Not just for the birds

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  • What’s Beautiful?

    What’s Beautiful?

    I was looking for a file for an assignment on Hamlet this afternoon and came across this thing I wrote for one of my classes a few years ago. I’ll often write alongside my students on an assignment, or model something before-hand. But I’d forgotten about this. I thought I’d share it here since it has to do with Peat, and because it’s not only about him or birds. The other thing I talk about might connect somehow to bird hunting. Maybe it doesn’t. But it’s part of who I am, or was, or will be. What’s beautiful to you? As avid bird hunters, surely we see many things outside the terrain of partridges that move us. For this assignment, I asked students to 1) define beauty, and 2) describe the most beautiful thing. This was my response to both.

    Definition of beauty: beauty is a feeling of being overwhelmed by pleasure in something. It could be a thought or idea, a physical object, a landscape, a smell, a whole person or creature, an experience, a sound that lasts just an instant or an entire concert of music, or a physical sensation. It could be almost anything, but whatever it is, words cannot adequately describe the beauty. Words fall short. Otherwise, beauty wouldn’t be beautiful; it would be ordinary.

    The most beautiful thing to me is: it’s a toss-up between two things. The first is watching my puppy go on point, and the second is watching a stranger help someone who is having trouble with something. I picked the first because I love Peat (my puppy) but can’t explain what that love is made up of except to say that it’s the whole experience of getting him at 7 weeks old and wanting to kill him nearly every day for his first year or so but working through that, and realizing that every night he calms down and presses himself against me in bed and passes out from exhaustion and has fur that’s softer than God should have been allowed to make; this little guy’s bird-finding instincts are miraculous and when he’s looking for them and suddenly finds them what he does is even more miraculous and beautiful: he freezes instantly in the weirdest posture, with his neck bowed to the ground and his nose up, and one of his front paws is lifted daintily off the ground, and he will not move until the birds fly. See, I’ve tried to explain what’s so beautiful about this, and even if I wrote ten million words, they couldn’t adequately express the feeling of beauty to me. The second thing is similar to the first in that I can’t really describe how moving it is to see a stranger help someone in need. There’s just something about seeing that that makes me feel the world is okay and that people really are good, or can be. In a world where you usually notice how mean people can be, and how most people, strangers, seem to be out for themselves and screw everybody else (especially when they’re driving!), it’s overwhelming to see the opposite, partly because it’s kind of rare but also because it shows we can love without judging, and there’s something about that that is so good I could never in a million years describe it. 

  • Reflection

    Reflection

    My problem is that anything that I want to be good at, I take it seriously and have the tendency to get obsessed with it. Years ago, I raced bicycles at an elite level and for 12 months a year my life revolved around bicycles and the bicycle racing scene. It was eat, sleep, train, travel all over the place to race plus I had a full-time job on top of that.

    This time of my life was way before the internet, social media, and Instagram so I had subscriptions to every bicycle magazine on the planet to get my constant fix. Success back then wasn’t measured by how many followers or likes you had, real or fake ones that are easily bought for a few bucks but actual credentials and race results that got me free bikes, clothing, and a small stipend towards my race entry fees and travel expenses. After 15 years of spending every free moment on my bike and missing doing other outdoor activities, especially in the summer, I got burned out and walked away from the sport and didn’t want anything to do with it.

    I’m passionate about chukar hunting and love the sport but I’m almost glad the season is only four months a year. I’m also happy that I’m not in the upland hunting industry because it’s nice to take a break, change focus, and do other things the other eight months. My chukar hunting obsession needs to take a break, yes there is too much of a good thing and I don’t want to get burned out on upland bird hunting like I did on bicycle racing.

    I’m a goal oriented person which made me be a successful bicycle racer but I made a mistake at the beginning of this past chukar season to try and hunt my age which is 57 plus hike further and gain more elevation than the season before. I didn’t achieve my goal on the last day of the season and felt a little bit of a failure.

    I like the off-season and I’ll be outdoors trail-running, hiking, fly-fishing, and sometimes even riding my bicycle. My plan is to be fresh and excited to switch gears back to chukar hunting this coming fall. Who knows what my next what obsession will be. Mountaineering? I kind of doubt it but who knows, ten years ago I never thought in a million years I’d ever carry a shotgun and kill birds. I do know one thing for next season, I’m not setting any goals for anything.

  • Rituals

    Rituals

    Some things are rituals. It was never discussed on Saturday but over the course of the last four months it was customary or tradition that we’d bird hunt on every Sunday.

    Last Sunday morning while sitting in front of the wood stove drinking coffee and looking out the living room window toward the mountains, Bob said, “Let’s go for a hike after I get done grading papers. Just because the season is over doesn’t mean we can’t go for a hike. Besides, we all need some exercise.” I agreed wholeheartedly.

    I grabbed my upland bird pack from the garage and transferred things from it to my day hiking backpack. It was always a practice during hunting season that I’d have a mental check list of things to add to my pack so not to forget something important. It was routine to fill my hydration pack with water, look to make sure my gloves were still in there, to add some dog treats and snacks. Of course this time I didn’t need to worry about packing enough shotgun shells or to remember to put my shotgun in the back of the pickup. One ritual we didn’t break this time was to bring GPS collars for the dogs. Bob accidentally forgot the collars once so as we would drive away from our house, I would always ask him if we have the dog collars. We don’t really need GPS collars if we’re not hunting but Angus is deaf and senile sometimes and it’s comforting knowing we could track him if he wanders off, which he did a couple of times this season.

    We drove through town and past a couple of churches with parking lots packed full of big pickups and cars. We’d always joke on our way down to the canyon on a late Sunday morning that we were going to the 24-Hour Church of HELLS Canyon.

    It was a beautiful February afternoon. We started up a steep ridge, and the ascent felt easy. We continued our climb for another hour through the sage and bitterbrush, and the dogs went on point down below me near Bob. The sound of a covey busting filled the air. Out of habit, I was expecting to hear the sound of Bob shooting, but it was strangely quiet and I wondered if the dogs were confused why we didn’t shoot. Did they know we weren’t carrying a gun and it’s the off season? Traversing up the ridge we found a few more coveys of Huns but no chukar. We’d hunted here once before earlier in the season but the dogs had found only chukar and no Huns. Weird.

    We hadn’t spent a lot of time in the canyon this season, but spiritually I feel like the hills are sacred. The hills are my church. We eventually turned around and headed back down, and I stopped to admire the view of the distant snow-covered mountains and to watch Peat and Angus running through the golden bunchgrass and I knew at that exact moment that this spot I was standing on was where I want to scatter some of Angus’s ashes.

    Heading up.
    Angus with his subtle point. It’s the way he’s always done it.
    Peat backing Angus who’s way below him.
    Catching the wind.
    Strange not carrying a shotgun in my hand or on my shoulder.
    A couple of Huns
    Peat watching them fly.
    A single that busted after the main covey
    Funny Peat laying down while honoring
    Peat honoring Angus again.
    Sacred hills.
    Angus of the chukar hills.
    So long, farewell, and just like a habit we’ll be back next season.
  • Season Highlights

    Season Highlights

    A week later, the withdrawal symptoms have begun. Peat’s evening hotlaps have intensified. Angus seems more lost than his age and illness can explain, insisting on some daily me-time around dusk to see if any game birds have interloped on our plot. Leslie made the video. I’m having more meltdowns than usual, at least in my head (and seem to be sleeping much less). Arg. I hate the off-season.

    But, as you can see in the video, it was a season worth looking at. All the numbers were better than ever, even if it felt like there were fewer birds than ever. The numbers say otherwise (that’s why it’s good to keep a log, to keep your memory fair).

    So enjoy the video, and — if you’re anything like me — hang in there until next September.

  • Old Paths

    Old Paths

    Bob and I stood there at the bottom of the mountain for a couple of minutes looking up the steep ridge and up to a rocky outcropping high up on the ridgetop. We scanned the terrain for obvious paths made by animals. These paths usually prove to be the easier route up to the place in the rocks where we hope to find some chukar. Bob hollered at Peat and Angus to go find some birds, and our dogs, just like wild animals, naturally followed these old paths. We followed the dogs.

    I headed up the rocky game path with my head down, lifting one foot front in front of the other, and I’d count twenty steps before allowing myself to catch my breath for a second, and then I’d dizzily look around to see if the dogs were onto birds.

    Game paths are habits of the landscape. Some are straight, some are meandering, some cross through creek beds lined with hawthorns and aspen trees, and a few have dead ends. We have been beckoned by and followed many hundreds of miles of these ancient paths chukar hunting the past few years and have followed ghostly footprints left in the snow, mud, and dew. We have stopped to examine tracks of elk, deer, rabbits, mice, snakes, turkeys, coyotes, chukar, cougar, wolves, and our own dogs’ paw prints.

    chukar path

    Humans are animals too and we make tracks in the icy snow and slippery mud. Our footprints and scent are now obvious to the next traveler. Walking on these paths veining the earth makes us feel human, they make us feel more connected with nature. There are beautiful things we will never see unless we walk on these paths.

    Hole in the rock.