Even though the Dog Days
of August continue to wield their humid heat and to ripen tomatoes on the vine,
the magnificent exhale of autumn is not far away. For someone with roots in the
rural south, fall means, among other things, a new deer season. While hardly an
expert hunter, I am an opportunist when it comes to spending time on the old
south Georgia farm into whose family I married almost thirty years ago. And as
a happy omnivore, I make no apology for hands-on participation in bringing meat
to the family table. Besides, there are few experiences to match the splendid and
freely-given feast of daybreak.
Even when excited about a
hunt, I usually require second effort to roll out of a warm bed at 4:30am. Once
up and layered in my hunting clothes, I tiptoe to the kitchen to grab a handful
of breakfast bars and pour a cup of orange juice. (Coffee inevitably becomes a liability
when an activity requires stillness and quiet.)
The night before a hunt
I take careful inventory of my gear and remove the trigger lock from my rifle.
In the morning, all that remains is to gather and go, so I stow my equipment in
the back seat of the old red S-10 pickup parked beneath the pecan tree in the
back yard. During the 10-mile drive from my in-law’s house in town to the farm,
I eat a breakfast bar and wash it down with the orange juice.
I yawn – and shiver.
Even in south GA, during late November and December, the pre-dawn temperature often
dips below freezing.
As the truck tires rumble
over the coarse asphalt, I scan ahead and side to side, watching to the limits
of the high beams for any movement in the dark, or for the turquoise glow of
eyes bobbing on the roadside. Turning onto the fine sand of the farm road, the
roar of tires gives way to the squeak of shock absorbers and the creak of the
old truck’s chassis as we bounce our way through ruts and washes.
There are several fine
places to hunt on these 260 acres, but this morning I head for the “back stand”
which is situated at the far end of a long, wide field in the southeast corner
of the property. So I turn to the right off the lane and through a break in the
old fencerow. About a hundred yards later, I turn left and conceal the truck in
between two rows of young longleaf pines. They are not yet ten years old, but
many of them stand 15 feet or taller.
This is one of my
favorite moments of the hunt, the moment when I silence the engine and
extinguish the headlights. When all mechanical noise and artificial light
disappear, darkness and silence approach as if on foot. Daylight wilderness can
be silent, too, but silence is quieter in the company of darkness. When I step
out of the truck, they press in like wild animals sizing up this strange
creature who has entered their woods. Like a newborn, I accept their greeting
and their terms with a kind of naked trust.
After sliding my rifle
from its case, I snap the loaded clip into the magazine well. When seated I’ll pull
the bolt and chamber a round. After twisting into my bright orange vest, I
sling my gun over one shoulder and my backpack over the other. Shoving my icy
fingers into gloves, I begin the short hike to the stand.
The air is cold and damp
in my nose, but fragrant with the scent of pine and moist earth. I hear every
breath I take, each footfall, every swish of clothing as if through an
amplifier. Starshine provides enough light to see familiar landmarks, so I leave
my flashlight off.
I follow well-worn tire paths
along the edge of the field and up a small rise. At the crest there stands a
thinning cluster of old oak trees, privet hedge, and blackberry brambles with
briars sharp as cats’ teeth. Wild plums used to grow here, too. What the years
have done with them I don’t know. When there were quail to hunt on this farm,
my father-in-law and I would usually find a covey in this thicket.
Just past the clump of trees,
I turn left. The field stretches out to my right. The back stand sits at the
far end. I walk some 50-75 yards along the edge before turning down a row in
the center of the field. Walking the middle, I avoid leaving my scent along the
fencerows where deer might soon ease through the woods, skittish and wary in
the wide open space. Reaching the end of the row, I look around and find the
stand, a dark, rectangular shadow looming thirty feet to my left.
My wife’s brother-in-law
and his two sons built this perch. It is a free-standing structure wide and
deep enough to accommodate two hunters comfortably. Nestled beneath the
spreading limbs of two large live oaks, it is now part of the tree line that
has grown up along the fencerow which runs north and south. The stand faces
west, so the sun will rise behind me. A camouflaged tarp covers the front and
the two sides. A bright blue tarp overhead helps to shed the cold dew or a
light rain. The floor is about eight feet off the ground. Easing around to the
back, I climb the wide ladder of two-by-sixes nailed to the supporting 4x4 posts.
Settling in, I make more noise than I intend.
The sandy field before
me usually grows cotton or soybeans. This year, however, either by design or
neglect, it has lain fallow. Its crop is a tangle of weeds: prickly cockleburs,
brittle dog fennel, wispy shoots of nondescript field grasses, and all of it in
various shades of winter-kill brown.
As the new day begins to
break, both darkness and silence creep away. They seem to burrow into the earth
itself. In the emergent light, shapes that I am convinced are deer turn out to
be clumps of weeds, or some shadowy break in between branches.
Fresh light seeps
through the planted pines behind me. First it comes in flat, misty angles that
reach out to the little knoll on the far side of the field. As the sun rises,
the angles of light grow steeper and brighter. When struck by sunlight, the silver
frost begins to turn the weeds a deep, glistening brown. The change starts on
the far side of the field and follows the shadows as they shorten. It’s like
watching a brown tide creep toward me.
While
light spills across the land, the background music of the forest begins to play.
Owls hoot and growl at each other as they begin a day of rest. In a whistling
rush, ducks speed by just overhead. Squirrels scratch and chatter in the oaks
behind me and in the dry leaves beneath me. And there is a kind of ancient, deep-time
beauty in the dissonant honking of Canada geese as they ascend in widening
circles from a nearby pond before winging their way to wherever it is they will
go next.
And the new day lives.
I receive the awakening world as a gift. This daybreak is
only the latest in a series of untold billions. It is nothing new. Yet to one who can neither cause nor
prevent such wonder, it sparkles with newness. Witnessing and participating in
this daily act of resurrection reveals the depth of my dependence upon the
earth and a renewed hunger to be in relationship with it.
The more I become aware of all the sunrises that life offers,
the more humbly, gratefully, and eternally human I become.
8/18/14
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