To my dearest children, all seven of you, hers, mine and ours, three girls, four boys. But, blood or step, I love you all equally and I raised you up as best I could. And I brought each of you to the horse and to the gun. Some of you took to it and some of you did not, but you all know how to ride, to shoot, too, should the need arise, a handy thing in these perilous times.
And you, Laura, named for Laura Ingalls Wilder—another little girl raised in a little house in the big woods—I am so proud of you for the venison and fish you brought home, and later for discouraging that home invader by splintering floorboards between his feet as you backed him out the door, and I will always relish your explanation, “I could have killed him easy, Pa, but I couldn’t stand the paperwork.”
You moved as quick as you could from where such things are suspect to the mountains of Montana where such things are taken in stride. You and that young thug gave each other great gifts. He gave you Montana and you gave him his life, assuming he didn’t squander it later on some other foolishness.
Susannah, I held your pregnant mother and caressed her belly in the moonlight. Your first word was “Daddy,” your second was “moon.” You were born in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, and always found wry humor in your birth certificate, but you had no say in the matter. That’s where your mother was at the time. Your little sister was born in New York, not Manhattan, or even New York State, but an obscure withering railroad town on the edge of the prairie, with the unlikely name of New York Mills where the main employer manufactured dry dog food and the train didn’t stop anymore. Momma was in hard labor in the back of the truck, stretched out on a moving quilt and I used to tease her that she got to hurting so bad she took to gnawing on the spare tire. Two hours later, Momma, Pappy and infant Shelley were on our way back home to that farm we called Thistle Ridge.
Chad, you came with your momma when I took her in after she broke her leg in a horse wreck and your half-brother Tolv had the most amazing birth story of them all, born in our little cabin in the big woods. Tolv, I called the preacher to come take care of Chad and your sister while I attended to the birthing chores, left messages at the church and the general store. Word spread far and wide and the yard began filling up with pickups, beers were cracked and freely passed. The power was out as a beaver had dropped a popple on the line way down by Otter Lake and you came into this world by the light of a Coleman nailed to a timber above the bed. I cut the cord with my skinning knife, tied it off with fishing line and wrapped you in a towel and took you out onto the porch and hollered, “It’s a boy!” When somebody hollered back “Have a beer!” I had three.
And Rhys and Rhett, I rescued you and your momma from suburban Houston. You were five and six, I was 60 and your momma was 35. Not a day went by when you didn’t tell me you loved me, some days many times, even into your teen years. Your momma and I loved so fiercely I wished we’d met years before, but that would have been a felony. I sent you to our little island school with 16 other children, the smallest school in the state. I home-schooled you two years where physics, biology, zoology and PE were combined in hours on the range and in the woods. I broke you both in on a Red Ryder BB gun, then on to .22’s and finally centerfire rifles and shotguns. Rhett, you were a dead shot and Rhys, you became a tolerable hunter and I still have the rack from your first whitetail on my curio table, a nice even eight. I’d expect that from two boys with Alamo blood. Yeah, and your great-great uncle Gus rode with Buffalo Bill, too.
Uncle Gus Uhl, second from right in middle row, poses with other cowboys in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
I killed my last deer just after I turned 70 but don’t get out much anymore as I don’t have you to track and drag and skin. I’ll try it once more at 75.
But I digress as an old man is prone to do.
My thoughts are with you all this chilly afternoon as I enjoy a whiskey and memories of you as babies and beyond. Though it’s nothing quite like Minnesota’s Dunn Township where most of you were raised or Maplewood Township where we churched, these island woods light up this time of year. The wild grapes are drooping like yellow streamers everywhere, the same sumac you remember we have here too and it is just as red as in Minnesota. The sweet gum is all mottled ochre, brown and green and the pig nut hickory is so blazing yellow it hurts your eyes. The pines and oaks, always green, add contrast. The Spanish moss hangs like God’s own tears, like mine, too, if I remember you too hard.
Nights are in the upper 40s and daytime highs are in the 50s. Each morning there is a fine blue haze over the river and marsh, which tangles in the treetops and moss along the banks. Woodsmoke is on the breeze and there is a comet over the beach just before sunrise. My winter wood is cut, split and stacked, the finest oak, hickory and cherry, but you Minnesota kids would snicker at the pile. What lasts me three months, we would have burned there in less than a week.
My hunters are pulling fat deer off the lease and they showed up at the creek side beer joint yesterday eve and blessed me with a cooler of venison summer sausage and snack sticks with just enough jalapeno to make me reach for my glass from time to time. We loose hounds and hosses on Saturday for one last glorious hurrah to close the season. Rhys and Rhett, you handled the hounds before you were old enough to shoot and you know it well. I know all of you have come to see me way out here on the edge of the world, way out on this frothy and windblown Atlantic rim, but I wish the rest you could see this.
Not just see it, but hear it, smell it and taste it too.
I will be thinking of you all when the hounds strike and their music comes rolling up through the trees and the sun gleams on the antlers as the deer flash through the trees.
Though none of you will be with me, there is always next year, God willing. I just thought to share my joy, my sadness too.
Love always,
Your pa.
This article originally appeared in the 2022 March/April issue of 2022.