sentiments.

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.

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.

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.  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. 

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.

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.

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.

Happy Hunting.

r. 

february.

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.

 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.  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.

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.  Taylor gets to eat all he can until I come get what I need. Hell of a deal for the both of us.

Bought some new fly gear. New rod and reel, we’ll see if I need money or gear in the coming months.  I’m leaning toward keeping it.  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.  I can’t help it.

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. 

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. 

Happy Hunting.

r. 

dream season lost.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

at the rack.

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."

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

One book that I am reading right now is Zen in the Art of Archery 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 

really just hoping for some shooting tips. Turns out this book gives zero shooting tips. I just want to leave a few quotes that I think are relevant to anyone, not just a theologian, philosopher, or mystic. 

"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."

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.

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. 

And it is a beautiful thing. 

r.