The Old Man had been stashing random bits of castoff gear in outbuildings around his place for decades. Items that dated to the last days of the Second World War, fly rods loaded with ancient fabric line, bass lures made of hand-painted wood whose steel treble hooks had long since rusted away, engine parts and mysterious tools, elements of adventures long since come, gone and turned to dust, all of these lay discarded, hidden in plain sight by forgotten shadows.
These items were seeds in the Boy’s garden of imagination, relics whose stories made for Indiana Jones-style ramblings through haylofts and storage sheds where spiders offered more than enough menace to keep a young explorer on his toes. These tiny byproducts of lives lived by others hinted of potential joy unsuspected, things the Boy did not know he didn’t know.
There were tools for jobs he didn’t know existed, supplies for tasks he could not imagine, souvenirs from events he’d never know to be.
This taught him to dream, in the main. More subtly, it also taught him to recognize souvenirs as mere possessions, items whose value is limited to the experiences they might yet cause to be. He learned not to confuse monetary value with personal worth, because objects are just passing possessions, but memories never fade away, not completely.
Deep in one corner of the building lay a pile of outdoor magazines. Some had been gnawed by mice, but most in the core of the pile were still in good shape. The Boy turned the dark, crumbling pages, passing photos of elk and mule deer and of dogs pointing quail, past largemouth bass and king salmon. The Boy read his favorite part first, a humor column that started on the magazine’s last page before jumping inside, then he looked up at the Old Man, who sat in his chair working a crossword puzzle. The columnist had written about camp cooking and the magazine was full of fish and game good for the table.
“Why do you reckon God made quail taste better than blackbirds?” he asked.
The Old Man looked thoughtful for a moment.
“I don’t know that He did,” he said. “I’ve never eaten a blackbird.”
“But if they were good to eat, people would be hunting them and there’d be a season,” the Boy said.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Most people won’t try new things on their own. Maybe blackbirds are so good, the only folks who’ve tried them are keeping it a secret.”
This sounded silly, but there was a certain logic to it.
“Mostly we hunt because of the challenge,” he went on. “We eat what we shoot because it’s part of nature’s cycle, but that’s not all there is to it.
“Looking forward to the challenge of finding game, everything you have to go through to get it home, cleaned and put away. Then remembering, after it’s all over, how hard you worked and what you did, how well you shot, even if just occasionally, as long as it was occasionally enough, that’s part of it too.
“There wouldn’t be much challenge to mowing down a sack of blackbirds, but not just everybody can hit a quail. Not regularly, anyway, not enough to put on the table.
“When you’re eating a quail, or a deer if you can find one, part of what you’re tasting is the memory. Your memory of how cold the day was and how the rain smelled, how it felt to walk miles with mud stuck to your boots and how the little feathers felt in your hand when your dog completed a retrieve. There’s a lot of good feeling in that. All that’s part of the flavor, too.
“A flock of blackbirds would just taste like blackbirds, but wild game, that tastes like adventure.”
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 24 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 24 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
