The Opportunity

I had wanted to rendezvous for a while but just didn’t know how to get started or talk my wife Rhonda into it. I had worked on craft projects for fun and made a period knife from a Green River knife blank and an elk knee bone; I made a latigo sheath using furniture tacks to decorate it.

Our young family was on our way home, I don’t remember from where but off the freeway at the local reservoir there was a rendezvous. Of course I had to stop. We visited the trade tents and in comes an older fellow with a long beard, full buckskins, and all the regalia. I wanted to look just like him, excepting a beard; I’ve never been able to grow one. I bought a beaded rosette with the little money I had, went home, found some leather and made a new medicine bag.

I got a job working as a drafter and my co-drafter and I became friends quickly. He had wanted to rendezvous and beat me to it. He and his family were friends with a family that had been rendezvousing for some time. They invited us to come up to camp and have dinner with them. The night was warm, the old style lanterns were lit, and we sat around a bright fire eating his Dutch oven masterpiece. Later they invited us to camp with them. We were in the habit of camping anyway, and we wanted to attend, so we packed our modern camping equipment and headed out to Cache Valley Rendezvous in May.

There is one thing you should know about this rendezvous, it almost always rains and you usually get one or more cool days. This was the exception it was hot, real hot, high 90s to 100s. We camped in the “tin teepee” area. Many rendezvous have an area set aside, away from the main rendezvous area, where people can setup there modern gear or camping trailers. Each day we would walk down the hot and extremely dusty road about ¾ of a mile to where our friends were camped. Side note: I hadn’t met my friends family yet, as soon as our camp was set up I left my wife and kids to go find my friends camp. It was a bit of a walk to the rendezvous so I decided to cross the river that divided modern camp from period camp. I went down through the brush and here are some kids, one of them, a young boy had a dead black dog by a hind leg and was trying to pull it out of the river. I told him he “probably shouldn’t be doing that” and left the grizzly scene. Eventually I found my friends and later found out it was my friend’s son that I had passed on the river, and he wasn’t very impressed by my story.

Rhonda, the kids and I spent the next four days running around camp. There were games for the kids and also craft projects. I shot my friends black powder rifles and threw the tomahawks. I don’t remember all that my wife did, but it seemed she was having a good time. My friends had a large canvas fly that provided great shade and even though it was miserably hot out it was nice in the shade. We had a lot of fun. As the camp went on Rhonda informed me that she wanted to camp in the period area at the next rendezvous. Wow, I couldn’t believe it, here was my opportunity. We had a great time even though my neighbors Coleman lantern fell and broke the glass which of course he blamed it on the kids, who had not been close to his camp; he wanted me to pay $50 so he could get a new globe. They are five bucks at Wal-Mart. He made stink about it and I told him to jump off.

Anyway it was fun, the kids loved it, Rhonda loved it, and I couldn’t wait to do it again, only the right way.

Cach Valley Rendezvous: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mountain-Man-Rendezvous-Reenactments-Rocky-Mountain-Region/146539856156?sk=messages_inbox&action=read&tid=id.385711374830579#!/pages/OEMM-Cache-Valley-Rendezvous/127071744027856