Man on the Silver Mountain

Chapter One:

THE VALLEY OF SILVER MOUNTAIN

The year was 1938, I was 25 and I was finally in the Rocky Mountains (which were first given that name in 1752 by the Canadian explorer, Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre as the Montagnes de Roche aka. Mountains of Rock). After 6 weeks of untrimmed beard and hair growth, I was beginning to look the part of a mountain man, which I had always admired the likes of.

I had begun to follow a dream, where I was living in the wilderness, nothing but myself, my 4 mules and enough supplies for a couple of months before I would have to return to the post that I had embarked on my journey from.

I had learned about trapping as a possible way to earn enough to start my dream of raising horses and mules.

Since I was old enough to remember, I had a passion for horses and mules, which focus was always on my mind.

I saw many using their horses and mules to plow, pull a wagon or as transportation but never in a way that looked “right” for both man and beast. I had started my first gelding to being able to be ridden, 12 years earlier but still didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing.

It had been a great fall season and I was riding my favorite mule, a john mule (red dun colored 14 hh tall) I named Zeb, with my supplies on my most trusted pack mule, a molly I named Elly (also a dun but darker, with more prominent dorsal stripe and zebra stripe leg markings, 14hh tall).

Trapping for the last 6 weeks, then skinning and bundling the beaver, muskrat, mink and the occasional bobcat pelts after stretching and drying them.