After an unsuccessful day in my stand on Thanksgiving Day, my daughter and I drove the next morning back to the Philly suburbs where I was born and raised.
I suppose I’ll always call that place home, although Lynchburg, Virginia where I now live is becoming more and more my home as time rolls on. I love it here. I love the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the upper James River in the spring. I love the woods and farms where I hunt, and I love living in a place where hunting and fishing is still such a central piece of the societal fabric.
I’m fifty-five years old, and if there is anything I miss, it’s the kinship and camaraderie of lifelong friends and the things they talk about when they find themselves in each other’s company. Often, those conversations are enriched by a cup of coffee, or expanded by a glass of wine or a generous amount of bourbon over a little ice.
I moved here at fifty-one. Not an age where a man makes such friends, unless something should occur that brings them together. A man generally makes all his close friends by the end of his college years. After that, with the pace of life and our territorial nature, he doesn’t open himself up to the possibility of adding another trusted friend to the short list of those he holds close. In the absence of a mutual history, the connection could be church, or a sporting event, or a neighbor borrowing a crescent wrench. Or, it could be time spent in a hunting lodge, after a day afield.
This past weekend I was in the company of such a bond. Two men who came to know each other later in life and found a friendship in their love of hunting. Men of similar station and accomplishments. Men of character, who hold to an enduring view of life, and sport, and adventure.
My dad met this other fellow on a hunt a few years back. A guided hunt that only men of some measure can aspire to. The sort of experience envied by anyone with a love of the outdoors and a taste for the sort of adventures that we read about as little boys. The sort of trip that only a man of sufficient means can make.
I’ll call him Bill. Bill holds a law degree from a substantial law school the Deep South, steeped in tradition and grandeur. He made his life work in service to our country and speaks from a volume of experience that a man like me will never know. I couldn’t even bring myself to envy him. To me, envy cheapens that which deserves respect. I respected him. I listened to him tell me – over the course of the two days I was home — about his life and his accomplishments and some of the hunts he’d been on…many with my dad.
Bill, like myself, is a transplanted Virginian. I’m from the Philadelphia area and Bill is from the Deep South. We both spoke of Virginia with respect and admiration for all the sporting opportunities she offers us. I told him where my deer hunt is located, and he knew the area right away. He realized that I’m not far from Fluvanna County and he showed me the obligatory photo on his phone of an enormous buck that a friend of his took outside of Charlottesville.
I was in the midst of explaining to my dad about my getting skunked, so far, in this deer season. I told them about hearing some grunts, and a bleat. I explained that I was hunting an area not very pressured but that there were some guys running dogs on the lands nearby. My dad was a bit shocked and I explained that deer hunting with dogs is legal in Virginia, to which Bill spit out; “Dogs…so much for a Gentleman’s Hunt.” I liked him right away.
Something told me to ask more questions than were answered over the weekend. Bill was a man of great depth and breadth and would have held my interest on his own. Coupled with my dad, though, there was a presence in the room that commanded my attention and demanded my near-silence.
Something takes place when older men gather. Something that young men recognize if they are wise, and while I no longer consider myself a young man, I am younger than they are, and I understood that there was a lot of wisdom talking. It had been many years since I talked of the outdoors and “gentleman’s hunts” and I wanted to hear it all. So, I listened as Bill and my dad talked, on Saturday morning, fueled by the knowledge that in my presence there was a new audience for the stories. And later, on Saturday night, expanded by a few glasses of Cabernet.
The conversation was magnificent and large. I contributed the most by simply asking questions…I had little to offer these two men and I was all the better for realizing this and accepting it. This was a chance to hear tall tales of high adventure and to look, full-on, into the rarity of a friendship that formed long after either man was of college age. These two had come upon each other in a hunting camp well past the time when most great friendships are made, but had been blessed by it nonetheless.
There was a point when the conversation turned to the great writers of outdoor stories, the chroniclers of safaris and adventures, and I mentioned Gene Hill and Robert Ruark. For a moment, I was on equal footing with both men, as they were fans of the great Ruark and I believe I earned just a smidgeon of respect from them, for knowing his name and being somewhat familiar with his work and his life. I spoke of my love for Hill and my own desire to write stories in the same flavor as these men.
The smile and the twinkle told me I had broken just a little ground with Bill, and it felt good for me. The evening was full of talk of deer, and bear, and hunting camps and politics. Of rifles and fly rods, and gun dogs, and duck blinds. I added to my education, the knowledge of what makes a fine Cabernet, the difficulties of transporting your own gun internationally for a hunt, and that a French Chamois is definitely not the same as a Chamois you’d detail your car with.
When older men gather, some younger men can find themselves feeling threatened or bothered. Some younger men don’t have the confidence to accept that there are moments when your best play is to say as little as possible until the conversations turns to that rare topic where you really have something to offer. In that mystical moment, you gain in stature, because the older men recognize your respect.
One takes a lot from such moments, when older men gather. You leave with a generous supply of wisdom, a healthy view of your own adventurous spirit, and the knowledge that one of these days – sooner than you figured it would ever happen — you’ll be the one regaling a younger gentleman-hunter, as he listens intently, hanging on every word spoken…
…when older men gather.
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
