JOURNEY TO THE MIDNIGHT SUN
(events in the story that I borrowed from real life)
Chapter 1:
Please see the section labeled “About this Book” to learn about real-life events applied in Chapter One.
Chapter 7:
Near the end of this chapter, when John tells Laureal about Ellie’s surprising ability, and he then goes on to tell about riding Ellie while she runs through the night; these are fully accurate descriptions of my Clydesdale horse, Reba.
Chapter 8:
The first paragraph in this chapter reflects my personal beliefs during the first five years of writing Journey to the Midnight Sun. My girlfriend, who became my wife, was spiritual, but I was not. I believed that science held the answers and the truth.
Chapter 10:
At the wedding table, John's story about the young mother deer and bluebird is true. The event happened exactly as described in the story. I was practice-hunting to get a feel for how it may have been for primitive hunters. I may have been barefoot, as I was doing that at the time. My spear was a dull broomstick. Late that same day, the deer really did come to my camp and scold me. To train my feet for barefoot hunting, I took walks barefoot on my gravel road. I did so at night, so my neighbors would not think I had lost my mind.
At the wedding table, the story John tells about trimming Ellie’s hooves is true. The only changes are as follows: I did not make the hoof stand from a branch but from lumber scraps. And after I fell, got up, and spoke to Ellie, I did not say, “Thank you, Ellie.” I said, “God bless you, Reba.” She immediately brought her muzzle over and rested it on my heart. It was a powerful moment!
At the wedding table, the story Laureal begins to tell about the bear cub is taken from a real experience I had with a bear cub. The story did not make it into the book, so I will not tell it here. If time allows, I will come back and tell the story of the cub after I have published all 99 chapters on this website.
Chapter 11:
The story Laureal tells John about the dove in the glade is based on a real-life event. I was pulling my canoe as a wheeled cart across the State of South Dakota, mostly by gravel roads and rural blacktops (to see an image of how I pulled my canoe/cart, click here). I was on a gravel road, it was summer, and the temperature was blistering hot. My canoe/cart weighed 300 pounds, and making it to the next shade spot was monumental, and that is not an exaggeration. When I got to the shade, I lay down and closed my eyes. Flies were biting me, but I was too exhausted to care. The breeze in that shade felt like air conditioning, and it was so good. After a brief rest, I set out pulling towards the small town of Selby, and along the way, I began to get angry. I became angry because I believed my people, the people of rural and small-town America, were following large and powerful interests that did not care about them. They were following big interests that put power and money above God and country, and they were being led to destruction. These were my exact thoughts, and I felt more upset than I had in a long time. As I entered the tiny town, I noticed a dove in a tree, which was just as Laureal describes it to John in the book. In town, some people hollered at me from a porch to tell me that it just so happened the town was having a community supper that night, with a rodeo afterwards. I shouted back angrily, telling them I did not have time. I had never shouted like that, not in the 3,000 miles I had traveled thus far in that journey, a journey in which I had received so much spontaneous kindness as to be astounding. Now, before entering the town, while pulling my canoe/cart, a man in a truck stopped to tell me the town had a small park where I could camp. So, I went to the park, and stopping there, I turned to see that same dove sitting in the seat of my canoe. The dove did not fly away. It just sat there in my seat, gazing at me in a way that was not natural. It had no fear, but was simply serene. It held my gaze. It looked nowhere but into my eyes. It remained there as I unloaded items, and I spoke to it. It did not reply, of course. Then, as I was getting more items out of my cart, I turned to see it was gone. Now, I know some people will claim I had heat stroke, but I was highly conditioned to what I was doing. Thousands of miles of travel the old-fashioned way had not only conditioned me but had also sharpened my senses. The dove was real! And my anger was gone. A man pulled up in a truck. Not the same man as before, but a different fellow. Word had spread through the town. His name was James, like mine. He had a ticket to the community supper and rodeo. He said he had to work and couldn't go, and he wanted me to have his ticket. I thanked him kindly. This was the treatment I received along the entire trail, from one end to the other, 4,000 miles through the awesome heart of America. I went into my tent and lay down to rest for a spell. I knew what had happened. I asked God's forgiveness. I went to the community supper, a complete stranger, but one of them, and they recognized it. They treated me like family, and we all enjoyed the supper and rodeo. Now, here's the thing. That "pair of hands that work in the darkness," it knew my greatest sin was anger, not violent anger, but instead, a "to hell with you," and I walk away kind of anger. It was a sin that had derailed me in major ways, more than once in life. And there in Selby, it took its best shot at me, and it had me, but the Lord, who had spoken to my heart before I began my journey and told me He would share his children with me if I followed Him, He sent that dove to distract me at the critical juncture. I love my people, and I never became angry with them like that again. (To know more about my journey on the Lewis and Clark Trail, click here.)
Chapter 17:
To write the blizzard scene, I drew on my experience getting caught in two blizzards. One while backpacking over the Continental Divide, and the second while canoeing in the State of Montana. In both blizzards, the wind really did sound like I was next to a freight train or jet engine. In the first blizzard, I did not try to hunker down but kept walking to gain lower elevation. My dog nearly died, but I took him and put him inside my coat and carried him there. In the second blizzard, I hunkered down in my tent, and my dog and I were trapped there in freezing conditions while the blizzard howled for four days.
Chapter 24:
To write the scene in which John tells the family that he'd heard an account of wolf pups being taken from their den to save them from extranous conditions, and how the mother wolf visited the pups when the humans were away, but allowed them to remain with the humans for the pups sake - I drew from the following experience: My neighbor at the time, who shall not be named here, asked me to dispose of some wild dogs living on his property. The man was understandably worried for his young son, among other things. It was the dead of winter and extremely cold. I drove my 4-wheel-drive truck as far as I could on a tractor path that led into rugged woods in hilly ravine country. From there I went on foot, hunting for the den of wild dogs. I would say I found the den by sheer luck, except I do not believe in luck. The den was not a hole, but semi-tucked into a cliffy hillside in dense woods. Deer bones lay scattered all around. The pups, Great Pyrenees, were huddled together, growling at me, with one pup, the alpha, protecting the others. I had my pistol out because, if their mother, who was huge, came along just then, she would attack me. In my free hand, I had food, and little by little, I won the pups over. I then carried them to my truck, one at a time. It was aduous, but I was in good condition. There were 4 of them. Back home, I built them a house out of hay bales. I was a bachelor, and as the days passed, I would go off to work each day, and the pups' mother, a beautiful Great Pyrenees, would come to visit and guard them. I knew because I could see her tracks in the snow. The pups grew as the weeks passed. I took them for walks in the woods, along with my two dogs, and a stray dog that just showed up and may have been the pups' father. Their mother would shadow us. At other times, I walked alone down the tractor path that led into the wooded ravine, and I would call to the mother dog, "Come, girl. It's okay, girl. You can come, it's safe." She would bark in reply, and her voice was so full of pain and hurt - I didn't know a dog could sound so emotional. I tried, but I could never get her to come in. It was sad. She must have been severely abused at some time in the past. I always left food for her. Anyway, the pups were extraordinary, but I had to do something with them, so I took them to the Humane Society in Lawrence, Kansas. Not long after that, I was home watching the news when, to my great surprise, there were the pups on TV! ABC evening news in Kansas City, with news anchor Laurie Everett. The pups made it to the 'big time' and were stars, at least for a day, because they really were extraordinary, as I previously mentioned. The news people didn't know the pups' origin story, and although I thought about it, I never contacted them. Below are two pictures of the pups. The picture on the left shows the pups with the black stray that may have been their father. The picture on the right, from front to back, shows my dog Clovy, the four pups, the stray dog that may have been their father, and my dog UB who did the Lewis and Clark Trail with me.
Chapter 39:
The story of the battle between the eagle and geese is entirely true. I witnessed the battle while canoeing the headwaters of the Missouri River in Montana, on the Lewis and Clark trail. My dog UB and I floated right by as the battle transpired. The birds never noticed us. It was as if my canoe was nothing more than a log, slowly drifting past. So I had a bird's-eye view.
Chapter 40:
To write about the flood in this chapter, I drew from an experience that my wife Laura and I had while canoe camping. It was night, and we were sitting at our campfire. Our canoe sat near the river about a hundred feet away. I happened to look out towards the river, and, in disbelief, I asked, "Is that water rising?" We could not believe our eyes. We flew into action. We took down our tent and broke camp with no time to pack anything in an organized fashion. We ran back and forth between camp and canoe, splashing through the water, and by the time we retrieved the last load, the water had inundated our camp. The next thing we knew, we were in a full-fledged flood, at night, with no way to escape the river. Shadows of giant trees rose and fell, bobbing and turning. I was listening for the sound of an old open-faced dam that had fallen into disrepair. Supposedly, it waited somewhere ahead, but the river in the trees and rushes along the banks made so much noise that I couldn't hear it. The dam was said to be only a few feet high, but presented a significant danger in the form of a "keeper hole" that had claimed a significant number of lives over the years, and had earned the names, "Kaw Death Trap," and "Devil's Drop." Anyway, I guess that, perhaps, the depth of the flood made the dam a non-issue, because we never encountered it. I kept my cool. I may be terrible in other kinds of situations, but not in situations like this. Likewise, Laureal was calm, and she actually did say that everything would be okay. I told myself she did not understand the danger, and she did not, but that was probably a good thing. She was spiritual, and that had a lot to do with her calm demeanor. Finally, after a harrowing hour or two, we came to an elongated island high enough in elevation, with a patch of woods atop it, and, sweeping around behind it, we turned and paddled hard in its wake to gain its backside. We camped there. It was a sleepless night. Our two dogs were crazy, at war with several geese, and it was too dark, and we were too exhausted to rein them in. In the morning light, we set out in the flooded river and canoed to safety. I never knew what caused the flood, but it seems obvious that the large dam upstream had opened its flood gates. Had I checked before camping, I would have known that. Laura didn't give me a hard time for it. She was very forgiving in that way, but from that day on, she always referred to it as the "canoe trip from hell."
Chapter 41:
To write about the fire on the water, I drew from an experience I had while canoeing in the Columbia River Gorge. I was paddling east, and had entered the gorge earlier that day, and was near the trailhead where I would portage around the Bonniville Dam. It was raining harder than I've seen before or since, when out of the blue, the clouds cracked open and the sunshine came down even as the rain continued to boil the water. As the sunbeams swept this way and that across the boiling surface, a light show was created, multi-color patches of light flowed here, there, and everywhere. It was a mind-blowing experience. At the dock where my portage began, I asked a local fisherman if he'd ever seen such a thing. He smiled and said it happened sometimes.
Chapter 61:
To write the story Julian and Anders tell about canoeing the "Black Widow" rapids, I drew on a canoeing experience I had while canoeing the Missouri River downstream from Great Falls, Montana. The only difference in the two stories is that I was canoeing solo with my dog, UB. Other than this one difference, everything happened exactly as recounted in Chapter 61, and also, in Chapter 47 where Anders and Julian begin to tell the story but, due to protests from Mia and others, decide to tell it at a later date. This experience, just downstream of the Maroney Dam, along with my experience on the Columbia River, just upstream of the Bonneville Dam, as told in my book American Errand (day 28), were the two most extreme experiences of my canoe travels.
NOTE: MORE REAL-LIFE EVENTS WILL BE
ADDED AFTER ALL 99 CHAPTERS ARE POSTED.
