each loved the other, parentage was hard for ones so young. You suffered in silence my many absences, preferring my love for the outdoors to that of another woman or sitting in a bar somewhere, drinking up my paychecks.
"Years went by. We moved to Montana so that I might engage in greater outdoors adventure. Though thinking me foolish, you still supported my decision to leave financial security for a will-o'-the-wisp dream of becoming a guide. By and by, our kids matured and you joined me in outdoors adventure. You, too, fell as passionately in love with wild places and wild things.
"It took years, but eventually, we made a heckuva team, honey--one recognized far and wide for our professional outdoors ability and caring aptitude in service to others.
"Now we're in our waning years, coasting down the backside of life. We still make a heckuva team, though. After forty-nine years together, you still give 110% to support each of my wild-haired dreams. And I trust you've found my enthusiastic assistance for each of yours.
"Though most of what our contemporaries think the finer things in life seem to have a way of trickling through our fingers, we have each other--in spades! If anything, you are more beautiful today than when you were blushing at the altar at age seventeen.
"You are healthier, more mature and, I'm sure, more caring. You challenge me to become better at every thing I wish to do. Meanwhile, you've grown under my tutelage until I'd rather be in tandem with you than anyone else I've ever known, or even seen, or heard of, or read about in magazine or newspaper or book. You are tops.
"Thanks for being you and loving me."
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Dance On the Wild Side is a book about Jane's and Roland's life and love. Jean Rafferty of Glasgow Scotland said this about the story: “Devoured the book yesterday in a single—very long—sitting, Jane, you are a lucky woman, having a 300-odd page love letter written for you.”
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