Well-known outfitter, packer and guide tells his backwood memories

Mar. 24—KOOSKIA — Jim Renshaw, a well-known outfitter, packer and guide, could keep an audience spellbound for hours with stories about his lifetime in the Idaho backcountry.

Renshaw, in fact, did just that in February when nearly 300 people from throughout the region and several states packed the Kooskia City Hall to hear him spin tales about his adventures packing hunters, fishermen and other recreationists into pristine territory accessible only on horseback. Renshaw was the featured speaker of the Friends of the Kooskia Library event to celebrate his 92nd birthday.

With a clear, rosy complexion and the confident bearing of a man who's spent all of his life handling horses, Renshaw looks, maybe, 20 years younger than his nine decades.

"Oh, but I feel it," he admitted.

His forebears moved to the Kamiah-Orofino area in the late 1800s and operated several businesses, including a hardware store, a mortuary and a creamery. His grandfather, however, wasn't the businessman type and instead turned to outfitting and horse packing in the mountains for the U.S. Forest Service and private customers.

"I asked my mother on her 70th birthday what kind of guy he was," Renshaw said. "Mom said he wasn't worth a darn for anything. All he wanted to do was take a bunch of horses and go up in the mountains."

Renshaw paused and poked his own thumb into his chest.

"You're looking at the third generation that was that way."

Renshaw said his grandfather often took hunting parties miles into what is now known as the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness where the only way in and out was on horseback. Trips sometimes took up to a month or more by way of Hamilton, Mont., Moose Creek and Elk Summit.

"My dad was no better; he did the same thing," Renshaw said. "And dad was into the Selway Lodge in 1911 and they were talking about how the salmon was so thick when they forded the river that it scared the mules."

Selway Lodge is 40 miles upriver from the end of the road at Selway Falls; it's about 13 1/2 miles past the Moose Creek Ranger Station. When Renshaw was two months old, his parents, Alvin and Elna Renshaw, bought the Selway Lodge and moved the family there, operating it for 16 years.

"You're back in the middle of nowhere. And now there's an airstrip at Selway Lodge but when the folks moved in there the nearest airstrip was Moose Creek. It had been opened in 1931 and in 1934 they built an airstrip at Shearer, which is a mile above Selway Lodge. And that was the airstrip that dad used.

"The first few years, he packed everybody from Selway Falls or from Paradise (on the Montana side of the mountains). They went in there (in 1932) ... and it was two years before Mom ever came out. You know, it's a long ways to ride out of there."

Supplies were brought in by packstring. Isolated homesteaders raised horses and cattle and gardens, catered to dudes and hunters, and worked hard to survive.

"And then Dad packed for the Forest Service," Renshaw said. "Some years, especially during World War II, help was hard to get, so he packed for them. He was known as one of the best packers there was. I mean, the Forest Service even put that down, that he was real good. He was raised doing it and he wanted to be good."

One of Alvin Renshaw's customers was the famed movie producer, John Huston, and his wife who stayed with them about a month while Huston was writing a movie.

As a child, Renshaw lived what many would consider an idyllic life. Even before he was a teenager, his parents sent him on errands to supply hunting camps, or to fetch the mail at Moose Creek or other excursions that would take him into the woods alone sometimes for days. At the end of a long day's ride, Renshaw would turn the horses loose up the mountain, make camp and then the next morning climb back up the mountain to retrieve the beasts before going on his way.

The distance from town, however, proved a challenge for Renshaw, his two sisters and a younger brother to attend to schooling. Often the girls would be sent to town during the school term while Renshaw stayed behind to help with the hunting camps. His mother, who had been a teacher before her marriage, taught him at home.

"We never did make it for the first day of school. I mean, we just was always late for the start of school."

By the time they were teenagers, the Renshaw children were involved in the family business and their parents ordered correspondence courses for them to study. They didn't graduate from high school. Renshaw never went back, but his sister, Jean Renshaw Carroll, did return later to finish her education. She got a college degree, became an educator who taught in schools around Culdesac and Kooskia and published a book about her years living in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

In 1948, Renshaw's parents decided to retire from the ranch.

"Before they sold out Dad asked me if I wanted to take over. Well, I was 16. When you're 16 you're only thinking of two things and one of them's a steering wheel. So, (I said) 'No, I didn't want it.' I didn't know what we had."

The family moved to Kooskia but Renshaw returned the next year to work for the new owners of the ranch, who, he said "knew nothing with what they were doing."

Renshaw continued to work for other outfitters and then his father was killed in a hunting accident. When he was 19, he returned to the old Selway Lodge ranch and met the new managers.

"The people who were managing it had lived over in Hells Canyon on the Oregon side. And they had a daughter. And she had a little girl. We got married the next year."

Renshaw and his wife, Darlene — who was a talented horsewoman — worked with her parents for a couple of years and then they bought their own place at Trout Creek, where they operated an outfitting business until 1973. They also bought a hunting camp at Weitas Creek that Renshaw operated until selling out in 1998.

The couple raised two girls and two boys. Darlene died of cancer in 1982.

"I joined the Back Country Horsemen and through them kept busy, going to the mountains," he said. Some excursions involved opening and closing the ranger station at Meadow Creek and packing volunteers in and out of Fish Lake. He also helped pack in supplies for an organization that took troubled children into backwoods for wilderness excursions.

"If nothing else was going on I'd get some relatives and friends and we'd go to the mountains. And we'd go up the Selway and Fish Lake and around and I managed to keep busy. I had the farm at Suttler Creek and I'd put up hay."

During one of his outings with the Back Country Horsemen, Renshaw met one of the newer members, Helen Kettle, who asked him to show her some of the trails. The two hit it off and now live together at the farm on Suttler Creek.

Until about two years ago, Renshaw participated in the packing clinics that the horsemen's club held. These days, he no longer keeps horses or dogs but his memory is filled with stories about them and the adventures they had together during their years in the backwoods.

"It was a wonderful life," Renshaw said. "I heard or read someplace, if you could make a living doing what you love to do, you'll never have to work a day in your life. And that's pretty much what I did."

Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.