Best Trapper Poems
I zip swiftly along on my snow machine,
admist a white blanket with spots of green,
my trapline runs along this stretch,
Alaskan cold makes smoke of breath.
The snowpack has been good this year,
goes a little way to allaying my fears,
but who knows what’s in the traps I set,
too early to count my dollars yet.
The first trap I find quite empty,
so I drive to the next, hoping to see…
A Marten! Yes! That’ll bring in cash,
he goes in the bag, then I’m off in a flash
I have many more long miles to go
across this bitter, cold, sub-arctic snow.
Some wonder why I come up north
where wolves are literally at my door.
Why do I make cash in this old way,
and in a tiny cabin have to stay
for three months out of every twelve,
away from my wife, and daughter, Isabelle.
I think then of ‘normal’ office work,
with gossiping cowokers, and a boss/jerk,
stuck every day in the same routine,
answering calls, staring at a screen,
Stuck in a cubicle, dull and beige,
waiting only for the day I get paid.
That’s what they same is normal, right?
How I’m ‘supposed’ to go about my life?
A life of punching clocks and paying bills,
if that’s what life is, give me the chill!
Out here my office is endless miles
of sculpted beauty and manly trials.
Never know what’s coming the next day,
be in caribou, wendigo, or snowstorm’s gray,
to me there is something to all that,
so I push onward to my next trap…
Look! Another Marten! Awesome.
Eamon heard the rocks skitter away,
scree tumbling down with his every step,
descending from towering Mount Gilborne,
to a lake below where he could rest.
He knew a spot to set up his new tent,
where the conifers came down to the shore,
vibrant blue waters, the peak high above,
a nature-lover could not ask for more.
After setting up camp he went to the lake
to get water to boil for his food,
when he happened upon a man setting traps
in the water wearing clothing quite rude.
His shirt and pants all seemed to be deer-hide,
right down to the old western type fringe,
he wore a fur hat and long moccasins
that ran all the way up past his shins.
Standing in the shallows, he set his trap,
then he looked up and jumped back two feet,
shouted,”You fool, you could’ve been shot!
What’s the idea sneaking up on me!”
Said Eamon,“I didn’t mean to scare you,
and I see there that you’ve got beaver traps,
I like cosplay as much as anyone,
but I must ask, have you a permit for that?”
The man just gave him a peculiar look,
“Now just what’re you talkin’ about, man?
I came out here to this cold frontier,
ain’t need no permit to be on this land.”
Said Eamon,”I get you are playing a part,
and I don’t work for the Forest service,
but I want to keep the wilderness wild,
so I’m going to have to report this.”
“You’ll ride all the way back to St. Louis
to accuse a man committing no crime?”
The man just gawked and shook his shaggy head,
“Good luck then, you’ll have one hell of a time!
“I holed up here to avoid the Blackfeet,
they’ve been rampaging ’round without care,
you try to go now, I’ll bet you twenty plews,
you won’t escape these peaks with you hair!”
Said Eamon,”I get that you like history,
but I don’t really care who you are,
you can’t just go and trap any old thing,
that is taking this bit much too far!”
With that he turned to his bulging frame pack,
and dug out from it his satellite phone,
he typed in a number, and then turned back,
but the strangely dressed man was long gone…
* * *
III.
Dan found himself between
the angry mammoth and the cliff.
He had no choice but to retreat,
though the fall his flesh would rip.
Then about six feet down he saw,
a tree growing out of the wall,
at a slanting angle he could catch,
so Trapper Dan let himself fall.
He snagged the trunk and hung,
his legs dangling free in space.
Above the angry mammoth tried,
but could not check’s it pace.
An animal so very large
can’t always halt in a shot spell.
Momentum carried him clear off,
and a hundred feet he fell.
Dan scrambled back upwards,
then looked down upon the stream.
He wanted to skin the giant beast,
but couldn’t move it without a team!
And emerging on the river’s far side,
one hundred long feet below,
Three more mammoths did appear,
and send up a mournful bellow.
Dan just sighed and shook his head,
deciding right then and there,
that he was not going to risk anymore
for a pelt of mammoth hair...
Twas two weeks back without dogs,
and he stopped two days to hunt.
He arrived at Whitehorse exhausted,
consumed by an angry funk.
He walked into the small café
and found Kloatsultshik eating.
Dan said,”I Should’ve listened, my friend,
and saved myself the beating.”
That was the last he ever trapped,
he and Kloatsultshik partnered up to buy
the small café and a mining stake,
running their businesses side-by-side.
And in all the years that followed,
whenever people spoke of trekking west,
Dan warned them off of the small pass,
of The Valley That Trumpets Death.
* * *
The trapper looked for the oddly-dressed man,
but could no longer see him, or his tent.
He glanced around, so supremely confused,
now where the devil had that darned fool went?
He searched along the whole of the lake shore,
but of the strange man he found no sign,
scratched his head and wondered if the thin air
was somehow playing tricks on his mind?
Though a bit unnerved, he just gave a shrug,
gathered up his gear and headed back down
to where he and Postlewaite had made their camp
in a ravine on a patch of good ground.
Ol’ Post already had a small fire going,
he was preparing the stew for that night,
the trapper walked up, said,”Post, I just had
myself one hell or a troublin’ sight.
“I saw up on that pond I found yesterday
a man in the most peculiar clothes,
his pants made of fabric they use on wagons,
they were slung down on his hips real low.
“He had no hat perched high up on his head,
and spectacles made out of some dark glass,
his coat looked like fleece, but also like cloth,
with fancy leather boots, laces and brass.
“His tent was some cloth that I’ve never seen,
but that wasn’t the strangest of it,
he kept saying that to trap in these peaks
I would have to get myself a permit!?”
Ol’ Post looked at him, said,”Gilborne, my boy,
did you get into the corn whiskey?”
The trapper shook his head,”Nary a drop,
I swear to your, this is what I did see!”
Post looked the young man over once more,
then gave a shrug and let out a big yarn,
“Don’t know what to tell you, since we’re alone,
no good way to explain what you saw.
“Maybe it is like the Injins tell it,
’cause I’ve heard it’s said by the Blackfeet,
that ghosts live up here in crannies and cracks,
haunt the high places of these cold Rockies.
“But we’ll keep an eye out, in case I’m wrong,
being careful out here is always good,
but this here fire just ain’t hot enough,
see if you can go scrounge up some more wood.”
Gil went about searching for dry branches,
wondering what he’d really seen on the strand,
yet neither trapper nor, nor Eamon,
would ever again see the other man.
I.
Trapper Dan Slocumb sat on down
in the small Whitehorse café.
The gold rush gone, ten years now,
he’d turned to furs to make his pay.
That day he spotted Red Billings,
carving away at a large tusk,
Much too big to ever be ivory
from even the greatest walrus.
He also wore what looked to be
a brand new buffalo coat,
but the hair on it was reddish-brown,
and so damn long that it flowed!
“Wherever did you get that?”
the trapper went on to ask.
Red said,”Took it from a frozen Indian,
six days west, by a small pass.
“I was trapping nearby looking for
an untouched source of hides,
When I found a man lying dead,
fallen motionless, on his side.
“I figured he wouldn’t need them,
so I helped myself, you see.
I made this coat, sold the rest,
but held on to the ivory.”
Dan he sat, lost deep in thought,
contemplating Red’s crazy tale.
That hide look like a big windfall,
better than trapping to no avail.
Six days west was manageable,
and his sled and dogs could zoom,
that’s when the half-breed Kloatsultshik
spoke up from across the room.
“Slocumb, don’t go being foolish,
for my mother’s people tell,
of a place one week west of here,
filled with great beasts from hell.
“Billings is lucky to be breathing,
if he traveled near that pass,
for in the language of my mother
it’s named ‘The Valley That Trumpets Death.’”
Red laughed and dismissed him,
“That’s all superstitious nonsense.”
And the thoughts of Dan only say
visions of dollars and of cents...
CONTINUES IN PART II.
II.
Through long hills and dense forest,
Slocumb’s dogs pulled the sleigh.
Faint traces of Red Billing’s trail
guided Dan along the way.
He found the frozen Indian,
torn apart by many scavengers.
He said then a silent prayer,
since he couldn’t bury him in frozen dirt.
Another day of searching long,
and by a stream he found, at last,
a small gap in a long ridge,
he stood before the small pass.
It was a very narrow route,
quite easy for a man to miss,
shrouded by a forest of spruce
and the weight of clinging mists.
He worked through the route slowly,
moving the dogs around boulders.
Into a long and narrow valley,
Dan and his huskies soldiered.
The valley seemed like any other,
as he moved slowly through the glades,
with only the sound of the runners
breaking the silence in any way.
He came into a meadowed spot,
on the south side of a ledge.
One hundred feet it fell away,
to a churning river that leapt its bed.
As he looked down a cracking sound
arose from the woods' far side.
Then a piercing wail erupted loud,
echoing both far and wide.
A massive red-brown head emerged,
then a body impossible large!
Huge tusks spiraled towards him,
and the great beast launched a charge.
Dan froze in place, not believing
that an elephant could live in snow.
No wait—a mammoth! That was what
stood faced before him as a foe.
Dan grabbed his trusty Winchester
and dove away from the sled.
The mammoth speared it swiftly,
and both the dogs and sled lifted.
With a toss of its huge head,
dogs and sled flew off the ledge.
Enraged, Dan let go with him gun,
seven rounds in the beast’s head.
But then to his great horror,
the mammoth turned to him.
Bloodied, but not badly hurt,
with a trumpet, it came charging…
CONCLUDES IN PART III.
Sured my inclination
To goad trapper's ware
For I seek to be strung
By the trap that ensnares
If only to acquaint
With a pardoner's air
Thee whom unwittingly
Summoned my dare
...Bill passed on back in sixty-nine,
and I buried him on that same hill,
next to his friend Timlin Rivers,
beneath northern lights and the night’s chill.
And I know it won’t be all that long
until I too will be joining them,
the doc said two months, three at most
’till the cancer brings me to my end.
I wanted you to hear all this
so you can better understand
how it is you came to be ‘Bill,’
and why you father’s named 'Timlin.'
I know your wife’s expecting now
a child I won’t live to see,
but some day you must tell them this,
ought to know the family history.
Know how we carved out a living,
why we're settled out all this way,
all because that gruff, old trapper
took in a poor and starving brave.
Satan is very cunning
he tries to trap us at every turn
but his schemes I have become to learn
he tries to remind us of our past
but satans' lies can not last
he might try to trick or tempt us from day to day
but we have the power to tell him to go away
he might try to tell us that we are at fault
he might even try to bring us to an halt
satan thinks he is cleevr setting his little snares
but he has no scheeme, tricks or defence through our prayers
the Lord hears every word that we say
and he gives us the authority to send satan packing on his way Amen.
satan can trry to throw anything at us but he has no power through prayer
he has no anti prayer missile so fire them up and blast him out for good.