Islands in the stream…eras in the flow of a man’s lifetime.
Days lapse January meager now, and this one is dying. In the twilight of its wake, snow is born. Death to one, life to another.
Waylaid at my threshold by the magic, rescued from the zephyr of melancholy evening-tide brings…still, after all the miles…I am brightened by its nativity. As the first few flakes wander hopefully down through the freshening north breeze, to alight virgin white and in kaleidoscopic wonder upon the green wool loft of my jacket.
I am held the longer, while arises the ageless little flutter of excitement deep at my chest, as in quickening presence they are followed by the thickening flutter of others. That swell to flurries, that whisper, whirl and glisten against the glimmer of the porch light. In promise at least, to abide the night.
All the times, all the places, all the years…they have been ever welcome.
Though the logs in my arms grow heavier, until I must step inside, delivering them at last to the woodbox. Glancing through the side window to assure myself again, that indeed, snow is falling.
A comforting and pensive while by the fire, a needful, searching hand reaching for solace in setter feathers, the first line of The Old Man and the Boy again to perfect a mood. What once was. As once I knew most the Boy, now I know the more, the Old Man. A lingering doze in the cradling warmth of the ancient, puppy-bitten, leather chair. A last heartening look outside before retiring.
A little smile about yesteryear, as still it tumbles down….
Midnight, deposited to bed but sleepless, the night even more mystical beneath the satin shimmer of a building moon, I am lost beyond frosted windowpanes to its faithful but restless swirl.
Seven years old again, with my nose under the quilts of that cold but happy back room in Gran’pa and Granny’s old clapboard farmhouse, praying it won’t leave. ’Cause I got five rabbit gums set about the meadows, that me and Gran’pa made back in the summer from hollow black gum stumps. He had shown me how to get the trigger sticks perfec’ly right so they’d go off jus’ so, and mostly like Ruark said “he wasn’t painful about it.” And what with shelter and a slice of apple inside, it’uz just the finest kind o’ night to be ’ boxin’ cottontails.
“Will we catch one, Gran’pa?”
“Rabbits ain’t much diff’rent from people, Boy. If you’ve set your trap well, they’ll catch themselves.”
“There’s snow, Gran’pa! Maybe we’ll catch two, even three!”
And I hear again the faint, wind-riven rush of the flakes against an old blue, bubbled-glass window pane, just as then, and in the darkness the tireless march of the pendulum clock on the livin’ room mantle, measuring off the forever hours to first light. When I could throw back the covers, grab my pants and boots midst a barefooted dash across an icy linoleum floor to a warming kitchen stove. With Granny’s old-time, scratch-biscuit ‘n’ ‘lasses-soppin’ breakfast waitin’, so soon after Gran’pa and me could go see.
But time won’t tarry there. Drawn away again into the swirl of the snow, remembrance spins on, through the 10 years more ’fore I was 17. The 10 years that held the people and places that made up home then. The neighborly little farms all around I prospected over, haunting the woods and creeks, fishin’, huntin’ and trappin’. The folks who took me patiently under-wing, unlocking the by-ways, showing me the deeper beauty and rightfulness of it all, and setting my sails to uncover a landscape more.
The dogs, the birds, the squirrels, the robin redbreasts, the green snakes in scuppernong vines, the critters all…that were part of it…the blue balls on cedar trees and muscadines cold and sweet under the leaf mold of late October, the awesome fortitude of ages-ago forest pines, and the mountain men you could imagine in the wizened knots of century-old barnwood. The discoveries and adventures that came every new morning, every star-lit night, firing my growing outdoor lust to an unquenchable blaze and launching the sporting life I have lived, loved and hungered for more than all else.
Before all too soon, life decreed I must become a man grown and leave it all behind, be about college, forging a living and making the way outdoors on my own. Knowing even then, even before I met Thomas Wolfe, it could never be there in the same way again.
While, behind the blue windowpanes, the silvery flurries swirled restlessly on. As across the remaining hours of the night, one by one, spilled back the many eras that have followed, that have bracketed the years in turn, given to my lifelong quest for the finest of the sporting life, the trappings and traditions that have rendered it incomparable.
As across the ephemeral epochs of time, with passion banked brightest, each of us so afflicted has sought to invest our years as ardently and broadly as we could before time would close the marketplace: in the lifespan of a first, old hand-me-down hunting truck, in a first duck boat and a maiden waterfowling affair, in the 54 years-and-counting of a gunning partnership with a first Parker shotgun, in 5-weights for a time on nursery-waters snook and tarpon, in a search for Norman Maclean’s Montana and the rivers that run through it, in 12-weights and billfish over Pacific blue waters, in the devoted and thrilling, too-short years of a one, most beloved dog, in the soul-felt company, in a wondrous season, of a departed, dearest friend. In a hundred things more, in a thousand different places.
A few years, a decade, scores or half-centuries spent toward the panting yearning for wildness, beasts, fish and fowl, and their romance amid far, beautiful destinations. When no horizon was too distant, nor any mountain too tall. Africa, Patagonia, Panama, Chile and Brazil, Scotland and Spain, English estates and Irish moors, fabled places more. Eons, large and small, wagered in collecting sagas for Nash Buckingham Derrydales, old bass lures, shorebird decoys, one-in-the-world smoothbores, or crumbling sketches of times-when. Seasons exhausted against the world’s finest of all kindred things, of every type and description, that enshrine the craft and value of yesteryear. Or pledged in awe to the finest art of masters, who layer so exquisitely timeless memories upon canvas, and shape clay into dreams that melt to bronze.
Islands in the stream…eras in the flow of a man’s lifetime. One singular life-long enthrallment, or for most perhaps, many of divided emotions. The places he has chosen to pull ashore and apportion a driven measure of his years. Eras burning, then cooling. Of tempered ardor before the next, or from the death of abandonment. Lifetime long, or birthday brief. Perhaps the average of a decade. Left behind with cooling passion, or blazing on in smaller-eras within a collective larger. For the sum of his days. All as distinctive and diverse as the man who has elected them. All, once he has passed their borders, to which he can never in same return again.
Defining, the ones he has chosen. Poignant, their genesis and passing. Sadness when they have fled, joyful their time and blessings. For in echoes of regret, none can remain or ever be held again with an affection as enchanting as at their blossoming.
“As neither,” I was reminded by a knowing friend recently, “can they ever be forgotten or stricken from what a man has won.”
Miles and moments, minutes and years. Spent from the shelves of a limited supply. Parceled out in seasons against the things that have captivated us the most.
Until there comes the day we find the years have thinned, and time is depleting in suddening clarity the shelves of the marketplace. There is no longer the much we can afford, or as boldly muster with limitations of age and flesh, as in the final few eras we are brought to choose the more of circumstance, and less of desire.
It seems, before hardly we could know, we have made the dash across the years rather than a cold linoleum floor.
Through eras great and small. Until, finally, we will arrive at our last. To push past the hurt of the loss, I believe, to find not a season solely of sadness, but another of gladness.
A time of gifting back, in any way we can, all that we have earned.
Then our journey will be replete. Then the river can flow on home to the sea.
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
