Yuki the Reindeer from the Mountain West Animal Hospital Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Mary with Bluebell the Reindeer from the Rockin Reindeer Ranch Ogden City Christmas Square Copyright Mary HeersI first time I came face to face with a living, breathing reindeer was a few weeks ago at the Reindeer Express hosted by Utah State University vet students. Two vets from the Mt. West Animal Hospital near Provo had brought two of their reindeer with them to Cache Valley and were standing by to answer our questions.
The first thing I learned was that both male and female reindeer grow a new set of antlers every year. The antlers are solid bone and can weigh up to 15 pounds. The males usually drop their antlers in Nov after the mating season, while the females keep theirs a few months longer – until after they drop their calves in the Spring. A vet student chimed in. He said reindeer losing their antlers looks a lot like us losing a baby tooth. The antlers get a little wobbly and simply fall off. The reindeer just keeps grazing.
Now I was hot on the trail of reindeer in Utah. I went to the Ogden City Christmas Square to meet Bluebell from the Rockin Reindeer farm near Ogden. As admirers were taking pictures, Bluebell’s owner told me that watching the antlers regrow could be pretty exciting. Every morning you could get up and easily see how the antlers had grown another inch overnight.
I also learned if you listened closely, you could hear a clicking when the reindeer walked. The first time they heard it, they thought something was terribly wrong. But all reindeer click when the tendon in their leg slides over a bone. Clicking seems to be a way for the herd to find each other in white-out winter weather.
Another adaptation to intense cold is the hair that covers every reindeer’s nose This helps keep it warm in the reindeers natural habitat in the far north.
I can trace my own fascination with reindeer to my childhood days when my father arranged for a friend of his to dress up as Santa and personally deliver a big white sack full of presents to our house. The fact that Santa rang our doorbell didn’t strike me as odd since we didn’t have a chimney. One Christmas Eve I was talking all day about how I would soon get to meet Santa’s reindeer. When the doorbell rang, I rushed to open the door. There was Santa with his big white sack. No reindeer.
“Where are the reindeer?” I asked.
“I left them down the street,” Santa said. “Let’s go see them after we open the presents. “
That did the trick. I forgot all about the reindeer.
But now that I’m older and wiser, I know that most male reindeer drop their antlers in Nov, while the females keep theirs a few more months. So the odds are very, very good that the Santa that rang my doorbell was driving an all-female dream team.
Nora’s embellished May Swenson poem: “Unconscious Came a Beauty,” as a butterfly A means to emphasize the butterfly poem subject. Poem copyright acknowledged Photo Courtesy Shannon RhodesI’m sitting here today with first grader Nora Baggaley and USU student teacher Ashlyn Prince. Just steps away from where we spend our days at Edith Bowen Laboratory School on the campus of Utah State University, we find Swenson Park, built on the lot where May’s childhood home once stood. She spent her elementary school days here, she was a student at Utah State Agricultural College, and she moved east to become a writer. During her lifetime May Swenson wrote her way into fame by recording memories riding her willow horse, enjoying strawberry juice dripping down her chin, and describing the relationships that develop when a baseball bat, ball, and mitt meet. Eventually she became Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. I love that she wrote shape poems about simple things like insects.
Insects? Did you say bugs? Coming into student teaching, I wasn’t too thrilled when I heard about the focus we have on bugs. From the beginning of the school year, we were already in the Logan River, digging out stonefly larva. By the second week, I was already writing a book for my students about why I do not like bugs. Here’s some of my book “Definitely NOT the Bug Girl.” I loved butterflies; they had beautiful wings. That was until I saw them closer. They looked an awful lot like grasshoppers with wings, and if you were paying attention, I hate grasshoppers! Why did I never think they were big, sticky, scary insects too? They did come from caterpillars…I should’ve known!”
Throughout the semester, from katydids flying at my head to being chased at recess with grasshoppers, I’ve grown to love the stories and discoveries the children have with bugs. Now today, I see a bug and instantly start to wonder: How did it get here? Where is it going? What would my students think about this? I could almost say I love bugs…
Swenson’s “Unconscious Came a Beauty” captures an encounter with a butterfly. She isn’t certain about which kind of butterfly, so she offers two choices based on her descriptors. She must have been outside writing when one landed on her hand long enough for her to notice it, know it well enough to describe it.
I like how her words are in the shape of a butterfly and the wiggly way she typed the title.
When I wrote “Definitely NOT the Bug Girl,” Nora and her classmates encouraged me to include even more chapters about different kinds of insects. They wanted chapters of how I felt about roly polys, katydids, and ladybugs. I never really had an opinion about ladybugs. They were cute but a little frightening when they would fly. Finding them at recess became not so scary to me. Did you know they start their life as black and orange larvae?
How’s this for a poem inspired by May’s shape poem?
Hungry crawls a lady bug larva
To our recess rock riddled with yellow aphids dots
And stopped our games
Orange-striped black
Alligator-wiggling on its six legs
We sat wondering, and Asher brought one to class
Where it crept out overnight as a familiar friend.
Aurora Borealis from Logan Utah Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, PhotographerBesides bugs, did you know May also wrote about space topics we know, like astronaut landings, gibbous moons, shadows, and her ghost moon? She called it, “the albino bowl on cloth of jet.”
In November, every student, and teacher, was given a nature journal paper to observe the full moon that night. Sadly, the sky was full of clouds and only a faint glow was visible. Amazingly enough though, we could see the northern lights a few days later! It was a beautiful sight, and made up for missing the November Beaver Moon.
Night Sky Nature Journal Entries by Ashlyn and Nora Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
This is a two-voice poem we call “Witchy Sky.”
The beaver moon reminds me of cotton candy in the dark. It reminds me of a flashlight shining through my finger. The northern lights are Glinda and Elphaba. I notice a lot of thick clouds. I can’t really see the shape of the moon in the clouds but still it glows through them. I wonder what does the moon feel like? How bright would the sky have been if there were no clouds tonight?
May Swenson remembered classmates folding paper airplanes and releasing them in the classroom when their teachers’ backs were turned. In a clip from a 1969 recording “Poetry Is Alive and Well and Living in America,” she says, “My poems sail away like that, I don’t know who picks them up, who may be reading them. It’s lovely to think that people are reading my things, especially that they are being stimulated to write their own poems.”
Don’t worry, May. We are inspired by your Mourning Cloak, Ashlyn’s aphid-eaters, Nora’s night sky auroras, and students, young adult and age 6, immersed in words every day.
This is Nora Baggaley,Ashlyn Prince, and Shannon Rhodes, and we are Wild About Utah,May Swenson, night sky poetry, and of course, bugs. Well, maybe bugs. Nora, Shannon & Ashlyn in the Studio Courtesy & Copyright Stu Baggaley, Photographer
Abandoned Sugar Beet Factory, Weston near Franklin, ID Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, PhotographerWhen I started teaching at Preston High School, one of the first books my English class read was The Diary of Anne Frank. I remember asking the class if they had any family stories of their own to share about those war years. A young woman raised her hand and said her grandparents had a painting on their wall that had been given to them by a German Prisoner of War. This POW had worked on their Cache Valley sugar beet farm in 1945. He’d signed the painting, and had written a few words of thanks on the back for the kind treatment he had received
I was astounded. German POW’s in Cache Valley? This led me to ask more questions.
I found out in 1945 there were close to 400 German POWs living in tents in a work camp at the Cache Valley Fairgrounds. Local farmers contracted with the US Government to hire the POWs to work in the fields for 80 cents a day.
Each morning the prisoners would get loaded into trucks and driven to a sugar beet field. The work day didn’t end until 8 pm when the prisoners returned to the Fairgrounds, damp and chilled, from the ride in the open bed trucks.
Sugar Beet Knives Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, PhotographerIn 1945, sugar beets were a profitable crop, but labor intensive. In the Spring, the beets needed to be thinned and weeded. This work was done by a short handled hoe. In the Fall, the beets needed to be pulled out of the ground. This was done by a special beet knife with a big fish hook on the end. Once pulled out of the ground, the top leaves were sliced off and the beets tossed into a pile bound for the sugar factory.
At the peak of sugar beet farming in and around Cache Valley, there were 5 sugar factories operating. But by 1945 the factories were down to two – one located in Lewiston, and the other in Whitney, near Preston.
Native Americans came from Arizona to work the beets and set up their colorful teepees in downtown Lewiston. High school students were let out of school for 2-3 weeks in the Fall to work during what were called “Harvest Vacations.”
A friend of mine in Preston told me about a young man who went off the college in the Fall of 1945, but came home after a week. His father handed him a sugar beet knife and told him if he wasn’t going to go to college, he was going to work in the fields.
Everyone I met who once worked in the sugar beet fields told me all the work of thinning and harvesting needed to be done while bent over, and the resulting back pain was terrible.
Of all the stories I heard, my favorite was one of a Logan beet farmer who took his 3-year-old daughter with him to check on the work being done by the POWs he had hired. One day, he looked up and saw one of the German POWs holding his little girl in his arms. The farmer took his little girl by the hand, but the POW didn’t let go. A guard came running over. But both men stopped when they saw the tears running down the POW’s face. Somewhere, many miles away, they realized this German POW had a little girl of his own that he may or may not ever see again.
Today, all the POWs have long gone, as well as the local sugar beet farms. But if you drive north on Highway 89, just before you get to Preston, you can see the remains of the Whitney sugar beet factory. These huge crumbling buildings stand as a reminder that sugar beets were once king in Cache Valley.
Eric Jones (left) and the author, High on Borah Peak, Idaho Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, PhotographerThe Author’s Journal Entry From Borah Peak 2003 Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Eric Jones closing in on the summit of Borah Peak Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Eric Jones leading the way to Dromendary Peak in Little Cottonwood Canyon 1995 Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Little Cottonwood Canyon 1991, The Thumb, S-Direct Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Eric Jones on a ledge near the Gate Buttress Little Cottonwood Canyon 1991. Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
White Pine with Gary and Eric Jones circa 1988 Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, PhotographerI lost a beloved friend and mentor two weeks ago in a fluke canyoneering accident in Zion National Park.
I first met Eric Jones when I was four years old. My family had just moved to Sugarhouse, in the Salt Lake Valley. I rode my red, yellow, and blue Big Wheel Speedster down the sidewalk and skidded to a stop three houses away to talk to two bothers standing in their front yard. The much taller one asked if I was the new kid who just moved in. I said I was. He asked my name. I said, “Eric.” He smiled and said, “Hey, that’s my name too!” His younger brother—my age—said, “And I am Gary Jacob Jones!”
Gary and I became fast friends and Eric, five years older, was someone I perpetually looked up to. He was always taller than I, charismatic, funny, and true to himself to the core. One Saturday, while playing under an apple tree in the big sandbox in the Jones’ backyard, Eric came out to coerce Gary and I into hiking with him. We declined his initial offer but agreed when he promised 7-Eleven Slurpees on our way back. And so, we went. This scene played out many times.
Eric took us to fantastical places in the Wasatch. While we hiked, he would tell stories about wild animals, old miners’ tales, ghost stories, places he had been, and places he wanted to go. Each story, each place name, added to the intrigue and the places he talked about became the places I dreamed about: Grizzly Gulch, Sundial Peak, the West Slabs of Mount Olympus, Maybird Gulch, Cardiac Pass, Thunder Mountain, and on and on. When he described the largest Wilderness Area in the lower 48 states, the River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho, I knew I had to get there someday. It’s a place where I have spent much of my adult life, including a long backpacking trip with Eric.
One time, he told us about an invention called a mountain bike that was a cross between a BMX bike and a ten-speed, and then, on cue, a mountain biker appeared heading down the trail. Eric drew a map of the Wasatch from memory on a blank piece of paper once, naming all the
side canyons within Mill Creek, Big Cottonwood, and Little Cottonwood Canyons. He labeled each summit, with its precise elevation. As a kid, I was amazed that all this information was just in his head, literally at his fingertips.
One June, after luring Gary and I from the sandbox once again, we attempted to climb the 11,045 foot Mount Superior. Eventually we reached a place on the knife-edge ridge where there was too much snow to safely proceed—at least for Gary and I. Eric probably could have crossed it safely and headed on to the summit, but we were his companions, and he wasn’t going to put us in danger or abandon us. So, we turned around and headed for the 7-Eleven at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon.
Eric always wanted to see what there was to see around the next bend or over the next ridgeline. He planted seeds of mystery and awe in my core.
Before we were old enough to participate, Gary and I heard stories of Eric’ s feats in the mountains with the older scouts. The troop had planned a week-long 50-mile backing trip in the Uinta Mountains that included, at Eric’s instance, a layover day and extra mileage to climb Kings Peak, the tallest mountain in Utah.
When they arrived at the lake for the layover, the leaders—trail-weary from backpacking with a bunch of teenagers—announced that they wouldn’t be going to King’s Peak the next day. They would have a rest day instead. The other boys seemed happy enough to loaf around. Not Eric.
He got up before dawn, packed his day pack, and headed off to the summit on his own. I don’t recall if he woke up his tent-mate to tell him where he was going before he left or not. Either way, the leaders were not happy with him when they figured it out hours later. Gary thinks Eric was 14 years old at the time.
Eric told a funny tale from that trip. One of the other boys, Nathan Cornwall, had pre-made all his lunches for the week, which consisted of eight sardine and mayonnaise sandwiches on Wonder Bread, which he had carefully packed back in the bread sack. You shouldn’t need a food handler’s permit to know this is a horrible idea. Eric couldn’t stop laughing when he described Nathan pulling the smashed mass of soggy, stinky sardine sandwiches out of his pack the first day of the trip.
During his life Eric hiked, climbed, camped, canyoneered, skied, and rowed thousands of miles throughout west, from the Cascades to the Tetons to the red rock deserts of the southwest, and beyond. He was a keen writer and a profound thinker. He worked hard, loved deeply, and he stood for the things he believed in. He was fine friend to many.
When we were finally old enough backpack with Eric and his friends, Gary and I literally ran with our full packs on, to keep up with Eric’s long, easy strides. That’s the image I have of Eric Jones in my mind. I was just trying to keep up, chasing a legend into the wilds.
Author’s note: “Eric also edited my Salmon River Guidebook before I sent it off to the publisher years ago. He went through it with a fine-toothed comb and picked up on so many details others missed, including myself. He influenced me to be a better writer.” https://blackcanyonguides.com/
Mary with Bluebell the Reindeer
