THE BORN LESAR

I'm not exactly what you'd call a real mountain man

On a recent episode of the television show 'Mountain Men,' an Alaskan homesteader named Morgan Beasley goes on a 16-hour trek starting hours before dawn in windy below-zero weather straight up a 3,000-foot near-vertical mountainside, gets to the top, sees the Dall sheep that he's hunting, and then it runs away. 'Darn it all,' he says, basically, and turns around to go back home.

That same day, I walked out to my backyard shed looking for my rake, realized I had left it in the garage, said 'Darn it all' -- or some version of it that my Catholic upbringing taught me will bring three Hail Marys, two Our Fathers and a swat upside the head from my Dad -- and went back to sit in my chair. Yeah, me and Morgan, we were pooped.

I was young once and in shape, rumor has it, but those days are farther behind me now than Nancy Pelosi's chances of getting invited to Mara-Lago for a tiki party. I've been noticing my physical prowess slowly ebbing over time, and these days it feels as if my energy level is lower than the Energizer Bunny after his own batteries have been ripped out of the hole in his back and thrown in the ocean. Really. Please, somebody shut that rabbit up already.

In case you've never seen 'Mountain Men,' it's a weekly hour-long History Network docudrama that follows the lives of several grizzled characters who eke out an existence at elevations where the air is thin and the ladies' leg hair is as dense as the bears' (just a hunch). Morgan's chosen location is along the Alaska Range, a 400-mile line of jagged peaks that includes Denali, the tallest point in North America, and it's so cold there in winter that Morgan has to chisel three feet through the ice of a running creek just to scoop up enough water to make his morning coffee. I know the feeling -- sometimes I have to reach around the pineapple-orange-mango juice jug to get to the chocolate milk. Brutal.

At a glance, Morgan seems sort of built like me -- big of belly and meek of muscle. Watch the dude, though, on that journey up the mountain, and he's like Superman on a Red Bull IV drip. First, he slogs for six miles on a pair of hybrid skis/snowshoes that sink two feet into pillowy snow, all while lugging a backpack that looks as if it's filled with three small children, or two large ones.

All this takes place in the pitch dark, mind you, because Morgan knows he must get to the high hunting ground at first light to surprise the sheep. All during his trek -- as some cameramen who's probably thinking to himself 'This ain't what I signed up for!' follows him -- he mutters to himself that he simply must kill an animal or he and his partner will have no meat for the entire winter (although I'm thinking those two horses outside his cabin will start looking like pretty good stew base around February).

When Morgan gets to the base of the mountain, he encounters icy boulders as big as Jeeps, then crawls up through them at sheer angles like he's a kid at a McDonald's Playland (although there's no ketchup or vomit to work around). After his walk through the Arctic snowpack, you'd think he'd already be exhausted, yet he negotiates the rocks and emerges -- still in total darkness -- onto vertical but less hazardous terrain. He's barely breathing hard. I was puffing after hiking to the kitchen during a commercial for sliced peaches (Yeah, sugar free. If you say so.) I have to say -- despite Morgan's less-than athletic appearance, the guy's a man-stud. As dawn nears, he's headed vertical more directly than Jesus on Ascension Day, stopping every now again to check out the cliffs with his binoculars for the ivory speck of a sheep against a background that's whiter than the crowd at a Norwegian lutefisk dinner. Realizing that he has only four hours of daylight in Alaska at this time of the year, he's can't tarry, but keeps on moving over ridge after ridge. My legs were like lead just from kicking my chair back into the recline position.

As the background music builds to a crescendo, Morgan suddenly spots his prey just over the next peak. He has to shimmy around a hill to get close enough for a clean shot, but as he rises from his crouch for the big moment, the sheep has already detected his presence and is scooting to safety. After all that work, all that incredible exertion, all Morgan can do is turn around and trudge 16 hours back to his cabin. I felt so bad for him that I forget to put any Cool Whip on my brownie.

I like watching 'Mountain Men' and other such adventures of rugged people, I suppose because it tells me what individuals can do if they put their minds to it. Morgan and the other fellows on this show constantly repeat that they've chosen this lifestyle for the solitude and the ability to live off the so-called grid, but, man, you'd better be in shape before you buy a wilderness cabin outpost and live off spruce grouse breasts, salmon and caribou liver. Everything these people do involves grueling physical labor, from sawing up cedar logs for firewood to firing up the bush plane to fly three hours to reach the nearest village after you've chopped off your favorite three toes with a dull axe. Me? I usually take at least two rest breaks on my way to the mailbox.

I am enthralled by the romanticism of a mountain man lifestyle, but working that hard just to say I live off the land doesn't seem worth it. I do enjoy hunting for meat, but I generally park within a few hundred yards of a ladder treestand with a padded seat. Walking 16 hours up a mountainside for a sheep just seems kinda silly when Pick 'n Save has fresh ribeyes in the case and I can grab a 12-pack of Bush Lite on may to the checkout. Yeah, I know, I'd get the 30-pack, but they're awfully heavy.

At least I'm quite aware of my physical shortcomings, and don't try to do more than these old bones can handle. Just the other day, matter of fact, after watching Morgan climb a mountain, I thought about doing some yardwork, but, well, my pinky kinda' hurt from that Twinkie package paper cut. Besides, another episode of “Mountain Men” was coming on, and Jake Herak was about to chase his dog pack for 12 straight hours so they wouldn't get beat up by a cougar.

I was sleeping before the theme song was over.