BY GEORGE STRANAHAN
A journal, handwritten and in French, was found in an oil cloth sack under the floor of what used to be Henry and Rita’s cabin in Lenado and adds this bit to what is already known of early settlers in our valley.
French beaver trappers were the first of the invaders here, entering the so south over Taylor Pass in the 1860s. The European market for beaver fur was a frantic demand bubble that could easily support the costs of
supply from a remote Rocky Mountain valley. The merry band of frogs came over the pass to strike it rich. At first it was easy money as they trapped out Castle Creek. then Maroon Creek, and on down the valley.
Pierre Merkinn and his two brothers claimed and defended as their own the territory of Woody Creek, putting up their trappers’ shacks in what is now Lenado. They refer to the whole valley, including the creek, as Lenado, an old old French word denoting a woody copse. And, surely according to their journal, they all struck it rich until the bubble burst and both demand and supply disappeared simultaneously. Reduced to eating buckskin and mushrooms, the brothers spent their days in Kobey Park and they too were often taken to table. The journal references Kobey Park as Le Parque du Chien.
It was Pierre, looking for grouse, who first noticed a dog high in a particularly dense spruce. He stared and wondered: a dog? Here? In a tree? He noticed the wings folded along the dog’s back. Pierre Merkin was the first nonnative ever to clap eyes on a flying dog — indigenous only to Woody Creek Students of the Ute culture and language have long been confused by their phrase unmuonga fuilleo, finding no English equivalent. With the evidence from the journal it is now accepted that this was their term for “flying dog,” and thus they knew well of the creature.
The brothers, trappers by trade, brought the dog down and studied it carefully. The underbelly fur was extraordinary, lusciously soft, and rather a reddish blonde, perhaps quite suitable for their great-grandfather August Merkin’s eponymous hairpiece.
The brothers returned to Kobey Park and soon trapped several more flying
dogs, enough to establish a domestic breeding colony in kennels that they
built in Lenado. The flying dogs were fruitful and multiplied and served the
merkin market at a handsome profit — a family business reborn from afar. Prosperity returned to what little was left of the original French immigration. The journal begins to record the births of new Merkins. The maternal side? Apparently, and little evidence here, Utes chose the French over migrating north toward Meeker with their own. This
may, and academics argue this, be the source of those many ”Lucky Pierre”
jokes.
And so, Merkins and flying dogs multiplied and Lenado became prosperous. As always, when things are too good to be true, they are too good
to be true. One spring morning Pierre went to the kennels and found every
door open and every flying dog gone. Who, how, what? It was thought at first a jilted Ute and then perhaps an Italian. These things are in the journal.
Flying dogs gone, beavers long gone, equals hard times. The Merkins, l
suppose naturally migratory, moved on down valley; there are remnants today in the dairy industry around Rifle. They are not well regarded by their neighbors, and the children are shunned in their schools.
Now why would one think that Pierre bad captured every flying dog in Kobey Park and, none left, that every released flying dog died? Today, some will look for buckskin or mushrooms in Kobey Park report strange sighting: one tourist with a beehive hairdo, claimed to have been abducted and taken to a mystical place where thousands of flying dogs cavorted and one made snarling sounds and motions, which she interpreted as a demand to examine her pudendum. It’s the UFO thing, those who have seen a flying dog believe, and those that haven’t have their doubts. It is told to children of Lenado that Lumber Jack, a man of strange habits and collections, kept in his cabin a stuffed flying dog, and that on harvest moons he would release it to fly again until daybreak. Children have heard strange barkings from above on nights of the harvest moon and tell the story to their own children.
And this, dear reader, is how it is, and perhaps ever will be. Today “flying dog” is an appellation for some ales and ranches, is seen on T-shirts, and is generally identified with a Woody Creek attitude of purposeful irreverence. Purposeful irreverence? Two loaded words: for what purpose’? Irreverent of what authorities? Only a flying dog would know, and Woody Creek is no longer the only place you’re likely to find one.
