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Show add 3/ At one of the more popular ones, the Fort Bridger, Wyo. rendezvous, they came from California, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New York and even Tennessee. A lone enthusiast in Germany begged off saying it looked like an early winter. This year's Ft. Bridger rendezvous was the largest <--V<M held this century in the U.S. There was a circle of more than 50 teepees. And more than 400 sharpshooters, including womenfolk, participated in skill and fun matches. Traditionally, a rendezvous would be held in the spring at a spot picked out the year before. When the thaw came, they would come, luggin' their winter's catch of pelts, squaws tailing behind. Teepees would stretch for miles along a stream bed . Rendezvous would last for weeks with shooting matches, drinking and tall tale contests. There would even be barbecues of fresh butchered buffalo or mutton to nibble on. Traders would dicker over the price of pelts and sell a tired and ragged trapper a bit of corn whiskey. Today's rendezvous are not much different except that the people come from a variety of careers and backgrounds, instead of straight out of the hills. The ranks of mountainmen include accountants; carpenters, Air Force officers, lawyers and even doctors and architects. "Much as I'd like to mountainman full time, you just can't in today's world," Clemin Flintlocker alias DeLoy Larson, Pleasant Grove, Utah explains. "Man's got to earn a livin' for his brood. But any chance I get, I head to the hills," the iron |
