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The hunter found the spot on the ridge where he had taken his stand last year and the year before that. He adjusted the leaves to make a confortable seat and leaned back against the trunk of a huge hickory tree. He rested the rifle across his knees as he waited for daylight. As he sat there in the pitch blackness, he noted that he could not see his hand in front of his face or the outline of the sky. The cold begin to seep inside his clothing as he thought back on previous hunts with his Dad and brothers. Since his Dad had his heart attack and had undergone quadruple bypass surgery, there was no way he was going to be able to go hunting this year. Neither of his brothers had wanted to go hunting this year, so he had decided to uphold the tradition and go by himself. Just yesterday he had bought his hunting license and deer stamp and stocked up on the traditional snacks of vienna sausage, cheese, crackers and diet coke. He had cleaned his rifle, and made sure he had his knife and a string strong enough to hold a deer in case he got one and had to clean it in the field.
Now he could see the outline of trees against the sky as it started to lighten up a bit and the cold sunk farther into his bones. He thought back on his first hunt when he was twelve and his Dad had allowed him to go rabbit hunting with his brothers for the first time. He recalled last year when it had rained and he and his Dad had both came back to the truck to sit out the rain and listed to the University of Tennessee play Kentucky in football on the truck radio as they shelled and ate raw peanuts one after the other.
Now it was getting light enought to see individual trees and the sky was taking on a pinkish-blue hue. The cold was making him feel stiff so he got onto his feet and shifted his weight as he tried to warm up a bit. It seemed strange being out here alone. He wondered why his brothers had not made time to come on the hunt this year. One said he had to go look at some cattle he was thinking of buying and the other had too much work to do to take a day off even on a Saturday. In the past, he always knew where his brothers and Dad were positioned and waited for the sound of a shot. It was now getting light enought to see the form of a deer if one happened to be nearby. The hunter started peering at each object to see if it could possibly be a deer. As the light came on in and the cold came in deeper, the hunter remembered his Dad always saying that the coldest time was just in those minutes before the sun appeared above the horizon. It was now that time as the rays begin to filter through the trees. The hunter peered at each object and remembered what his brother said to look for a deer's ears rather than look for a deer. It seemed that deer suddenly appeared from a bush when you had been looking straight at it all the time.
As the hunter sat there scanning back and forth, he started to feel very alone and strange. Something was wrong. Why was he sitting here in the woods? He thought of his Dad back home. He thought of his brothers who had been too busy to come this year. Then it hit him. It was not the deer he was looking for but the companionship of his family, The hunter took one last look around, stood up and headed back down the ridge to where he had parked his pickup truck. He then got into the truck and drove the two hours to his Dad's home where he was raised as a boy.
The hunter went in and found his Dad sitting rather unconfortably in his favorite chair. "I went hunting." the hunter told his Dad "But it was too windy. Nothing was moving. I picked up some peanuts in Smithville on the way here."
"Where did you go?" his Dad asked.
"Same place as last year." the Hunter replied.
"You know UT plays Kenucky this afternoon. We can listen on the radio," the Dad suggested.
"I know." the son replied, "I know," as he settled on the couch across from his Dad and passed him the peanuts.
- By Carl Fritts
As the hunter sat in his backyard, his mind wandered back to a time about 15 years ago when he, his brother and dad rode down a country road on their way to a field where a friend had given them permission to hunt for rabbits. They had been there the previous winter.
As they drove down the road, the hunters dad said, "You missed your turn back there, didn't you?"
" I believe maybe I did", the hunter said as he looked for a place to turn around, "But how did you know? I have driven down this road several times and you have only been down here once and that was a year ago."
" I remember when we were here last year we were near that high peaked ridge with the pasture land going near to the top and the trees only at the very top," his dad replied.
As the hunter thought back on that scene, he wondered how and when he had lost his ability to navigate from the land like that. When he was a boy, he always knew which direction he was going and what the time of day was. Now, he could not tell directions without a map or time without a clock. Was it simply from being off the farm for 25 years? His dad, whose whole life had been spent on the farm and out of doors, always seemed to know where he was and what time it was within a few minutes. Could it be that we train ourselves to lose these inborn skills as we become dependent on maps and signs for directions and watches to tell time? Could it be that we train ourselves not to use our memory when we program our lives with calendars and dates and reminders of all kinds? As the hunter sat there he knew that this was true. His brain was cluttered with the background information of a dozen or so different places where had lived. His dad still had the basic background of the ridges and streams over which he had trodden as a boy firmly implanted in his mind. He did not have the complications of a dozen different road maps as the background of his mind. His dad did not need a calendar to remember who he was going to be meeting with in the next hour and which subject they would be discussing.
“Then again, I could be suffering from early Alzheimer’s,” the hunter thought as he picked up his lawn chair and carried it back to the porch.
- By Carl Fritts, August, 1998
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