tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37095516922277955742024-02-20T23:29:56.148-08:00The Buffalo Digesta celebration of the harvest.r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-87006979229295540762011-03-31T16:36:00.000-07:002011-03-31T16:39:38.752-07:00walter.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Sometimes you just miss. It can happen two times in a row. And even when its not your fault, the arrow or the bullet or the whatever metaphor you want to insert just doesn’t go where it is supposed to go. There isn’t a reason, it’s just that these things happen to people. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have new stories that I can put into words and some that I sadly still cannot. Someone told me yesterday “Bad things come in threes, looks like you’re about over the hump.” Painful events seem to gravitate toward each other. Life can take hold of your throat and poke you in the eye, and while your cleaning that up come from behind, pull down your pants and wax the back of your legs, and not gently. I had a pity party for the first time yesterday in the girl’s car. It was the first time I exhaled and breathed the word ‘why’ (where do you put the period here…inside of out of the quotes? Am I even an adult?).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I wish like hell that there wasn’t a why. And there might not be, in all honesty. It’s that question that people wrestle with, a dead horse cliché worth nothing more than bullshit answers you get back. What makes you such a good person that nothing bad should ever happen to you? The pretense is mind-blowing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I started writing a short story called <i>Walter</i><span style="font-style:normal">. I haven’t finished yet, but I figure I’ll post the first part. It is inspired by a cold Michigan spring and wool jackets that are worth a damn. It smells musty. This part reminds me of fourth grade when the teacher explains what setting is and then you have to make up your own. It is an incredibly simple and beautiful idea that we have forgotten everywhere except for writing. Setting, time and place, the when and the where of life. I think that Hemmingway’s greatest strength was access to these incredible, inspirational places in a time where they were just coming out of their own Wild West, when the alpha could really flex his muscle. The kind of settings he built in his fiction, especially the short stories, are truly what draws me in. I will post the rest next week or so. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--StartFragment--> </p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center"><i>Walter<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Walter straightened when he saw the scattered pile of ash collecting inches from his tattered legal pad. He was a two fisted writer. One clutched an unpainted pine pencil that had scratched a permanent callous between his left index and middle finger. The other delicately fingered a burning cigarette. He kept another behind his ear and when both were smoked he would roll two more from legal pad paper and Indiana tobacco that he kept an old Dominican cigar box. This particular ash was the first draft of a series of letters he had penned the year before. He quickly finished his smoke and brushed it onto the cedar floor.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The room was simple, sparsely decorated. Cedar plank floors unstained and largely untreated had bent and bowed through the many years, no two the same, uncoordinated. There was but one picture of his paternal grandmother on the adjacent left wall. She was rowing a Thompson oar boat, smiling, the year before it had floated away. Walter and his father had walked the perimeter of the lake two and a half times before finally conceding to their misfortune. He looked out from his desk at the old dock where the boat had once been tied, noting how its replacement lacked the old pioneer character of that old wooden boat. There was a small propane-burning stove and an even smaller oatmeal-colored icebox the opposite side of the room, next the door to his bedroom that housed a double-sized bed and the home’s original chest of drawers built when his grandfather was twenty. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">He rolled two more cigarettes as he watched the world from his thatched seat. The windowpane rattled occasionally from blustery winds, the chop on the lake was quick and deliberate. When Walter stood back his straightened from his slight shoulder slump. His stoop was the result of his seventh grade growth spurt, a lank that he had not quite grown into despite the years that had passed. His body creaked as his arms and back arched to stretch. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">He moved to the sliding glass doors and paused. He stood to remember for a moment. The dock remained steady through the springtime gusts of wind and wave. March was much like Walter, stretching and creaking like a cellar door after a long Michigan winter. The snow was now gone, but the leaves had yet to bud on the trees. There was no evidence of a harsh winter or new growth, seasonal purgatory. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Walter reached for his overcoat and slipped it on. He stepped through the open door and onto the wooden steps, putting he cigarettes in his coat pocket. He made his way down the brick path that lead to the dock. His father had laid the path when Walter was a child, the result of cosmetic improvements and the graceless aging of his grandmother. On cold October evenings she would be covered in quilt and wheeled to the foot of the dock to watch the lake in the waning hours of daylight. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The wind was cold and wet and he tightened his shoulders against it. It was not crisp, but heavy. The dreariness was a source of comfort, a synergy of emotions that relieved the lonliness that Walter had felt for most of his life. He lit a match and puffed out a pillow of smoke. He walked up to the dock quietly, surveying the lake with his hands in this coat pockets. Nail by nail he had pounded the panels together, his young hands blistered and cramped. That was 1949. That was the same year that his mother had passed, each stroke of the hammer was an expression of their silence, their sadness. Her love his Father’s guiding light, and when it was gone, he was lost to purpose. They went to South Haven that summer, just the two of them to fish from the pier. There was hardly a word between them, a stoic expression of the hurt that loss brings. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">His grandmother’s health quickly deteriorated in the coming months. The sadness of Walter’s father was too much for her to overcome. Walter lit a cigarette as he remembered sitting in silence with her the weeks before she passed. He would wheel her down the brick path to the edge of the lake. The smell of pine and the northern air brought a pleasant smile to her face, the stillness of the water gave her peace. She used to listen as the crickets bade good evening to the forest, and as hoot owl called the day done. </p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-47119444410922075702010-07-26T14:10:00.000-07:002010-07-26T14:12:29.264-07:00sentiments.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">I have been writing of sorts, but without a story. I supposed I haven’t even been outside much this summer due to disaster. The gulf oil spill ruined good plans for salt-water fishing, and the flood in Nashville ruined the good fishing here until recently, and I haven’t been out much since it has returned. I haven’t written anything because I feel like there is nothing to say. Vegetables are beautiful this year, especially the Tomatoes. I feel as though they are little miracles, and the longer we wait on that deep red, the more satisfying they are. I don’t have that romantic sense about gardening like the other natural pursuits, but nonetheless I am still impressed. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Nostalgia can be a battle, especially when accompanied by a sense of being uprooted and ungrounded. I heard this ass on NPR equating a sense of nostalgia to dissatisfaction with the present. I’m not saying that he’s wrong, but perhaps just heartless and incapable of compassion. I think he’s operating on some faulty assumptions about progress, and also think that he had a shitty childhood, or maybe he was born a thirty three year old. I mostly just dislike him. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I grew up in Michigan, and ever since I left have always been drawn back. My family still has a place on a lake there, and I feel as though I’ve discovered it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s a place that I always have held close, even when I lived right there. I think that I like it so much because my mother does, and I feel like it is the way in which I most understand and know her. She has so many memories of her mother there, and times with her brother and father, and with my dad. It’s such a large part of her identity. I have my own memories and regrets tied to that water, and its something that I have had to come to grips with over the years of being away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And therein lies the truth about nostalgia. It’s a living and breathing part of your identity, not some bullshit nod to the way you think the world use to be (or even how great you think it is now). The lady’s family has the same connection to their piece of land in Holmes County, Mississippi. Its fun to watch because I know how they feel, how much they want to protect it because it is such an important way to tangibly understand what they share as a family. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">But what I have learned most about the sentimental is that it can develop into something new. It is dynamic. I have been having so much fun researching how to duck hunt our lake and the adjoining river system this summer, because I love to hunt and because our house is in a flyway and because we have never done it. My relationship to that place is about to change, especially if it works. I suppose it means that I will have a different, more developed relationship with the place and with the collective identity of our experiences there. It feels like that part of my history is bending the rules a little bit to accommodate me. Which, quite frankly, rules. The river that leads into the lake is also a killer steelhead fishery, and there is a native brook trout stream about a half-mile down the road. These are all added bonuses that I never even knew I cared about until I began to appreciate the harvest. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, the point is that nostalgia and sentimentality are important, especially if it is such a large part of your identity, and its also pretty neat to see those things change and develop with you. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Happy Hunting. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">r. </p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-88734865003244622582010-04-27T07:46:00.000-07:002010-04-27T10:25:57.127-07:00micah ling.<p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" class="MsoNormal">I just purchased <i>Three Islands </i><span style="FONT-STYLE: normal">by Micah Ling. Its a pretty intersting amalgamation of poetry and exploration of juxtaposed historical characters. I once had an English course with Micah as professor. Hers’ was one of my most memorable courses at University. It felt strangely non-academic, but somehow facilitated some fantastic writing from a handful of the students. I think that the most important take-away was about having something to say. If there is something worth conveying, then the writing just sort of happens. I can’t remember if I came to the realization on my own during the course or if she made a point of it, but craft always follows perspective. It’s the reason for Faulkner’s genius and the existence of high school English teachers.</span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" class="MsoNormal">I remember she never corrected my punctuation, which made me feel pretty good. She did hate the passive voice, I remember, and I’m still pretty lazy about correcting it. To be truthful, I still have to look back at my old grammar handbook that I was forced to purchase five years ago to even realize the difference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" class="MsoNormal">If you want to find someone passionate about what they do, seek out an adjunct professor. I remember one of the greatest feelings I had at school was receiving a paper back from her with no markings until the last page, which just had an A circled in red ink. I am not sure if she was just busy or rushed and didn’t have time to go through the whole thing, but that can make a kid feel pretty stupendous. It was validation for a guy that really wasn’t all that confident yet. I remember that I spent hours and hours pouring over ever sentence and every paragraph the two nights leading up to turning it in, and it wasn’t because I was fascinated with the research or really wanted to learn, but rather, for the first time, I had something to say. Something important, that seemed urgent at the time, the sort of work that made writing feel more like uncovering an artifact that had always been there but no one had ever taken the time to be seen. I entered that essay into the campus literary journal in 2009, and it ended up being my first published work.</p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" class="MsoNormal">I think now of what I want my life to look like in five and ten years. I’ve wondered for a while what book I would choose to write if the opportunity came. I have always wanted to <i>be</i><span style="FONT-STYLE: normal"> John Gierach, because I think essays and short stories are so crafty and convey such skill. I guess the novel would be great, but I am not sure that I have the stones for fiction and I’m really not much of a story-teller. More importantly, the question is and should be, what book is your life writing? What do you have to actually </span><i>say? </i><span style="FONT-STYLE: normal">And I think that I’m ok with ‘I don’t know’ for now. </span></p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" class="MsoNormal">A review of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic" class="Apple-style-span">Three Islands </span>to follow. </p><p style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify" class="MsoNormal">r. </p><!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-18517321875232340372010-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:002010-04-27T08:23:13.214-07:00birdnests and circle hooks.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I used the word ‘fleshy’ to describe a fish last night. The Spanish Mackeral flaked off of the smoker and the smells permeated across the yard. It’s a combination of dill weed and salt water that almost brings the ocean home. April offshore trips are perfect. The mornings are cold and it makes you feel more seasoned than you are. The tourists have left, and they will return with the better weather, but for now it feels like the only people here are the ones in on the secret. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Macks take well and keep you occupied. They are for the smoker, a sort of consolation from the ocean that keeps you fed and relieves the monotony. Beer is God’s consolation for slow fishing. Knots amaze me, as does someone who knows a thing or two about finding and catching the invisible monsters from Earth’s last real wilderness.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Pilar was once the world’s most successful offshore sport fishing boat. Hemingway was a successful writer because he was successful at everything else. He didn’t need an imagination; he had already lived it all. He described writing short stories like they had already existed, that all they needed were some words on paper so that others could imagine what he had already accomplished. He didn’t ‘write’ stories, he ‘knew’ stories. I think about what it must have been like on that boat. Imagine the pressure of fishing with a man who believed that the whole world could never really keep up with him. It took a plane crash, a bush fire, and a lifetime long booze binge for the world to finally catch back up. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Captains have an enviable sense of self-reliance. Persistence, accuracy, and faith supplement a concrete belief in systems and cycles. It is Cobia season, and the shit of it is the same as the success: it’s just staring. Staring hard, for hours, looking to find that one brown shark of a fish just close enough for casting. He watches the water, we watch him, like following a guide who has no map. We’re not quite sure what we’re looking for, but this guy seems to think that he does so we might as well shut up and not get left behind. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And it comes together like lightning, and the friends are radioed while the enemy boats are scoffed at. We’ll never know what they caught, but to hell with ‘em while we bask in the ‘fish on.’ You reel in, I’ll keep you fueled with beer and we’ll all meet at the propane fryer to drink too much and fall asleep. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Happy Hunting,</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">r. </p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-67258021211493724032010-04-12T08:00:00.000-07:002010-04-12T08:12:20.685-07:00the two in the bush.<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We’re lucky to have one of the best urban fly shops in the country here in Tennessee. I find myself just hanging around more often; it’s the one part of the city that doesn’t incubate my nasty little habits. There aren’t any sitting chairs really, but that’s not a terrible thing. I think it is suppose to remind the urban folk to get off of their asses. Urban folks do a lot of running, and its mostly just in a circle, which makes me chuckle a bit, and probably because I’m a means to an end sort of guy. I think that is one reason that a fly shop in the middle of a city is both appropriate and necessary, to remind people like me that there is always something on the end of the line that needs to be stripped in. I don’t think it was designed with that in mind, but nonetheless it holds.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">We’re more of a trial by failure pair of anglers, Sam and I. And it’s a process, but little victories keep it moving. The first fish on a new rod is special, a sort of ‘at least the damn thing works’ occurrence. Sam got a new four weight last season, beautiful rod, and he missed six strikes in a row on the Elk the first day he brought it out. I picked it up and switched to a smaller wooly, then landed a respectable ten-inch rainbow in the first five casts. It felt like kissing your best friends sister and then having to tell him that you liked it. At least the damn thing works.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I got my own four-weight this season, and with respect to my own sister, didn’t share it until there was a fish in hand. I suppose I owe him one. Angling is a win some, lose some proposition, and just like hunting, the odds are better when there is someone else around to pick up the slack. When we were trolling for mackerels last summer, I was doubled over barfing up the morning while he made sure we didn’t come home fools. Tiny victories, and maybe we’re even after all.</p><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 142px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Jm6vt4CQ21Sh_gyfAMUcZaYYOcbZJxwto5DaDJ2pI7Af7nsKeH9gogD73SZ9Jhgo62MmQj4kVRoYbNB58EdRwYTs72Vc_eg43R6h8hLU7yKSz07Gx2utWeRjWAxZZcU3H1Y4D4pghGg/s200/ALEX3674........jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459268937960755762" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As for the season, I don’t know that it could improve much more. Life is good. Mean streaks come and go, and the more questions you ask the more you miss the ride. It’s better just to enjoy it. It seems like everyone in my little network of hunting friends is having an amazingswell of spring success. At the Lady’s farm we killed three birds over the Easter holiday. I am not sure how I can tell the story, except to say that two in the hand beats the hell out of one, and that something sure clicked with Alex and the slate call.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It really is beautiful to hunt the wild turkey. I think that Ben Franklin described them as noble, which is hard to argue against. More than any other game animal, the turkey requires a delicate hand and a subtle respect for silence and form. It is a nimble art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Calling a turkey feels like walking a tight rope, a ‘just enough’ understanding of the razor-thin line between sensuality and violence. And when everything comes together, the early morning taste of tobacco, the whisper of fan feathers dragging across an oak bottom and the smell of gunpowder from a smoking barrel, life if perfect.</p><img style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiafdSAil3waYe7SJpftJJzxKu-Mb6wBcs8pV-w2MiL2ml1pnevOXF0EAoOUKbl07gK0Ot6QAh2er_jtJVOdCLrzTQy_nRfaqYtx7KdEpaGJaMdlPj3FVgI42cvb8k90UYVFqvakClcuvw/s400/ALEX3734........jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459266571348429058" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:9px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px;">photos c/o alex wilson</span><br /></div></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> <o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-29882671407762595292010-03-12T08:38:00.000-08:002010-03-12T09:07:26.911-08:00the inbetween.<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It is once again that time of the year that the discussions begin. These are the early nights at the bar spent comparing schedules and making breakable plans for the coming weeks, discussing the whens and the hows and the whos of the upcoming fishing season. Generally, I like to focus on the local rivers and ponds, fishing Tennessee stockers, bass, and bream. This year I want to catch a mess of early season Bream on topwater flies for the freezer. The plan is a season long fish fry, without the ordeal and the mess. Just clean and tender bream fillets in the freezer to indulge at either my leisure or necessity. I got the idea from John Gierach (who figured out most of this stuff in the seventies) and got the beer batter recipe from Langdon Cook. Things are looking up.<b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I also like to plan a trip or two to the gulf. Usually I can go fish with Sam or Clay in the salt, and Clay and I really want to experience some night fishing with cork and shrimp for speckled trout. Hopefully his brother will show us the ropes (and the lines, and the bait, and the fish…).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdutQT24tiGOSihCFIEWSGadUAQOvEqCGeKtYB8nIRTQJKVq0cA_3WSlxvlU8tBWmsBPa-DPFQMPRcCZ4z0z5Mg13EgiA0pOvqyEsnMdqLSZ4FTDZvsPFggSfniB2qBHSsr6iwzgU_cRg/s320/photo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447788970768716514" /><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sam and I went out on what we thought was a great adventure last summer on July fifth. We woke up in a hazy stupor thinking that it was a great day to go trolling about a mile off the beach. The idea was to bag some mackerels by breakfast, but after two hours we were skunked and would have stayed that way had it not been for some very unexpected and creative chumming. Our rods doubled over and we ended up with two great king mackeral, and as soon as mine hit the deck I immediately doubled over with sea-sickness. Trip over.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The in-between season is always refreshing, and mostly because anticipation is sometimes more fun than the real thing. Its when the planners come out, and people like me actually believe that this is the year that they will finally kill that long-beard or get on the water twenty five days. Speaking of water, there’s not nearly enough of it, and what we have is never quite close enough. We are blessed with probably the best tailwater in the southeast, and we never make good enough use of it. I bought a map of the Caney for the first time and it cost me 16 dollars, which says that it might be a little <i>too</i><span style="font-style:normal"> good. But nonetheless, catching fish is better than not catching fish, even if it means making a few friends that you would rather not have.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style:normal">Found a great blog today, sparse and to the point. That can only mean that the person responsible spends way more time hunting than writing, which is how it is supposed to be, sort of like a functional woodstove, if you get my dead-drift.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Off to the best sandwich in the city. It’s the best we can do sometimes.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Happy Hunting.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">r.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-91937315884333623612010-03-10T14:42:00.000-08:002010-03-10T15:06:55.363-08:00naked and pure.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Writing, as a profession, is the by far the most disrespected and enviable. The ideal type begins like this: poor middle-aged bastard who chain-smokes and hates people like Anglicans love whiskey, suddenly strikes it rich with a stroke of brilliance that comes from seemingly nowhere but that has, in fact, been there the entire time. I think that writing as a profession attracts the most confused sorts of folks. It’s that everyone wants to be heard, but no one actually likes to write. I don’t believe that I speak to many who say that they <i>love </i><span style="font-style:normal">to write. But they all want to be writers. That famous quote, ‘the hardest part about writing is starting and not stopping.’ I’ve always thought that there is one major similarity between real writers and lawyers. Both have an immeasurable capacity to do boring stuff. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There are a ton of issues. That’s both the beauty and the shit of it all. The good news is that there will always be a market, there will always be something to write about, something to interpret or make sense of, and people with perspective and a creative way of conveying that perspective turn into writers. There are things that will never go away, even if the form changes or mediums disappear. People will always listen to music and people will always read. That’s just the plain and simple truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And its patience too. I think a lot of problems that need to be solved have to do with patience. We want right now what took our parents and grandparents 25 years to build. It is the problem of wanting something for nothing, of being an adult. It’s about taking punches and not quitting. About being told no and choosing not to pout and walking back into the fire to make a day of it. And it comes back to how people look at money, like more if it will solve your problems, like money isn’t the problem in itself. Something for nothing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Because when life is standing before you, naked and pure, take a mental picture. Have<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>something to wake up for every morning, that one thing, and the world seems to make a little more sense. Try everything, especially when you are young, because youth is (or should be) urgent. But don’t be like Andrew and Jodee’s dog Boston, because he tried the turd in the bushes and got both a mouth and an ear-full. Some things are best indulged while no one is looking.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Just so you know (perhaps you don’t care, and if that is the case, then now is a good time to bounce off of this page to one that more specifically engages your fancy, or you can read a book, someone will appreciate that), I am making changes. I am finding some help to rework the page, and I want to make the content less about me, because I’m the first to admit that no one gives a damn about memoirs and they just come across as pretentious and untrue. Unless you are Nelson Mandella or someone who <i>actually knows something, </i><span style="font-style:normal">odds are we don’t care about your life*. A bummer about being born in 1986 is that I don’t know very many people who both survived the depression </span><i>and </i><span style="font-style:normal">fought in a war. Those are the people who know a thing or two about stark-naked life. I would probably read memoirs written by people who fit these criteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I will also be posting more often, perhaps even imbedding some extra doo-hickey gadgets that don’t really matter so that I can get more people engaged in reading what I have to say.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Because here is the plan. I want to write, I really like it (in a therapeutic problem solving way, not that I usually enjoy it because that would be contradictory to paragraph 1). Writing is only two things, perspective and craft, and I figure that I have a lifetime to perfect the craft. I figure that if I get an essay collection by the time I’m 70 I’ll be a real-life Norman McLean, and I’ll die content and with the most rods. I can’t help it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I don’t know if you can tell, but I can’t focus today. I think this is mostly penitence for failing a lot in the past three days, perhaps a shot of self-pity and a questioning of how the hell I got here. Its four eighteen and in thirty minutes I will be either at the bar or finishing a John Gierach essay. On the one hand, craft brew really makes me feel better about myself in a ‘memoir’ sort of way. But the John essay is good, and I have some tobacco that actually tastes like it should, so option two is also a feasible outcome. This has become the question of the day, a day that has produced nothing except tiny victories and mounting defeats.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And the answer to the question is to go fishing.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">r. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--StartFragment--> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">*I publish this paragraph at the risk of sounding oft-putting, rude, and generally like an asshole. Before you write me off, just know that I'm talking about print memoirs, like augusten burroughs and other worthless work like that. Its just a rant. I'm not writing about LC or NorCal or other who pour their hearts and lives into their online medium, because these are real people with real lives who tell the truth and love to write. That is the best part of an online outdoor community, sharing stories. So please, accept this little post-script and take my writing for what its worth (which is exactly what you paid for it). Thanks. <o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-4992362568409009842010-02-17T12:39:00.000-08:002010-02-17T13:00:48.761-08:00february.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I have since moved back to Tennessee and have switched focus from whitetails to the beginnings of the growing season, turkeys, and the rod and reel. For turkeys, the goal is simple. I have never taken a bird and am committed to success this March and April. This is all dependent on the strength of my interest in a month, but that is the idea for now. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> A more concrete and immediate affair of interest is the beginning of the spring growing season. One of my goals is to increase my personal involvement with The Lady’s garden, of which I am already down a few points for missing the seed-buying trip. She knows more than me anyhow, so it will probably work out better that way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The CSA begins in May also, but the signups are now and that at the very least stokes some anticipation. The snow-dustings and soft morning frosts still remind me that it is February, but afternoons feel like they are stretching and waking up for spring.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The fun part is the full freezer in conjunction with the garden. Sam and I went back to the cooler the week after the season closed and spent a good three hours slicing and gathering venison to be processed. The results are firmly packed away Tetris style in three freezers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Taylor gets to eat all he can until I come get what I need. Hell of a deal for the both of us.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Bought some new fly gear. New rod and reel, we’ll see if I need money or gear in the coming months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’m leaning toward keeping it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Logic says that I’ll get to make money for the rest of my life, and there is a finite amount of fly rods in the world. It would be a shame to let any of them slip out of my grasp. There is a little part in every fly-man that truly believes that whoever dies with the most rods wins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I can’t help it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">February is usually the doldrums for the hunter/gatherer. Clay got a new bird dog, and hopefully he gets to hunt over him in the final two weeks of quail season in Alabama. Its a beautiful dog with a strong name. I think that most have a certain affinity for hunting dogs. Strange how the relationship changes a bit when utility is added to the equation, but I can't help but look forward to August and doves thinking about how I don't have to run after those damn birds any more. There is nothing more ridiculous that an grown man hurdling sage and stick with shotgun pointed straight in the air in search of downed fowl. I'm a lanky six foot three and am quite worthless in this capacity, but I will retrieve to hand and I don't eat my own turds. Its all about perspective I suppose. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">In the meantime, I think I'll write some, learn to tie some new fly patterns, and enjoy tobacco that actually tastes like tobacco. Cheap beer, venison steaks, cold hands, and not being stressed about not being in the woods. It isn't all poetic, but I thought this picture was great, even though it is plain. I have some friends who are incredible photographers, and I would love to make some trips with them and hopefully show off some of their work. Thinking about learning more about bird watching, would love to know where to start. That’s your queue, many thanks. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Happy Hunting.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">r. </p><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYph1akTQJfZN1B43oeOgCASwO2Jgsc2hMGfCs2_cj01MV8Jkzq-cd3ECVtRpeS6_S3WzJ8E1EsTTf7yUk1pj-sEHXIZxBji-D-mOHFg7z-HnUoR3h6F3ewgiNbjshHijul-uyYcWnNs8/s400/ALEX3089....jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5439318937936160322" /> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-26073584863648384472010-02-04T15:38:00.000-08:002010-02-17T11:56:59.088-08:00tally.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It is raining in the South this week. I suppose that today is Sunday and that means the Alabama Whitetail season is coming to a close in exactly a week and six hours, which is a both saddening and hopeful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I knew this day was coming, and I have been putting this post off because I am nervous about how I want to portray myself and what I have taken this season. The last thing that I wish for the Digest to become is a tally sheet or announcement board.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I suppose I just want to be respectful of both the game and others who don’t share the same perspective. I also think that I want the focus to be on the season, on participating with nature. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sam and I were at his farm two weekends ago with some other friends. The harvest that weekend was beyond anything that I could have anticipated. Each member of the party took an animal, which makes for a memorable weekend no matter what else goes on.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sam is a great hunter, and apparently has some philosopher in his bones. “I like to let the woods just happen. Just be patient and let everything come to you instead of the other way around.” We were still-hunting a creek bed on conceivably the worst day to do it. The ground was frozen and crunched under every step. At the very least we ended up with a quotable morning. That is certainly making a day of it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This season I had the pleasure of hunting for dove, quail, duck, deer, and pig. I would say that this is my most productive season, but I am not selling anything so we’ll just leave the mechanical language out of it. I have taken two deer, both does, and I could not be happier about it. I took my first Mississippi Whitetail in December, which was a load off of my back. Now I can just enjoy myself over there instead of settling a score. Duck hunting was slow, but I mostly show up for the jokes anyway. I love bird hunting, and if you have never experienced a South Georgia style quail hunt, then dammit I think you should get moving. Doves may have been my favorite, simply because being that close to good friends and shooting three boxes of shells certainly makes a weekend of it. Hay bails be damned, we were the only ones shooting birds out of a group of thirty.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It is nice to wake up in the morning and not be dead tired dragging yourself to the field, or feeling guilty for not doing so. Now I just can’t, and that comes with a strange relief. I suppose that one of the best parts of the fall and winter hunting is honing in on the seasonal aspect of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is steady, has its own slow rhythm. Summer is just so distracting. People are all over the place, and even nature moves faster.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I was walking through the woods on Saturday morning and the ground was wet. It was warm and a storm was about to pass through. I climbed the tree and took a little pleasure in the sound that my wet boots made on the steel as I got settled. Sometimes the most insignificant of occurrences lead to mind-crushing self-awareness. I think most people have those moments, where the world pauses and you have that little slip in the space-time continuum to truly love being alive. It is that moment, when your boot squeaks 25 feet up an old planted pine, that the stillness and the smells of the early morning are finally soaked in by your soul. It happened there, at 6:15 in the morning, just when the sleepy sun was reaching through the trees, stretching out the stiffness in its back from its steady rest.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The hardest part of writing this is trying to make everything sound poetic, sound like what it actually is, a matter of life and death. But I don’t really know if that is how I feel about it now. I think that the way of the hunter and the grower and the gatherer is the way that it is supposed to be, and the more you build your life upon those things the less fantastic it becomes. Of course there are days that it all makes sense, that the cosmic alliances become apparent and the gravity of the entire world is made known through one animal taking the life of another. Harvest is a mystery, no matter the season and no matter the pursuit.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But sometimes in the end it’s just that things that are spectacular are just plain ordinary, and that is the way that it is supposed to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The violence doesn’t get to me like it used to, and I certainly have a different sort of gratification than I had four years ago. Now, it is just more satisfying to know that food doesn’t come from a grocery store, and that hunting alone means running the risk of missing the point. Life and death are truly just parts of life, and the more that I learn that the more balanced my perspective becomes, and life grows more satisfying each day. It’s a tight-rope act balancing both gravity and constancy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So now, I hope that each day I and we can become reconnected with the rhythms of the spring season. My hope is that we can all be blessed with those tiny moments of awareness, and that the harvest from the ground is as plentiful as the harvest of game.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Happy Hunting.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">r. </p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-61900232418785130692010-01-05T11:07:00.000-08:002010-01-17T20:47:00.594-08:00agonizing and excellent.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I have been spending my time lately thinking about writing. Not actually writing, mind you, but mostly about thinking about it. Granted, good writing cannot happen until the pen touches the pad or the fingers dance on the keys, but I figure that there must be some sort of reflection on the craft every once in a while. I read something interesting by songwriter Chris DuBois. Writers have the gift of perception, the craft can be developed. Perception, though, has a few faces, and that is what makes writing and writers different and worth exploring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Part of my meditation on writing and perception dealt with the medium. I have pondered for some time now buying a stack of legal pads and a box of Dixon Ticonderoga #2 yellow pencils and setting about becoming a man that exclusively deals with the handwritten prose. Wendell Berry is my favorite writer. So versatile, and so much to say. He only uses the pen and pad. Something about an expensive machine really cheapens the process. Perhaps its just the rationalization of the the organization and gurgitation of thought that kind of rubs me the wrong way, but then again its probably just the difference between a shovel and a back-hoe.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Tools that perform the same task in different ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Or, the difference between a graphite and bamboo rod. The bamboo rod is slower, more delicate, more organic, more calculated, and requires a definitive sense of process and result. The graphite is more of a brute, the result of years of development and error, requiring of the beginning angler only a few hours<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>on a lake to competently shoot line forty and fifty feet. Its about volume. The legal pad requires for sentiment and nostalgia, two important themes that appear in what I write, along with a delicate hand and a calculated, committed course of thought and narrative. It also requires legible penmanship, something that I lack terribly. I began recently to write in all caps, but soon my careful letters gave way to the same bullshit turkey dusting results as my former lowercase attempt at communication.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:.5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Back to the rods. The computer, and the graphite rod, while they are easier and faster, perhaps give me the chance to spill it all to a fast and volumous medium, catching thoughts that normally would fall to the basement of my brain before my hand could record them. I think of my best writing, and it has come in either of two settings , including hybrids of each. The first is when my fingers fly as my mind dumps to the keys. Some of my best work, including published work, has come this way, as if it had already been created. Other examples or descriptions of this setting are journal thoughts that I have sort of stewed and developed for a time, almost as if I have already written them consciously and orally, as if they need recording, not writing.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:.5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The other favorite writing has come as a result of the pen and pad. I think of being in Alaska and choosing to sit for two hours to develop a thought. Its more narrative, more descriptive, more careful, more calculated, because once it goes to the paper, it sure as hell isn't coming off. It is both agonizing and excellent.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:.5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I would love to hear your thoughts. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">r.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:.5in 1.0in 1.5in 2.0in 2.5in 3.0in 3.5in 4.0in 4.5in 5.0in 5.5in 6.0in;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> <o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-7740809669261364612010-01-05T10:59:00.000-08:002010-01-06T20:59:59.124-08:00boots.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Things I have learned: emailing your ex-girlfriend from the deer-stand produces confusing, if not undesirable results, and no matter how impressed you are with your trophy, coyotes with mange are not welcome in duck camp. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And, you can tell a lot about a man by his boots. I read an article by someone who was billed as some sort of expert backpacker, which I suppose is someone who is just really good at camping. I guess that’s just a weird distinction, because if you can set up a damn tent, not starve, pick up your trash and return uninjured, you’ve pretty much nailed it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Anyway, he was writing about hiking some famous trail that ends here in the south, and was giving recommendations for the proper apparel. First of all, if you need to go out and purchase a new wardrobe and all new equipment to hike a dirt road, then odds are you should just stay home. What I did learn, however, is that you can somehow purchase the equipment necessary for expert status and peak performance and at the same time consequently abstain from patronizing anything that contains cotton, wool, or leather.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The recommended boots, however, were not boots at all. Instead, my man prefers what he calls a “trail-running” shoe for distance hikes, citing the light-weight as a benefit for distance hikers. I disagree (mostly don’t care, but I suppose I have spent a lot of space writing about this, so lets wrap it up). For me, it’s about soul. Cotton comes from the ground, wool from a sheep, leather from hide, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what the hell a poly-ester is. The definition says something about organic or free fatty acids, and I assume there are multiple of these things (hence ‘poly’), but it might as well be magic. Nylon is my least favorite of these miracles of modern chemistry, so damn slippery, and it always comes in the least natural color that you can imagine, like canary yellow, bright blue, some trendy red and black spandex, etc. You get the point. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And not to say that I don’t use these materials. I have a polyester jacket that I use as a rain slicker, and it keeps me pretty warm for an Alabama winter, and the point isn’t that these new materials are bad, because they aren’t. I just don’t have any sort of emotional connection to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What the natural materials lack in performance they make up in affinity. There is sort of a natural sympathy, a natural history to them. Perhaps because they have been gotten, not created out of thin air, and perhaps because this history not only is imbedded in the object of purchase, but in something much more consequential, like an animal or the ground.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">It is also a shame that the trail-runners don’t partake in the experience that is a good pair of boots. I got mine after seeing a friend with the same pair. I bought them used, which suits me. They are no longer manufactured, and I admit to having a sense of pride in that. As far as character, they are all leather uppers that require weekly upkeep, rubber soles that need replacing, gore-tex (the greatest invention that modern chemistry has ever happened upon), cotton laces, and so on. The left boot is missing three of the d-rings that hold the laces, but most of them are still there, so it works. The uppers on the same side were chewed to pieces by the roommates dog, so the padding is mostly gone, but the patch job looks ok, and the satisfaction that comes from fixing something you love more than outweighs the novelty of new ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They aren’t pretty anymore, but damn are they handsome.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When I was in Alaska, we decided to hike a 25-mile mountain pass in May. Perfectly rational for college boys from Tennessee, but apparently the run-off from the winter isn’t through until June or July. Along with other mishaps, the pass was still under snow at least knee deep, and in some places waste deep. We hiked through about two miles of this thinking that we could make it to a lake with rainbow trout the size of my thigh. Turns out that was stupid, and it was one of the only times in my life that I felt truly in danger. My boots were there, and the memories from that hike, along with the rest of the trip and ones like it are in imbedded with them. For me, the thought of trail shoes with synthetic nubuck, nylon webbing, airmesh nylon. etc. just doesn’t get me going like leather, cotton, and wool. All of these things were once living, and from my back porch I can point to a sheep, a cow, and a field where cotton can grow. You can touch it. You can connect with it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">You probably don’t give a damn about my boots, and I admit that this is more than a little self-indulgent, but that’s what essays and memoirs are about. That’s what I’m trying to communicate, I think, is the authenticity of finding your identity. Its not an exclusive thing, and I would be the first to say that the way that the world makes sense to me isn’t the way that it makes sense to you, and that makes it all much sweeter. It is about the respectable life, and the “leather identity” isn’t the only one.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">For example, whiskey doesn’t have to be expensive, it just needs to be justified. There is something about a man who finds slow pleasure in a glass of working man’s bourbon. What you lose in supposed quality is made up in the peace of mind that your buzz and your wallet are equally healthy. It’s all about finding what you need. After all, a frugal man spends money on the things he loves and nothing else, so long as he can help it. A frugal man knows himself, knows his loves, his strengths, and his needs. Truly, frugality is more about respect for the respectable life: a woman with a good figure, work that is truly needed, and the simplicity of knowing that you and God have reached an understanding.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">And it is soul like this that makes me love the South. Good or bad, better or worse, it is a place that knows itself. It has those old wounds, those scratches in the leather, the patch job on the uppers, and it probably needs to be re-soled. But its honest and beautiful, even if sometimes it isn’t pretty. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">r.</p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-28442452900940158762009-12-08T10:53:00.000-08:002009-12-08T11:10:06.929-08:00clay.<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia">I think that many of you can relate to my desire for the Digest to become more of a forum than a soapbox. Its the middle of the whitetail season and I'm switching focus and putting up a fish post. This is the first correspondence from Clay McInnis, a friend and hunting partner. Clay gave me a fishing report from the Andes mountains in Argentina, which is good, because if I'm ever in the area in the next fifteen years, I'll have an idea on fly pattern and size.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Times; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>Patagonia, Argentina</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Times; min-height: 19.0px"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGhvbM5L1hjlh8wKI8JnQZdztZp0akDlFvoDrg6lJvEsHP_3p0QokStJlR8VTx7RjK0b32oCDwwd_saZee_wBJHFH0YPo0DYZZXiboc6ixK8PcgZQNYx2j-5kZYk5RLTtR7awqg_jyt1w/s320/16561_771669351341_7028009_43610164_3432881_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412940986317734274" /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>Juan, our fly fishing guide, was going 152 km/h through the winding roads of the Andes Mountains, which was the last thing I needed after 26 hours of travel the day before. The scenery was gorgeous, with lakes and rivers slicing through the mountain ranges and plateaus that separate Patagonia and Chile. On our drive to San Huberto we saw wild boar, red black tail deer, bald eagles, Ted Turner’s 37,000-acre ranch and fishing lodge on the Carzancuda River, Condor’s nests, and active volcanoes including the dormant Lanin. Once we reached the San Huberto Lodge, a picturesque fishing lodge south of Junin de los andes run by a family from Norway, Juan showed us to our room while the cook prepared us a VLT (venison lettuce tomato) sandwich with a pitcher of their very own San Huberto spring water. Delicious doesn’t do this meal justice. </i></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Times; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>After traveling over 30 hours I was struggling to keep my eyes open, but Juan wanted us to take full advantage of the sun being out at 9pm. We put on our waders and eased into Rio Maelleo. The water was cold and I couldn’t feel my feet, but it was the first time in my life I hooked onto a rainbow after 9:30pm. My blood started to flow. The topography and view of San Huberto was unbelievable, and harked a time when dinosaurs roamed the land. It was the most primitive and preserved place I have ever visited, and if you closed your eyes and tried to hear anything but nature you couldn’t. The sound of rushing water and nature at its purist was the only thing I could decipher.</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Times; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>During the next three and a half days we caught several rainbows over 22 and 23 and a handful of browns over 18 or so. Patagonia creek fishing is challenging because you have to play the wind, and the trout are nit picky on the mayflies. They were hitting the nymphs during the early morning and hitting the mayflies during midday right before our picnic, and during the afternoon they really started hitting the streamers---especially the browns. </i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Times; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>On our final day Juan took us to the lake in the Lanin national park, and while the roads where in bad shape the water wasn’t. The Lanin volcano was broken up by a mountain range that separated us from Chile. Waterfalls soaked the sides of rock crashing into the lake that was as clear as the Caribbean. We fist hit the brush on the mountainsides and had luck there with a mayfly and a nymph dropper. I caught beautiful silver brown that was a 19 or 20, and a few healthy silver rainbows. As the day progressed we started to tie on streamers and hit the currents in the lake broken up by the waterfalls. On my fifth cast I got a strike and it hit real hard. It took a dive towards the broken water and debris coverage, and stole my slack while my reel started to drag. I was on a 6 weight and my reel was screaming. I knew this fish was big and healthy. It took a few minutes to get it to surface and when it did I saw that it was a real healthy brown. I continued to fight it, and was only hoping that I set the hook. I held my tip towards the sky because I’ll be damned if this fish is breaking off. We got him into the net and on the boat and he was worn out. He was a healthy 25 brown trout that put up a hell of a fight, one that I respected. </i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Times; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>The trip that dad and I took to Patagonia is one that I will cherish, and the fact the we were on the water together landing fish of a lifetime brought us closer together, something that you can’t experience going out for pizza and a beer.</i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Times; min-height: 19.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 16.0px Georgia"><i>-Clay McInnis: December 6, 2009</i></p><img style="text-align: right;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBEjsSID4D94jQsxfTVx4sv3d_0JmG_CGaA2HIz0ZkNqgMPGG3HdrI28ghns6YQmcUGb-Hm-OGtmy9a2o1vbRKCBF_kWVM5pawy2rRhicQv0QKTK_ZwicckwDxfO49CA904H_qq-pV-_Q/s320/16561_771669401241_7028009_43610173_5501237_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412940992487806706" /> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Times; min-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESl6meYWWtZtI0KSYhaNIc9mKxE59Xr0Vh0I75rUWDVxUZaijGtwH6NwFh2rUJe0I7drumMPAh3GlWF06I0cVl6tDxfinCD7cp82uwcc0yno-1ZVv_XJP9Lo3O-ZCAvr1VhlhGeqoZ00/s1600-h/16561_771669530981_7028009_43610198_1568929_n.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESl6meYWWtZtI0KSYhaNIc9mKxE59Xr0Vh0I75rUWDVxUZaijGtwH6NwFh2rUJe0I7drumMPAh3GlWF06I0cVl6tDxfinCD7cp82uwcc0yno-1ZVv_XJP9Lo3O-ZCAvr1VhlhGeqoZ00/s320/16561_771669530981_7028009_43610198_1568929_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412941004830770930" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB0BoymmHX5_ElcLb3TumoGy-Mte7rgu6exr7o0_w2hsdEMVnSM2c7dtNhu7zyy6719BNUZye8nBdPabWU57wnbRoOtGf8aqyQEsJANv4_0Oo2jFKPSk73ZN7q4RvEGlmZOYD2ePGT3ho/s1600-h/16561_771669411221_7028009_43610175_4303802_n.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB0BoymmHX5_ElcLb3TumoGy-Mte7rgu6exr7o0_w2hsdEMVnSM2c7dtNhu7zyy6719BNUZye8nBdPabWU57wnbRoOtGf8aqyQEsJANv4_0Oo2jFKPSk73ZN7q4RvEGlmZOYD2ePGT3ho/s320/16561_771669411221_7028009_43610175_4303802_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412941001592269090" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh28R-qrFHWTr4-EZXhv4VDgWbeCESNaQYIJ_Id5jnd6OkVbq1KiwvDSjiPB03_kPUeSXiGXGMuDbkxUxjr7zQAcsFzHvjoPXphmWl78r8SQPEgtuGVhaTdhc3EeQwxUlPJO03Izfm5Z9g/s1600-h/16561_771669341361_7028009_43610162_6363095_n.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh28R-qrFHWTr4-EZXhv4VDgWbeCESNaQYIJ_Id5jnd6OkVbq1KiwvDSjiPB03_kPUeSXiGXGMuDbkxUxjr7zQAcsFzHvjoPXphmWl78r8SQPEgtuGVhaTdhc3EeQwxUlPJO03Izfm5Z9g/s320/16561_771669341361_7028009_43610162_6363095_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412940981473423730" /></a><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Times; min-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;">Not that there is anything wrong with beer or pizza.</span><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Times; min-height: 19px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; ">Happy hunting. </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Times; min-height: 19px; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; ">r. </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Georgia"><br /></p>r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-32657736351632582812009-12-01T05:52:00.000-08:002009-12-01T06:09:24.921-08:00november.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtOqTVQIzF5PqPf1UYY-4AwruWeVUSdVyOTCS6NiX5t-tUqD68Altsp3yEsTs3xQxlAezncJb_6V2GiASe_OqALmOr6ywOahXzOQo4nXzgiPDo2AuQgZ6cgz7HmX8_vu6LEL5SVskOuKQ/s1600/13868_765710702521_7028009_43400204_1489299_n.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtOqTVQIzF5PqPf1UYY-4AwruWeVUSdVyOTCS6NiX5t-tUqD68Altsp3yEsTs3xQxlAezncJb_6V2GiASe_OqALmOr6ywOahXzOQo4nXzgiPDo2AuQgZ6cgz7HmX8_vu6LEL5SVskOuKQ/s320/13868_765710702521_7028009_43400204_1489299_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410266066356342594" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Usually the end of november I find myself in a bit of a rut (and not the exciting kind). Thanksgiving for me is spent in the suburbs of Atlanta, away from the field. The last few years I have come back with an anxiety about the next two months. Whitetail season in both Mississippi and Alabama ends January 31, so there is still plenty of time remaining to fill the freezer and hopefully take that special buck. However, the proverbial half-way point of December 1 does little except aid in remembering missed shots and blown opportunities. The cool part of the hunt is growing and learning, with an ever increasing respect for both the game and success. This is hard stuff (The road is supposed to represent something...can't really figure out what).</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Most of those that I hunt with and around have already accomplished their season goals by now, whether that is that first whitetail bow-kill or that yearly buck. That is very nice to see, but it sure doesn't help in decreasing my own frustration. Luckily, there is some venison in the freezer from the roommate that I have access to, so that can hold me over until the arrow connects. Not that I haven't been in a good position. I have recorded seeing 31 deer in fifteen hunts, which is a rate just over 2 deer seen per hunt. At least I'm in the ballpark, even if its the nosebleeds. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">I'm searching for some profound thoughts for the digest, but sometimes they just don't come. The season makes you tired, as it should. There are no secret for success, just hard work, knowledge, and skill. By now, you all should be tired, especially if your rut is coming to a close. We're just getting into it down south, so I can imagine that I won't be doing much of anything else in the coming weeks, which is sure to take a toll on mind and body. </span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">When I started to hunt four seasons ago, I remember driving home in the truck after a weekend in the woods and realizing that my shoulders were as relaxed as I could ever remember them. It was as if all of that physical anxiety from living day to day had just left my body. That was the day that I decided that this would be something that I would do, something that I would become. Well, now I sit four years later and I have mixed emotions. The more I learn, the worse I feel at this, even though I am finally putting myself on deer that I have scouted by myself for the first time in my life. I think I will just be relieved when success finally does come. I really am ready to have that anxious spirit lifted from my shoulders. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">So, whether or not you have filled the tag and the freezer, just be encouraged to stick with it. Its a long season (for some), and it isn't supposed to be easy. Upcoming at the digest we will have a few guest posts from hunters far more successful and experienced than me, including a report from the South Dakota pheasant opener (the photos here are taken by Clay McInnis and are a look forward into that post) and the Mississippi duck opener. Carson will be weighing in on the fishing front, and hopefully I will have some good news to report in the coming weeks. </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Happy hunting.</span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">r. </span></span></span></p></span></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><img style="text-align: right;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKHaOQyG5Oz4ds7Ji6esHPEV7l-GT5NNjxP080MTRetC2q-I_B_l5RCoWJoYEZ9vR8NbTrT1OS-UZGbn_0-gHkIR7dX6-IPTxiME-riMn9ip4Xm4dDejoG5TzAYg2yzaewb31GrmVIYtQ/s400/13868_765710747431_7028009_43400212_4125640_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410267569669933026" /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div>r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-10661644414750478342009-11-09T13:22:00.001-08:002009-11-10T12:09:32.258-08:00cold hands.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYiRmeGi77BY334a2cEsu_1S6lDNHD7QVm2UVMKxiQYSTA_uo4M_3gi_W3ZgM-wfXSujC2ZIYsYU2LbQXx-ZzaC15j-htXZIRSAg_O5k6tdQ7h6ZN7uL5JS0Ik1rNxOFyPJJDRT_y3oUs/s1600-h/IMG_7223.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYiRmeGi77BY334a2cEsu_1S6lDNHD7QVm2UVMKxiQYSTA_uo4M_3gi_W3ZgM-wfXSujC2ZIYsYU2LbQXx-ZzaC15j-htXZIRSAg_O5k6tdQ7h6ZN7uL5JS0Ik1rNxOFyPJJDRT_y3oUs/s200/IMG_7223.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402223319838417986" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;">When the hunting is slow...it makes you miss fishing. Here is an essay published in the spring 2009 edition of the Belmont Literary Journal. For a campus publication, I was very impressed with the quality of work that was chosen. I was no where near the creme de la class, but it was an honor to be recognized for good writing at a place where there is a ton of great writing. My friend Carson is going to write a guest post coming in the next few weeks on some of his adventures with the rod and reel. He has far more than I do, coupled with a much more experienced perspective on the matter (in case you haven' t noticed, I like the concept of perspective). In the meantime, I hope this suits your fancy.<br /></div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center;text-indent: 0.5in; ">Cold Hands</p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center;text-indent: 0.5in; ">The best part about cold hands is how much the hooks hurt when they snag your fingers. My woolen gloves are cut at the second knuckle to expose the ends of my fingers, to make convenient my pathetic attempts at orvis and clinch knots. When the air is this cold on the river, the only way to warm your hands is to remove the gloves, undo the suspenders on your waders, and dive your hands into the front of your pants, all the while attempting to retain any semblance of dignity as a group of seasoned fishermen pass in a drift boat making successful casts to the same exact water that you have been working for the past ten minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>However, if I were here for dignity, I would have quit months ago. Also, if I were here to catch fish, I would have quit months ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I read fly fishing magazines during the week, explaining the difference between a stack mend and a roll cast, the appropriate situation for woolly buggers, and the importance of quality knot tying. I am still working to keep the same hook tied to the same damn piece of string for more than four casts before it unexplainably disappears into the forest of seaweed, rocks, and mud that is the river bed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Today is especially brutal, as the high water levels and mid-day start do nothing to coax the trout from their shoreline caverns for a one-course meal of barbed steel, elk-hair, and copper wire. The truth is, I don’t need to catch a fish, I just need a fish to swim up to me, tap me on the leg, and say “Hey, we see you, and we hate to make a fool out of you, but we really are not going to bite that, it’s silly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why don’t you just take a break to enjoy the scenery and let some guy who thinks he knows what he is doing wave his stick around so we can make a fool out of him instead.” Then I wouldn’t be wasting my time getting my hopes up thinking “THIS IS THE CAST!” The reality is, I will continue to fish, continue to learn, and continue to make an ass of myself on the river because this sport is so insanely difficult.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>I mentioned the thing about the cold hands. I love that part. I love the part where I accidentally stick myself with my 22 zebra midge right on the tip of my middle finger (which in turn I can conveniently wave at my friend Sam, who is fifty yards downstream, in an effort to convey my thoughts concerning my luck and skill at both tying knots and catching fish). I love it because it makes things even. The thing about sport fishing is that it really is not a sport at all. Maybe it is, but it is not like if I don’t hook the fish first, that he (excuse the gendered pronoun) is going to somehow cast a hook baited with a cheeseburger onto the shore in hopes of catching and eating me. I think “sport” may be too generous. Perhaps it can be justified by the exorbitant prices that we pay for gear just to fool a ten-inch rainbow. Hell, if I release him, he’s out a sore lip and an inconvenient trip to the surface, while I’ve paid $200 for my rod, $100 for my reel, $50 for line, $6 for leader, another $6 for tippet, $50 total for flies, and a shitload for waders, vest and boots amounting to another $300. I think I might rather go for the lip piercing and a bottle of scotch and call it even with the fish. Instead, I hold the fish for a few seconds, amazed at the monetary price I pay to anger something that could live in my aquarium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Back to the point about the hands, the part about making things even. The odds are completely in the fish’s favor, but what does he gain from my presence at the river? The fish gets no satisfaction from winning (not that it should, I am a terrible fisherman), no trophy, not even recognition. The only time a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>fish is recognized is when it loses. Cold hands make it hurt, and I think that I deserve to hurt, even just a little, if this is to be called sport.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Like I said, I do not come here for the dignity or the fish. I need this more than anything. I need to feel the river’s steady, uninterrupted rhythm rushing around my feet as I wade carefully in the shallows. I need to move slowly through the silt and stones as I listen to the sound of my legs carefully navigating the current, like the steps of a nervous doe as she steps into the open at dusk. I need the river because it makes me alive. I feel as though I belong here. There is a place for me at the river, and I think it needs me here just as much as I need it. Let me clarify that it does not need me here on my terms, but rather on its own. Nature does not need me to govern, regulate, exploit, capitalize, or intervene on the delicate system of balance. Rather, it needs me to take part in it. The river needs me to cleanse my nervous soul with its peace, because at the river, peace is every step. It needs me to come alive, because as a part of nature, when I am truly alive, then I can truly participate in and appreciate the natural dialogue.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>This is what I have learned. In order not to be truly dead before the actual biological event occurs, I must engage in this discourse with nature, I must once again become a part of it. In his commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace gives this amusing yet profound anecdote:</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’ <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’</span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">No one thinks about breathing until the first time they cannot. Imagine the first time your brother held you underwater longer than you expected. As he let go of your head, your lips touched air once again and the urgency of your lungs burst into the most violent, beautiful gasp until the deepest and most fulfilling breath of your life moved you back to a state of normalcy.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;text-indent: 0.5in; ">This is fishing in human terms. The hook pierces, the air suffocates, but now the fish knows what the water actually is. Maybe the fish sat under one rock for its entire life, with nothing else on its mind except that one rock and whatever crustacean meals floated by. It had no idea that there was an entire river to be explored, that there was an entire world of which it is a part. The fish is the same as me. In the same way that the river on my legs and the hook in my finger remind me that I am alive, perhaps the air on its gills and the hook in its lip say the same thing to a fish. There is a part of me that wants to believe that fish do not jump out of the water until a person catches them. After all, you never know that you are dead until you realize what it is like to be truly alive.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;text-indent: 0.5in; ">Fish on.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;text-indent: 0.5in; ">r. <br /></p><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocMVnCGVUKOL7S_XZli8oRsIwi-ZhcqF0s7rZS_GiUdoc_gMguB-AXF7vEUtkUhbOqy0wdhhsRcaLiwLVbxfwL9CRCilBAfIRuOg5WIwKk3IWkI1PAv8h2yo5B1vqhn48G2_ima4e3B4/s400/IMG_7224.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402231658853936114" /></div>r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-68784570901698715952009-10-30T06:04:00.000-07:002009-11-09T14:11:31.578-08:00dream season lost.<div style="text-align: justify;">I was in the stand last night. It was eighty four degrees as I set out on the two hundred and fifty yard trek from truck to tree. I arrived with sweat pouring down my face, trudging noisily to the edge of a well utilized funnel. I should have turned around, and I knew it, but my stubborn mind always pictures Mr. Big quartering away at fifteen yards every morning and afternoon that I hunt the bed-stand. Having a chance at least eases my mind. <br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The hunt turned about how you would think: wrong spot and none-deer. However, and as always, a lack of action allows for contemplation, and they are equally necessary to the success of a season. Sometimes the woods make do not make sense until you see them from the top of a tree. I thought initially that I was on the edge of a prime bedding area for deer. I found that I had ventured between the sheets and was resting my head on the pillow, essentially trying to kill while announcing my intentions. Being in the middle of the cane sure allows you to understand what is happening with deer. It also is a surefire sign that you will remain with no food in the freezer. The bugs were bad and even if I had been in the right tree, the shots that would be presented would have to be quick and decisive, which is not the remedy for my early season habit of rushing the release. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At this point of the thought process, my mind wandered back to opening weekend (last post). I suppose that I imagined this season to be the year it all came together with me and the bow. More time on the stand, thorough scouting, more mastery of the bow, and weather that seemed like it was cooperating at just the right time. The dream season. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was discouraged thinking about my expectations and then thinking about what has actually transpired. I have rushed two shots that cost me two deer (one miss, one unrecovered), which has been followed by ungodly october heat and zero deer movement. I sat disappointed for some time, watching a spider gracefully wrap a fly caught in a well placed web. The spider would climb up to anchor herself, only to float back down to knit the casket for the unsuspecting prey. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The hunt is only successful for those that deserve it. It takes a dedication to finding the game, to mastery of the stick and string, to planting the crop, and it takes time. Thinking about two weeks ago, if the arrows had connected, I would be looking at a season to remember, with meat in the freezer and a rack headed to the wall. Instead, I sat thinking about a dream season lost. Its easy to think about it that way when the woods are still. Off-target arrows tend to take permanent residence in the inside of the mind, and those memories make it more difficult to remember the taste of success. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Part of deserving it is having patience. Nature rewards those who put in their time, who know the woods like the spider and who approach the hunt with respect and that "floating grace." It also should shed light on the true nature of success. Success is the end result, but I would say that any hunter who harvests an animal without understanding the consequences, or even worse, who is apathetic or calloused to the death inflicted, is an utter failure. Not to be a downer, but this is a matter or life and death and it should not be taken lightly. Deserving it is more than just connecting with the shot, it is also about mastering the contemplation that Izaak Walton describes so eloquently.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I used to have discussions on fishing with my friend Carson, and I would always harken back to The Compleat Angler and Izaak Walton, and I think they spoke to the nature of success. Fly fishing, I would say, is not about catching fish. Reluctanly he would agree, until one day he looks back and says "It may not be about catching fish, but it sure as hell isn't about NOT catching fish." And he was right. <br /></div></div>r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-59569707742605546992009-10-22T05:10:00.001-07:002009-11-09T14:11:42.709-08:00at the rack.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2C62bpsa76SIHwtZHf77zxOj4L_R7j8UCXk1zdk6O_mUSPPwtUYj5ec1xInkTfnXIjkWLDBviFMSjPAvpBYbNHLE2Xn0FfKB5iR2cw0aWg5lmT9gh3c0_1AixTG8uoiEX5aG3iI_U-i8/s1600-h/7435_558193473982_34103139_32721739_303871_n.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2C62bpsa76SIHwtZHf77zxOj4L_R7j8UCXk1zdk6O_mUSPPwtUYj5ec1xInkTfnXIjkWLDBviFMSjPAvpBYbNHLE2Xn0FfKB5iR2cw0aWg5lmT9gh3c0_1AixTG8uoiEX5aG3iI_U-i8/s200/7435_558193473982_34103139_32721739_303871_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395557093109031906" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first week of Alabama bow season has come and gone, capped off by a evening hunt that produced this tall, massive seven point buck-deer for Sam. Sam introduced me to bowhunting three seasons ago, and it is only fitting that I missed this buck only two nights before at twelve yards. Sam's thirty yard shot just before the end of legal shooting hours was well placed and resulted in the kind of swift and respectful kill that we all strive for. This was Sam's first buck taken with the bow, and has been aptly named "Stan-Buck."<br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Our friend Clay also took his first whitetail with the bow over the weekend, arrowing his first on his own farm, then finally filling the freezer on Sunday night with a beautiful twenty five yard shot and a forty yard blood trail. Quite the exciting weekend. Between the five in our party, there were other shots taken and some deer that went sadly unrecovered, but there is little more that can be asked of the early season. Temperatures were constantly in the forties, the moon was dark and the deer were moving. <br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For me, it takes some time to get back into the rhythm of the hunt, and the more that I contemplate it I find that it is more like getting into the the rhythm of the season. It should be slower, it should be a shift in perspective. Autumn is a time where, conceptually, we move from taking the yields of the soils to participating in the harvest of the game. It is less methodical, more still, colder, quieter...and it is good. It almost seems like a time of cleansing. Cleansing not only of your thoughts, of the mechanical routine of the modern adult routine, but a reaping the surplus of what your fields and labor have sustained. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Back to rhythm. My first hunt of the year I sat a small archery plot that I had planted in late august. It is near an opening in a long fence-line between bedding areas, a consistent funnel for deer. I climbed into the tree late, reached the top, and then realized that my face mask was on the ground. First of all, a damn face mask is worthless, I don't know why I use it. The only camouflage I truly believe in is cover scent and being still, the rest is a marketing scheme that has us all hypnotized. I took it as a sign and stayed in the tree. Soon, though, I heard a thud, bent over the edge of my stand, and saw my bow sight lying on the ground. Hard to shoot a deer without a sight, so I climbed down and then back up. The next morning I forgot my stabilizer at camp. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I ended up missing two deer at very close range this weekend, both because I rushed the shot. The second missed shot flew over the buck pictured above that was killed by Sam only two evenings later. It all comes back to rhythm. Rhythm is such a valuable and beautiful human sense, and the closer our we can match the rhythm of our selves with the rhythm of the nature with whom we participate, the more closely we will know and celebrate it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One book that I am reading right now is <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Zen in the Art of Archery</span> by Eugen Herrigel. Lets start by saying that I am in no way a mystic and I really do not practice Zen in the least. I was </div><div style="text-align: justify;">really just hoping for some shooting tips. Turns out this book gives <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">zero</span> shooting tips. I just want to leave a few quotes that I think are relevant to anyone, not just a theologian, philosopher, or mystic. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">"Unless we enter into...experiences by direct participation, we remain outside, turn and twist as we may. This law, which all genuine mysticism obeys, allows no exceptions."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Consequently, by the "art" of archery he does not mean the ability of the sportsman, which can be controlled, more or less, by bodily exercises, but an ability whose origin is to be sought in spiritual exercises and who aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal, so that fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself...In this contest of the archer with himself is revealed the secret essence of this art, and instruction in it does not suppress anything essential by waiving the utilitarian ends to which the practice of knightly contests was put.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Certainly a mouthful. If I could change one part of that, I would say that the the art of archery is the ability of the sportsman to realize the rhythm of the nature with whom (s)he participates. Sam and Clay found it this weekend. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And it is a beautiful thing. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">r. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><img style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieMZgo8DHC-53ptIn_y5yeAuB8BWrz9JGubwwniDdDvMykcvla9pKb6UMing5Ouq2fbh_7M8q4iMo8ErIT5KBvGPxFb6f36n1MoqdaU-Fb7ZpRESTcmmeHd5m3lOh-LZar0RLPa0IZojE/s400/7117_757134903491_7028009_43072413_2965045_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395797244842195442" /></div></div></div></div>r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-62684591358688552732009-10-13T19:54:00.000-07:002009-11-09T14:11:48.229-08:00pete fromm.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">I would like to commend Pete Fromm for winning the 2009 Robert Traver Award from Fly Rod and Reel magazine. I just finished reading his story <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Land Beyond Maps </span>and was captizated. Also, I think that the magazine deserves some credit as well for choosing a story that truly has nothing to do with fly fishing, outside of its use in setting. Mr. Fromm’s writing is both creative and wise. It celebrates youth and love. Its one of those pieces that causes writers (mostly me) to shake my head in awe and jealousy. I enter the Traver contest most years, but I think that this year Mr. Fromm has set himself apart from past winners in both craft and content. I am sure that the judges had no problem quickly singling out his work as the deserving winner. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is quite an amazing short story. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I highly recommend picking up the October/November 2009 edition of Fly Rod and Reel to read both the winner and runner-up in this years Traver Award competition. </p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-86740165510771450592009-10-12T20:01:00.000-07:002009-11-09T14:11:55.486-08:00introduction.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The American bison was once the most plentiful game in North America. Its population once thrived from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New York to Georgia, from Carolina to California. They were sacred animals, providing sustenance and economy to the pre-euro Americans. Today, the buffalo is somewhat foreign to the American identity, something akin to a myth or tourist destination. I would imagine that their place in the American character was similar or greater than the whitetail deer today, but they have quite simply disappeared. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> There is perhaps no chapter of the American narrative more tragic than the destruction of the buffalo.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The slaughter of the buffalo began with the introduction of the repeating rifle to native tribes. History books have looked at this singular event as simply the progress of rationalization and the thrust of innovation gifted upon the natives, resulting in the unintended consequences of relocation and mismanagement (I think that is as tactful as I can be).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>While both traders and soldiers provided firearms to natives, the truth behind the <i>disappearance</i><span style="font-style:normal"> of the buffalo is purely political. The post-war federal government of the 1870’s and 80’s was focused on reconstruction and expansion; reconstruction to rebuild the nation that they had destroyed, expansion to erase painful memories of the previous decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The rifle had immediate effects, making the buffalo harvest fast and easy, allowing the natives to harvest more than they needed, creating a market for buffalo meat and leather as a commodity back east (most of which was spoiled due to a lack of refrigeration on railcars), and thus depleting the buffalo population and forcing the natives to move or adopt an agrarian lifestyle. The American Bison, along with the culture of native America, ultimately succumbed to Western ideals of rationalization and conquest.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> Delegate R.C. McCormick of the Arizona territory is the buffalo’s Mr. Smith. In 1870, he lobbied the House of Representatives for protection of the buffalo on public lands. His efforts failed when he pleaded with congress to examine the effects that the buffalo destruction was ravaging upon the native populations in the western territories. Congress favored a “hard-line Indian stance” and saw this as a positive step for native conquest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Others also proposed legislation in the coming years, resulting in the a relatively strong bill outlawing the destruction of the buffalo on public land. This bill was pocket vetoed by President Ulysses S. Grant, who is quoted as saying that the quick destruction of the buffalo will force the natives to adopt a “more agrarian lifestyle” and thus become more easily relocated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>With the destruction of the native economy (way of life), the federal government marched westward, forging the frontier on the shoulders of Columbus, Cortez, Coronado, and De Soto.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> The point of it all, I suppose, is that greed and power contributed heavily to the destruction of the American bison, and in turn, the destruction of Native American culture and economy, and it is sad. It is sad because of what we lost in natural understanding and resource. It is sad because of the state of native America at present. It is sad, mostly, because of all the death and pain that was inflicted for the sake of acreage and settlement. To me, this is the greatest tragedy of America, a nation of immigrants and champions, a nation with shallow roots.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> So this is The Buffalo Digest. It is a celebration of the harvest, an exploration of natural understanding, and an attempt to more deeply connect to the land and to natives old and new. My hope is that we never again allow the political extension of the people’s will cause such destruction and mismanagement, but more importantly my hope is that our roots grow deep and that our marriage to the fields and game fosters respect and honor. This is the place to explore those relationships and to share what it means to be a hunter, fisher, grower, and American.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> It’s the best week of the year, and I can’t wait for it to start. Happy Hunting.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> r.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size:8.0pt;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;">For more information on the disappearance of the buffalo, read William Hornaday’s account of the buffalo legislation of the 1870’s and 80’s, along with Robert C. Kennedy’s 2001 <i>The Last Buffalo </i></span><span style="font-size:8.0pt;">cartoon essay.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;">http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=June&Date=6<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;">http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/roughingit/map/figures3/bufhornaday.html <o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3709551692227795574.post-19908529207723903542009-10-06T19:58:00.000-07:002009-10-06T20:02:36.540-07:00welcome.welcome to the buffalo digest, a celebration of the harvest. r. hurdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02450387993292882303noreply@blogger.com0