|
Saturday, February 21, 2009
ODE TO A MOUNTAIN MAN
Greg Coln, died last month. Around here he was just known as, “The Mountain Man.”
Years ago, Greg had been a young, upwardly mobile and successful business man with an international pipeline company, in Wichita Falls. He traveled the world trouble shooting major pipelines. One day, Greg returned the keys to his landlord and drove his Mercedes to the bank, allegedly leaving it on the sidewalk right out front. He left for parts unknown. Some say a woman was to blame and others that city life was just too tame for Greg Coln.
Greg left with nothing but his backpack and headed west. He showed up around here and took up residence in an abandoned trapper's cabin in a remote valley in the wilderness under a towering thirteen'er. I can see that valley in the distance from a craggy outcropping not far from the Mountain Reporter’s redoubt. Some tourists go there in the summertime, but beat a hasty retreat when the quakies shed their leaves and the snow flakes fall. Then, there’s no way in and there’s no way out. Greg stayed that winter with nothing but his bible and a rifle. Both of them saved his life. When he came down from the mountain he found that the locals had made bets on whether he would survive. He did and he's been known as the Mounain Man ever since. He later joined the Navy, but returned here when he was discharged.
Greg became a river guide, proficient in technical climbing and master of all things outdoors. He met his future wife, Delen, they married and soon opened their own river guide operation, “Mountain Man Tours.” Greg became known for his competence and concern for safety on the river and at the same time his charm and wit with the guests. Over the years, thousands were treated to a piece of the wilderness and backwoods wisdom by Greg Coln. Many of his customers were regulars and few forgot him. Greg headed river search and rescue and saved countless lives.
Greg and Delen had no children, but the young kids that streamed through Greg’s operation as summer guides and his step children became Greg’s personal concern. Greg was more than just a guide on the river, but a guide in life to his young charges. He knew much and was a great teacher. He taught diligence, competence and attention to detail in a fatherly yet not too overbearing way. Like the drill sergeant in “Officer and a Gentleman”, he was disciplined on the surface, but concerned underneath. Something kids sorely miss today.
Greg neither sold nor often mentioned his deep faith, yet I know it was an internal compass for him; and it, in turn, transferred into an unstated foundation for his life that people sensed and were reaffirmed by. Greg was never a preacher, just a guide. You could follow or not, that was up to you, but people soon realized, Greg knew where he was going. Some of Greg’s insights and wisdom are in his book, “Tracks on the River,” which I recommend.
In spite of running a business and guiding every day, Greg never lost his love of outdoor adventure. He took his friends down the Green River or the Snake and waited twelve years for a permit to do the Colorado through the Grande Canyon and treated his friends to join the ride. He always found time to “shoot the Box,” a remote spot not far from here where the headwaters of the river roar through a narrow canyon with class four force in the spring time of year. I went with Greg through the box not long ago. We thrilled on the rapids and wondered at a moose standing in the willows just out of reach. Even at Fifty years of age Greg was the first to jump off a forty foot cliff into the freezing waters at a slow curve on a sunny early spring afternoon.
On another occasion one fall day, I caught a ride home on the back of Greg’s Beamer motorcycle. As we leaned into a curve cut into a looming cliff on the right with the sparkling tumbling river below on the left I caught a glimpse of the speedometer at 80. Greg wasn’t showing off, it was just a typical day on the way home with the Mountain Man. And on another still, I recall struggling to stay upright as I careened down behind Greg's perfect turns on a black run above the timberline under sky's a color beyond blue. As I caught up to him waiting at the bottom of the mogled run, he said with a smile, "You're not a bad skier."
Greg was active in local affairs, and we spent a lot of time on boards and committees. It wasn’t something Greg liked, but he thought it was important to try to help the community. His level-headed advice and funny self-deprecating and unassuming remarks often brought a calm and consensus to matters sometimes spinning out of control with petty differences.
One day Greg called me and told me the doctor, who just moments before had left the room, had told him he had an inoperable brain tumor and he probably wouldn’t live out the week. We talked quietly, but in spite of the tremendous blow he had jsut recieved, Greg was strong and he joked about whether this was the mountain too big to climb. Greg did have surgery; and, incredibly, walked into my office a few days later with his head shaved and stitches from front to back and ear to ear. His head looked like the end of a football. Greg lived another eight months. In that eight months he rafted with his friends including down the Colorado one more time. He suffered greatly, but in spite of the disability and pain, he never quit his devoted attention to Delen and never gave up the adventure.
Some people say Greg was a hippie. That’s not so. He was a mountain man, which is a wholly different thing. A hippie is someone who abandons the stress of the pursuit of personal success for the safety and comfort of the undifferentiated collective. Greg did not seek the collective. On the contrary, he was the living epitome of pioneer spirit and American rugged individualism. He sought personal challenge and solitude with nature. In Greg’s favorite movie, "Jeremiah Johnson", the song goes, “The way that you wander is the way that you choose; a day that you tarry is a day that you loose.” Greg Coln went the way that he chose, and he did not tarry. Greg died at 52 and packed more into that life than most. He was a Mountain Man, and I am privileged to say he was my friend.
|
