At the “Ersity of Was”

By Amy Story

Photos courtesy of Hinsel Scott

The daunting and still somewhat undiscovered Owyhee Mountains  have long fascinated me.  Had I known earlier that a website-building friend I’d met at networking meetings long ago was having exciting adventures in the wilds of the Owyhees as early as 2016, I’d have been riveted to his YouTube videos. But I didn’t find out about Hinsel Scott’s wanderings there until 2021. When I commented on one of his posts, I received an invitation for a friend and me to join him on what he called a “freshmen” hike.

Yvette and I met him at a parking lot “on campus,” as he called it. We were near a camping location east of Highway 95. Ten years earlier I’d hiked in this area with my children. We had camped in a cave among bat dung, made a campfire, and my kids played “echoing ukeleles.” Somewhere up the canyon, I knew a boat was wedged between the rocks, victim of (we’d always thought), a flash flood. Although I once was an avid hiker, it had now been a while for me, and my hiking legs were wobbly.

Hinsel greeted us with his walking stick, backpack, and in full desert garb: head, neck, and arms covered. Yvette and I wore less serious, more comfortable attire. Yvette expressed an aversion to snakes, or “sneks,” as Hinsel called them, one of which we saw when we were barely out of the parking lot.

“Oh, hello, little feller!” Hinsel said, mimicking an old man’s Scottish country voice. “Might ye be gettin’ yourself off the trail fer us?” He encouraged the serpent along with his walking stick.

Yvette later told me it took everything she had to keep going after that. I was glad she continued. Hinsel’s narrative was informative, entertaining, amusing. We hiked along to his patter of history, geology, and personal experience. He told us the hills had in essence saved him. He had adventured there for about four years, during which he said his stress levels and alarming health numbers were down. He even had decreased and then eliminated the need for diabetes medication.

I watched, amazed, as Hinsel, not a slight man, maneuvered atop rocks and among waterfalls I would not dare attempt. I marveled he could do such things without falling or injury.