Legacy Gifts

Legacy Gifts

It was nearing midnight that Thanksgiving evening many years ago. The fire had waned to pulsing orange embers, the room captive to darkness beyond its failing glow, but for the single, small table lamp by Daddy’s chair. The night was mellow as moonlight on a meadow,...
America’s Drift from Tradition

America’s Drift from Tradition

If our children work hard, love, protect and abide, maybe they can survive. . . and maybe one day before it’s all too late they can bring America back again.

Love Gloves

Love Gloves

Never underestimate the power of suggestion, especially from a crafty old codger with a bird dog.

On the Southbound Home

On the Southbound Home

Had a man once who said, “The older the boy, the younger the man.” Strikes me he was right. No matter how old you are, you got to hang on to him—the boy—never let him go. Hardly back from Chile and Patagonia, languishing in a chair before the fire—even as the...
River of Many Returns

River of Many Returns

I must tell you a story. A story of old Argentina. A story older than two centuries, but as young as yesterday. A story within a story, for one would be untold without the other. A story of many things, though at its core the strength and soul of a woman. Not of Evita...
The Lasting Legacy of Nash Buckingham

The Lasting Legacy of Nash Buckingham

Regrets are scratches on the furniture of our lives that can never be polished away. The scars of fate that shoved aside dreams, the wounds of choices ill-chosen, the lesions of opportunities lost or dreams abandoned. Some are shallow; some are deep. Some settle...
A Healing Place

A Healing Place

It was the day of his birth, the genesis of his sixty-third year, and it had been a good one. It could have been celebrated anywhere in the world, as so many times before it had. But not today. Not this time. Today, it had been spent on the small streams near home,...
Dog Eyes: Windows to the Soul

Dog Eyes: Windows to the Soul

Gaze into the eyes of a dog. When they are deep and clear, when they pulse for the hunt like bellowed coals and the reflections in them flash like lightning with the restless lights of life on fire. And where do you find tranquility? A restoration of spirit, a calming...
This One’s On Me

This One’s On Me

The following is an excerpt of Chapter 3 from Mike Gaddis’s From A Higher Hill, featuring 65 explorations of the sporting life, the whole of which transcend contemporary perspective, and ascend to rare and unexcelled poignancy. Pardon the indulgence, my good...
Training Across

Training Across

Those of us who spend lifetimes hunting and fishing learn in time that skills attained wild serve very efficiently in the struggles that eventuate in tamer, but trying, environs of modern living. Attributes of stoicism, self-discipline, perseverance, determination,...