I am fortunate enough to be a member of a few different professional organizations of outdoor writers, and the access that affords me has been one that’s helped me keep the rest of my world in focus.
Each group meets once a year in varying locations for the purpose of, as humor columnist Dave Barry once said, giving awards to one another, which we do. But we also raise a little money for scholarships through auctioning off some of the excess outdoor swag that comes our way. These events are sponsored by big names in the outdoor industry, and so there are typically a few nice big-ticket items up for bids, but the plurality of the items for sale come from among our members.
Many Octobers ago at a such a gathering, I bought a big tackle box full of bass baits that had been donated by one of my favorite mentors and best friends. The friend in question is a retired college professor who lives in the Carolinas and specializes in fly fishing, yet the necessity of cash flow meant he’d written no small number of traditional bass fishing articles along the way.
The cache in question was a good-sized Rubbermaid box with clasps on either end. Inside were removable trays, rows of compartments, slides of containers and racks of hangers. From stern to stem, the box was loaded with bass-centric spinners, divers, chatterers, sinkers, swimmers, ploppers, plungers and enough treble hooks to fill every ER west of Bogue Chitto with puncture wound patients.
I bought it to give to my then 13-year-old son for Christmas, which I did and, shortly thereafter, roughly a quarter of its contents were to be found hanging from trees, snarled in laydowns, embedded in embankments and traded away for similar loot from his friends, which was just exactly what I had hoped would happen. The balance, as I also hoped, were fished every day, transferred in small doses to a backpack and bicycled from pond to pond in the neighborhood where we live.
Outdoor writers have access to a wealth of wonderful experiences but, without fail, they are not wealthy themselves. Their compensation in life comes through dreams fulfilled. Still, a few dollars for a good cause in exchange for a passel of once-given bass baits was, and remains, the best of deals.
When I get all caught up in the hand-held instant communication we’ve created for the apparent purpose of reminding ourselves to hate one another, all I need do to escape is to look up and think about days not so long gone by.
It’s not hard to picture a common sight from that time — one of my son and his bicycle gang of buddies pedaling by, pursuing trophy bass or tiny pool perch, whichever would bite first. They were pursuing them with a passion unique to kids who were old enough to make some decisions for themselves but were yet too young to notice the burdens adulthood brings.
Such mental images are a reminder that, no matter what’s going on elsewhere in the world, summers are still sunny, neighbors are still friends, and fishing is still the best place to be.
It’s a wonderful thing, introducing kids to the outdoors. Both kids and the outdoors have been making their own introductions, one to another, unheralded and unhindered by adults, since time began. Sometimes, if we are very lucky, the relationship even serves to introduce us back.
It sure seems to do so for me.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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