I have spent a lot of my life living in the woods and working in the woods. Mountain Men misses the mark. I remember an old miner who was in his mid 70’s living in a one room cabin. And he had a few couple productive fruit trees. He had constructed a water wheel that powdered one light bulb in the cabin. I am sure that he lived on “side hill salmon” know as poached venison and vegetables from his little garden. He ground up gold bearing rock into flour from which he panned gold. The rock that showed visible gold he sold as jeweler’s gold.
I remember Grandma Green who was an RN who married a miner. They lived in a very remote area and when people were injured or sick she was the first stop before they were taken over the mountain to the county hospital. Grandma Green canned bear meat, venison, along with salmon and steelhead out of the river for food. I remember visiting as a kid and fishing the river while dad kept a close eye on me. Grandma Green did have an old crank phone. The phoneline ran a few miles along the river and when the phone rang everybody listen. Grandma Green came out of the mountains during WWII to work as a nurse at the County Hospital. My mother was a nurse at the hospital and they became long time friends. One day she told me to call her Grandma. It was an honor. I believe she made a lot of friends with kids including another member of this board.
A while back I told my wife that the producers/writers are taking people who live and work in the outdoors and trying to make a TV show. Unfortunately the producers/writers lack the skill to capture the essence of living in the mountains. The scene of Tom’s neighbor out in the snow looking for Tom with an over and under shotgun broke open on his shoulder was a joke. That scene had to be put together by a city slicker. I suspect the man owned far better firearms to carry around in bear country, because ducks was not his objective. I cannot knock the use of a small ski plane in Alaska. Small planes have been a way of life in Alaska going back to the early days. Some fly and live, some fly and die.
Back in the 1960’s I spent a summer away from school on a homestead in the Peace River Country of Alberta. We did not have power, the well did not have a pump, we brought water up in a bucket on a rope, and we bought vegetables and bread. During that summer I shot a bear, a large bobcat, lots of rabbits, and grouse for meat.
For the first two years of our marriage the wife and I live at a remote Guard Station with a spring fed water system and a small WWII generator which we ran a few hours a week. A single wire fire phone provided communications about 2 miles up and down the creek. I and the neighbors would climb the trees using trees spurs to maintain the line. My primary communications out of the canyon was to a distant fire lookout which relayed messages to the main station.
I think the people putting the show on have good basic people but they are missing the mark. The characters are good. For some reason I am thinking Tom is wearing his “Go to Town Hat.” I like old Tom but the producers keeps showing the same set of bear tracks. Suspect that fry’s a lot of viewers grits.
