Frontiersman no longer wanted

Where is the challenge and adventure of life to day? I grew up on stories of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett the tales of men going west, alone and testing themselves. Now men struggle to survive boredom and monotony of the slow death behind a desk, the same never ending task. Our society has even resorted to drugging boy's because they have to much energy, so they can be controlled to fit a cookie cutter society. What would the world be liked today if Ben Franklin,

Washington, Jefferson or Lewis and Clark had been given drugs to keep them calm. We have no new worlds or frontiers to explore. I can only imagine what it would be like to ride a horse with only a knife and a rifle and live by my own hands, and only answer to God in the end. The closest I have ever come was on a Black bear hunt in Canada. Larry Loxley , my cousin Lester and I were in northern Ontario. On the first day of the hunt I was probably 20 miles from camp and Lester was about 5 miles from me and I was the last one dropped off and the last to be picked up at night. I would be in my stand about 2 in the afternoon and be picked up about 1 am in the morning. Well I climbed out of my stand right at dusk, just barely enough light to see as there was no moon that evening and walked out to be picked up. I got to the road which was about 100 yards away from the tree stand. As I was sitting in the road a few minutes a grouse flushed about 10 yards from me right at the edge of the bush. Now things started going thru my mind as to what might have flushed the Grouse, was It a bear or wolf what?I started to stand up and as I was I my finger went automatically to the safe on my 30.06 rifle and switched it off, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, my heart racing I was ALIVE and I loved it. I stood there in the darkness one big nerve looking around me even though I could not even see my hand in front of my face. For 30 minutes I was in a state of adrenaline rush, a feeling i have never experienced since, and finally ended when I heard the diesel truck coming over the horizon.

As Lester opened the door I finally unloaded my rifle. He asked me what I thought and I told him and he told me that he did not unload his gun either until the door of the truck was opened. Neither Lester or I had ever hunted in a place where we could have been some animals dinner.

What would it have been to live like that every day? I wish I could cross the Cumberland Gap

with flintlock in hand and see a wilderness for the first time !