No, not packin' heat - a weapon - we're talking backpacking; hiking and photography. What better scenario than you and a camera in a beautiful forest with majestic mountain peaks and cold, clear streams; endless vistas to elevate your creative blood pressure and rid yourself of the mundane city life and the same old landscapes you've done over and over again, vainly attempting to make something new and interesting out of a cow pasture.

I was moved to this line of thinking when I ran across a flyer for a backpacking trip to Colorado, the home state of the Coor's brewery, that being an incentive in itself. A group was leaving Tulsa, Oklahoma via two chartered buses for three glorious days in the Mt. Zirkel wilderness area. I knew the Mrs. would be less than enthusiastic about this adventure so I called my old fishing buddy Arnold who, after a few beers, was ready to go.

In a moment of unusual clarity and good sense, Arnold and I decided to take a warm-up hike, a short trek using the trails of a local state park to check our gear. Since the most I'd ever packed in my life was a camera bag and a case of beer from the pickup to the fishing dock, it seemed wise to conduct a trial run to learn the basics of the art of backpacking. Adding photography into the mix complicated things and called for several decisions. With the weight of the pack being a priority, what gear should one take to cover the most likely photo opportunities? What should I bring to protect the equipment in case of bad weather? Now this was back in the old B.D. days (before digital) and film was also a consideration; how many rolls? The final choice was a 28-85mm zoom, a 100-300mm telephoto, a 1.5 tele-converter, a macro lens for wildflowers, and ten rolls of film. That should do it.

A trip to the local outfitters store put another strain on the old credit card with a backpack, sleeping bag, foam mattress, hiking boots, rain gear, cooking utensils, stove, and a supply of what looked like (according to the photos on the bag) delicious freeze dried food such as beef stroganoff, lasagna, and scrambled eggs with ham. I got hungry just looking at it.

Arriving at the trailhead, Arnold suggested we have a few beers from the cooler before leaving the pickup and maybe stick a few in the pack to avoid any possibility of dehydration. Good idea. I did notice that the weight of the pack was considerable upon hoisting it up, but hey, we were backpackers. We'd toughen up. OK, so there were frequent rest stops during the grueling two mile trip but it wasn't all that bad and we eventually arrived at the designated campsite, tired, but still functional. Just as the trail map had promised, there was a picturesque little pond nearby complete with a massive growth of cattails around the perimeter. It was the cattails that got Arnold excited. You have to consider that Arnold was raised in the wilds of Idaho and had some experience as a woodsman though it had been more than 20 years and several pounds of bodyweight since he'd used those skills.

"We're gonna have a real survivalist meal tonight," he said. "Cattail roots and frog legs, a gourmet meal if there ever was one. Forget that freeze dried junk."

"Uh, okay. How do we get frog legs?"

"Easy. I'll make a bow and arrow out of these saplings, use my boot lace for a string, then, come dark, you shine the flashlight on them, and whang, fresh frog legs."

"Sure, that'll work," I said, wondering how many beers Arnold had put in his pack.

"You take your camera and shoot photos and I'll gather cattails and make the bow," said Arnold.

And he did. He notched a springy limb at each end, stringing it with the boot lace, and then using the campfire, hardened the ends of small, fairly straight, twigs to use as arrows. Not that the fire made the ends any sharper or more durable, but what do I know? I'm a city boy. The cattails were harvested; the roots cut off (though they didn't look all that appetizing to me), and placed into a frying pan in preparation for us connoisseurs. Night fell.

"All you gotta do," says Arnold, "is listen for a frog, shine the light on him causing him to freeze, then I'll nail him."

"Right."

I lead off, flashlight in hand, panning the shore of the pond for our potential mouth-watering meal. We had barely started, not having gone more than ten yards when after stepping over a small stream, I hear Arnold say one word, "SNAKE".

Now I don't know about you, but when I hear that word, I do my damndest to do the impossible and levitate, hovering in the air until the danger has passed. Evidently, the effort was successful as I did not feel any death wielding fangs sink into my ankle. I don't know what kind of snake it was, doesn't matter really, in my case, as they all cause momentary cardiovascular restriction, but I did see it slithering away into the body of the pond.

You're not going to believe what happened next, but if I'm lying, I'm dying. Arnold, the Idaho outdoorsman, draws back the sapling bow, notches the fire hardened, homemade arrow, pulls back and let's go, hitting the snake... IN THE HEAD! (Let us pause here and make clear that ordinarily and wiser with age, I do not condone taking the life of any wild creature unless absolutely necessary and reasonable, but that is what happened on this occasion... and I slept better for it.)

I looked at Arnold in disbelief knowing what I had just seen was in the same believability category as my recent levitation, impossible. Yet, there was the snake, slowly sinking into the depths. "This is over," I declared. "No frog legs. I'm turning off the flashlight, going back to the tent, and heating up the beef stroganoff. You can have my share of the cattail roots."

So much for the trial run but lessons were learned. Freeze dried food is not nearly as tasty as the photos depict. Backpacks are lighter without beer. Snakes and cattails live together. We were ready for Mt. Zirkel. But that's another story.

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