The boy walked as quietly as he could. He was hunting, but he concentrated on moving and being quiet first. Stealth, he knew, was key.
When he could, he stepped where rain had washed leaves away to show bare dirt. When he couldn’t, he picked his feet straight up, so as not to drag, took short steps and put his toes down carefully, feeling for sticks that might crack and give him away. He looked down, then up, then down again, easing along. Moving after looking carefully, watching for a still moment. Moving without moving, really.
He carried a scoped .22 for squirrels, or a .30-06 for deer, or a big double rifle with open sights for dangerous game, or just a BB gun, if anybody asked.
He caught his breath in a high pass of the Rockies, or crept along a sendero in south Texas, or slipped beside an old fence line that marked the boundary of how far he could roam alone. It didn’t matter, really. When everything in the world is so much larger and unexplained, imagining what might be comes easier.
As years went by he had grown, and traded that advantage of perspective for the things boys think they want. With it went the magic. He thought experience would replace imagination and so let the latter go, and experience, he found, was great, though finite, while imagination could go anywhere, and forever.
Then it occurred to him if he could only imagine being that small again, he might, in a second step, imagine the world from there. One step, then two, a careful look, through an un-jaded eye, and maybe, sometimes, it was working.
He remembered when these fields had been pasture, when a barn had stood to one side just so. He remembered an afternoon spent in its loft, the smell of fresh hay along the floor and in stacks rafter high, dry beside September rain, sitting beside his mother in the loading door, watching a dove shoot he was too small to attend.
He remembered when the BB gun he held had been new, smelled freshly of oil. He looked through its peep sight and remembered learning to aim and squeeze. Was the target in sharp focus then? He thought so. He would get his glasses and look and imagine again.
Looking there while standing here helped him see other things, too. It let him remember how big things are to boys who are small, and reminded him how much a boy appreciates a patient guide, though it doesn’t always show. It let him remember how fragile big dreams are, and how it hurts when they’re shaken by the doubts of others, for fear they’ll fall, and reminded him some might want to see, they can go anywhere they like. Dreams realized are only logistics applied. They happen one step at a time, after looking carefully, watching for a still moment, and moving without moving, really.
Kevin Tate is the outdoors writer for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
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