Day 1

I sit looking out over a beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountain valley vista.  It’s threatening lightening and I have no shelter, just a big piece of canvas and my horse blankets.  That’s right I said horse.  My two horses are grazing away at their evening meal.  Flint, my riding horse and Remington, my pack horse.  This time it’s cowboy survival!  I’ve come out as a casual rider on a days trek.  No food, little gear.  Of course in my case I need to bring a pack horse to carry all my camera gear.  The vistas here are stunning.  It’s classic Colorado.  The temps are ranging from cold enough to snow at night to 70 during the day.  Having horses to travel through and survive with won’t be easier – it will be harder.  It takes a lot to look after horses – they’ll need water and a small field of grass every day.  I can’t just set myself up anywhere.  I have to consider them in my every move.  Tonight I’m laying under the canvas and waiting for night to come in.  I’m actually wondering if I would be better off closer to the horses.  I just remembered there are a lot of mountain lions here.  Big ones!

Day 2

Today was a long ride day.  I passed through a couple of places that I think I can survive in.  Where I am now is great for the horses but not much for me.  I spent all day riding looking for a good spot and gathering a lot of wild edibles: shooting stars, lady supper dandelion, glacier lily, bistort, stone crop, thistle even pine buds. All of that will help but I’ve got to get to a creek with fish in it.  Otherwise it’s going to be a very long week.  The thunder and lightening came out on cue in the afternoon like it seems to do every day.

Day 3 – Night

I’ve moved only a short distance back to a valley where the stream looks promising.  There’s plenty of grass for the horses, water, wild edibles and lots of firewood, which is good because I have a fire!  I took my flashlight, broke the bulb – but not the filament – filled it with dried grass, turned it on and voila – the grass ignited from the burning filament!  As it stands now it’s been a week of only greens – so I will try the creek tomorrow for brook trout.
I had it in my head that I would build a lean-to out here – but then it occurred to me – I have all this rope and the canvas cover for the pack horse – instant lean-to roof.
The sun is setting behind me. The sky has that velvet blue look to it and the night hawks are very busy.  The only really bad thing is that there are a lot of mosquitoes here.  They are all over my horses by the hundreds.  I try to wipe them down but it only helps for a minute.

The cool night air should help to knock them down for the night.  Who knows – maybe I’ll get a full night sleep.

Day 4 – Night

Not a bad day but not all that fruitful either.  I set out to try a few fishing rods with no luck so I’m still a vegetarian survivor – filling up on dandelions, violets, and glacier lilies.  Storms came and went throughout the afternoon which forced me back in my shelter, so I decided to add some evergreen boughs to one end to begin closing it in.  If it doesn’t get windy or stormy I might sleep well with this fire.  I was able to purify the stream water by boiling it in the plastic water bladder I came out with.

Day 5 – Night

What a day.  I walked down to the pond at the bottom of my slope and tried some more fly-fishing.  I caught a brook trout!!!  (Or brookies as they call them here).  What a feast.  Then the reality of surviving with horses kicked in – I had to move them and the electric fence to new pastures – it took 3 hours and wore me out.
But, then, I caught another brookie!!  So it’s been a good day of surviving.  I could really get into this fly-fishing thing.  On a not so good note it was very hot today and so now the mosquitoes are insane.