A fella posed a question the other day that caused me pause…
He asked, “When’s the last time you did something for the first time?”
Not when’s the last time you did something again for the first time in a long time. But the last time you did something for the first time?
Which was, regrettably…I think…much more uneasy to answer than it should have been. Regrettably, I think, because if a man is happy doing the thing or things he loves most every day the rest of his being–no matter how many times he’s done them before—is it really worth the dilemma and perspiration to ponder otherwise?
What was it Babcock allowed? “I Don’t Want To Shoot An Elephant.” Just six ounces of bobwhite quail in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Again, come again. ’Til the shutters fall.
Every man and woman of us has the one thing in life we love the most, no matter how varied and cosmopolitan our adventures may have been. As for myself, could I know that tomorrow would be the last day of my life, I trust to hell it’s in January. ’Cause I would hope to spend it over a crisp morning aboard the fine, four-beat of a walking horse through the South Georgia longleaf, in vanguard before a truly old-time mule and dog wagon, following a fancy, mixed-brace of big-going pointing dogs (the better if they’re mine) laying out way yonder, bouncing off the forward corners and stacking up punch-and-proud on the limb coveys. On an old-line, wild bird plan’ation that’s survived there since The War, since the tradition was born.
Would I want to do it every day the rest of my life, aside anything else? Well, there’s days I’ve dreamed so, but it ain’t practically possible nohow. There’s the rest of the year in my hip pocket when it’s not in season. In the brief marketplace of life, I have not wished in the other nine months to be a frugal man.
I love it all.
To another fellow, it might be a September mule-string climb into the Tetons for the royalty and thrill of elk, just to be there mid such majestic country it makes your soul bleed, to exalt with the guttural, rutting roar of the monumental bull in the lower pasture. That fellow has wanted it too, for it to be September the other eleven months of a year. But he faces the same conundrum. Glorious as the supposition might be, it’s also impossible, and he’ll surely not waste the scarce protoplasm of his off-season time. There’re Montana big rivers, buffalo in Zim, salmon in Quebec, moose in the Yukon, marlin in the blue waters, grouse on the Scottish moors, woodcock in Ireland and Lord knows, all the other magnificent sporting kingdoms and blessings He has bestowed across this fascinating planetary presence.
If you love any part of the sporting heaven He’s shared with Earth, it’s awfully hard not to embrace the whole of what you can manage in the one small lifetime you’re granted.
So that, while there are exceptions, and indeed there are some men who are soul-bound to the same enthralling path for their being, for the majority of us it comes back to the lustful old saw, that…
“Variety truly is the allspice of life.”
So that it’s unimaginably intricate to lay the original question aside, to define the limits of your life into one hemisphere, and squander the life’s blood of time, when the sporting world is so wonderfully and continentally vast it would take eight score-and-forty—and the wealth of the universe—to maybe traverse its boundaries.
Again, when’s the last time you did something for the first time?
Seems an easier thing to answer really for a young man than us older codgers. At 40, hopefully, you’re still stretching on tiptoes for anything you can reach. At 50, you’re still buying tickets to Zanzibar. At 60, maybe the pace ain’t the same, but there’s still powder-and-shot in the old musket, heart-fires that occasionally yet blaze and the perennial hankering that’s hard put to stand down. By the time you’ve turned the colorful corner out of Autumn into your latter 70s, however, and find somehow you’ve been transported into the sere Winter of your existence, trustfully you’ve done most of the things your heart has really yearned upon.
Nevertheless, it rises to fore…no matter how ambitious and well-fixed a fellow is…he can’t possibly, chronologically and physiologically, do it all. I know there have been men who have taken a whorl at it, and if they have been truly successful, I stand corrected. I just know the main majority of my fellows won’t reach Saturn in their lifetimes either.
All this, and that piercing question again, has set me to thinking hard along now about the accounts of my sporting life, the ones in which I’ve invested, and the ones possibly I have left to enter into the log. What with time being the currency of life, and the balance perhaps overdue. You never know. Time, that can neither be accrued or compounded, that places us all on a kind of a fixed income, with Fate in the wings looming to foreclose the ledger at any point unknown. While the October leaves keep tumbling down through the waist of the hourglass and are squeezed into years. Even for the young Turks who haven’t yet seen the elephant.
We’re not in the marketplace of the past mind you, which has been foreclosed anyhow. I can’t have the 1940s back again, spy my first rabbit in its bed, have Lady, my first beagle again or 1967, when I read The Old Man and the Boy full-through the first time. I wish I could. We all wish we could. First times, like first puppies, are incomparably and unforgettably wonderful times. They, of course, only come the once in your lifetime. Even could you have eternity, there’s no time like the mix of innocence and elation that waxes spiritual with the first time. I think there’s at least one good word for that…
Poignant.
There’s an even shorter one…sad.
It’s a rejuvenating thought…to know once again, wonderful.
So, back to the premise…when’s the last time you did something for the first time?
I turned this on an old friend recently, as we rocked on his porch at sunset. He said, “I’ve always wanted to hunt coastal griz.”
“It’s not too late,” I said.
He considered that for a few moments, then stared off across the frost-burned November fields to the treeline.
“It may be,” he said.
That’s “may be” double-sad.
Each man must answer that question upon his own limitations. But search deep and hard, before riving the conclusion.
We can’t have 1990 back, or 2000, 2019 or even the past minute.
But a man finds he must hold to course, demand the promise of himself that he will live. Live, until he truly dies.
What we can have is another sunrise, another rainy day, a friend’s invitation, another rebounding heart-wish, whatever opportunity again if we push past inertia, perhaps step off what may have become a beaten path, find the grit to growl and grab it. Nine thousand miles distant, in the back 40, even in the rocking chair by our fireside hearth, first time with a Seery-Lester tale.
First time? I’ll admit, for me, it’s been a while. Perhaps, too much of a while.
Back to eternity…it’s been said some folks pine for it, but don’t know what to do with a rainy afternoon.
As outdoorsmen, I think we know the pity in that.
I have always wanted to do a leopard hunt with the bushman in the Kalahari. Not the hang-the-bait, shoot him in the tree kind. The one where three of them push him the hell like tracking dogs, push him until he bays-up spitting, tomcat mad and mean, and so often comes like razored lightning. Cats have come like buzzsaws into the car even. Hopefully, you climb off and stop him with buckshot on the way, if you can. Had it almost worked out a couple of times. Alas, fortune punched the ticket otherwise.
Maybe I will, still.
Hell, Loretta will have a roof over her head, and the insurance is paid.
Wish we could sit and talk, you and me, about the unrequited fires that still lay smoldering in your own furnace. That might yet be revived to a blaze. Or about some original opportunity that might come along serendipitously unknown aponst the morrow.
When’s the last time you did something for the first time?
It’s a thorn-prickling, stir-the-stew, renaissance kind of question. For any man. In any year.
Life can be likened to ascending a mountain. The higher you climb, the more years you have beneath you, the farther you can see, the more unobstructed the view, the more you understand. 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
