Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLDuffer’s Goats
SITKA, Alaska — David Rice, aka The Old Duffer, knows how to walk softly in the wilderness. His quiet calm shows in his videos, especially in this one of the Mountain Goats of Washington state’s Olympic National Park.
During the ’70s, Rice carried into the mountains one of the first Minolta SLR 35mm cameras, amassing more than a thousand 35 mm slides — nearly 300 of them photos of Mountain Goats:
“On one memorable trip I counted more than 72 goats climbing on the cliffs around me. I spent so much time on Burnt Mountain, that the Mountain Goats soon recognized who I was.
“I would give out a whistle (and) the Mountain Goats would drop from the rocky crags to bed down around me. At one time I had 34 goats sitting around me within a stone’s throw.”
Rice today lives on Baranof Island in southeast Alaska, and describes himself as a “worn-out, sometimes unfriendly old man who loves nature, wildlife, outdoors, video, photography, and sometimes just being a cantankerous old man. My higher education and life accomplishments? Most of those disappeared in a series of senior moments.”
Eds. Note: Don’t leave The Old Duffer’s site without learning what to do about bear attacks.
