I Followed My Man To The Lower 48

I grew up in the wilderness, off the grid. During the tourist season my mother worked for a white water outfit, I was her help. The usual was a plane flew in with six rafters. Orientation, equipment check, weight check, these were my job. As the men walked down to the river this man touched my cheek telling me he was coming back for me. My mother snapped at him raising her voice to leave me alone. I was 17, and that was the first man to touch me.

Usually the guests were picked up down river and went Salmon fishing or bear spotting. But he caught a ride back to base camp on the equipment truck. My mother told me to run and hide. I ran into him, he came around back with the ranger that had taken them down river.

My mother didn't want to talk with him, he wasn't leaving without me. He was willing to pay for me. He told my mother he would send me to college and support me. After a night of negotiations, and me looking at an opportunity for college and a man with soft hands and who smoked at me. She agreed but not without spending a day telling what men wanted to do with a girl. Don't be so trusting.

Well, I'm sure my mother had an idea or two, but for me it was a wake up experience. The first night after getting to the lower 48 he showed me around and my room. After dinner prepared by the chef he showed me to my room. A while later he came up and told me to come on down and keep him company. The next morning the chef yelled at him, but it was too late. I had moved in.

All my life I lived with my mother in a one bedroom house with an outhouse. The only men, they couldn't offer me breakfast much less a college education. Not only was I going to go to a real college, I was getting a city slicker education. I may have been a girl without experience but even the chef told me I had him wrapped around my little finger.

I finished college, went to law school. Popped out a couple of boys, my mother's cabin got inside plumbing and hooked up to the grid. After everything froze up she spent the winters running the chef crazy and getting close to the boys, who I took up for a few weeks during the tourist season.

I don't talk sex with her, she doesn't want to hear what he does with me. I tell her I prepare for bed and go to my fate and am glad when I wake up in the morning. I'm sure that up there when the cold takes over a big bear hunter finds a warm bed and he's not there to talk to her. My man may not have a bushy beard, or know how to take down a moose and field dress him, but when the night gets quiet I feel the bear in him. I may have gotten soft here, but I can make my man howl at the moon and growl when he's all over me. And I can still help field dress a moose and enjoy doing it.