Tim's "Service" Station
The Webmaster's Corner of the Mount Horeb Area Historical Society Web Site

Out on the crest trail
there's a wind a blowin'
A Sierra wind
blowin' away my cares
Its pushin' me northwards
that's where I'm goin'
I'm bound for the border
and I'll soon be there.

- From "Out on the Crest Trail"

-Walkin' Jim Stoltz
copyright1999 Wild Wind Records

This monthService Station verse is dedicated to Jim Stoltzwho has walked and sung his way into the hearts of Americans while promoting a love for the country's wild places. Jim has walked up and down and across the continent on the long trails putting over 24,000 miles under his feet. No small feat! I highly recommend those who love Service's ballads of wanderlust invest in a recording of "Walkin Jim". His music can be found at: http://www.walkinjim.com/index.html . . . you won't be dissapointed.

Jim's songs, verse and images take me back to my own hiking days. In 1974 a friend and I started from the Mexican border and backpacked 6 months to the Canadian border on the Pacific Crest Trail. Along the way we too witnessed what Service would pen in this piece . . . "drop-curtain scenes galore" . Curtain scenes of that hike return to me now, over a quarter century later. I remember the heavy packs, frozen boots, blisters, a three week rainstorm, hip deep snow and those damn Oregon mosquitos. But more often what comes back are scenes of moonlit peaks, alpenglow, the still woods and the windy passes, and the comraderie of fellow travelers on the trail.

With my partner Karen, I have returned to rehike bits and pieces of that wonderful trail over the years. Each time it gets a bit harder to hoist the loads and scale the switchbacks. But each time a renewed appreciation for what God has created and us mortals have not yet mucked up returns. So here's to Jim Stoltz, the long trails and . . .

The Call of the Wild
by Robert W. Service

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
And learned to know the desert's little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
(You'll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things --
Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching --
But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

From Spell of the Yukon, published 1907.