During the spring run-off of
1965, my family moved from our ranch east of Ingomar,
Montana, to East Pass Creek at the foot of Wyoming’s
Big Horn Mountains. While exploring the new
outbuildings, my brothers and I found an old
flat-bottomed, plywood boat in the barn loft and we
figured we should float it in the creek. Lowering
the boat out of the loft was simple; gravity did the
hard work, but dragging it to the creek depleted the
sweat equity of us three skinny Kerns boys. We knew
shooting the rapids of Pass Creek might be
dangerous, but we weren’t nearly as fearful of
drowning as we were of losing our boat. If dragging
the craft the 200 yards across the yard was so
taxing, imagine the effort it would take to drag our
boat home if it beached a half-mile down the creek.
As a safety measure, we borrowed a lariat off Dad’s
saddle to tether the boat to a tree. Using the word
“borrowed” implies our intention of returning the
rope. Someday we will. A 30 foot rope effectively
becomes 26 feet after allowing four feet for the
knots at each end, so by tying it to a tree
downstream of the launch its thrill length doubles
to 52 feet before we hit the end of our slack.
Youngsters addicted to video games probably can’t
follow my calculations, so I will translate using
Common Core math. Round the 26 foot lariat to the
friendlier number of 50 and add 2 representing the
number of butts in the boat—the third brother always
stays on the bank to explain the senselessness of
waiting dinner for the return of the two who had
floated out of sight. See, that was easy…52 feet of
whitewater.
We launched into the rapids and bounced along for
exactly 52 feet before the unforgiving tug of the
lariat swamped us under the current. God was with
us, as he is with all country kids, and the raging
waters spit us into the shallows where we could boy
handle the boat ashore. None of us were interested
in a re-ride, so we decided to find a friendlier
body of water to float our new John boat.
Across the county road hidden by willows was a
shallow pond built by my great-great-grandfather in
the late 1800s. Over the years it filled with
cattails and turtles, but looked more inviting than
another 52 foot run down the creek. Dragging our
boat across the road and pasture was labor
intensive, but was worth it as the boat and pond
became the center of our entertainment for the next
four years. We sank the old boat repeatedly and it
always magically floated to the surface until one
afternoon when it slipped into the mud to never rise
again. The pond chapter of my childhood came to an
abrupt and disappointing close.
Thirty-four years later, I am back in Montana and
have built a small holding pond from which I pump
irrigation water. Over the years it has filled with
cattails, frogs, minnows and grand kids. Last
weekend, my seven mini-Kimmels and two mini-Kernses
visited and the older kids spent all day playing
around the pond. It was too cold for kayaking, their
favorite pond sport, so they borrowed a couple
minnow traps from their great-grandfather and caught
a bucket full of squiggly minnows. Sarah, the
four-year-old, was disappointed Nana would not fix
minnows for dinner—had she served them, no doubt
Sarah would have eaten them. She is a country kid to
the core and this brings me to my point. Water
occupies position number three as the most critical
element for human life on the arid western
plains—God being first and oxygen number two. It is
entirely logical leftists target water as the tool
by which to control the unwashed masses.
Rather than limiting their reach to navigable
waters, the EPA now interprets the Clean Water Act
as being applicable to all surface waters in these
United States. This was the loose interpretation the
EPA used to redraw Wyoming reservation boundaries to
place the town of Riverton under tribal control.
Here in Montana, I expect the EPA to be a major
player in the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Water
Compact. Even you left-wingers making a living
farming the mailbox have to be nervous how the EPA
is aggressively regulating our lives. Who will you
call when the big government gun created by your
voting history is suddenly pointed at you?
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