Mountain men are expensive..........

The mountain man show is in town again! Yay. I agreed to go with Jeff, as I did last year, only this year I actually knew what I was getting myself into.

First off, I took exception to the signs that said "Cascade Mountain Men" everywhere with NO mention of the fairer sex and I pointed out that it was International Women's Day so why weren't the women being represented? Jeff took it upon himself to actually bring my complaint to the ladies at the gate collecting money and they were no help at all. They said "We just collect the money." Well, THEY are not going to change the world, that's for sure. 

This year, we actually went with a wish list. Jeff had many items he was looking for, in his quest to go further and further into the past until he actually BECOMES Merriweather Lewis. Or William Clark. Or perhaps just Scannon the dog. Fun fact, Scannon's real name is Seaman, but someone couldn't read Clark's handwriting back in the day so for years all of you Lewis and Clark fans have been calling the dog Scannon when he was Seaman all along. Anyway.

The big-ticket item he was looking for was a replica 1803 Harper's Ferry flint lock muzzleloader rifle. Because that's the kind they carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition or something. We did find the gun and we bought it. But that's the super short version of the story. Because we had to talk FOREVER to the guy selling it. And a bunch of other guys dressed in buckskin with names like "Overload" and "Trapper." It was all ".58 caliber" and "modern sights" and blah, blah, blah.

We also found Jeff a tin cup, a thingy that you strike with flint and it makes fire, and a mini powder horn. And a bunch of other boring stuff. Oh, and a super cool hat! I picked it out.

Also? I threw a tomahawk at a wood target and it stuck! Ok, I also threw it at a fence and on the ground but on my third try it stuck! I felt like Pocahontas! I mean, if Pocahontas threw tomahawks and all.

But of course the best part was the people watching and "stuff." Such as:

These fur pelts. I don't know which poor animals had to die for this. But they were very soft. 

People dressed like this. Everywhere. 

Mr. Smee, of Peter Pan fame, was there.

This man, who told me he's been a pirate for the past six years. And by that he meant he dresses like a pirate and goes to bars with other guys dressed like pirates. I wanna be a pirate!

We are the Red Men, feathers in our head men, down among the dead men, pow wow! (Side note, I later learned that this man was wearing no pants. Why the jacket and no pants? I don't think dress blues and loincloths go together but maybe that's just me?)

I was so tempted, too! 

These dudes, who were dressed as Navy men from long ago. They talked to us for a LONG time about the different whistles and what they meant, and how only the whistle guy was allowed to salute with his left hand. All I asked was to take their picture and I got a history lesson. 

For the ladies! A whole table of corsets. And this one on display. Very pretty. I was carrying around a flyer from this booth and another guy asked me if I was getting married. He thought I was making my wedding dress. I mean, never mind the diamond ring on my left hand, which is generally the universal symbol for "I snagged my mountain man, yessiree, and I'm gonna go cook him up some vittles in this here cast iron skillet!"

A lantern. I dunno. I liked the red. And it's blurry. Sorry 'bout that. 

Eye won't say eye had a GREAT time at the mountain man show but eye guess it was o.k. 

The takeaway message is this: mountain man shows are weird and expensive. But you can learn to make fire and throw sharp things and those skills might come in handy during a zombie apocalypse. At the very least, you can pick yourself up a nice beaver hat or a piece of buckskin to make yourself buckskin underwear or something. And you just never know when you're going to need that.

Mountain Man........

My husband, apparently with some extra discretionary time on his hands, somehow became intrigued by the idea of being a mountain man. Not like the guys on that TV show where they live in the harsh backwoods of Alaska and survive the winter by killing a moose and stuffing him in the freezer.

No, this mountain man type appears to be a group of suburbanites who work at Microsoft by day and spend their weekends shooting muzzleloader guns and wearing coonskin caps. I will pause here to point out that in my attempt to explain what a muzzleloader is I typed into Google "What is a muzzle loader (because I didn't know it was one word)?" and I received this reply: a gun that is loaded by its muzzle. So, you see, I do not understand this at ALL.

Once a month they have a "shoot" which my husband attends. Once a year they have a "rondy" which is short for "rendezvous" and means: primitive-type camping excursion wherein everyone dresses in period gear and you might win a box. No, seriously, a box. There is a rifle box, which I guess is where you store a rifle or things you might need for a rifle. And there is a camp box, which is like a treasure chest, only probably for things like lard and muslin. And the best prize of all? A tomahawk pipe. Yes, you heard right. It's a working tomahawk that you can also smoke through. So, in case you're smoking and someone tries to kill you....Thwap! Tomahawk to the head. No one saw that coming.

This year's "rondy" also touts exactly ONE activity for women and that is the frying pan toss. The WHAT? For what earthly reason would anyone need to toss a frying pan? Is there a target? What kind of frying pan? A super-lightweight non-stick saute pan? Or a cast-iron skillet? I'm guessing the latter. Which is why, if you are participating in this year's frying pan toss, you might want to lift some weights in preparation. Because those suckers are heavy. I have more questions: can you toss overhand or underhand? Are there points for style and technique?

Last year, around this time, my husband convinced me to go the the mountain man show. Yes, they have their own show, held at the fairgrounds. Kind of like Comic-Con for Daniel Boone. I wrote about this show here. I thought I would humor him, browse the offerings like bear heads and wood handicrafts, and that his interest would fizzle out. But here we are, a year later, and he's still in touch with his inner Grizzly Adams.

For the past week or so, he's been working hard on a "hunting pouch" which is code for man purse. This small purse is intended to hold lead balls and "patches" which are small squares of material that are essential to firing a muzzleloader. My husband worked diligently, cutting the pattern and assembling the pieces. The leather and pattern were given to him by a fellow mountain man, called "Broken Arrow" or something. Side note: their real names might be ordinary like Dave or Jeff, but they go by names such as "Two Balls" and "Trapper." My husband thought it would be fun to assemble this man purse, and after all, it was free.

Except not. Because we had to make a trip to Michael's to buy all manner of wood carving tools, a sewing awl, leather straps and bits, and waxed thread. So, this man purse ended up costing quite a pretty penny, all told. And it became a big project that took up the better end of the dining room table where my husband had the audacity to use a DRILL on his project! On my table! In the end, he added a handsome leather strap (ordered on Amazon for $27.99) and hand-stitched his initials on the flap to personalize it.

And now he has a ball bag.

Not to hold his own balls, mind you, although I forgive you for misunderstanding the purpose considering the amount of sewing and handicrafts that were going on. The bag will hold the little lead balls that one shoots from the muzzleloader. The whole process of firing this gun is laughable - in the amount of time it takes to load it and fire it, the bear, or deer or whatever it is the mountain man might be shooting at has long since disappeared, sauntering away at a casual pace muttering "get a real gun!" under his breath.

You see, you first have to pour black powder from a powder horn into this little metal tube thing, which you use to disperse it into the barrel of the gun. Then, you put a little square of cloth (the patch) into your mouth for some reason, get it nice and spitty, and into the gun it goes. Then, you insert a lead ball. Then, you use the ramrod to push the whole mess deep into the gun. Then, you put a cap on a spot near the firing pin (I'm just paraphrasing my terminology here, can you guess?), but only if your gun is a cap lock gun. There are also flint lock guns, in which case you put a little more black powder into a tiny pan next to the firing pin. Either way, you cock the gun, the pin comes in contact with the cap (or in the case of a flint lock, the flint sparks the black powder) and KABOOM! The gun fires! So, you see why the bear or deer or elk has time to take a little vacation while waiting for you to fire your gun.

So, it's a good thing someone made better guns. Or civilization would have died with the muzzleloader. And I guess I understand the history part of it. People like history. Civil war reenactments abound. Dressing up in mountain man gear for a "rondy" is no different than dressing up like a Japanese anime character for a comic book convention. Perhaps my husband is motivated by his most memorable teacher who quoted "Those who forget history are doomed and destined to repeat it." Which, by the way, is a misquote of George Santayana's saying "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But you get the idea.

And so, I will accompany my husband to this year's mountain man show. Last year I was squeezed provocatively by a dirty old man. I was hoping there would be snacks, but the only thing offered was horehound candy and sarsaparilla. However, if you were in the market for a nice teepee or a bear head for your wall, this would be the place to go. My husband is on the search for a tin cup. Because he feels too suburban drinking his coffee from a Starbucks cup whilst at the mountain man shoots. Natch.