No Shave November making me a genuine wild man

We’re half through No-shave November or what I like to refer to as Mountain Man Month.

That’s right, pilgrim, I’ve been letting the whiskers grow. They’re just getting past the itchy stage good. I may take my facemask off and let folks see the beard — on Zoom that is (just in case the governor’s reading).

I’ve only ever grown it out a couple of other times in my whole life. I think the longest was maybe for two months. The mask and social distancing did make it weird this time. I’m always pretty self-conscious in the early stages when it’s not too good because that’s when people make remarks.

The first real remark I got was from the young lady who works our reception desk. I had worn a mask around her while it was growing in and one day she stuck her head into my office and said, “Wow, you must be taking good vitamins as fast as that beard grew.” I pointed out she just hadn’t seen me without a mask.

Probably the worst part is that I had pretty shaggy hair when I started and now I’m really starting to look like a wild man. The question is, if I go to my barber is she gonna want to have a go at the beard too.

I guess if I become too self-conscious I can always just turn off the video on my Zoom. Or I can put a hoodie on and go for the Unabomber look. OK, my beard is nowhere near as dark as Ted Kaczynski’s or as trimmed as the famous hoodie caricature of him.

I have always fancied the idea of disappearing into the mountains with my rifle and a dog. A good beard would no doubt be the first step in my transformation to mountain man.

One of my mountain man heroes was Ben Lilly, who hunted the Gila in southwest New Mexico late in his life and was said to have dispatched the last grizzly bear in the territory.

His language, like most mountain men, was descriptive and plain-spoken. For instance, he said, “I never met a man with his face shaved clean until I was a big boy. When I saw him I thought he was a dead man ... walking about, and I was mighty scared.”

I guess my first and main purpose for this very gray beard is to make sure I don’t scare grown men with my clean-shaven features. If my wife opens her mouth to complain I might just take another page from old Ben Lilly.

In one account in his book his wife tells him to do something about the chicken hawk that was bothering her chickens. He went out to see about it and didn’t return for two years. In explanation he offered, “That hawk just kept flying.”

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

karlterry@yucca.net