Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  When I was sixteen, I bought my first shotgun. It was an H&R single shot twelve gauge. I wasn't really a hunter, but I thought it would give me a chance to spend more time outdoors when the fishing had slowed down. Though I had originally bought the gun for hunting rabbits or pheasants, or possibly quail, I never thought I'd have to use it on a spider. When the World War II ship I was stationed on in Key West was decommissioned around 1973, I was assigned to a much newer guided missile destroyer in Charleston, South Carolina. I didn't know anything about Charleston, except that it was in a southern state, and I was under the impression that a fellow who hailed from Ohio might not be all that welcome. I'd heard rumors that even though the civil war had been over for more than a hundred years, there were still some tender feelings. My fears were somewhat influenced by having just watched the movie, Deliverance, a few weeks prior to having to make the move. For those...

\   A few years ago I was working at the boat haul out getting some plank work done, when the shipwright, John Kveum, mentioned the location of an outhouse across from the haul out. It was tucked away in a little bit of an alcove under the towering rock wall of what we here in Hoonah know as the tunnel. There were rocks all around the base of the outhouse, and of course I had to do a blog post about it. The idea that people would get beaned while on the way to a porta-potty kind of tickled me. I have a strange sense of humor. Anyway, the next year, they moved the potties. Probably wisdom to do so. I spotted some fairly good rocks where it had been residing, and if one of those had hit the outhouse when you were in there, if you didn't have to crap when you got there, you'd probably have to afterwards. I guess last year there was a few more rocks falling off the face of the tunnel and there was a fear that a tourist might get hit by one and of course ...