How we Tell Our Tales...

     Mid-winter is time for reminiscences, I suppose. There’s not as much to occupy your mind when the sun sets before 5PM. Deer season is over and rabbit season is in the homestretch. Between now and spring gobblers, there’s not a lot to do but clean the guns, mend the waders, and get the fishing gear ready. (Although this year, I am intent on trying the upper James for smallmouth in winter. I’ve heard so much about it)

     These last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about old hunts and old hunters. And since I’m quickly becoming the latter, I have a larger collection of the former. Lately I’ve been thinking about how we hunt, but more importantly, how we remember how we hunt.

     Every hunter has a different style. Some guys prefer to sit in a stand most of the day, use a grunt or a bleat box, and then wait for what comes their way. Some guys prefer to still hunt on the ground, choosing a likely post and doing their best to be unseen, unheard, and “unsmelled.” Some guys prefer a .308 or a .30-06. Others would never venture into the woods with anything but a .30-30 and others depend on their shotgun and a slug.

     Some bird hunters rely on a trusty semi-auto and others like the timeless look and feel of an over-under. One man is a “Setter guy” and his buddy might be inclined to a Spaniel. One guy sits in his blind with his trusted Chocolate Lab and his neighbors has a Chessie. A lot of where and how we hunt is tempered by our personalities.

     These past few weeks I started seeing how the way we remember our hunts, and the way we tell our stories is also flavored by our personalities as well.

I’m a sentimentalist and a writer by nature. And having never been more than an average hunter and fisherman at best (and I’m being generous here) I find that my stories of old hunts are flavored far more by the people I hunted with, and places I hunted, and the picture those created, than by the technical specifics of what size shot I used or which hook worked best.

     I was thinking along those lines last week when I was considering the two greatest hunters I have personally ever known, and how they both looked at the hunt. It’s an interesting study and it made me look at other friends I hunt with and consider how they tell their stories and convey the memories they’ve made.

     The two men I’m thinking of were both father-figures to me. Both still are, to be honest, only one is gone now, imparting his wisdom in my life, only from memories. His name was John, but everyone called him “Poppa John” or just “Pop.” Every hunting and fishing community has its local legends and Pop was ours. Growing up in Delaware, if you wanted to get your hunting license, and you were a minor, you eventually met Poppa John.

     Pop singlehandedly began the “Safe Hunter” program in Delaware. Teaching young people to handle a firearm safely was a passion for Pop. And he was tireless in his efforts. I grew up playing baseball with his son, and one of his daughters was a classmate in middle school, but my first personal encounter with the legendary Poppa John, was at 11 years old, taking my Hunter Safety training at William Penn High School for three evenings one week in September of 1975.

     Pop was firm but patient. Tough but fair. He brooked no foolishness where gun safety was concerned. Yet for his disciplined and serious approach to teaching us about hunting safely, his wit, wisdom, humor, and slightly cantankerous nature always came through. Every important point he made about firearm handling was illustrated with a story of how it worked in the field. And how it looked when someone didn’t do it that way. Pop never took the “textbook” approach to teaching. He was sober as a judge about the disciplines of firearms, but he related them to us through years of experience, and wonderful stories -always in first person—that assured us that this wise man knew whereof he spoke. From the time I was eleven, I wanted to hunt with Poppa John.

     Almost twenty years later, after he and his wife had unofficially “adopted” me and I got to know him and consider him a father, I came to know the deeper stories behind what he taught us in those classes. Pop was an artist at heart. He drove a truck for a living, and after an accident and a serious injury, he became a Range Safety Officer and an instructor at Ommelanden…the facility that he dreamt of and then willed into being. The first and only state-owned shooting facility in Delaware.

     Pop was an artist. He loved art on canvas and art in written form. He showed me a picture once of a buck he’d taken in Virginia, about 50 years prior. It was an oil-on-canvas painting and he regaled me about how the hunt went, and what sort of day it was and where the buck came from. Then he told me that he had painted this masterpiece himself. That conversation led to about two more hours of his personal history. How he’d fought in WWII and when he came home, he went to community college to study art and architectural design. How art was really his first love. How life happened and his art had to be relegated to the closet of the impractical, because in Pop’s world, his family came first and earning a living was far more a priority than painting a picture.

     But Pop never stopped painting. Not really. He may have stopped painting on canvas, but he painted in his heart, and he painted in mine…mine and anyone else who sat with him and listened to his stories. Pop would tell you more about the daylight or the fog, or the snow, or the temperature, or the guys in the hunting camp, than he ever would the caliber or the shot, or the duck call. The hunt was a gathering, not an exercise. It was tradition, and friendships, and honor. And when Pop spoke of the animals, there was a reverence and an appreciation that imbued a sacredness to the hunt. These animals were here for us. To feed our families. To provide food and sometimes covering. They were treasured. Their sacrifice was appreciated. They earned our respect. We did our best to take care of their habitat, because it too was sacred. And…they were beautiful.

     Pop would describe a deer the way an art critic described a Rembrandt. Pop knew that these animals -like the humans who pursued them—were created. They weren’t here by accident. Pop described an animal the way I imagine DaVinci describe the Mona Lisa when his workday ended, and he described his current project to his family. When Pop shoed me that oil-on-canvas of a deer he’d taken, it really was a microcosm of how he viewed hunting, the outdoors, and life itself. The artist in Pop, saw the art in the world and connected to it.

     The other greatest hunter I ever knew is another father to me. He has hunted all over the world and taken game I hardly knew existed. He has been to lands I can’t even pronounce or find on a globe. He is a quite soul and he’s not one to boor you with a story of the field if you didn’t ask. His trophies and memories are enough for him. If you’re an enthusiast and a friend, he’ll gladly tell you about the Ibex, or the Gemsbok, or the doe his grandson took last winter. But he won’t brag about any of it and unless you ask, he’ll never introduce the topic in a conversation. He’s the antithesis of what everyone else thinks a big game hunter is.

     His profession requires a precise nature and his is the perfect fit. His approach to life is as precise as his approach to business. Direct. Clutter-free. Well planned. Well executed. This is how he approaches a hunt as well. It must be when you’re going for an animal on the other side of the world and you’re depending entirely on a guide or a local. There has to be an itinerary. It must run like a watch.

     When he settles down with a bourbon and begins to tell about a hunt, he describes the day, the environment, and the events with precision. He notices these things. What was the temperature? Where was the wind coming from? Where I might describe a day by saying “It was hot as blazes and windy like March!” He will tell you it was “a seven to ten mile per hour breeze from the South, and about 91 degrees.” It’s his nature to know those things.

     He told me a story once about a particular sheep he was pursuing and how he took a shot from some distance and had to drop down a chute formation on the side of this mountain. It was all shale and he lost his footing and wound up sliding halfway down, wondering if he’d be able to stop. The wondering how he’d get back up to his guide. He noticed the type of shale as a matter of fact. His scientific interest and eye for detail picked it up right away and it flavored his story.

     He is a collector of adventure stories and an expert on Teddy Roosevelt. And for all his precise, analytical nature, there is still magic in his stories and a twinkle in his eye as he recounts the moment of harvest. I have spent hours absorbing these stories, in part because they are as close as I will likely ever get to such exotic locations and such once-in-a-lifetime hunts. And also, because I love this man. He’s been a father to me when I had none and I find myself sometimes seeing me in those pictures he paints. Hunting alongside hm, just happy enough to be there. A life of adventure comes along far too infrequently to ignore it. So, I lap it up when I can.

     I had this in mind when I considered these stories I write and how it is I view my own outdoor adventures. Like Pop, I’m seeing the beauty and the art under it all. Often, as I hunt or fish, I’m already crafting the words I will write later, and a few trips out have been cut a little short because the inspiration overwhelmed the urge to hunt or fish that afternoon. Like my other hunting hero, I often notice the details of the day or the environment.

     Someday, I hope to hunt with him. Just someplace local, for some game that tastes good but doesn’t necessarily evoke such grandiose imagery. Because hunting forms a bond, and because I always wanted to hunt with my dad, but never had a dad to hunt with.

     I never got the chance to hunt with Poppa John either. His health precluded any more trips to the woods, and he passed in 2011. But I take him with me every time I go out, and I carved his initials into a tree in my deer land this year. It won’t ever mean anything to anyone, should someone find it someday, but for me it was a way of leaving a bit of him out there in the Virginia landscape. He would have loved the beauty. He might have even painted a picture of it. Since he can’t, I try my best to let my words do it for him.

    

Memories of Opening Days gone by...

Deer season opens Saturday.

For the second time since I moved here in 2014, I will be out there before dawn, in a tree, listening and watching and hoping.

I was on the land last week, making a few final adjustments to my stand and just feeling it. The forest has its own feel and an outdoorsman finds himself attuned to it, almost to the point of needing it. And I need it these days.

The forest brings me peace and a sense of connection that grows foggy as the year wears on. In a world of mortgage rates and real estate contracts and networking and commission checks and the constant grind and the daily battle, the hunting grounds are a chance to reconnect to the things that all men were, before we became mortgage brokers, and realtors, and auto mechanics, and lawyers and such.

It reminds me of a time when no matter what other title we wore, we had to remain in tune with the forest if we wanted to eat and provide for our families. A time when recognizing the tracks of a herd of whitetails was more vital to our survival than spotting trends in the bond market.

There was a day, not so long ago, when a man made his way to a place like the one where I hunt and earned his stripes as he listened and watched and learned and finally, harvested. Returning to this place returns me to that place. For a few days each fall and early winter, I can throw some wood on the embers in my soul that glow only faintly. I can reignite a fire that gets me through another new year. I can find myself again, and hopefully, memorize the face that stares back at me, reflecting from the creek in the middle of the woods I hunt, and let the memory of that man guide me for another year.

Sitting in my stand, I remember how magical this world really is. How dew on a billion pine needles looks so much like diamonds shimmering in the sunrise on a frozen November morning. How bold a squirrel can be when it’s not squirrel season. I remember how much farther sound travels in the winter, when the air is cold. I am reminded of this because I can hear the farmer in the neighboring fields, a good half mile from me, talking to his hired hand, starting the tractor and getting ready to finish up the soybean harvest.

I live in a world of social media marketing, where algorithms and trending hash tags are the currency of realm. Out here, the social media is the bickering between the crows and the cardinals and the squirrels and the woodpeckers, all seeming to be warning the deer that I am here, 15 feet up in this cedar tree, waiting for their appearance. The rest of the year I am trying to be seen and stand out to attract business. Here…I am trying to be invisible and silent and attract game. Hash tags are replaced with my grunt and my green can. The approach is different, but the tactics are similar and the desired results the same.

Out here too, I am constantly being reminded of time. The shadows of dawn look different from the evening shadows, but they are shadows nonetheless and they both hold mystery. One provides waning cover for the locals, waking up from their slumber, or just heading in from a night out. The other, a slightly eerie and foreboding signal that it’s time for man to be heading to his home, and time for the real rulers of this wood to shake off the caution of the day and come out of hiding.

More than anything, these days, I am reminded of all the other times I was in woods like these. Times as a boy, tagging along. Then as a teenager, just stepping out on my own as a hunter and tracker.

Or the miles I walked with my first bird dog, Jesse. A mid-twenties, struggling businessman and his young, eager Springer spaniel; shotgun over my shoulder, whistle around my neck, and a pocket full of treats for the best dog I ever owned. We’d walk until he was tuckered out on those frozen January Saturdays and then he’d stretch out on the front seat of my pickup, snoring like a buzz saw as the heater worked it’s magic on his chilled body and he caught up on the sleep he’d earned out there in the fields.

Or my best friend Mark.

We hunted and fished almost weekly when we were young. And into our early adulthood, every chance we got, we’d throw our shotguns into my truck and head off to the woods or the fields looking for our prey and, mostly, just being together.

We stay in touch. There was no falling out. We talk of going out together again, like the old days, maybe him coming here for deer or me going there for turkey. But life, and age, and responsibility, and miles just seems to preclude this hunt we both desperately want. And need.

I think of those days out here, too and I miss them. I am alone in my stand on these frosty mornings. I treasure the time by myself, but I sure miss Mark, and the great stories around the campfire at days end. There’s nothing like the stories told at a hunting camp among lifelong friends. I told a hundred and heard a million when I was younger, and I replay them in my heart as I sit here watching the sun rise.

It’s 325 miles from where I live now to where I grew up. It feels like 325 million sometimes. It’s not the distance…it’s the years. Most of a lifetime has passed since I sat in that stand on May Mills’ farm in Delaware and watched that perfect eight-pointer making his way to me. Most of a lifetime since I slowly raised that Glenfield Model 778 to my shoulder and whispered to that buck, coaxing him as he sidled closer.

A college degree, a marriage, a daughter, a divorce, a career lost and regained ago, I felt the recoil dig into my shoulder and watched as the big boy dropped where he stood.

A young nineteen-year-old scampered down the tree and approached that buck cautiously. A proud young man felt an arm around his shoulder as his hunting partner for that day, Hank, congratulated him on a beautiful prize. An excited best friend made the call from a gas station pay phone, to gain bragging rights for the day.

Now…at 56, he sits in a stand and remembers all the other stands he sat in through the years. And the lunches and the campfires, and the jokes, and the warmth after a cold day.

He remembers it all. Jesse is around some far-off woodstove, warming his cold bones and waiting to hear my key in the latch for a reunion one day.
Mark lives in Delaware and Hank is in Florida and it’s been a lot of years since they’ve hunted together. He remembers the last time they all went out…only nobody knew it was going to be the last time. If they had, maybe they would have said something. Or done something special to commemorate. But they just figured they’d all be together again the next year. And just like that…they weren’t.

But I remember…

At Water's Edge

     I live near a small lake here in Lynchburg. It’s a private lake, the only access afforded is for those who have lakefront homes. There is a road that rings the entire lake and the folks on the far side of the lake probably work out some sort of arrangement with the neighbors across the street.

     My neighborhood adjoins this neighborhood, so I am not lakeside at all. I can only catch a glimpse of it as I turn down one street on my way home. But I walk the circuit around the lake every morning. It’s my daily cardio; a four-mile course with some pretty steep hills in between the flat runs, and some breathtaking views.

     Living on the lake would be heaven for me. I see the floating docks and the canoes and pontoon boats moored alongside and I imagine how wonderful it would be to walk out my door and spend the first hour of my day sitting there watching the lake come to life.

     It’s a sleepy lake, “leave no wake” rules mean no water skiers, or jet skis. It’s meant for the more mature folks. There are more visiting grandchildren than children living there. But that would be fine with me as well, My daughter is grown and would also welcome the quiet.

      It’s situated so that the sun rises at the far end and spills a golden swath across the length and breadth. I can imagine sitting there in the early mornings…or late into the night, listening to the sounds of the lake. The lapping of the water on the pilings of the dock. The loons. The heron. A fish, splashing as it surface- feeds. The peepers.

     For those whose hearts are drawn outdoors, being waterside is both magical and calming. My fondest memories were spent near a body of water somewhere. I grew up going to the beaches of New Jersey and Delaware and Maryland. For me, even as I thrilled to the sights and sounds of the boardwalk and the amusement piers and the crowds

…there was the awe of the ocean.

      As I grew older, I found myself finding greater joy in just looking out at the vast expanse. The rhythmic push and pull of the tide and the waves against the shore gave cover to the thoughts churning in my soul. It is easy to lose oneself in the awesome hugeness that is the Atlantic.

     Or I would spend my days on the Chesapeake -in my estimation as beautiful a place as any other in the world—and again, be drawn to the isolation of my thoughts and the safety to plumb the depths of my heart, that the enormity of that place provides.

     One of my very favorite places in the world, is Battery Park in Old New Castle, near where I grew up in Delaware. At this point, the Delaware ends its journey from upstate New York, through Pennsylvania, through Philadelphia, where, by this point, she has grown to a body of water so large she handles tankers and freighters. At Battery Park, she is merging with the Delaware Bay and then the Atlantic.

     I love walking beside this mighty river. Nothing affects her flow. Nothing alters the millennia or so that she’s seen, without changing course. There is a beautiful walking trail along about 3 miles of her course, with the river on one side and a vast wetland on the other. I find it the perfect place for listening to Rich Mullins, or -most often—to silence.

     Here in Lynchburg, I have had to adjust to the lack of these large bodies. I have the James, and I have fallen in love with the headwaters, where I fish…far upstream from the city. The James River Gorge is as close to the natural beauty of the Chesapeake as I have found here. I must admit…learning to fish a river has been a challenge and I’m not very good at it. I have never been as skunked as I have been fishing where I fish now. But I go to fish only as a secondary by product of the trip. Just being there, on that water, listening to the gurgle, seeing the wildlife. The trip is the reason. The fishing is a wonderful piece of a larger puzzle.

     Most times throughout my life as an outdoorsman, being waterside has been refreshing and re-energizing. Usually those days were almost fruitless where my quarry was concerned. While I often failed to catch my prey, I never missed on the soul connection I was seeking. While I was outside, hunting or fishing, inside I was stalking another prey, in the rugged wilderness of my soul. Peace. Sense. Order. Wisdom. Those were the trophies I was stalking in my heart, as the river rolled by, or the waves crashed on the shore, or the stream splashed amidst the rocks.

     I think of this as I walk my circuit around Timber Lake each morning and see the docks and the canoes and the small sailboats. I think of the wonderous silence of sitting on one of those docks, and sorting out my day, and my life.

     Always it is the water. The water of a lake or a pond, or a river and a duck blind. Or the massive and boiling Atlantic. I get this from my grandfather. My mothers’ father was a restless man who lived his life with one foot on a boat somewhere, out in the ocean. Early on in his life he had a beautiful thirty-two-foot Cabin Cruiser. He was happy then. But he lost it to a series of bad decisions and spent the rest of his days searching for the piece of himself that went along with that boat. His heart was always on the water and he never got to find that heart again. Or the peace that the water brought him.

     I am much the same. I can’t walk past a lake, or drive by a body of water, without staring, and trying to take it all in as much as I can. On my drive back home to Delaware, there is a point where I-95 passes over the confluence of the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay. The Millard Tydings Bridge spans the chasm at Havre de Grace Maryland. I have driven over that bridge at least five hundred times in my life. Yet, every time I drive over, I try to see out into the bay, then upriver to the Conowingo Dam. There’s nothing different from any of the other hundreds of times I’ve seen it, but I just want to see it again. To take it all in as fast as possible, in the forty-five seconds or so, that it takes to drive across the bridge. Every time, I wish I was down there. Down there, on a boat, at anchor, maybe with a line in the water, maybe not. But down there nonetheless, absorbing the beauty, and running the dredge through my soul once more.

     Waterside is where my heart finds rest. Where I only then begin to make sense of the noise and the cacophony around me. Those of you built in similar fashion understand. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably been picturing your own watersides as you read. And perhaps imagined the peace they bring to us.

   

I remember...

I remember.

I remember the first warm breeze of March, that gave the boys on my street a glimmer of hope that the long, cold winter would really be coming to an end. Sometimes, in the dreary gray of those late February days that lingered into March, we feared Summer was going to pass us by. That first warm day gave us hope.

I remember the first peal of thunder around this time too. My grandmother would call it “The storm that breaks Winter’s back.” Because once you heard thunder, there couldn’t be many days left until Spring.

I remember the first warm Saturday, when we would all grab our fishing rods and go back to the little creek behind our houses. It wasn’t fed by anything…it was just a long catch basin for all the storm drains in town, and it only held water after a good rain. But there was the occasional pool, and we’d practice casting the new plugs we’d accumulated over the winter, just to see how they swam.

I remember the first fishing trip of the year, and pedaling our Spider bikes through Chelsea Estates, down highway 141, across the open meadow encircled by the off ramp to I-95 to our secret fishing hole, “Nonesuch Creek.”

I remember the day before, digging in the yard for garden worms, and trying to fill an old metal Maxwell House can.

And red cork bobbers. And Eagle Claw hooks. And pyramid sinkers.

And waiting for a nibble.

And talking about the things that little boys used to talk about in another place and time in this country. A place and time when little boys could hop on their bikes early on a Saturday morning in late March, pedal three miles and fish in a spot out of sight from the world. And nobody worried about them.

The jokes we’d heard our fathers tell, that they weren’t supposed to tell in front of us, but we just happened to be there, and they’d had a beer or two and they told the joke with a wink that said, “don’t tell your mother.”

I remember bologna sandwiches and warm Cokes in a brown paper bag. Peeing in the bushes. Finding a stick, poking it into the ground and resting our fishing rod in the crook of the “Y.”

I remember the wily old bass who lived in the “back pond” section of Lum’s Pond, a section full of cypress stumps and lily pads and chain pickerel, that looked as if time had forgotten about it.

I remember my first subscription to Field and Stream, and reading Gene Hill, and wanting to write like he did…and only being nine years old.

I remember joining B.A.S.S for the first time and reading the articles about exotic fishing locations like Normandy Lake, Rock Hill reservoir, Lake Sam Houston.

I remember when- before the Outdoor Channel, and the Fishing Channel-- there was only one man to watch fishing; the great Jerry McKinnis and “The Fishin’ Hole.”

I remember my best friend Mark, and I, talking about fishing where Jerry McKinnis fished someday.

I remember the hot days of Summer, and the cool of the Brandywine River on my feet as I looked for smallmouth bass. The steamy nights of Little League baseball, staying outside way past dark, and talking about tomorrows.

I remember the first early signs of autumn and going back to school and trying to squeeze in just one more trip to “Nonesuch Creek” before we got busy with homework.

The excitement of the first frost and the coming of deer season.

I remember my first deer stand, my first shotgun, and my first buck.

I remember hunting alone. Walking for hours with only my trusty Spaniel, Jesse, by my side.

Somehow -with the passage of time, and the gradual loss of wonder—we all became “anglers,” my friends and I. My True Temper fiberglass fishing rod disappeared and became several graphite rods and high-speed reels. Nightcrawlers somehow became taboo…beneath the skill set of a fisherman like me.

My hundred-dollar Glenfield 778 pump action 12 gauge just had to be replaced by a Stoeger, or a Beretta.

The little boy who tried understanding the “Solunar Tables” became the adult with phone apps that tell me the best times to be in my deer stand, or on the river.

Jesse, my beloved Springer, lies beside his mother in a meadow in Delaware. But I remember everything about him.

The little boys of Monroe Avenue…the boys I fished with and grew into adulthood with, are all grown men now. Husbands, ex-husbands, dads, and grandads. And one- my first friend on that street, Tommy, now lives only in my memories too.

And in my heart.

It’s funny what becomes of memories as we grow older.

I have several nice fishing rods, but I’d trade them all plus a hundred bucks, for that old True Temper fiberglass rod and the red “737” reel.

And my little red tackle box, full of fish hooks and split shot and bobbers and a smelly jar of pork rind with the lid rusted shut.

I have a very nice, deadly accurate, Remington 783 / .308 deer rifle. I love that gun.

I’d hand it over before my next breath, if you could find me my old Glenfield 778.

My TV is full of fishing and hunting shows. But Jerry McKinnis is only in the reruns now. He’s retired and “The Fishin Hole” went off the air after 44 seasons.

Mark and I haven’t fished together in almost 35 years.

Johnny lives in Ohio. Richard still lives on our old street.

Tommy fishes in Heaven now…if they fish there.

But I remember them all. I cherish them. I long for them.

For the days of sunburnt shoulders, and spider bikes with baseball cards in the spokes.

For the first honks of Canada geese, and the nip of Fall.

For the soft music playing underneath Jerry McKinnis’ slight drawl, while he describes his next adventure in his Itasca motorhome.

I remember when this man, this dad, this busy, stressed-out, never-enough-time fifty-five-year-old, was just a boy.

On a bike.

With his friends.

Heading for adventure.

In a time and a place that won’t ever be here again.

But I remember…

Whose Woods are These?

“Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow”

Few people would fail to recognize these words from Robert Frost’s wonderful, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” If you’re of or near my vintage, you probably learned this in seventh or eighth grade English class and had to recite at least a portion of it.

I was driving to my deer hunt this past Tuesday and thought of the opening refrain. I had the day off, and having still not taken a deer, (I’ve seen seven now, but refuse to take a bad shot) I went back into the woods for another crack.

I was thinking about my first day in these woods, back in September. I don’t own this land, it belongs to my landlord. He is not a hunter and had no problem with letting me use it. It was clear-cut about twenty years ago and it’s mostly tall cedars, pines and an occasional hardwood, surrounded by the densest thicket and bramble I have ever encountered. I had to chop my way in with a machete the first day I was there. The deer trails are too numerous to count, the bear signs are unmistakable, and I’ve even come upon some grouse and woodcock.

Tuesday, as I pulled up to the path that had been cut in with a bush-hog, I thought about how familiar I am with this land now, and how unfamiliar I was a mere four months ago. I didn’t grow up where there were bears and the thought of stumbling upon one scared me more than it should. I carried my sidearm just in case, hoping to both see a bear, and not have to shoot one. I have no problem with bear hunters, I just don’t think I could bring myself to shooting one, especially since I’ve yet to see one live in nature. I guess I’ve seen too many Disney movies and seeing them in the wild would still be a treat for me.

Those first few trips, when I was cutting in some paths and scouting for a spot to set my stand, were a bit scary. Always the feeling I was being watched or hearing a phantom rustle in the thicket. The first pitch-black morning heading in to my stand, deep in the woods, was nerve racking. I didn’t relax until I’d climbed up, and had at least, the advantage of seeing something coming toward me.

I never did see any bears, nor any other predators, but because I wasn’t familiar with the woods…they still seemed to lurk around every corner and behind every tree. I was contrasting this with how familiar I was with the woods and the farm I hunted as a boy. We’d begun hunting that farm when I was twelve, and by the time I last hunted it, I was twenty-years old and you could have blindfolded me and dropped me off deep in the middle and I would have known exactly where I was, and how to get back to camp.

I didn’t own that land either, but I’d been there so many times that it had become mine.

Tuesday, as walked into the new area I was hunting, (my stand was non-productive, and I found a new, high-traffic area a few weeks ago) I was relatively at ease with my surroundings. I had been there enough times by then that I’d begun to recognize familiar trees and trails and where the briars were. It was then that I thought of the opening line to Frost’s masterpiece; “Who’s woods are these…”

They are slowly becoming my woods and with each visit, I am less edgy and more at ease and at home. There is a calmness and a mild sense of accomplishment when a sportsman becomes familiar enough with his hunt that he really knows it. In recent trips, I’ve been able to pick out -over the squawk of the crows, the honking of the Canada Geese and the chirping of the squirrels-- the gurgle of the stream that cuts through the Northeast edge. I found where the woodcock hole up…mostly because I stepped on a rush and they took flight. I’ve seen where the sow and her cubs travel, looking for late season food. Lately I’ve (finally) found where the deer are crossing, sadly, the season closes this Saturday and I have only one more chance to position myself on the correct side of the kudzu-covered oak and get a clean shot. (I refuse to take a shot that might only wound).

These woods are becoming mine, and I must admit to deeply enjoying the feeling. There is a part of a man -at least an outdoorsman—that wants to explore. That needs to explore. This fall I have had thirty-five acres of essentially unspoiled frontier at my disposal. My landlord has never developed this land and has no intention to. He visits it maybe twice a year to target-shoot with some friends. The rest of the year it sits idle, making for a very non-pressured area for wildlife. I have probably walked this land more in the last four months, than Darren has in the five years he’s owned it. And while that doesn’t get my name on the deed, it makes it “mine” in many ways.

I know this land now. Or at least I know it far better than I did in late September. I’ve explored it. I camped overnight, the night before deer season opened. I ate lunch in the warming fall sun and peed on a few trees. In the discovery and exploration, there has come a growing familiarity and as a result, a calm confidence with each visit.

I find much of life like this. We face things in our days that become new and scary territory for us. Becoming a husband was scary. Sadly, I didn’t have much time to explore that landscape before my marriage ended and I was a single dad. Fatherhood was like exploring an ever-changing environment. It was easy at first, when I was only exploring the edges, and the open, sun-filled meadows of my daughter’s early years. But each passing year required me to venture deeper into the woods as she became a teenager, and now, a grown woman of almost twenty-one.

The woods weren’t how I thought they’d be. I didn’t think I’d traverse them alone, without her mom along as a guide. And so, without the second set of eyes, I’ve had to feel my way along, not able to relax and enjoy the beauty of the scenery as much as I’d have liked, because I was too concerned with where the dangerous areas might be, and worried that I might somehow damage the forest with my presence.

Thankfully, my daughter -like the woods I hunt—is resilient and withstood my sometimes-clumsy traipsing. I picked up after myself, listened and watched for signs, and somehow, navigated these woods and became a decent father as my daughter transitioned from her teens to adulthood.

I’m fifty-five. That happened suddenly…like taking a turn down an unfamiliar path and in an instant wondering where you are. I’m navigating what is the last half of my life now and while I think about that truth, it still hasn’t hit me forcefully. I’m healthy, active, and I finally got myself through the darkest places in this forest of life. It seems strange to realize that I am more than halfway through these woods already.

We sometimes take for granted our own familiarity with the land we walk. We do this with friendships, with neighbors, with opportunities and memories. We linger too long in some places and rush through others far too quickly, missing something beautiful in sight or sound. There are some forests that are so deep and so tricky that we never really master them. We grow comfortable…but never complacent, because we never really feel like we’ve explored it all, every inch, until we know it like the proverbial back of our hand. Over there is the stump I sat down on and ate lunch on my first hunt. There’s the oak where my first tree stand was. Over there is the irrigation ditch that marks the edge of the property. This is the house I grew up in, the hospital where my daughter was born, the Delaware River where I loved to walk as a boy.

My journey as an American has taken on a feeling similar to my explorations of woods. I was born here. I grew up here. But it has taken these fifty-five years to only now begin to fully know this land and appreciate her and love her as my own. My Faith is the same. I became a believer at age nine, yet at age fifty-five, and with a bachelor’s degree in religion, I still feel as if I am only now comfortable in the terrain, and only now recognize the landmarks.

We explore life, each day, much the same way we walk in our hunting grounds. We can either creep along, unfamiliar with the lay of the land, or we can trek and traverse and document our discoveries. I’ve done some of each, too much of the former, not enough of the latter. That too is changing.

Hunting again, after a long time away from the sport, has rekindled not only my desire to explore unknown woodlands, but the unknown parts of my heart. Unknown adventures in my faith, uncharted regions of my life as a dad, a son, a writer, and a friend. Ironically, it is only with age that we grow familiar with this life of ours, as it is with these lands we hunt or these rivers we fish. By the time we’ve mapped them out and plumbed their depths, our time for exploration is almost done.

But that is where the excitement lives; in the uncharted areas. Behind the unfamiliar bends in the path, in the sounds of rustling in the thicket, the sight of bear markings, or the sudden flight of the woodcock.

“Whose woods are these? I think I know…”  

I think I know too. And like Frost, I have miles to go before I sleep.

Texts and Memories...

     The text came through a few days before Christmas. It was from my lifelong best friend. I glanced at my phone and saw that there were two images attached. I knew what was coming next. Mark had taken two beautiful eight-point bucks within a day of each other, hunting in the mountains near Morefield, WV. He has family there and hunts there every year. He had to show me.

    I smiled at the size and beauty of the two bucks. Replying with a congratulations and asking him if he used a grunt or a bleat, trying to scrape together some hope for the remaining two weeks of hunting here in Virginia. “The West Virginia rut is probably the same as it is here,” I thought, “Maybe I still have something to look forward too for the late season.”

    Thirty-Six years ago, when I got my first, and so far, only, deer, I called Mark that night. (This was before cell phones and I had to drive to the gas station in town to call his house.) He had opted to hunt downstate instead of the farm I had access to. I had scored a nice eight-point youngster, about three and a half years old. He immediately popped my balloon by telling me he’d taken a monster of a nine-point, weighing in at 195 lbs. dressed. I was jealous at first, but he was and is my best friend and I had to be happy for him. We’d both had success, he just had a little more than me this time.

     That was how it happened throughout our friendship. Mark grew up in a more rural setting and had been hunting longer than I had. He could walk out his back door and into a farmer’s soy field and take rabbit and geese and the occasional deer. I lived in the suburbs and had to wait until I could drive to get anywhere to hunt.

     This made Mark a little better shot than I was at first. He was a little better tracker, a little more attuned to where the animals were. I can’t say it didn’t bother me in the beginning of our friendship, (we met at age fourteen) but I got over it soon enough. I loved him dearly. He was the brother I’d always hoped to have, (I have three brothers but we’re not particularly close) and he felt the same for me. We were inseparable throughout high school and the first few years of our twenties.

     On the water, we were equals. I could find the bass as easily as he could, but in the field, he was just a little better when we were kids. I never minded, and he never gloated. It wasn’t really a competition, not me against him anyway. It was more like “us against them.” Mark was happiest when we both scored a buck, or a few Canada geese, or some rabbits, or a bucket full of crappie that his grandmother cooked in cracker meal. I felt the same. I don’t care that his first buck was bigger than mine. I cared that he got one too. Next year…or the year after, I’d take the bigger buck, but this year was his.

     We talked, back then, of buying land near each other and raising our families near each other and remaining friends in the same way we had been through high school. We only got as close as sharing an apartment one year. Life took us in different directions after that and we never did buy that land. Our children, his son and my daughter, are almost the same age and have only met once. It didn’t happen like we’d figured.

     But he is still my best friend, and I am his. He lives in Delaware, where we grew up, while life had me in Tennessee for seventeen years and now in Lynchburg, Virginia for the past five. I’m likely here to stay and, while I’m only six hours from home these days, (as opposed to fifteen when I lived in Nashville) I still haven’t seen Mark in over seven years.

     We stay in touch by text. In the summers he is working on a crab boat in the Chesapeake and doesn’t have time to chat. So, we text when we can and keep “caught-up” and promise each other that one of these days, we’ll get together. I mean it when I say it, and I’m sure he does too…but we’re both in our mid fifties now and it’s just plain hard to find time. We will, someday, I’m sure.

     But until then, we text, and those texts are filled with running jokes, stories and remembrances from our wonderful childhood days together, lines from movies we loved, snippets of church sermons and Field and Stream articles, and, on good days in the woods, pictures of the beautiful eight-pointers he took, or the bronze back I hooked last spring, or the James River Gorge where I fish with the caption… “Wish you were here.”

     I do. I do wish he was here. I wish we were having these conversations face to face, not in text messages, as the busy-ness of adulthood gnaws away at our time. I wish we were boys again, wearing varsity jackets and cruising Newark, or orange vests, with deer tags flapping in the breeze, stalking some yet-to-be-found buck and not realizing that the last time we hunted together would really be the last time…at least for a long time.

     So, I’ll take the texts and I’ll happily concede this year’s buck trophy to my best friend. I’m happy for him. Happy because I know him, and I know how he loves hunting, and happy that he had success this year. I know how much it means to have those few days respite from the grown-up world that has swallowed our childhood plans. I have about three more days available to hunt before deer closes here where I live. I hope I can send him a mildly braggadocious text sometime in the next seven days. It won’t matter if I take a buck that’s bigger than his or merely a doe for the freezer…he’ll be as happy for me as I am for him and he’ll probably smile and remember when we hunted and fished and did pretty much everything else together. And he’ll shoot me a text reminding me of those days.

And I’ll smile.

When Older Men Gather

                                            

     After a second unsuccessful day in my stand on Thanksgiving Day, my daughter and I drove the next morning back to the Delaware Valley and the Philly suburbs where I was born and raised.

     I suppose I’ll always call that place home, although, Lynchburg Virginia, where I now live, is becoming more and more my home as time rolls on. I love it here. I love the backdrop of the Blueridge Mountains and the upper James River in the spring. I love the woods and farms where I hunt, and I love living in a place where hunting and fishing and the outdoors is still such a central piece of the societal fabric.

     I’m fifty-five years old, and if there is anything I miss about living here, it’s the kinship and camaraderie of lifelong friends and the things they talk about when they find themselves in each other’s company. Often, those conversations are enriched by a cup of coffee, or expanded by a glass of wine or a generous amount of bourbon over not-too-much ice.

     I moved here at fifty-one. Not an age where a man makes such friends unless something should occur that brings them together. A man generally makes all his close friends by the end of his college years. After that, with the pace of life and our territorial nature, a man doesn’t open himself up to the possibility of adding another trusted friend to the short list of those he holds close.

     In the absence of childhood memories, there’s not much that would bond two men, and it takes something outside them both to bring them together and create a friendship. It could be church, or a sporting event, or a neighbor borrowing a crescent wrench.  Or, it could be time spent in a hunting lodge, after a day afield.

     This past weekend I was in the company of such a bond. Two men who came to know each other later in life and found a friendship in their love of hunting. Men of similar station and accomplishments. Men of character. Men who hold to an enduring view of life, and sport, and adventure.

     My dad met this other fellow on a hunt more than a few years back. A guided hunt that only men of some measure can aspire to. The sort of experience envied by anyone with a love of the outdoors and a taste for the sort of adventures that we read about as little boys. The sort of trip that only a man of sufficient means can make.

     I’ll call him Bill. Bill holds a law degree from a substantial law school at a university deep in the South, steeped in tradition and grandeur. He made his life work in service to our country and speaks from a volume of experience that a man like me will never know. I couldn’t even bring myself to envy him. To me, envy cheapens that which deserves respect. I respected him. I listened to him tell me -over the course of the two days I was home during which I spent several hours each day in his presence—about his life and his accomplishments and some of the hunts he’d been on…many with my dad.

     Bill, like myself, is a transplanted Virginian. I’m from the Philadelphia area and Bill is from the deep South. We both spoke of Virginia with respect and admiration for all the sporting opportunities she offers us. I told him where my deer hunt is located, and he knew the area right away. He realized that I’m not far from Fluvanna County and he showed me the obligatory photo on his phone of an enormous buck that a friend of his took, up in Fluvanna, outside of Charlottesville.

     I was in the midst of explaining to my dad about my getting skunked, so far, in this deer season. I told them about hearing some grunts, and a bleat. I explained that I was hunting an area not very pressured with other hunters. I mentioned the fact that there were some men running dogs on the lands near where I hunt. My dad was a bit shocked and I explained that deer hunting with dogs is legal in Virginia, to which Bill spit out; “Dogs…so much for a Gentleman’s Hunt.”  I liked him right away.

     Something told me to ask more questions than I answered over the weekend. Bill was a man of great depth and breadth and would have held my interest on his own. Coupled with my dad, though, there was a presence in the room that commanded my attention and demanded my near-silence.

     Something takes place when older men gather. Something that young men recognize if they are wise, and while I no longer consider myself a young man, I am younger than they are, and I understood that there was a lot of wisdom talking. It had been many years since I talked of the outdoors and “gentleman’s hunts” and I wanted to hear it all. So, I listened as Bill and my dad talked, on Saturday morning, fueled by the knowledge that in my presence there was a new audience for the stories. And later, on Saturday night, expanded by a few glasses of Cabernet.

     The conversation was magnificent and large. I contributed the most by simply asking questions…I had little to offer these two men and I was all the better for realizing this and accepting it. This was a chance to hear tall tales of high adventure and to look, full-on, into the rarity of a friendship that formed long after either man was of college age. These two had come upon each other in a hunting camp well past the time when most great friendships are made, but had been blessed by it nonetheless.

     There was a point when the conversation turned to the great writers of outdoor stories, the chroniclers of safaris and adventures, and I mentioned Gene Hill and Robert Ruark. For a moment, I was on equal footing with both men, as they were fans of the great Ruark and I believe I earned just a smidgeon of respect for knowing his name and being somewhat familiar with his work and his life. I spoke of my love for Hill and my own desire to write stories in the same flavor as these men. The smile and the twinkle told me I had broken just a little ground with Bill, and it felt good for me.

     The evening was full of talk of deer, and bear, and hunting camps and politics. Of rifles and fly rods, and gun dogs, and duck blinds. I added to my education, the knowledge of  what makes a fine Cabernet, the difficulties of transporting your own gun internationally for a hunt, and that a French Chamois is definitely not the same as a Chamois you’d detail your car with.

     When older men gather, some younger men can find themselves feeling threatened or bothered. Some younger men don’t have the confidence to accept that there are moments when your best play is to say as little as possible until the conversations turns to that rare topic where you really have something to offer. In that mystical moment, you gain in stature, because the older men recognize your respect.

     One takes a lot from such moments, when older men gather. You leave with a generous supply of wisdom, a healthy view of your own adventurous spirit, and the knowledge that one of these days -sooner than you figured it would ever happen—you’ll be the one regaling a younger gentleman-hunter, as he listens intently, hanging on every word spoken…

…when older men gather.