One man's hardship, another man's heaven

Recently, the http://www.idahostatesman. com news website reported the death of Richard Zimmerman, a man whose life had nothing to do with high finance, high society, high-speed Internet or most standard trappings of our modern world — including telephones, electricity and running water. I did not know the man, but wish I had. Zimmerman, better known as Dugout Dick, died April 21, 2010, at the age of 94 from natural causes in the cave-built house he called home. Dugout Dick, according to the article, was the last of a community of people living outside of societal norms who had built their homes along a remote and cave-riddled stretch of Idaho's Salmon River. Dugout Dick had lived almost entirely off the land and transformed his cave into a home with salvaged doors, windows, lumber and other cast off oddments. When Dugout Dick became ill at 93, he agreed to try living in a nursing home, but the lifestyle didn't suit him, and he hitchhiked back to his cave. Included in his personal list of accomplishments, the article says, was learning how to make yogurt out of the milk from his own goats. In my memory lives an old man, long-dead, who had homesteaded with his family along the Kootenai River. Charlie had lived his life on that homestead with no electricity or phone or running water save for the river rolling past his door. Over a decade before I met him in the early-1970s, he had to move off the family homestead to make way for progress in the form of the Kootenai River dam. Charlie could've used the money from the land sale to buy a place with modern conveniences near town, instead, he opted to rebuild his life on an abandoned homestead not far from where he grew up. The place had no electricity or phone or running water save for the little creek meandering past his door ... then directly under his innovative new outhouse on a bridge — which is what prompted Dad's official business as a Fish & Game warden with Charlie that day. But that's a story for another day. We headed off the pavement and down Charlie's unmarked dirt lane with Dad dodging the pickup around the worst of the road, me in the middle and my older brother, the evil dork, hogging shotgun on my right. The dirt road ended at Charlie's lowslung house that nestled into a grove of pines on the edge of grassy clearing in the mountains. Being old hands at official game warden business, we kids didn't need any reminders to be quiet and polite. So when Charlie, who was at least 70 years old at the time, offered us peach cobbler baked in his wood cookstove that morning we said, yes, thank you. And when we discovered that the cream topping was thick, butter-chunky cream, fresh from the goat pastured behind the little house, we said nothing at first. Fortunately, our mother's sketchy cooking skills and handiness with a wooden spoon had us trained to endure the most dubious foods. The evil dork and I shared a rare moment of agreement then politely said mmm-mmm and nodded our heads at old Charlie. After our goat-flavored treat, we wandered around Charlie's home gawking at the decades' worth of homesteader tools and crafts adorning his walls, shelves and sills, while Dad and Charlie finished their official business concerning the befouled creek water. My older brother and I were especially enamored with what looked like a miniature jukebox. Noticing our interest, Charlie transformed the jukebox, as if by magic, into a small accordion. He performed a lively concert for us with his gnarled fingers dancing over the keys and buttons as he sang, his only payment our obvious delight. I think sometimes about the simple, yet hard, lifestyle that Charlie chose to live. And though I do without many "modern necessities" in my own lifestyle, I know when the power goes out, my phone line is down or my Internet connection is dead that I'm not made of the hardy stuff to succeed at the basics as Charlie did. As Dugout Dick did more recently. Without my customary joking or wisecrackery, I salute these men and their lives, and anyone else in the wild west of America who finds self-fulfillment and happiness in a life led with even a fraction of their fortitude and self-reliance. (It's hard to be self-reliant when you can't even remember to buy matches at http:// viewnorth40.wordpress.com.)