While visiting Idaho on vacation in 2000, my brothers Claude and Clell and I went camping for a few days. We headed about 35 miles north of our hometown up to a small mountain lake near an old mining claim above 9,000 feet in the Sawtooth Mountains. It takes all day in a jeep to get up there using the remains of an old mining road. The Tip Top Mine was established in the 1890s and probably little or no gold or silver was ever taken out. We camped beside a small spring-fed lake down below the actual mineshaft.
On our first morning in camp, we were surprised to see a young doe coming around, obviously very interested in what was going on. Over the next couple of days, she got to where she would come right into camp, not close enough to touch, but definitely not afraid of us. At times, like when we were trying to cook or wash dishes, she was kind of a pest. We called her Jane Doe. Apparently, in such a remote area, she had never been around humans (including hunters) and was just curious.
Midnight marauder
That trip also included what has become known as “The Porcupine Incident.” In that part of the country, the humidity is very low and tents aren’t necessary, so we just rolled out our sleeping bags onto foam pads on the ground. Even though it was late August, nights get really cold at that elevation. (Our drinking water actually froze that night.)
To help keep warm, we had an old tarp that we put across all three of our sleeping bags. During the night, as the temperature dropped and the wind came up, we ended up with the tarp clear over our heads.
Sometime during the night, we heard a commotion. “Watch out!” Claude yelled. “There’s a big old porcupine out there!” Clell and I raised the tarp to look out and there was the biggest porcupine we’d ever seen, shuffling around by the fire pit, maybe 6 feet from where we were sleeping.
Claude had heard it first and thought it was Jane Doe, sniffing around again. When he looked out from under the tarp, the porcupine was very close. He yanked the tarp down just as it swiped at him with its tail.
There was a full moon so we could see pretty well as Claude jumped out of his sleeping bag to run the porcupine off. He grabbed a tree branch laying nearby and chased the porcupine off. This presented quite a sight: Claude in nothing but his white skivvies and bare white legs, running round in the pale blue moonlight, freezing his behind off in the 35-degree wind. He was yelling and swiping at that huge old porcupine who was doing his best to get the heck away from this ghost-like madman!
As Claude returned to his sleeping bag, he heard me and Clell laughing like crazy. He became highly irate at our description of what we had witnessed and our lack of appreciation for his selflessness. With chattering teeth, he proclaimed loudly that we should be thankful we had an older brother who would risk his life to protect us.
A hair-raising ordeal
When the sun rose the next morning, we found quills all over the ground and on the tarp by the head of Claude’s sleeping bag. It was a darned good thing he had managed to pull the tarp back down quickly. By then, Clell and I agreed that we may have been a little unappreciative earlier, but Claude was still rather grumpy about the whole thing.
This story may have gotten a little more dramatic in the re-telling over the years, but these are the facts and they are undisputed (except by Claude). Just thinking about that pale apparition running around in the moonlight makes me laugh even today. No doubt the porcupine’s story of his harrowing escape has endured among succeeding generations of his family. FC
Clark Ballard, the older brother of longtime Farm Collector contributor Clell Ballard, has traveled widely in his work as a documentary film producer. Email him at clarkball@bellsouth.net
