Recently this article was published in the Anchorage Daily News:
http://www.adn.com/2012/01/26/2284773/man-seeks-to-reclaim-his-22-cats.html#storylink=misearch
The piece chronicles the woes of homesteader Jim Hershberger, whose 22 cats were removed from his care January 14 during a semi-annual supplies trip to Anchorage.
By all accounts, Hershberger is a genteel if not cantakankerous mountain man who seeks to retrieve his band of cats, who provide him with company as well as entertainment during his long stints in the Mentasta Mountains. He affirms his case with notions of his love and gratitude for his feline companions, and he calls for the state of Alaska to return his beloved, well cared-for cats to his awaiting embrace so that the family may return to their homestead.
Upon returning from a usual supply trip Mr. Hershberger, a Vietnam veteran, loads his crated cats into sleds after parking his vehicle at a rest stop along the Tok Cutoff. From there, he hauls them east, down an embankment to their resting place. According to Mr, Hershberger, better known by Tok residents as The Mentasta Mountain Man, his cats run free as tundra cats run at his abode in North Slana.
His fight with the state aside, I found upon reading this article that I have an alleged story to add to this, especially since there is an allegedly false representation of former Alaska State Trooper attempts to assist Jim Hershberger in his mission to be a good cat care provider.
Recounting trooper duties, whether first hand or as a close relative, is somewhat frowned upon in some scenarios. For purposes of protecting the identities of citizens involved, I will now disclose that these events are all alleged.
Allegedly, it was a nameless winter evening when a man laden in blue, yellow, and a Stetson stomped through the living room door of the home he shared with his red-headed wife. She was content with her casual telephone conversation, relaying anxious plans to visit Valdez glacier for a spring wedding. “On the actual glacier!” she declared gleefully to the friend on the other end.
Upon sight of her husband, uniform fragrant with soppy scents of sweat coupled with snow, she made haste to put down the receiver formerly glued to her ear for two hours. He was a mess, indeed, for his swing shift evening had been spent in hot pursuit of a homesteader.
Similarly to the trooper, the homesteader was of singular mind against the cold. The taste of survival, like the taste of water, had driven both men through the mountains that night in search of a parked vehicle parked at the rest stop alongside the Tok Cutoff; the vessel through which fruits of living were sought. It was a warm vessel, too, much unlike the eventual mountain trek the homesteader and the police officer.
It began, allegedly of course, with a phone call to Tok Dispatch. The shall-remain-nameless dispatcher, herself of abrupt character, relayed the information to the forever fictional Alaska State Trooper, who before this alleged phone call was likely researching Mukluks or recounting some hilarious detail of summer tourist arrests to his co-workers.
The caller was a modern homesteader with a cell phone for use in emergencies, and this was indeed one of those situations. The homesteader had found himself abruptly cold, lacking in energy, and ultimately facing death on the trek from cabin to vehicle. He was on the edge of cell phone coverage, and this exchange with dispatch could possibly be his last living conversation. He was also fearful for his travel company: a sled full of 22 cats.
“Leave your cats and head for your vehicle; it could mean the difference between life and death!” was the dispatcher’s advice.
“I just won’t do that.” the forlorn reply from The Mountain Man.
As dutifully as an integral Alaska State Trooper does, the man in blue and yellow interrupted his wife who was allegedly compiling documents for an impending research project. The phone call was brief. “I’m headed out in the direction of Mentasta to look for this (crazy) homesteader and his 22 cats who is probably going to freeze to death because he refuses to leave his cats at home when he travels.”
Some hours later, upon the trooper’s alleged late return, he recounted to his eager wife what she recognized (being the veteran trooper wife that she was) as just another one of those tales that you only hear in Alaska. Considering herself lucky to be counted among the many Alaskans who are fortunate enough in their exposure to such laughable and compelling stories, she listened intently.
The man was indeed hypothermic, and the trooper allegedly took over hauling the cats after a brief exchange that went something like, “You’re really not going to leave these cats in order to save yourself?” “No, I’m not.” “Well okay, then.”
The man in blue and yellow was already dressed in his warmest gear, and having just completed the task of actually locating The Homesteader in what would have been his place of death, he took the reigns of the Sled of Cats. With the felines fighting inside their cotton sacks and plastic crates, howling and screeching and giving great rise of feline emotion with every turn and bump — the sled even toppled over several times upon the ascent — the trooper moved on, step for step. His sweat froze in the subzero temperatures, his brow was simultaneously hot with feverish attempt and frozen with elemental ice. The Homesteader followed closely, thankful and determined with every step.
When they reached the mountain man’s vessel of refuge, the trooper allegedly handed the homesteader an energy drink and an unidentified snack to refuel his belly and his soul for the long impending journey to Anchorage.
The Homesteader was allegedly thankful and exhausted; the police officer allegedly exhausted and exasperated. After explaining to the homesteader that it is a real possibility that on another such evening when the weather is cold and the cats are fighting and the burden too heavy to haul, there could be a lack of trooper assistance and that the homesteader should really reconsider his planning steps in venturing to his vehicular refuge on such a night, the trooper returned home to his alleged home in Tok, where his alleged five children were sleeping and his alleged wife waiting to hear what she was sure would be another allegedly awesome tale of such season that only a homesteader or an Alaska State Trooper could experience it.
When the Alaska State Trooper’s wife was attending an alleged dinner with friends in Tok over a year later, and heard recount of the Anchorage Daily News article in which Jim Hershberger the homesteader recalled with indignation that a year ago, an Alaska State Trooper not only encouraged him to let his beloved cats die in the wilderness, but that Mr. Hershberger was forced to save himself and his cats from certain doom at the rejection of law enforcement,
Last winter, he attempted the trip in knee-deep snow when it was 40 degrees below zero. He didn’t make it past the first frozen river before he had to stop and build a fire and eventually called 911 on his cell phone. The troopers told him to save himself.
“The first thing they told me was, ‘Leave your cats and get out.’ And I said, ‘No, I can’t do that.’ ”
Instead, he pulled them back to his car, he said.
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/26/2284773/man-seeks-to-reclaim-his-22-cats.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy
….she was at the same time incensed and empowered. “For Mr. Hershberger to so easily shun the efforts of a man who, out of duty and compassion, risked life and limb to carry those howling felines up the side of a mountain is an egregious act of disrespect and shows an utter lack of appreciation. Without the aid of the trooper, Mr. Hershberger would have met his end along with his cats on the side of some unknown mountainous terrain. He probably had no idea that somewhere in the tundra resided a wife of a trooper who had a stellar memory and a penchant for crafting words that tell stories of both a truthful and an alleged nature.”
The alleged wife of the alleged state trooper would like for Mr. Hershberger to remember that while his great state of residence honors his civil right to be a homesteader, it also apparently honors his right to lie publicly in an attempt to invoke sympathy for his cause. And while the alleged wife of the alleged trooper indeed recognizes that Mr. Hershberger’s desire to foster 22 cats within the confines of his car has not been acknowledged by the government that employs the man who rescued him, it does not befit him to tell lies about that man in order to garner sympathy for his cause of reacquiring his feline companions. Someone needs to remind Mr. Hershberger that our paths both figurative and literal are always compassed by truth, and that truth will always reconcile fiction. In any case, it’s a really good thing that the alleged trooper who met a homesteader from Mentasta on an alleged path some allegedly unholy cold evening last winter was allegedly a good enough man to further enable Mr. Hershberger to live his life, fight for his cats, and minimize the efforts of the man — not the government employee — who cared enough about his life to save it.
Ridiculous Google Terms That Have Led People To This Site