During the late autumn months the Elk are starting to herd together during rutting season and then begin their migration to lower elevations to winter where food is more plentiful. On the hills around the cabin they go through their routine of taking cover in the tall pines by day and moving to the open meadows in late evening to spend the night grazing on the tall grasses. Various families in Sky Hi Retreat have dogs that are notorious for erupting in their soulful howling upon hearing the eerie sounds of elk bugling. After a few minutes all is quiet again. Every twenty to thirty minutes the elk bugles and again another chorus of dog tunes break out. This will go on for a couple of hours. On full moon nights , this goes on all night long. To help mute the night melodies, we liked to listen to late night radio with Art Bell. Sometimes I don’t know which was worse, dogs howling, elk bugling or Art Bell’s side of his conversations with guest i.e., •uh Ha, Really, You don’t say, My Oh My,” etc.
Night time AM radio is limited in this neck of woods. Day time AM radio is a little better. Traveling to and from the White Mountains, we are forced to listen to San Francisco, LA, Denver and Albuquerque and sometimes Salt Lake City. It very difficult to pick up Phoenix stations until we are within fifty miles of their towers.
Back in the seventies , we enjoyed picking up some of the old melodramas hke The Shadow, Dick Tracey, etc. Now it is mostly talk shows or sports.
TV without cable or satellite is completely out of the questions. Some of our neighbors have satellite hooked up to their big screen TV. If they would only turn up the volume a little, we could sit on the deck and watch television with them. I think I will suggest it the next time there is a football game on that we would like to watch. Other than sports, I really don’t miss TV that much. Plenty to do here without it.