Riding West: An Outfitter's Life

by James K. Greer, Charles Miller

A big city boy with a university education, Jim Greer was haunted by the kind of dreams that afflict people like Thurber's Walter Mitty: dreams of running away from respectable careers to live intensely, on the edge, by the sweat of your brow and the skin of your teeth. At age forty, Jim Greer fled the conventional middle-class life in Denver he believed was killing him to operate a guide and outfitting service on Colorado's Western Slope. Riding West is the story of his adventures.

Some of Jim's stories of outfitting -- the business of taking men and women into the wilds and supplying them with the necessities of life -- are grim, others hilarious. He tells how he reinvented himself as "Doc" Greer, a cross between Hollywood's rhinestone image of a cowboy and the real thing; how he struggled with the dangers posed in the high country; how he fought for his authority, and sometimes his life, with headstrong horses and mules; how apparently trivial mistakes he made while hunting bears nearly got him killed. And how the winter comes -- when clients go home and snow closes the roads -- the bone-weary, dead-broke, and out-of-work outfitter retreats to town to live by his wits and dream of spring and another year in the high country.

A unique and engaging look at the life of a contemporary outfitter, Riding West should appeal to those interested in fishing, big-game hunting, the American West, or to city slickers who wants a taste of life in the great outdoors.

216 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1999