to his credit, he did use the phrase "somnolent vagaries"

Mammoth is all in a flurry for opening on Friday. Mattresses crowd the hallway and paint chips flutter from the ceiling. Fire alarms went off all day yesterday, and a man's been shoveling buffalo chips and elk scat off the lawns. I'm dreading the onslaught of tourists.

But. As promised, here is the story of Truman Everts. Get ready. It's a crazy.

Truman Everts Delaware III has the notoriety of being lost (and alive) in Yellowstone National Park the longest. He was expediting with the Washburne-Langford-Doane expedition in 1870, and, being near-sighted, he wandered off with his pack-horse to be lost. His 37 days in the wilderness went something like this:

Day 1: Lost.

Day 2: Pack-horse spooks and runs off. (See inset.) He is left with an opera glass and the contents of his pockets.

Day 3: Having eaten seriously nothing, he feasts upon some "palatable and nutritious" thistle-roots. (This thistle was later to be named after him.) "Glorious counterpoise to the wretchedness of the preceding half-hour!"

Day 3 1/2: He scrambles up a tree in order to avoid a screeching mountain lion. After a tussle, cougar avoided.

Day 4-5: Snowstorm. He eats a raw bird. Feet frostbitten.

Day 6-13: Hunkers down on some hots springs to stay warm, cooking thistles in a hot-pot. After three days, his hip is badly scalded. After seven days, he decides to make a fire with his opera-glass.

*Meanwhile, Washburne and/or Langford and/or Doane has realized Everts is missing. They search for him for about twelve days, then offer a $600 reward for their friend's rescue. This will be important later.*

Day 14: Leaves the hot springs. Hallucinations set in.

Day 15: Burns hand badly.

Day 16: Loses a shoe. Despairs. Finds it.

Day 17: Inadvertently sets the forest on fire. Loses knife, fishing line/hook, and hair to the flame.

Day 18ish? A vision of a friend appears to him and gives him directions.

Day 20... something...: He loses all sense of time, and therefore so does this account.

Day __: He eats some minnows, and throws them up.

Day __: He spies an abandoned tree stump/former bear den and decides to sleep in it. As a precautionary measure, he lights three fires around the stump to prevent the bear's return. Unfortunately, as he puts, it,"I rose the next morning to find that during the night, the fires had communicated with the forest." Forest fire the second.

*Meanwhile, $600 is quite a bit of money in 1870, and two mountaineers decide to have a go. They head to the spot where he was last seen and start the search from there.*

Day __: Everts climbs down a treacherous cliff.

Day __: The opera glass! She is lost! Everts retraces five miles to find her.

Day __: Several storms. Like snow, guys. Serious cold. All kinds of wandering 'round in misery.

Day 37: The man is barefoot, frostbitten to the bone, emaciated, and has claws for hands. Yet when two rescuers ask him if he is Mr. Everts, he still has the cheek to say, “All that is left of him.”

The rescuers are Baronet and Prichette. One hikes 75 miles for help. The other nurses him back to help. Turns out, ye life-sustaining thistles are wreaking havoc on the digestives. Until a mountain man has the now fifty-pound Everts drink A PINT OF BEAR OIL.

(Stop. Take a moment. Imagine bear oil. Imagine a pint of it. Imagine drinking a pint of bear oil. All at once. Have you considered it thoroughly? Have you? Okay, we can resume the story.)

Perhaps as a direct consequence of drinking sixteen fluid ounces of raw fat, Everts gains thirty pounds and sets off to join his abandoners in Helena. They name a mountain after him and are presumably very happy to see him again.

HOWEVER. No one will give the money to Baronet and Prichette. No one ever does. The expeditioners won't pay up and Everts flat-out refuses. (Had I a time machine, I would show up in 1870 Montana with $600 for EACH of them and possibly be lynched for wearing pants.) The mountaineers shrug off this heinous display of ingratitude eventually. Hard times are hard times. Possibly Everts was broke. BUT. Years latair, Baronet visits Everts to see how his rescuee is doing and is received so coldly that Baronet said he “wished he had left the son-of-a-gun to roam.” Whoa. Make of that what you will.

Anyways. After recuperating as best as one can from such an experience, Everts himself went on to marry a fourteen-year-old girl at age sixty-five, father Truman Everts Jr. at age seventy-five, and die peacefully at age eighty-five, leaving behind two bereft rescuers and a thirty-something widow with a ten-year-old. And that is the story of Truman Everts. (And also how this mountain got its name .)

This place is a magnet for madness. Chock-full of crazy people and stories and things. I kind of love it. Maybe next time we'll talk Superintendent Norris or tackle Teddy Roosevelt.

Much love!