This picture here is hard to appreciate with 2010 camera quality but it reminds me of quality time spent with two great men. For some odd reason I felt the need to pause and snap it a little after 4am that November morning. It was cold and dark, but I was warm, happy, and wanting to remember it later.
Getting out of a warm bed in the morning is tough for almost everyone. Doing it in the wee hours of the morning just to bundle up and go outside and sit in the woods requires true motivation. Dad’s on the porch there in the picture unlocking the door into the cold house, a place long empty but re-established as a home base for their local hunt club. David, or Grizz as the guys called him, was off to my right having just arrived. We all entered together.
This was ground well-trodden for both, but I was just a visitor spending the day hunting with them. The routine placement of things and prioritizing what to do first was easy for them. While I was fumbling to be helpful Dad quickly got some heat going and David started in the kitchen. More people were likely to show up before dawn, so they were getting things ready. David put me to a minor task mixing gravy on the stove while he worked with other parts of a hearty morning breakfast. Dad handled coffee and various other things too hard to follow at the time and even harder to recall so many years later.
They joked and laughed, talking about things of little to major importance. It was easy to see how much they respected one another and just enjoyed being there. Dad and Grizz laughed and smiled loving life in that moment. They both had spent a lifetime with the outdoors and finally had a place they could really enjoy it with their family and friends. Several men establish the club and a lot of hard work had been invested to get to that morning. They had done it all together from getting the legal rights to preparing the land and even running off trespassers and thieves.
By the time we were eating a hearty breakfast, the house was warm and active. Men came in a few at a time, some more alert than others, finding food and heat. They discussed where each person was going to be prior to sunrise. Communicating locations made it easier to identify shots in the distance and harder to make excuses about missing later. Excitement was high for what might walk out of the brush or across a field in the next couple hours.
Before the dawn started to peak over the horizon, everyone made final preparations for the woods. We all left that building, loaded up in trucks and ATVs for our morning destinations. Dad and David had chosen locations to either side of where I was to be. While I was confident in my own ability in the woods, I knew the placement was not by happenstance. I was grateful for this time with my Dad and his buddy and with the chance to be among them in their element watching them making things happen.
Later that day, I got a nice buck. It hangs on the wall over my desk in my home office and every day reminds me of an old dark house and like-minded men taking care of business all the while loving it.
