Robert M. Johnson

Spring of 1832 found Sam Ogden and his partner, Clyde Patterson feeling the itch of trapping season. In the high mountains, for the beaver, snow melt was already causing these highly intelligent animals to rush about in a desperate effort to save their dams and lodges from the onslaught of rushing water. One Valley near the Gunnison range, is particularly busy with the activity of many beaver colonies. It is called, "Grizzly Bear Valley." In this 10th volume of the Sam Ogden Mountain Man series, the young mountain man is facing perhaps the busiest year of his life. At midwinter, a wagon train managed to push through Grand Junction, leaving behind a veteran mountain man who had quickly tired of the company of what he called, "Those greenhorn pioneers." His name is Dick Wooten, already a legend on the frontier, but a man whose abilities are fading. He is looking for one last chance to hit the high country and be part of a trapping expedition. Dick Wooten is well aware of the reputation of Clyde Patterson and Sam Ogden as free trappers and he's unwilling to accept the fact that they are settling down and becoming part of the establishment, the settlement. In a short time, he convinced them that they should do one more trapping run and that he knows just exactly where they can find thousands of dollars in beaver pelts. It's too much for the two veteran trappers to pass up. They have to give it a shot. Wooten offered to lead his new partners to the richest beaver valley he had ever seen. He got them excited about the prospects, but neglected to also tell them that the valley was over run with Grizzly Bears. It was also the favored hunting grounds of not one but several Indian tribes from the region: Utes, Pawnee and Comanches.

It is 1832, winter still holds southwestern Colorado in its icy grip. Little Jacob Ogden was born in June and is about to take his first steps. His parents, Sam and Little Fire, have chosen to settle down in Grand Junction, Colorado. It has been a year of many changes, so far all good. In this ninth volume of the Sam Ogden Mountain Man Series, Sam and his Partner Clyde Patterson have decided to give up the life of a free trapper. They have decided to settle down in southwestern Colorado, in a new settlement called Grand Junction. Sam and Little Fire have made some new friends at the settlement of Grand Junction, the Olivers. John and Kate Oliver own and run the General Store, formerly the Trading Post of Grand Junction. They have adopted Sam and his family, sharing their home in Grand Junction. Sam, in turn, has invested his money from trapping in the Store, and is now part owner. Sam and Clyde bring many skills to the community. They have built a sleigh for the winter hauling of goods back and forth from the major supply center on the Santa Fe Trail: Bent's Fort. In this ninth volume of the Sam Ogden Mountain Man Series, "Bent's Fort Run," Sam and his partner, Clyde Patterson, are on a "run" to Bent's Fort for supplies to restock the store. As usual, they face challenges from renegade trappers, Indian hunting parties and the rough winter weather of Colorado. The Sam Ogden Series is as follows: 1.Hard to Kill 2.Winter Down 3.Rendezvous Prize 4.The Deerslayer's Destiny 5.Sam, My Warrior 6.Rocky Mountain Cabin 7.Free Trappers 8.Wilderness Wagoneer 9.Bent's Fort Run

It is 1828, the early spring trapping season is fast approaching and Rocky Mountain life is getting ready for the snow melt off the high peaks. Soon the Mandan Indian wife of Sam Ogden will give birth to their first child, and the Mountain Man hopes against hope that he will be back from the taplines before the end of June when she will be delivering. In this story, the seventh volume of the Sam Ogden Mountain Man Series, young Sam and his Mandan wife, Little Fire are about to become a family. Sam and his Partner Clyde Patterson are Free Trappers, and this means they make their own decisions about where and for how long they will work their traplines. Sam and Little Fire have made some new friends at the settlement of Grand Junction, just a two-day ride from their mountain cabin. John and Kate Oliver own and run the General Store, formerly the Trading Post of Grand Junction. Their five years of living on the frontier have been satisfying and their store is thriving. Their one regret is that they have no children of their own. It seems the most natural thing in the world for the Olivers to adopt Sam and Little Fire and their baby. For the first time in his young adult life, Sam Ogden, Free Trapper, has a family to come home to in the white settlements In this seventh volume of the Sam Ogden Mountain Man Series, "Free Trappers," Sam, his wife and his partner, Clyde Patterson face the harsh challenges of frontier life, both in the wilderness and in the recently founded white settlement of Grand Junction, Colorado Territory. The Sam Ogden Series is as follows: 1. Hard to Kill 2. Winter Down 3. Rendezvous Prize 4. The Deerslayer's Destiny 5. Sam, My Warrior 6. Rocky Mountain Cabin 7. Free Trappers

It is 1827, winter is fast approaching and Rocky Mountain life is getting ready for the big freeze and the great snows. Wild animals find the presence of human hunters annoying, disturbing their own hunting routines. It quickly becomes a struggle for territorial rights, whether it be a mountain lion, a grizzly bear or a wolf pack, domination is key to surviving in the high mountain ranges. In this story, the sixth volume of the Sam Ogden Mountain Man Series, young Sam and his Mandan wife, Little Fire are making a home for themselves in a cabin high in the Rockies. Along with their partner Clyde Patterson, the young couple will have to face the challenges to their survival from renegade Indians, outlaws, cougars, bears and wolves. The Rocky Mountain Cabin is their story, their adventure. The Mountain Man Rendezvous of 1827 took place in the Rocky Mountains at Popo Aggie. Once again, Sam Ogden and his partner Clyde Patterson were there for the tournaments that year: Hatchet Throwing, Knife Throwing and the Long Rifle Shoot. Tragedy had struck the last day of the Rendezvous when four mountain men tried to rape Sam's wife, the Mandan woman, Little Fire. That was a pain that would be a long time healing. At the Rendezvous, Sam and Clyde were offered the use of a mountain cabin in the Flattop range on the southwest flank of the Rockies. Big Bill Davis had built the cabin several years earlier and insisted that he wasn't going to be using it this winter. They took him up on his offer and headed south toward Grand Junction, Colorado Territory. In this sixth volume of the Sam Ogden Mountain Man Series, "Rocky Mountain Cabin," Sam, his wife and his partner Clyde Patterson settle in for the winter season of 1827. It will be a winter hard to forget. The Sam Ogden Series is as follows: 1.Hard to Kill 2.Winter Down 3.Rendezvous Prize 4.The Deerslayer's Destiny 5.Sam, My Warrior 6.Rocky Mountain Cabin

It is 1851 and over a hundred thousand people have poured into the California coastal towns of Los Angeles and Monterey and San Francisco. What had been sleepy Mexican settlements, under the influx of so many Americans, have become major cities of California which was recently named the 31st state of the union. John Charles Fremont, the Mountain Man's friend and business partner, has been chosen governor of the state of California and is now living in San Francisco.This present volume is number nineteen in the series that presents the fictional life of Jeremiah Warner a virtual incarnation of men like Kit Carson and Joe Walker and Jim Bridger. The study of the lives of these men who were so active on the frontier amazes the reader with the extent of their travels and their understanding of the wilderness. It was second nature for them to cross the Rocky Mountains and pan for gold in the rivers of California.In this volume, Rocky Mountain Return, the Mountain Man and his Cheyenne wife return to their previous home in the Platte River Valley. There they recruit their friends Tom and Mary Wilkerson to join them in the fields of gold, in California. Their journey across the mountains is one of excitement and courage.

The winter of 1826 finds young Sam Ogden living with the Mandan Indians in their village on the Missouri River. Life in the Slanted Village is built on the traditions of several hundred years. Sam and his mentor, Clyde Patterson have gradually become part of this complex network of practices and ceremonies. Sam has taken a wife, the daughter of Chief Rolling Thunder, her name is Little Fire. In the few months that they have been married, the young couple have successfully made a home of their spacious mud hut on the prairie. The Slanted Village is comprised of more than fifty of these solidly built log and mud homes. But living so close to the great River, the Missouri, brings with it the danger of the white man's illness. Already, the Mandan have been decimated by these fierce epidemics and another is now upon them. "Sam, my Warrior," is the fifth volume in the Sam Ogden Mountain Man Series. The story traces the evolution of the early Rocky Mountain West, marking its origins in the beaver trapping, fur trading period, through the gold rush phase and then into the cattle-raising period. The excitement of these simpler and nobler times continues to inspire us all The series is as follows: 1.Hard to Kill 2.Winter Down 3.Rendezvous Prize 4.The Deerslayer's Destiny 5."Sam, My Warrior"

The decade following the California gold rush of 1849 was a time of tumult and treachery. Hundreds of thousands poured into the territory whose main settlements barely harbored a thousand people. The American government was overwhelmed at dealing with the raucous situation which it had inherited from a dispirited Mexican political machine. The men who had set this grand American experiment in motion looked to one man, John Charles Fremont, for direction. His Fremont Enterprises, is the subject of this 18th volume of the Mountain Man Series: "River Gold To Die For." Fremont was himself engulfed in the mining frenzy that drove his contemporaries to leave hearth and home, squandering their life savings, for the promise of GOLD. This massive migration would take years to settle down and in the meantime it would depend on men like John Fremont's fictional friend and Gunman, Jeremiah Warner. The land grant owned by Fremont covered more than thirty square miles along the southern stretch of the Merced River, gold country In this story, the eighteenth volume of the Mountain Man Series, Jeremiah Warner goes from being the Boundary Rider to becoming the Gold River Gunman. He will be called on to be judge and jury for the dangerous element that is now slipping into the saloons and brothels of the California frontier. The wealth of the Fremont Enterprises can quickly become "River Gold to Die For." The Jeremiah Warner Mountain Man Series follows his adventures through the Rocky Mountain Wilderness and now into the thick of the California Gold Rush.

The first half of the nineteenth century in the American West was marked by an intense spirit of national pride and frontier determination. The politicians were the ones who stoked the flames of national pride that would eventually bring the territory of California into the American union. From the year 1803 when the Louisiana Purchase brought the entire Rocky Mountain territory under the control of the American government, men called free trappers were moving about throughout the territory and in their own way claiming it for the new owners. Their activities, and their aggression toward the Native Americans who inhabited the region, where source of conflict and violence. Where the Lewis and Clark expedition had gone through the entire Western territory all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back without engaging in open conflict with the natives, things were gradually changing in that regard. Tribes which it always thought with one another were now considering the white settlers as invaders of their territories and the danger to their ancient traditions. The men who took part in this process of expansion, and invasion, took it for granted that their Native American counterparts could not be trusted for the most part. The story is Samuel Ogden Leonard, the Mountain Man, began in eighteen twenty when he was just sixteen years old. In the summer of that year he met a consummate mountain man, Clyde Patterson, who had been a companion of one of the first, is not the first mountain man, John Coulter. After Coulter's death in the war of eighteen twelve, Patterson continued his life as a mountain man, mostly alone as a free trapper. He saw in Young Sam Ogden, not just the makings of a mountain man but the makings of a great mountain man he was fascinated with the experience that Young Sam had already had in the short time that he had spent in the Rocky mountain region. He wanted to pass on to his prot g , the skills that would make him one of the greatest mountain men to ever live. In order to do that, young Samuel had to learn the secrets that are revealed in this volume, "Winter Down."

The treasures of our life can be identified by what they bring of truth and goodness, of pleasure, satisfaction and creativity. We face in the course of any day a multitude of circumstances that we can turn into meaning and value. As we look at the circumstances and the environment in which we find ourselves, a moment of vision happens. Through vision we have internalized and assimilated its richness. We own the vision of happening, the moment is ours. Poetry is the discourse at this apex of vision. The poet in each of us is able to turn the greatest of our life circumstances into the fiber of our meaning. Moment by moment this process is our greatest asset for happiness. Consequently, poetry is something to be cultivated every day of our life. As athletes train for the field of sport, so we are trained by poetry for the field of action. The poetry in us finds the layers of truth hidden in the happenings of each day. Truth is more complex and rich than we allow, and it is up to us to perceive the subtleties of these layers through the filters of poetic insight. The filter of insight is the poetic gift, it is the ability to look at life situations and see in those situations the potential, the becoming. In fact, life is much more than we can imagine, giving us numerous options in all the events of this day, this week, this month, and this year. We are challenged to pay attention, to truly observe what is happening around us. The poet is someone who is obsessed with being here, not with tunnel vision, but awakened to what might be, what has been, what will be. This requires the mindfulness of full mental health, and brings with it true happiness. Life is a posturing, it is an awareness of this moment, a sense of the fullness we stand before. What we do with this fullness depends on our perception of its depth, its breadth, its horizons, and the many purposeful things that can be derived from this moment in time. We are constantly telling the story of our life as reinvented by this moment in time. Life is always going forward, never back. Reading poetry is re-living this vision of fullness. Like the athlete practicing, the musician doing drills, the reader of poetry is refining the basic skills of insight. A poem is not a "figuring out," but instead, a "going within." It is a portal of insight that guides the mind into the riches of time. The poem activates those powers of the mind that are both pleasurable and transformative. In the play of words, the tone, the rhythms, a poem touches the depths of the intuitive mind, the mind of the child within. It is this deeper mind that brings fulfilment, satisfaction and happiness to life's daily experiences. One word encapsulates this process and gives it meaning: ENJOY

Every day we add another spoke to the wheel of our life. When we bring our full self, our complete insight to this awareness, we make the spokes stronger and we give our life greater determination and meaning. The first man or woman who invented the wheel changed the course of humanity. Where we had been beings with just two feet, we relied on and depended on, the ability to carry something less than one hundred pounds of baggage. With the wheel, all of a sudden new horizons were opened before us. It was the wheel that made the difference and allowed us to expand the reach of our existence and the fullness of our potential. Without the wheel we would never have been able to plant civilizations around the world as we have. Without the wheel we would never have been able to fly and lift ourselves into the air and move about with extraordinary speed and agility. The wheel has given us access to the heavens and has given us access to the depths of the earth. The wheel is truly a magical development in human history. Things would never be the same once the wheel came to be. We quickly learned that wheels have to have support and that their support must come from within the circle. Two things make up that strength, the axle and the spokes. A strong axle and many strong spokes make a wheel capable of carrying unlimited material. When the horizons of life open for us unlimited, mankind forges ahead with gusto. The one who invented the wheel was a poet, someone who looked at life and saw there something that no one had seen before. The vision that they saw made magic for the followers of that generation. Once the wheel had entered into the social structure of human nature everything had to change. No one can trace the actual development of the first wheel and probably that's not important. But we always will know that that one invention, like the invention of fire, has moved mankind ahead by leaps and bounds. Each day of our life is like a spoke in the wheel that turns round and round. Moving us forward, the spokes get stronger as we pay attention and reach out to them with love. The poems that follow are the spokes of life and they have the potential for making life an even greater gift.