Roland's Campfire Culture Archives - 2008
January 1, 2008
The last word in arrogance is the developer who plans to road or log or gouge dollars from the public domain to accurse those who will make nothing by trying to save it as "selfish."
January 8, 2008
If history tells us anything, it tells us the only real limits to sadistic urges of the bloodthirsty came only after guns leveled the playing field.
January 15, 2008
Popular fiction aside, no woman in her right mind has any intention of letting a man into her kitchen
January 22, 2008
Legions of Montanans understand the one-of-a-kind natural values residing in the Rocky Mountain Front
January 29, 2008
Does it require more courage to follow and order to march to certain death than to live through cowardice?
February 5, 2008
Our nation cannot survive without a continuing supply of natural resources providing life's blood to our country. Yet we squander those resources profligately.
February 12, 2008
You won't find "Love" listed in the Wall Street Journal or on Dun & Bradstreet. But it's the stuff of great literature, and can be found on faces everywhere.
February 19, 2008
Friends and whitewater rafts--will ever the twain should meet?
February 26, 2008
Son, there are way too many horses in this world for a man to have to walk.
March 4, 2008
Oh my God! Jane! We hold title to the Okefenokee!
March 11, 2008
From Puritans to Okies, hope was the Eveready Battery that keeps on going: a bridge to every American's future.
March 18, 2008
I've always admired culture. Got a nice ring to it. We Montanans have distinct cultural advantages over unfortunates dwelling elsewhere who have to make much ado about much less.
March 25, 2008
How many of you know how the date for Easter is determined?
April 1, 2008
It must me shocking for bears to emerge after a long winter's sleep to find their living rooms still locked in a frozen world.
April 8, 2008
I had the normal youthful delusion that God had perfected the formula for quality creation when sculpting me.
April 15, 2008
Don't tie your saddlehorse to a dead tree housing a yellowjacket nest. It can sometimes be tough to get close enough to untie him!
April 22, 2008
Thank God the folks who made our great conservation wins happen didn't practice their protective ethics only one day each year.
April 29, 2008
Perhaps this story of tragedy and death explains why I developed guidelines to use while crossing streams during high water.
May 6, 2008
For the last several years Jane has spent her special day looking for grizzly bears (she lets me tag along).
May 13, 2008
We didn't inherit this land from our forefathers and mothers, but are borrowing it from our children!
May 20, 2008
Survival, when I was young was 90% luck and 10% skill. Now survival is seasoned with a modicum of experience, topped off with a measure of prudence.
May 27, 2008
It's my notion that the loneliest sound in all the world is the honking of a single goose flying alone in a fog.
June 3, 2008
Just once spent in the enchanting embrace of a mountain lake at its best and you'll be hooked for life.
June 10, 2008
Equal opportunity, what a laugh! My little mommy has a pie wheel trimmer, I get an oxygen bottle. She gets a rotary mincer, I get a blood pressure pump.
June 17, 2008
How did the Nez Perce engineer an entirely new horse strain without scientist or government telling them how?
June 24, 2008 Roland (the klutz) forgot to upload it!
July 1, 2008 Roland (the klutz) forgot to upload it AGAIN!
July 8, 2008
Isn't it bewildering that more hysteria comes from folks dwelling where there are no grizzlies than from folks who live where the bears hang around?
July 15, 2008
The first rule of outdoors adventure is that guy named Murphy plays a key role.
July 22, 2008
Bear in mind that, despite dozens of encounters with grizzly bears, mosquitos took a far larger blood toll from Lewis & Clarks intrepid explorers.
July 29, 2008
Barebacked and bare-bottomed, we swam our ponies into the lake, slipped from their backs to hold their tails. Again and again.
August 5, 2008
We ate lunch with a spectacular vista fifty miles east, to the Continental Divide.
August 12, 2008
The day I climbed to Rock Lake is the first time I realized prospectors of yore were equals of the mountain man when it came to perservering savvy.
August 19, 2008
It's true that I began my outdoors career stalking frogs and polywogs and garter snakes in the marsh that spread just beyond my rural school.
August 26, 2008
The hailstones were as big as golf balls, ripping through the scattered lodgepole pine branches. "Ow!" came a cry from the trail.
September 16, 2008
There are so many ways to lose friends and so many conflicts on the way to enjoying them that special effort is required to make friendships work.
September 23, 2008
Unable to become the wildlife spotter I'd like myself to be, I developed my very own, private, in-house back up. Cagy, isn't it?
September 30, 2008
In political elections I search for candidates who'll conserve fiscally AND economically. Those two kinds of conservation are NOT mutually exclusive.
October 7, 2008
The first snowflake kissed their tent about the same time both began snoring. By midnight, six inches had fallen, its weight stretching their ridgepole rope.
October 14, 2008
There are few inter-social entities as democratic as that of a hunting camp, especially a hunting camp composed of friends.
October 21, 2008
"I'm not going down into that hell-hole to hunt. I'm going to stay up here in the open country. That way, if I get an elk or don't get an elk, I'll still enjoy it."
October 28, 2008
Ever wonder about the secret ingredient that makes one hunter more successful than another?
November 4, 2008
Uncle Remus says "It what you do with what you got that pays off in the end."
November 11, 2008
Most accidental gun discharges are caused by novices, "with no harm done." But professionals--law officers, hunting guides, soldier--see it differently.
November 18, 2008
It was every hunter's dream--a band of huge bull elk, grazing acvross a south-facing slope, plowing through deep November snow.
November 25, 2008
Thanksgiving Day occurs on November 27. That's the same day, 54 years earlier, that Jane and I married.
December 2, 2008
Men! You're lucky I'm here to provide key tips for quality Christmas shopping for the little woman.
December 9, 2008
Goose music! My feet were no longer cold; if they were wet, I didn't notice! Al lifted his call. The rest was all a-blur!
December 16, 2008
Where I hail from, if a man won't meet another's eye, everybody knows that he's up to no good.
December 23, 2008
One of our more entrenched customs is to rail against the crass commercialism of Christmas. But don't you reckon Christ likes to see children smile?
December 30, 2008
I've been frightened by too many technological crisis to get too worried over whether my TV goes blank, come a new year.