Writing: Through a Hunter’s Window

I sit here in my office, more often than not, my indoor sanctuary. A place where feelings and memories come easily, but words come hard. A place where I may brood and think, dream and wonder that which writers often dream. Someone wise once said that even though a writer seems to be merely looking through a window, he is working. And indeed it’s true…

The circular moon, that silvery disc upon which flies the sacred Old Glory, placed there by men far braver than I, casts an elongated, abstract likeness; a shadow of an ancient oak tree, now dormant–perhaps sleeping–across the drifted wavelets of snow. Their diminutive peaks so insignificantly, helplessly, reaching for the oceans of the east. Perhaps they were headed there? Where larger, more fluid waters dare to go and, in their frozen, crystallized state, somehow know by some cosmic, celestial Power their effort is, at best futile, in vain? Frozen in their quest. One has to wonder whether there is some universal language, unworldly, known only to wild things, animate or otherwise, who are exclusively worthy of its understanding? Who are we to say? For never in Man’s life on Earth will he be as purely innocent as those things of nature found in sylvan glens…

On this night, every start has switched on its porch light, and I sit pondering the hunting seasons past among a multitude of other peaceful, random thoughts and soon come to knowing and feeling a certain sense of prodigious peace; of ever-deepening inner-comfort with just the simple knowledge, the threat for them, the whitetails and other wildlife forms has, once again, passed. Like myself, they too are at peace and Harm’s Way is no longer something they must avoid. The dread of winter, their true and worst enemy?

Still, it is not incomprehensible, that one of a predatory nature feels this sense of peace for wildlife? A feeling so ardent, so deep, so strong, it often carves a smile into his weathered face? A hunter? Yes. A man who genuinely and intimately cares for all things wild and free on God’s craziest planet? Again, but more definitely, yes!

For as much as I look forward to the hunts, and yes, dread the occasional killing aspect, I embrace more enthusiastically, the end of it all. It makes me warmer in a special place where, not long ago, I felt the painful throes of death. And perhaps does more for that fist-sized muscle than all of Man’s most sophisticated surgical procedures could ever manage-and without the scalpel. For once upon a time, a widowed dove sang her plangent, dulcet song for me. Somehow, and strangely, I think I understood?

I feel, sincerely, I have well-earned and am therefore entitled, to the regal title, Hunter. For not only do I think I understand the language of wild things, the needs of all creatures, yes great and small, I try wholeheartedly to provide those needs when indeed, they are the greatest. And I kill only when my ever-aging heart dictates to an ever-again mind. A mind that shall forever remember that wild places and wild things and wildlife provided this life with its most wondrous moments; sights, sounds, seclusion and yes, sustenance.

I have been eyewitness to what some less worldly soul may call miracles. Out There. Where miracles happen with each tick of Nature’s precious clock; where wonders never cease. Where God and I always and I always walk, my Silent Partner, together…

I have seen the abominable, merciless wrath of Nature, which in no fast or certain way, terminates Life. Those living, breathing miracles and yes, otherwise. If something dies by this hunter’s hand, it does so cleanly, swiftly, humanely and always with the pain of remorse in my heart…

I have wept watching the white-tailed fawn’s birthings in springtime and done the same , only with increased emotion, as through glistening eyes, I observed the deer of the winter yards dying from starvation; their skins stretched heinously over their fragile ribcages like the hides on snare drums. And yes, it is always the young of the herd to perish first, without pity from their elders. As in only the strong survive. As in we eat first and you my little one must die…

I have had chipmunks wriggle up the no-no end of my double shotgun then back out quizzically and comically. Gray squirrels have perched upon my sun drenched shoulders in the warmth of the autumnal sun and once, one jumped as high in the air as God and Nature, one in the same, might allow when I whispered a simple, “Good mornin’ little one!” And I’ve had whitetails so close the funneling steam from their flared nostrils fogged my shooting glasses and I could smell the cud of vegetation on their breath.

I’ve cried at the death of a cedar waxwing which succumbed after my desperate efforts to heal her wounds failed. And there was a time not too long ago when I smiled with a certain confidence in my hunting heart as a most heavily antlered white-tailed buck was allowed to walk past my morning stand-within twenty yards-knowing his life was purely at the mercy of my sentiment at the moment. He did not die by my hand. Me, the lover of the sacred, ritualistic buck hunt? Yes! Why did I not end his life, this once-in-a-lifetime-buck, so elegant, furtive and yet this morning making perhaps his greatest mistake? I don’t know…

And commonly, I’ve had black-capped chickadees tiptoe onto my cap as I sat beneath protective hemlocks. Ever so gently then, onto a shoulder. How often I’ve asked a mutual God to let me in on just what, exactly, they were thinking as, again, I whispered my startling, notorious, “Good morinin’ little one!” He never has. Yet…

Sylvan magic, wildlife wonders, miracles in the making? Abundant and available to the hunter. The seeker of miraculous sights, sounds and wild songs…

Perhaps someday, God will let me in on the secret, magical language of wild things? Perhaps He’ll say, “Okay, here’s what the chickadees said those times they lit upon your shoulder…” And then again, maybe not? I suppose this is why I’m a hunter. A keeper of wild places. A vagabond of pine-thick meadows? That way, when he does begin to teach me, On High, I’ll have a great advantage to understanding it all? Finally.

Right now, a predaceous intuition prods me to look out to the field across the road. I see ebony silhouettes of five, strung-out white-tailed deer. They glide silently like the shadows of nightly clouds in the cast light of the full moon; against the very Mother which-or who-gave them Life.

Perhaps they’ll succumb to the elements, the wrath? I pray not. Perhaps they’ll make it into springtime, finding renewed life in verdant meadows? I pray so…

For it is these living miracles, in no small way, that brought my hunting heart to the profound realization that I hunt not so much to kill, but to more intimately learn the true value of life; to further drive home to the heart, the precious nature of it all and thus, be grateful.

As a hunter, a sort of paladin of all things wild and free, I will pray on this starry night. That the time I’m allotted between this moment and the day I’m taught the Tongue of the Wild is long. With many nights of beautiful, silvery moons and whitetails silhouetted against a steel, blue wintry sky for these are memories able to sustain me. Surely, you understand why?


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