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t was a cold winter night in 1984. I was 12 years old. My family and I lived in an old farmhouse built back around the turn of the century in Tennessee on the edge of the Cumberland Platou at the end of a gravel road. It had no insulation in the walls and an open fireplace for heat. We had no Internet, no computers and no TV. For entertainment we would sit around Saturday night and listen to the Grand old Opry and eat popcorn with yeast flakes sprinkled generously on it. Like most 12-year-old boys I hated reading but on this particular night everyone was busy with their own activities. My dad loved to read. Finding nothing to do that interested me I became bored and I asked my dad what I could do. He handed me a Louis l’Amour book called “Hondo” and suggested that I give it a try. Reading a book was the last thing I wanted to do but since the only room in the house that was warm enough to be in was the living room and I could find nothing else to do I finally sat down in front of the fireplace and began reading. I was hooked! That began a lifelong love of reading, especially anything western. Through those books also began a lifelong passion for the west and anything western. I did not know it at the time but the stories of grit, determination and hard work coupled with danger and doing the right thing no matter the odds were having an effect on my thinking. During my teen and young adult years I had the privilege of making two trips out through the west and was determined to come back. Louis l’Amour describes the magnetic pull the west has on men and women who have been there and I can attest to having experienced that very sensation. As a young boy I dreamed of someday owning a cattle ranch somewhere out west. I have since read every Louis l’Amour book on the shelf as well as most of the Zane Grey collection, JT Edson and many other writers as well. As I grew older I got married, had a family and settled down in Tennessee. But always that dream of the west was in the back of my mind. I would read about the rider on his horse with his hat brim pulled down low against the steady rain with his slicker turned up to keep the water out. I would picture in my mind that rider working his way along the slope of the mountain just the way Louis l’Amour described it. The water coming down through the leaves and dripping off his hat brim. The rider would emerge on the shoulder of a mountain and look out across the valley as the rain came down. When I got older and got a place of my own with a few acres I built a barn and bought some horses. I learned how to train horses and how to use a round pen to de-spook them. I bought that hat and slicker that I had always worn in my dreams and finally got to experience the the feel of a horse on the mountain trail with the rain coming down. The creak of saddle leather as I shifted my weight. It was exactly like I thought it would be. Only a hundred times better. I was overcome by a feeling of freedom and nostalgia as I sat there listening to the rain and the other forest sounds. Being almost completely dry while the rain comes down all around me I felt like an explorer from the 1800s. Feeling the horse moving under me along the mountain trail, smelling the rain in the forest and even the wet horse smell brought back the emotions I felt while reading those westerns. It was magical as I rode onto the shoulder off the mountain and came out into a clearing where I could look along the mountain and into the valley. I imagined myself 150 years ago seeing the world as it was then. A cold drop of rain made its way inside my slicker and down my spine. I shivered as I hitched my gun belt into a more comfortable position. My horse twitched his ears and cocked one backwards towards me as though to ask me if I was out of my mind being out there in the rain like that instead of back inside the warm barn. I couldn’t blame the horse but I was having the time of my life. I went on to do many trail rides including one from Kentucky all the way down into Alabama. All of this just made me want to see the west from between the ears of a horse all the more. As life would have it though I settled into a career in Tennessee where my wife and I raised our children. I joined the local volunteer fire department in 1996. By 1998 I had my EMT license. In 2001 I graduated paramedic school. I worked full-time as a paramedic for years after that. I had the privilege of joining my local sheriffs department as a tactical medic. Otherwise known as a SWAT medic. I went through combat medic training, basic and advanced SWAT, basic and advanced weapons and a number of other classes. The last nine years that I was a paramedic I also served as a coroner, investigating all types of death scenes in my county. Eventually I realized that I wanted more in life and I was ready for a change. I had been managing and building a small trucking company on the side hauling cars and taking some trips out to the west coast and back. I had obtained my commercial drivers license back in 2007 and decided to put it to use full-time. I found that hauling cars nation wide answered that need I had to see the country. To see the mountains of the west. To feel the dryness of the desert of the southwest United States. To hear the pound of the surf on the pacific coast. The dripping water from the leaves in the rainforest of Washington and Oregon. The smell of buffalo and the sound of them snorting and grunting in Yellowstone National Park. Hauling cars has provided me the ability to see the west. I have traveled almost every state and every major highway along with many secondary roads in the lower 48. With careful planning I get to visit almost every national park and stop and hike in the mountains, the canyons, the valleys and along the creeks and rivers of the west. The names are almost magical to me. Dead man’s pass. The snake River. The Yellowstone River. The list goes on and on and as I see the names on road signs I recall the stories that I’ve read of those areas. I’ll pull the truck over and get out and walk out into the forest following deer and elk trails. Smelling the evergreens in the fresh mountain air. To me there is nothing like it back east. As beautiful as the mountains are on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee there is nothing there that can compare with the vast beauty and expanse and un ending miles of the great american west. The purples and reds, browns and grays of the painted desert. The staggering heights of the peaks above tree line in the Rocky Mountains. The beautiful evergreens of the Sierra mountain range. The rolling grass and tree studded hills of Montana and Idaho. The beauty of the mountains through Lolo Pass in Idaho and the trout filled river running down towards Moscow Idaho. The thimble berries growing in huge patches along the highway‘s of Washington. The glass like rock in the shale slides of Oregon. The mountains with nothing but grass on them along the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. The multitude of thorny yet beautiful cactus and other brush in Arizona and New Mexico. The herds of hundreds of antelope through the northern Midwest. The evidence of historic mining scattered all across the west. It’s a wonderful, mysterious, beautiful land that pulls at the heart and beckons you to return. Now that I have traveled the west so extensively I want to share a little bit of it with you in the pages of this book. Most of the towns, creeks, mountains and locations are real. Some are places I have seen in other areas that are fit into the story or location I am writing about. I hope that you are able to get a little bit of that sense of awe from these stories about the west that I experienced growing up reading about it.
As an OTR (over the road) truck Driver I get to see a lot of beautiful places. One day while driving through Hoodsport Washington I noticed there were a number of Bigfoot signs. Out of curiosity I got on YouTube and looked up Bigfoot stories. I ran across the Dixie Cryptid YouTube channel and began listening to story after story as I drove. I was hooked! The narrator, Cam, does such a good job with the stories that it wasn’t long before I started thinking about writing a story and sending it in just on the off chance that Cam might read it. I though it might be fun to hear my story read on his channel. Once I sent it in to Cam he encouraged me to keep writing. As a result of his encouragement The White Mountain Bigfoot vol 1 came into being. My first book! I had so much fun writing it and received so much encouragement from Cam’s loyal listeners that I decided to try writing another book.
I want to take a moment to thank my dad Bobby JR, sister Rachel, and adopted mom Juddy for helping with the editing and the constant encouragement to keep writing. Many thanks to daughter Sarah for the publishing (The Paperwork Princess on my YouTube channel “Trucking with Bones”) and my talented artist daughter for the cover painting.
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