There is urgency in the air, while the world slumbers.
The sun is rapidly approaching the horizon line. My eyes flash open, tipped off
by an alarm clock and without a thought to flicker. Predetermined getup is
taken on. A hastily prepared bite is consumed laboriously in dim kitchen
lighting. Sharp cold and the aroma of coffee sting my nose as I push through the
door outside. The hot liquid pours down my throat and warms my body.
The truck is preloaded and grumbles to a reluctant
start. Cab lights make the world darker, but can’t fight sunrise. It’s on its
way. I’ll beat it to the clover field. Dutifully, I throw the vehicle into gear
and head out into the world yet-to-stir.
White pine crowns, silhouetted by a growing gray haze
in the sky, guide my approach. Feet crunch on the stubble of a recently hayed
field. I’m an intruder in the world, under cover of darkness, hoping to make my
stand before the first whitetail makes the short amble from bedding thicket to
field edge.
Stakes are highest as I creep carefully to the back
corner of the clover field, and enter the woods via a whole in the brambles
I’ve previously cleared. I find my blind how I left it, though its weathered a
few days and become a part of the landscape—no longer an item of distrust for
the local wildlife community. I unfold a small stool, settle my bow in my lap,
and begin my vigil over the awakening world.
Darkness turns to gray and gray to white. The
temperature drops noticeably a few degrees with the peeking of the sun over the
horizon, as the day laborer turns a defiant shoulder to their alarm clock. It’s
deafening, the calm.
In this moment, this moment of raw possibility and
wonder, I come down from my cloud. As these days clog my spiritual pursuits
with schoolwork, conducted hours away from the woods I know, scouting is an
activity necessarily, though unwillingly, scrapped from my process. Will I get
lucky? My hunting effort is not premeditated. There are no likelihoods.
But more importantly, there is tradition.
Whether on opening day or some equally as nominal
first bout with deer season, there is the remembering of hunts passed, and the
nostalgic rediscovery of the sights, smells, and emotions that came with them.
There is the physical admission of inclusion within the food web, and an
intention to remain.
There is anticipation of hunts to come, of skills to
learn and classical ambition to please. There is a legacy of adventure and grit,
a lifestyle perceived as nothing more than necessary habit.
There is a home in the mountains, and the farm that
goes with it. There are autumn days when working outside is comfortable and the
willing slavery to a livelihood of passion is reflected upon with a
rose-colored lens. There is thankfulness.
In the wide-eyed world of chirping woods and sugar
gums crashing under the weight of a spunky bushytail there is the profundity of
morning and a renewed chance at living. There is the ritual of coffee and
prayer, and two dogs in the front yard, going through the same motions, but
with unrestrained lopes and wind-whipping ears.
There is a squirrel hunt like I used to, and the preparation
of the harvest and the resultant tie to the land. There are two kids to help,
filled with questions and burgeoning passion for the world.
There are first hunts that remind me of my own. And in
that there is heritage, and the scrappy morning hunts of my youth to refuel the
tradition.
And in it all, there is comfort.
*Originally published in The Rural Virginian
