Words and values were their greatest legacy — the outdoors their greatest gift.
Tell me. Do kids somewhere still grow up with Cochise, Robin Hood and William Tell, rather than the Terminator and Robo-Cop? Do they still forge blood-brother pacts with the Ogalala Sioux? Ride paint-stick ponies with feathers streaming from their mane?
I hope so.
Do perfect slingshot prongs still grow in dogwood trees? Green snakes still l habit scuppernong grapevines? Can you still whittle a little makeshift waterwheel from basswood, put it on an ash spindle…make it sing true among the rocks in the creek wash?
Can you recreate, now that you’re a man or woman grown, the same sense of accomplishment you had when you spied a large bright eye and then the hidden body of your first bedded cottontail? Or tracked it home a second time the morning after snow? Do you still remember the old man and tobacco smell of your grandfather as he sat alongside you on a mossy bank and waited for the redbreasts to spend themselves on a bream hook? The words of his stories?
If so, no matter where you lived, we came along together. Does it still happen?
Can boys still read the spoor of mink, muskrat, otter, fox and bobcat? Do they know when the hazel-nuts ripen along the slopes of the meadow? When it’s safe to eat a persimmon?
Would they recognize the drumming of the grouse? The love antics of the woodcock. Has someone told them that snapping turtles won’t turn loose ’til it thunders? That the proper word for a retriever fetch is “back!”
I worry about these things nowadays. The world is full of lessons, and the most important, it seems to me, start at Earth level — with four feet on the ground, two big ones and two little ones. With the scent of the woods, the ripple of water, the caress of the wind, the meaning of the seasons, the meanderings of wild things, with grown folks and kids and the simple words, sharing and caring it takes to explain them. With a Natural meeting of wisdom and wonder.
As the years travel by, I find ever-growing cause to be thankful for my boyhood, for the steppingstone it gave me to the world. Most of all, for the people who made it possible. It was a dream crammed full of loose, happy days with friends, along a creek or through a woods, with a 22 rifle or fishing pole and a dog, of clamoring happily after the grown folks who showed it all to me, who taught me where I fitted, and made me know I mattered. In the 40-odd years since, it has never let me down.
Expeditions were boundless, forever exciting Some, particularly the Sunday afternoon excursions through the mountains for rattlesnakes, were high adventure. We’d muster midday — me, my brother Joe and the Bingham boys- bristling with assorted weaponry, amid a cheerful caravan of family and friends in old CJ-3 jeeps. Following ancient woods paths, little more than wagon-rutted pioneer trails, we proudly rode vanguard, straining for the peculiar sheen of sunlight on timber rattler hide. The hapless serpent that befell our vigil never troubled Eden again. And if it wasn’t unduly punctured or trail-worn when we made home, we tacked the skin out on a board and posed for the Kodak.
Learnings were homespun, spontaneous, cleverly devised. Easy parables, something like the owl and the fly My aunt and uncle tendered that one, calling me from play I was ten years old, and had just shot it out with the Durango Kid. I still wore my twin cross-draw pistols when I rushed into their little house in the pines.
A saw-whet owl perched on my uncle’s arm. The little owl turned its head backwards and stared at me. Captivated, I stared back. Smoothing his feathers with my finger, I worked up to the question: “Can I keep him?”
“No. He wandered down the chimney,” my Uncle replied, “we’ll turn him loose.
“You wouldn’t want somebody to latch onto you just ’cause you happened onto their doorstep?” he continued, noticing my sagging lip.
“No, sir,” I returned dutifully, beginning to drift.
“Wait now,” he beckoned, “look here.”
He turned the owl on its back “See,” he said, pointing with one finger.
There was a tiny black fly clinging stubbornly to the bird’s feathers, just below its vent.
“All owls have a little fly that kinda hangs around there and cleans up,” he explained “For doing that the fly gets to keep company with the owl. Something you might want to remember.”
I glanced at my Aunt for confirmation. She was smiling wryly.
For a long time I examined owls. Sure enough, most of ’em had a fly. Some had several.
It was later, when I got out in the world and around people, that it all made sense. There’re a hell of a lot more flies than owls.
Many times, this humble country allegory has made the revelation ridiculous enough to tolerate. I suppose they knew that.
In the eyes of a black-and-tan hound, I first discovered loyalty. By way of a vixen with kits, I learned the meaning of devotion. In the death of my first squirrel, I came to know remorse. Watching my aunt and uncle stroll through an autumn wood, with the painted leaves sifting down, I first observed the wonder of love. In each instance, someone led me there, and brought me back. And taught me what was genuine.
I know now that it was not easy for my folks to wrest loose the time to tutor a green-eared kid, yet I cannot recall that anyone did it grudgingly or that anybody ever got in a hurry doing it. The only thing I remember is that we did it together and that “it” and they became one and the same.
On a high knob on Ridge’s Mountain where we stopped with the coon dogs in the small hours one morning long ago, weary, worn and happy, popped corn over an open fire, and then slept ’til the pink of dawn, I can still find my uncle. Wherever I listen to a bawling pack of twelve-inch beagles takin g a hare to ride, my father is there, steering me and a single-barrel 20 safely toward the path they will cross. When I discover the fragile pink pet a ls of a lady-slipper in a woodland, and hear the nearby babble of a brook, I see the gentle face of my grandmother, pulling me close to shoulder and stooping to show me its beauty.
Words and values were their greatest legacy — the outdoors their greatest gift. Beyond these, they left me to fill in the blanks.
Tell me it still happens.
From A Higher Hill finds Mike Gaddis atop the enlightening vantage of almost eight decades. Looking back over the vast and enthralling sporting landscape of a life well lived. And ahead, to anticipate and savor whatever years are left to come. Buy Now
