Ever since I was a teenager, I had always dreamed of my cabin in the woods. Somewhere tucked away in the forest, private and remote, but welcoming and warm. Wood and stone...leather, antler and bone. The smell of hickory and maple smoke coming from the chimney... A place of serenity...a fortress of solitude. Maybe in rural Maine or the U.P....an isolated mountain in Montana or in some deep secluded valley in West Virgina or Tennessee. Maybe even in the rural'est reaches of Southern Indiana perched on a hilltop overlooking the Ohio Valley.
But, dreams are just that for the most part, dreams...and life has a way of getting in the way. Jobs, family, bills and basically being a responsible adult tend to fade those teenage dreams...At this stage in the game, a "real" cabin is far from my reality and keeps slipping further with each passing day short of a lottery hit or an unknown rich uncle...but a man (and his teenage son) needs a place. He needs his space. A place for all "his" things and a thing for all his places...A continuation of his lifestyle, a continuation of his seasons...A "Man Cave"...a den, the trophy room...but where? A basement maybe? A bonus room? An unused bedroom? The garage??? Since I have none of those or a large bank account, my options were slim to none and none was in the lead!
Enter...The shed! An unassuming 12' by 16' storage shed in the backyard...Not exactly what Thoreau might have had in mind, but as they say "beggars can't be choosers"...It was constructed from wood after all and with a little effort and testosterone, some questionable carpentry skills, a dose of masculinity and a good cleaning, maybe, just maybe we would have our "cabin"...and so the adventure begins! Stay tuned...
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Spring has sprung!
Shhh...Do you hear it? There it is again...It's spring and it's calling...You can hear it in the wind. It's in the rushing of the dry, winter grass. It's in the hit or miss rain showers. It's in the dark of the storm cloud and the flash of lightning... It's in the robins in the backyard...It seems that the depression of a gray, wet winter is finally over...
Some people hear it in the drone of a mower's blades or the constant buzz of a weedeater...Others hear it in the crack of a bat or the low, throaty rumble of a V-twin cruising down a back road...still others feel it in the swing of a driver on a long par 4...for others it's in the mounds of seed potatoes or in the spinach and early peas.
But, for me it's in the thunder of a turkey's gobble as he hammers at the caw cawing of a crow. It's in the song of a blue bird darting in and out of an overgrown fence row. It's in the melody of a meadowlark in the high grass...Spring is in the explosion of redbuds and dogwoods...It's in the early morel mushrooms breaded and fried crisp. It's in the buds of the sugar maples and the light green fuzz on willow trees. It's in the vivid yellow of Easter Lillies along the stone foundation of a long gone homestead... It's in the clear, green, cold waters of an early season run of white bass up Laughery and Grant's...It's in the bend of a rod as a crappie makes her run...It's in the white of the bleached shed antler left behind by a wary old buck...It's in the red of an early season, sunburned neck after an afternoon on the creek...
That is my spring...Time to shake off the gray and boredom of cabin fever and live again.
Some people hear it in the drone of a mower's blades or the constant buzz of a weedeater...Others hear it in the crack of a bat or the low, throaty rumble of a V-twin cruising down a back road...still others feel it in the swing of a driver on a long par 4...for others it's in the mounds of seed potatoes or in the spinach and early peas.
But, for me it's in the thunder of a turkey's gobble as he hammers at the caw cawing of a crow. It's in the song of a blue bird darting in and out of an overgrown fence row. It's in the melody of a meadowlark in the high grass...Spring is in the explosion of redbuds and dogwoods...It's in the early morel mushrooms breaded and fried crisp. It's in the buds of the sugar maples and the light green fuzz on willow trees. It's in the vivid yellow of Easter Lillies along the stone foundation of a long gone homestead... It's in the clear, green, cold waters of an early season run of white bass up Laughery and Grant's...It's in the bend of a rod as a crappie makes her run...It's in the white of the bleached shed antler left behind by a wary old buck...It's in the red of an early season, sunburned neck after an afternoon on the creek...
That is my spring...Time to shake off the gray and boredom of cabin fever and live again.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
919
The warm sunlight pouring through my office window was too much and it's begging me outside...Work has been unusually busy this winter for no apparent reason and I could certainly use a "woods" break from the day to day. Four o'clock couldn't get here fast enough!
The air is still cool, but the sun's rays warm and the long damp gray of winter seems to be giving up to spring...perfect weather for an afternoon shed hunt. I'm still hoping to find the dropped antlers of a big split brow tined buck from last fall. He was a ghost in the shadows and our paths never crossed, but I did manage to get some nighttime pictures of the giant on my trail camera.
I hit all the normal spots, bedding areas, thickets, the edges of the cornfield, but no bone to be found...shed hunting is frustrating practice, literally a needle in a haystack! As I make my through the open woods, the damage from last week's high wind and tornado warnings is obvious...Poplars, oaks and maples that had been killed from the inside out by several years worth of a tent caterpillar infestation finally gave up...It seems the wind was indiscriminate in the tops it chose to snap off like toothpicks...
I check one more large field and something white catches my eye...an antler gleaming in the sun? I make my way through the green of the winter wheat towards the object...not a shed antler, but a twisted piece of white metal...I find more...and more. Roofing metal, vinyl siding, gutters, insulation, papers, pieces of clothing and a cooler...Not what I had hoped to find. I gathered up some of the debris and it dawned on me that this wasn't just junk or litter. It was bits and pieces of someone's life. Part of someone's history...part of their story. It made my heart heavy...one of my dearest friends lost family in the storms and it made me feel almost guilty for wanting to be out here in the field and woods to run from the stresses of my daily life...
As I made my way back to the truck, I couldn't help but notice the smell of the new wild onions, the bright green of the grass and the explosion of buds on the honeysuckle and maple trees...song birds and woodpeckers singing their notes...and I thought how amazing it is that our Creator breathes new life into the woods each year, a second chance even though everything wild and alive seems destroyed in the dormant winter...and I hope my friend can find some solace in that thought.
The air is still cool, but the sun's rays warm and the long damp gray of winter seems to be giving up to spring...perfect weather for an afternoon shed hunt. I'm still hoping to find the dropped antlers of a big split brow tined buck from last fall. He was a ghost in the shadows and our paths never crossed, but I did manage to get some nighttime pictures of the giant on my trail camera.
I check one more large field and something white catches my eye...an antler gleaming in the sun? I make my way through the green of the winter wheat towards the object...not a shed antler, but a twisted piece of white metal...I find more...and more. Roofing metal, vinyl siding, gutters, insulation, papers, pieces of clothing and a cooler...Not what I had hoped to find. I gathered up some of the debris and it dawned on me that this wasn't just junk or litter. It was bits and pieces of someone's life. Part of someone's history...part of their story. It made my heart heavy...one of my dearest friends lost family in the storms and it made me feel almost guilty for wanting to be out here in the field and woods to run from the stresses of my daily life...
As I made my way back to the truck, I couldn't help but notice the smell of the new wild onions, the bright green of the grass and the explosion of buds on the honeysuckle and maple trees...song birds and woodpeckers singing their notes...and I thought how amazing it is that our Creator breathes new life into the woods each year, a second chance even though everything wild and alive seems destroyed in the dormant winter...and I hope my friend can find some solace in that thought.
Monday, March 5, 2012
"Stuffed"...with memories
Webster's Definition of taxidermy-Taxi-der-my: The art of preparing, stuffing and mounting the skins of animals...
My definition of taxidermy...
I recently had a conversation, a debate really, about why hunters and fisherman have their "trophy" stuffed...The opposition took the stance that it was nothing more than the outdoorsmen stroking his own ego and getting some sort of sick pleasure from having dead animals hanging on his wall...I stopped and thought about it for a minute and from an outsider's point of view, taxidermy might seem that way. Especially with the attitude of a lot of today's "celebrity" hunters and fisherman and all the talk about shooters, hawgs, biggun's, and inches of antler...
But for me, and I'd guess many other sportsmen, it's so much more than having antlers adorning a wall...Each time I look at the animals that I've taken, I'm transported back to the hunt. The sights and smells. The weather, the rain, the sun...the cold, the frost...all of it. It might have been 25 years ago, but the perfectly symetrical basket racked 8 pointer forever staring back at me takes me back to my junior year of high school and the nervousness of a 17 year old's shot and the short tracking job and shared experiences with lifelong friends...The thickness of the neck and the gray of the coat and the heavy mass of the antlers of another 8 pointer remind me of an early November hunt years ago when my recurve struck home and my first true large buck was laid to rest...A glance at the beautiful white and cream colored hide, the flowing beams and long points of a caribou bull and I'm back on the tundra, cold, shivering and windswept, but more alive than I've ever been...The coarse, thick black hair, the long broken tusks of a wild boar and I can hear the baying of the hounds and the popping of the hog's teeth and still see my cedar arrow burying deep in his side as he bursts from cover with the dogs hot on his trail...The gnarled up, long tines of a huge buck looking back at me from the wall and I see Drew and I sitting along side one another as he squeezes the trigger on the buck of a lifetime. I can still feel the excitement he felt in that moment...The small, thin forkhorn antlers of a sleek little four pointer and I smile as I think of Olivia shooting her first deer and the pride she felt as we checked her prize in...and on and on...
You see, it's memories...they're reminders of parts of my life. Symbols of the respect I have for the animals I chase. The mounts I have keep those memories fresh, no matter how long ago. Good memories...they provide something real, something long after the meat is gone, long after the photos have faded. Tangible...there whenever I want to run back to the past...I can pull my hand through the hair, over the antlers, along the tines and everything comes rushing back. Every shot, vivid... every arrow released, each draw of my longbow or recurve...When I'm old and gray and can no longer be in the autumn woods, I'll still have my adventures each time my mounts and I glance back and forth at one another...that is taxidermy...it's preservation but the preservation I'm talking about has nothing to do with hides or antlers...
My definition of taxidermy...
I recently had a conversation, a debate really, about why hunters and fisherman have their "trophy" stuffed...The opposition took the stance that it was nothing more than the outdoorsmen stroking his own ego and getting some sort of sick pleasure from having dead animals hanging on his wall...I stopped and thought about it for a minute and from an outsider's point of view, taxidermy might seem that way. Especially with the attitude of a lot of today's "celebrity" hunters and fisherman and all the talk about shooters, hawgs, biggun's, and inches of antler...
But for me, and I'd guess many other sportsmen, it's so much more than having antlers adorning a wall...Each time I look at the animals that I've taken, I'm transported back to the hunt. The sights and smells. The weather, the rain, the sun...the cold, the frost...all of it. It might have been 25 years ago, but the perfectly symetrical basket racked 8 pointer forever staring back at me takes me back to my junior year of high school and the nervousness of a 17 year old's shot and the short tracking job and shared experiences with lifelong friends...The thickness of the neck and the gray of the coat and the heavy mass of the antlers of another 8 pointer remind me of an early November hunt years ago when my recurve struck home and my first true large buck was laid to rest...A glance at the beautiful white and cream colored hide, the flowing beams and long points of a caribou bull and I'm back on the tundra, cold, shivering and windswept, but more alive than I've ever been...The coarse, thick black hair, the long broken tusks of a wild boar and I can hear the baying of the hounds and the popping of the hog's teeth and still see my cedar arrow burying deep in his side as he bursts from cover with the dogs hot on his trail...The gnarled up, long tines of a huge buck looking back at me from the wall and I see Drew and I sitting along side one another as he squeezes the trigger on the buck of a lifetime. I can still feel the excitement he felt in that moment...The small, thin forkhorn antlers of a sleek little four pointer and I smile as I think of Olivia shooting her first deer and the pride she felt as we checked her prize in...and on and on...
You see, it's memories...they're reminders of parts of my life. Symbols of the respect I have for the animals I chase. The mounts I have keep those memories fresh, no matter how long ago. Good memories...they provide something real, something long after the meat is gone, long after the photos have faded. Tangible...there whenever I want to run back to the past...I can pull my hand through the hair, over the antlers, along the tines and everything comes rushing back. Every shot, vivid... every arrow released, each draw of my longbow or recurve...When I'm old and gray and can no longer be in the autumn woods, I'll still have my adventures each time my mounts and I glance back and forth at one another...that is taxidermy...it's preservation but the preservation I'm talking about has nothing to do with hides or antlers...
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