Life Among Serpents
There’s nothing like a snake to make a man sit up and pay attention.
A Gift of Water and Wind
Three-fifths of the world is water and the wind courses over all of it. So when Pappy gave me that 10-foot bateau, he gave me the world. The first swell smacked the port quarter, sent green water clean over the wheelhouse. Aboard Maggie C, a 26-foot Maine Lobsterman,...
Ghost Light on the Land’s End Road
I was suddenly awash in pale blue phosphorescence and I briefly reckoned poor ventilated Private Quigley had his chilly arms around me! Right turn at Frogmore, south down a dozen miles of two-lane island blacktop, through woods and swamps and fields, to old Fort...
True to the Bird: An Oysterman’s Sporting Legacy
Oysterman and artist, Gilbert Maggioni, married late and had no children. He passed his legacy to two young men, William Rhett of Beaufort and Grainger McKoy of Sumter. Gilbert Maggioni was an ornery old cuss most people said. He cussed the weather and he cussed the...
At Home on the Range
Cooking on wood is like blowing a goose call or a trombone. Showing you is easy, telling you is hard. The scud stacked up over the northeast, a gray washboard above the sea, to the horizon and beyond. Too late for a hurricane, but the wind didn’t care. Raindrops big...
Scents of Love
A scent can conjure up emotions and even specific memories. In the brain, smell is the closest to memory; in the heart, the closest to love. She meditated. She would not eat the venison I brought her. She worshiped some Hindu holy man whose name I wish I could forget....
A Hurricane, a Double Gun and a Pilgrimage
The hurricane roared through like a runaway train, like a Seaboard freight with a stuck throttle. Fifteen inches of rain in fifteen hours, wind a-hundred-plus-Jesus, tornados on the back side, it tore hell out of the piney ridges and swamp-ground hardwoods in between....
Good Dogs Buried
How many good dogs you gonna bury before one buries you? Blue weighed 90 pounds, with webbed feet big as biscuits, long legs and a deep chest, the biggest Lab bitch I ever saw, out of Tomahawk, Wisconsin, from a kennel of field champions. An undertaker gave her away....