Jean Carroll, February 2011
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Episode 3 (10:04)
Thank you for joining us for the third episode of “Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness History Project.” In this episode, titled “Legends of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness,” Jean Carroll recalls stories and legends that populate the backcountry, taking on a life of their own as they pass from campfire to campfire, and are retold on the front porches of log cabins or during breaks along the long trail.
Jean Renshaw Carroll is the author of the book, I Never Felt Poor, Except in Town. Selway Saga 1932 to 1948. In her stirring history and memoir, Jean shares about her experiences growing up at Selway Lodge, near the mouth of Bear Creek. She tells lively tales of exploits with her siblings living deep in the wilderness, of the hunters, pilots, trappers, fishermen and guests from all over the country, who visited her family’s home, and of the work she did, helping her father, Alvin Renshaw, with various duties around the ranch and, later, cooking for her brother Jim’s fishing parties. This paragraph is an excerpt from Jean’s book.
Each year, as we rode along the trail, I felt all my senses coming alive to the earthy smells and varied vivid greens of the trees and undergrowth, to the bright yellow patches of the balsamroot, and to the song of the river roaring through canyons or tinkling and murmuring along the deep holes. Always, too, I breathed in that familiar smell of horses and listened to the creak of the saddle leather and clop clop of hooves hitting rock or plopping through mud. Spring runoff all along the watershed would be sending cascades of water off the mountains so that we rode by numerous waterfalls not present any other time of year. As we rode toward our ranch home and simple life on the Selway, I rejoiced again in the fact that I never felt poor, except in town. On the Selway I felt rich… rich in freedom and rich in experience.
From I Never Felt Poor Except in Town, Selway Saga 1932 to 1948 by Jean Carroll and Borg Hendrickson.
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