HOME COUNTRY: Hey, I was there to help, right?

Hey, I was there to help, right? Right there in the kitchenette loaned us by the Roosevelt Hotel in Anchorage. My wife, Pam, ran the headquarters for the Iditarod Dogsled Race, and it was the second year of the race, 1974, and there I sat, a genuine Alaskan long-distance dog musher who had participated in the first race the year before.

So when a nicely dressed elderly gentleman with a thick Boston accent stopped by for coffee and questions about the race … hey, I’m there for you.

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HOME COUNTRY: How’s that you say?

In a few days, all those rhymers who lived in Tin Pan Alley back when Gertie was a pup will be fulfilled once again. How’s that you say?

Was a love song ever written that didn’t have moon and in it? And the full moon will be here in a couple of days and it is our responsibility to go look at it.

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HOME COUNTRY: The moon turned the horses and mules silver with its magic.

The moon turned the horses and mules silver with its magic. It gave the packer an unspoken pleasure to look back on a sinuous Sierra snake of eleven animals stretched in a flexible line nearly 150 feet long behind him. And he looked up, straight up on the peaks of Kearsarge where the snow fields always left behind shady patches of dirty white, up where the Inyo moon splashed them with a dream brush and made old secrets come to life.

“You’ve heard of the ghost of Kearsarge,” the old man said. “Everyone knows about her.” The packers at the table at the ranch looked at each other.

“What ghost?” one asked.

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HOME COUNTRY: We’re still curious about exactly where Old Man Jenkins’ cabin is…

We’re still curious about exactly where Old Man Jenkins’ cabin is. While he was alive, we never thought to bug him about where he lived, because we also cherish a man’s right to privacy. But Jenkins died on one of his trips to town, and we still didn’t know where his cabin was.

So that began a number of semi-serious expeditions into our nearby mountains to try and solve the mystery. Hasn’t happened yet, but there’s always hope deep in the souls of true explorers.

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HOME COUNTRY: Joe Glidden died 105 years ago…

Joe Glidden died 105 years ago, and millions of cowboys in New Mexico would celebrate if they knew why, and if there were really millions of cowboys in New Mexico, which there aren’t.

Now while you’re parsing that sentence, let me explain that Joe Glidden was a farmer in Illinois and his wife, his daughter and his two sons all died before Joe was 38. In a fit of despondence, he invented barbed wire. In 1874, in another fit of despondence, the United States let him patent the darned stuff.

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HOME COUNTRY: I always wondered what it would be like to putter.

I always wondered what it would be like to putter. I don’t mean golf. I haven’t done that kind of puttering since I played miniature golf in high school. That wagon wheel always messed me up, so I decided to leave my golf career right there and participate in more active pursuits.

But now here I am puttering. This came about naturally because my doctor told me to slow down, and I plan to enjoy every snail-like minute of this advice. Part of it is my age (I’m in double figures now. And they ain’t small double figures.) and part is my doctor giving me advice I’ve been wanting to hear for a long time now.

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HOME COUNTRY: Leona was a good mule.

Leona was a good mule. She was in a fabled minority in the pack station realm of mules, as she was a riding mule as well as a pack mule. She was also … well …

somewhat notional in nature. There was how Leona pictured her world, and there were the rest of us, who were wrong, of course.

Mules are worth a lot more than a horse in the eastern California High Sierra, and there are reasons for that. They usually live longer than a horse, they learn fast and never have to be shown twice, and they won’t jump off a 300-foot cliff just because a 40-foot pine tree sneaked up on them.

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HOME COUNTRY: Chickens have forever had a place in our hearts and on our tables.

Chickens have forever had a place in our hearts and on our tables. Why is that? Well … why not?

And so I’d like you to come with me back to the summer of 1970, ‘way up north of Fairbanks, Alaska, to what was once the thriving gold mining village of Chicken, Alaska. I was on my way, hitchhiking with a canoe, to paddle down a 500-mile stretch of the Yukon River and to see the cabin where Jack London spent the winter once upon a time.

Just as an aside here, hitchhiking with a canoe, or with a sled and 10 dogs, would make a lengthy how-to book all by themselves. It doesn’t sound easy, does it? It isn’t.

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HOME COUNTRY: “Now that’s the job I want”…

“Now that’s the job I want,” said Steve, putting down the paper. “A guy could really sink his teeth into something like that.”

Doc looked up from his coffee. “Didn’t know you were looking for work, Steve. Cowboying not working out for you?”

“It isn’t that,” said the cowboy/farrier, “it’s just that a guy should always keep his eyes open so as not to miss an opportunity to better himself. That’s why I’m so interested in becoming a chicken ranger.”

“A what?”

“He said a chicken ranger, Doc,” said Bert, “but I never heard of one.”

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HOME COUNTRY: It’s a rare treat to have old Jasper Blankenship come down from the diggins…

It’s a rare treat to have old Jasper Blankenship come down from the diggins to stock up on supplies. And he favored us with stories at the Mule Barn this bright morning over coffee, too.

“Well, Doc,” Jasper said, “you’re right. I wasn’t always a miner. Back during The War I had a job in the city at one of the big war plants, you know. I was a security guard and watched the gate. In those days, there was this one carpenter who just gave me the fits. He’d come out the gate at the end of the day with a wheelbarrow full of sawdust. I always stopped him and poked around in the sawdust and never found anything, but I just knew he was stealing something.”