The Call of the Mammoth

When I was in high school and going through all of the career counseling classes they make you take to see what jobs were right for your personality, there were only two jobs I was interested in.  The first career choice I picked was to be a puppeteer.  (The fact that I made my own hand puppets from my own designs made me super popular with the ladies.)  And the second career choice was made after I read Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear at the age of fifteen: I wanted to be a caveman. 

            I figured I would take a year after high school and move myself up into the mountains to survive on foraged and hunted food.  I would make clothing from the animals I killed.  I would make medicine from the herbs I found.  And I would surely find a cave somewhere in the wilderness of Idaho which would make a good home for me while I lived on a sabbatical away from humanity and technology. 

            I wasn’t stupid.  I knew this was going to be a lot of work, so I began preparing for it right there, as a fifteen year old boy, by reading every book I could get on survival, herbal medicine, flint knapping, and cavemen!  It became one of my many obsessions in my life.  I learned about the Venus figurines of the Aurignacian sites.  I learned about the painted caves in France and Spain such as Lascaux.  The Chauvet cave was discovered my junior year and I had a folder filled with information about it.  English class was dedicated to writing short stories about cavewomen and art class had me busy.  I painted rocks my Art Teacher, Mr. Shook, brought down from the mountains for me.  I sculpted my own Venus figurines from clay and Mr. Shook taught me to use the small kiln to fire special glazes on them.  I also began sculpting small, votive mammoths which I glazed in browns, oranges, and terracotta reds.  I wore a mammoth pendant I made for myself around my neck, had a raccoon tail on my backpack, and sported a faux fur vest which I wore in my senior portraits. 

            I’m not sure why, but the idea of Cro-Magnon humans living in a world of ice and winter with all of nature against them filled my mind for a long while.  My art was their art.  My dreams were to go back in time and breathe that primeval air.  I was a scrawny little guy who went hunting every fall with his dad and his brothers and never killed anything due to a combination of clumsiness and a soft heart.  But in my mind, I could survive an ice age. 

            The idea still flavors my existence.  My mom buys me mammoth figures when she comes across them.  Joseph bought me a mammoth ivory pendant as a gift one spring when we decided to rent a cabin and get away for a while.  And I still love looking at those cave paintings in books and on the internet.  But the idea of being a caveman hasn’t struck me for a long while until now. 

            In T-town, with an icy Mt Rainier looming above my new front porch, I have begun to hear the call of the woolly mammoth again.  I take my dogs for walks, and almost every time, someone (crackhead or otherwise) has to stop me to ask if my dog Dinky is a wolf.  Dinky is Siberian Husky mixed with Border Collie, and he is usually in a state of shedding his fur.  But he’s half the size of a regular wolf, and his eyes are brown as can be, not yellow.   

            Sally, my other dog, receives no such attention. 

            So I’m not sure how this inspiration will manifest itself this time around, but it was much of my culture in high school the last time it hit.  Perhaps I’ll take up painting rocks again, or maybe I’ll get a mammoth tattoo.  Until I know for sure, though, I will walk with my wolf and carry a spear in my mind.  (Maybe I should carry the spear in my hand, it might cut down on the crackheads who talk to me on said walks.)