Originally published on hintofriches.com (May 19, 2021)
My reading of the poem leads to a section of lodgepole pine forest on the south bank of the Madison River at Nine Mile Hole.
The poem was sufficient to lead me there. However, I was further encouraged by broad hints in The Thrill of The Chase.
By contrast, the poem alone has not led me to a specific blaze, or specific type of blaze. This has forced me to seek more nuanced hints in TTOTC, and in Forrest’s quotes.
On a couple of occasions, Forrest talked about hiding something in or near a rivulet:
“Now, what if I wanted to secret a can of Dr. Pepper under a rock in the cooling waters of a rivulet somewhere in my allotted public acreage?”
“When I left the lake the last time, I hid a bottle of Coke under a rock. My plan was to drink it the next time I was there. Now I suppose some other Lewis & Clark will find it someday. It has had time to cool. All of those lakes are naturally fed with springs and snowmelt.”
In Looking for Lewis Clark, he wrote about finding something in or near a rivulet:
“We spent the next day looking for the horses and finally found them down by a rivulet where the grass was tall and abundant.”
Forrest’s horse had a blaze on its forehead. Forrest named the horse Lightning in TTOTC (the horse was unnamed in a previous version of the story).
Lightning (i.e. Blaze) was found by a rivulet, where the grass was tall and abundant.
There are additional stories where Forrest writes about finding something in long grass:
In My War For Me, he landed in a small clearing with “belly-high grass” that made walking difficult. He tripped over a “stone grave marker that had fallen face down in the grass.” The grave marker made a profound impression on him. He “took care to replace the stone marker as it had fallen, and smooth the grass to hide it over.”
In Gypsy Magic, he heard music coming from the gypsy camp and scurried out the window, through the cemetery toward the large fire (i.e. blaze) around which the gypsy girls danced. He got up close by “lying on my stomach under a wagon, and pushing the tall grass aside.”
In Buffalo Smoke, while “walking along the bank of the Madison River, leisurely fishing and enjoying” himself, he looked around to find “twelve large buffalo resting in the tall grass.” Forrest adds, “So much steam (i.e. smoke, blaze) was on their bodies that it formed a cloud as it slowly rose to dissipate in the pine branches above.”
A rivulet, or spring, is one of the defining elements of Nine Mile Hole:
“My father taught me about “Nine Mile” many years before. The river flows into a far bank on a gradual bend, where two structural elements create a unique trout environment. First, there is a lava shelf on the far bank where the river depth drops from 6 to 12 inches to about 5 feet along a sharp ledge that is roughly 20 feet long. The second element is a spring that comes into the river just upstream from the lava shelf. These two factors create an environment that larger trout really like: a safe “hold” out of the way of predators, deep along the ledge, and cooler water that trout prefer during warm summer months.”
— Wall of Honor (Methodist Debakey Cardiovascular Journal, Apr-Jun, 2016), by Kim A. Eagle
If I were looking for the blaze in the forest on the south bank of the Madison River at Nine Mile Hole, I would want to include spots immediately beside the rivulet and beside long grasses.
Just saying.
