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.
1 Apr 08
©Golden Age Forge
