Geologist, Blacksmith, Engineer, Rancher, & Fireman
Contact me by
phone: (208) 462-4028
Site Map - Links to all Blacksmithing
and Other Pages on This Site
My newest page, my "New Home and Shop
Page"
Decorative Metalwork "Gallery" Page
Links to My Latest Writings
ABANA
has graciously consented to host
my web site. I was concerned that after having had two flat-line heart
attacks, and two other less serious heart events, my future could end
at any time. I wanted to insure that the blacksmithing information I
have in my many web pages would be preserved into the future for the
metalworking community, and ABANA made that possible. A big thank you
goes to ABANA.I
no longer operate a decorative metalworking business. So I do not
take custom orders any longer. My web site, and my Gallery page, are
for interest and instructional value only.
I am pleased
to welcome you to my home page. If you would like to know a little
about
my background please continue reading below. I have also included some
of my
more interesting experiences.
I
have a background as a civil engineer, precious metals exploration
geologist, and science teacher, among others. I am now a gentleman
rancher in Garden Valley, Idaho, and work on decorative
metalwork
in my shop in the winter when the snow lies deep on the land. I also
drive the ambulance when needed, and am a fireman
in the Crouch Volunteer Fire Department.
Retirement
doesn't have to mean inactivity or playing golf. :-)
I have had the benefit of traveling and living in
many different parts of the world. A portion of my youth was spent on
the island of Okinawa, where I fell in love with the island and its
people. Some of my travel was associated with my father's career as an
Air Force officer. I was in the Navy for six years, spending four of
them in the West Indies. During that period of my life I was heavily
involved with scuba and free diving. I was a diving instructor for part
of this time on the island of Grand Turk. I was also involved with
speleology, taking part in a joint Barbadian/Danish caving expedition
to the island of Barbados.
While
I was
living in Barbados, a beautiful hardwood yacht sailed in from England
and
was put up for sale. It was the perfect boat to allow me to embark upon
a
dream I had been working on for the previous four years. I bought the
stout
little craft, Sea Dart, while still
having two years remaining in the Navy. When my tour of duty in the
Navy
expired I returned to Barbados and Sea Dart to prepare for a world
cruise.
After three months of preparation I sailed Sea Dart into the setting
sun
to spend an extended period of time exploring some of the world, and
learning
about myself as well.
After
exploring many interesting places, and meeting lots of wonderful
people, I felt it was time to move on with my life. I sold Sea Dart to
the famous writer, Tristan
Jones, and
signed on to the much larger yacht, Banjo, which Tristan had sold to a
couple in New York. They wanted me to skipper her to New York from
Bequia, just north of South America. A month later, between Culebra and
Great Inagua, disaster struck twice. When we were near the boundary
between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, a long-boat approached us
with six men, seated two by two in the boat. They had an engine and
could easily outrun us. I had been warned that pirates were to be
expected in these waters, so I told Jan and Jim, Banjo's new owners, to
remain below while I met the long-boat. I had a 12 gage double-barreled
shotgun loaded with buck-shot lying in the cockpit ready for action. I
had been warned that pirates from Haiti had been attacking yachts,
killing all on board by cutting off their heads, stripping the boat of
everything of value, and then sinking the boat along with the bodies.
The
long-boat came slowly along side and a huge black man in the front
grabbed the railing on Banjo's port side while starting to stand up. As
he did so I could see the long cane knives which he and the others were
holding partially concealed by their left legs. As he started to stand
I raised the shotgun, aimed right between his eyes, and waited with
trembling legs for what would happen next. I had only two shots, and
there were six pirates, so there was no doubt that they could take
Banjo if they were willing to pay a price.
The
huge pirate froze in a semi bent over position, staring into the bores
of the two barrels of my shotgun, and broke into a huge smile, and
nodded his head in a knowing manor. He slowly sat back down, and during
a long moment, pregnant with potential disaster, they contemplated what
to do next. I watched them closely while moving back to the far side of
the cockpit to give me room to fire upon any one of the pirates that
might decide to leap over the side, and to prevent the leader from
attempting to grab my weapon. The stand-off continued for what seemed
an hour, but was perhaps only 30 seconds or so, when the pirate leader
pushed off and nodded to me, still grinning a huge white toothed ear to
ear grin. He allowed me to live, and I granted him the same in return.
Within
a matter of hours of surviving the aborted attack by the pirates we
entered into the next cataclysmic phase of the voyage. The weather had
been very unstable for several days and finally broke to the full fury
of hurricane Alice. Banjo weathered the storm well until the third
night. At 2:30 AM a huge sea lifted the 36 foot Banjo and smashed her
down upside down into the trough far below. The impact ripped out our
steel fresh water tanks, and caused a lot of other lesser damage,
including springing the shaft log, which started an inflow that was not
to be stopped. Fortunately the mast remained intact, however the boat
would have to be constantly bailed until the end of the voyage due to
the shaft log inflow.
After the
yacht slowly righted herself we had more than 8 feet of water on board
when
measured from the bottom of the bilge! Our engine was underwater, and
the
water was up to our waists in the main cabin. The three of us started
into
a marathon bailing session with anything that came to hand. Since the
engine
and batteries were underwater, the pumps were useless. By mid-morning
the
boat was riding high on the waves once again, and it looked as though
we
might live to tell the tale. Four days later we limped into Great
Inagua
where I finally went to bed and slept for more than 24 hours! I should
add
that even arriving at Gt. Inagua was not without its problems. We
raised
land shortly after midnight and were almost caught in the huge suction
of
the immense waves which were breaking across the outer reefs. There is
much more
to the story, but I will leave it for a narrative at some later date.
Several weeks
later we sailed into Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The owners of the yacht
had
experienced enough and decided to sell her right there and not continue
on
to New York. I returned home to Oregon where I entered Oregon State
University's School of Engineering. I graduated as a civil/construction
engineer in
1977.
Life was not to be dull after finishing with
school. I went to work for Morrison Knudsen Corporation in Boise,
Idaho, where I advanced to the position of senior engineer. My work was
mainly in tunnel construction. I spent two years as a shift engineer,
building the cooling water tunnels at the Seabrook Nuclear Power plant
in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The 22' diameter undersea twin tunnels were
the first of their type, going out over three miles offshore to
intersect with 11 offshore shafts in the sea floor. I was eventually
transferred back to the home office in Boise to do estimating work.
In 1982 the
construction industry fell apart, and two
weeks before Christmas I was
laid off, along with 3,500 other
engineers. I continued to work as a consulting
engineer doing various jobs along the way. Two of my construction
projects
that you may have seen in Idaho are the Fish
Trap
Facility, just below Hell's
Canyon Dam, and the
Sawtooth Fish Hatchery near Stanley,
Idaho. Because of their locations
I enjoyed both projects immensely. Changes in my life, a new daughter
among
other things, led to my return to school. I enrolled in Boise State
University
to study geology and to obtain my secondary teaching credentials.
Geology soon
took me to new adventures in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and
elsewhere,
which I have written narratives about below. Also, I finally connected
with
a full time science teaching position and taught science for 16 years.
I
now have a 25 year old daughter, Kimberly, and an 14 year old daughter,
Natalie.
In August
2000, I guided
my brother Walt, my daughter Kimberly,
and her friend Neil,
on a backpacking trip into the "Big Boulder
Lakes Basin" in Idaho's high Whitecloud Peaks, where our base camp was
at
an elevation of 9,200 feet. This image of Kimberly and me
was taken on the summit
of the second highest peak, at an elevation of 11,200 feet,
as are the other images. This was a horrible year for forest fires, and
one
of them can plainly be seen topping a high ridge in the distance. This
back
pack trip was a very special one to me for several reasons. We
had superb
weather, and the smoke from the many forest fires never darkened our
skies.
We saw a great many mountain goats, one only 30 feet away, and on the
night
of August 14th we watched a spectacular meteor shower through the ever
changing
colors of the aurora, in one of its most beautiful
displays in the last 50 years.
There is more
to the story however. There are two other reasons that make this trip
stand
out from the rest for me. Twenty years ago one of Idaho's most amazing,
but
unknown, epics of survival had played itself out in the valleys below
the
peak we are sitting on in the above images. Because of my past
experience
in mountain rescue I had knowledge of the amazing events that had taken
place
far below us, and I wanted to tell my daughter the story of the
survival
of the two young children, sole survivors of a plane crash, through one
of
Idaho's most severe winters. I also wanted to walk with my daughter
through
one of the most beautiful places on the face of the Earth, a high basin
that
has no trails or mapped routes into it, and a place that I call
"God's Cathedral." I will not name it here in
order
to help to preserve it from those who do not respect such places, and
who
leave their mark wherever they go. The entire trip was one of the best
I
have ever had the good fortune to be a part of. We accomplished far
more than I could ever have hoped for.
If you have read this far you
probably wonder why I taught junior high for 16 years. Certainly the
money was not one of them. I did so for various reasons, but the
enjoyment I derived from teaching and working with kids was at the top
of the list. I am now involved in decorative metal work, and with my
move to the mountains of central Idaho, and setting up my big
new shop, the future looks bright.
Also, I have now posted my Golden
Age Forge Gallery page where I have a little of my metalwork
on display, including commentary about how some of the pieces were made.The
2003-2004 school year ended my teaching career. I retired at the end of
the year for a variety of reasons, but the most compelling by far was
the terrible state of education in our country, and in my school
district. It was a good decision. Four days before my retirement I
suffered a major heart attack which would have forced my retirement had
it not already been in progress. We have purchased a heavenly beautiful ranch on which we are raising horses,
two of which are shown
here in our
front pasture being ridden by my two daughters when the snow was still
a few weeks away. We have other
critters too,
such as Daffodil, our miniature donkey. It is
not an easy life we have chosen, as this
image, and
also this one, demonstrate, but I am
fortunate in having the kind of equipment
that is needed to live
in a location
that can receive over
200" of snow in a season. BTW, the images you
have just looked at are of a normal winter, not a heavy one. I
produced several 360° QuickTime VR panorama images of our place, taken
in
mid Summer and early winter, that may be of interest to you. After it
loads, click and
hold the mouse button,
then move your cursor left or right to make the image scroll in a full
360°. If you zoom in you can also
move it up and down.
When I am not plowing or
blowing snow, or working with the horses, I may be fighting fires as a volunteer firefighter, as shown in this image of a fire we had recently.
I can now pursue my work in decorative metalworking, enjoy the
spectacular fishing close by in the many mountain streams, or explore
the wild country around our place by Jeep and horseback. We have
a great many elk here. This image,
taken across our lower pasture, shows the spring elk calving in
progress.
There were a number of wolves attending the birth of the calves too.
The elk were a problem because they liked to eat
the hay I had stored under my shop's eves, but that problem has been
solved by the construction of our new
barn. The
future looks bright,
and I think it will still be full of adventure and new
horizons. :-)
Narrative Links
If you would like to read more of my adventures
you may do so by clicking on one of the "Narrative" links below. You
may find it more convenient to save these files to disk and read them
off line with your browser because some are fairly long. I will
continue to add to this list as time allows.
Narrative #10 - "Week of the Buzz-Tails"
Conclusion
Thank you for visiting my home
page. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or
comments. If you have comments or suggestions, you may phone me at the
number listed below.
Contact me by phone: (208) 462-4028
Note: Due to spam problems I no longer post my e-mail address,
but will be happy to supply it to you over the phone.
12 Jun 08
©Golden Age Forge
