Not just for the birds

Tag: emily dickinson

  • Blessed

    Blessed

    As usual, chukar hunting, like some of the best things in life, continues not to make much sense to me. What does make sense to me is that the fact that it doesn’t make sense is probably the reason I keep doing it, not necessarily so I can find some sense in it, but because it’s not subject to the rules of things that should make sense. Things that should make sense are problematic because when they don’t make sense, which always eventually happens, then you get all warped up and try to force something that can’t be forced. Something breaks, or needs to. There are things about chukar hunting that make sense, such as — duh — you need to remember to bring your gun, and your dogs, and all that other crap to make it happen. But that’s not the hunting. I’m talking about hunting. It makes no sense. I love it. That I’m able to do it and not feel obliged to understand it makes it my favorite blessing. I guess that’s why I’m writing about it on Christmas instead of doing it; I’d rather be out there, but there are things that need to make sense today that got in the way. Writing about it is a way of trying to have it make sense, but I’m not afraid I’ll turn it into an understood thing because it’s hunting. Hunting can’t make any sense. When it does, I’ll stop.

    So I’m glad I’m not yet sleeping in an alabaster chamber, partly because I’m not really sure about my level of meekness, but I’m happy to report that I’ve been touched by morning and by noon, several times, in the past week of hiking the chukar hills with our family. It’s been a particularly blessed week.

    Partly because we’ve made a more devout effort this season to hunt areas we’ve never hunted before. Surprise: it’s paid off. Everyone has his or her go-to spots, and ours seemed to have dried up this season, which is good and bad but overall a blessing I think. If the familiar spots had contained the numbers of birds we’d been accustomed to, we wouldn’t have expanded the repertoire and would have missed what’s been there all along but untouched by our feet. I hope there’s a lesson in this we can remember.

    Another blessed thing is that, as the season winds down, I’m amazed that each season we seem to lap more miles, elevation gain, and bagged game. This sounds like bragging (maybe it is), but it’s notable to me because it speaks of a growing desire for something: maybe it’s time with the dogs, especially one whose season itself is a miracle but also the other one who’s getting better each hunt (miraculous in itself when considering our beginning together). Maybe it’s a proof thing: can we do more even though our bodies don’t look or feel as fit and young as only a few seasons ago? Maybe we’re just dumber. Who knows? It makes no sense.

    I’ll take it. I feel blessed. I wish you all the same.

    It seemed miraculous that the antler-rubbed shavings still sat in a pile months after being scraped
    Peat’s ruffed grouse
    Peat’s dusky grouse
    Double chukar
    Peat’s haul Christmas eve: dusky grouse, chukar, and Hungarian partridge
    Peat and a Hungarian partridge
  • Losing Stuff

    Losing Stuff

    Winter

    So much of bird hunting is about loss.

    Take yesterday, for example. In the truck, on the icy road to our destination, I lost traction a couple of times. On the hunt, I lost track of Leslie periodically, as well as the friends we hunted with. Peat, whose pad has healed nicely thanks to the booties which I’m still making him wear because he looks so goofy in them, lost both booties who knows where. I lost my footing several times in the icy snow, including once when hustling to find Peat, who I could hear barking hysterically up a tree down in a brushy hole, presumably at a long-departed dusky grouse; I took a super-chalant header, involuntarily separated from my gun, which ended up facing me with the safety off (must have been caused by the ground), which made me ponder the potential loss of life or limb from such an escapade. A bit later on, Peat pointed way down a precipitous, icy slope, and I decided the only way to get to him within a half-hour was to use my butt as a sled, which worked quite effectively, an idea for whose brilliance I congratulated myself several times while in motion before planting the ol’ boots and springing into the ready position just as the covey busted. Moments later, Peat brought me the chukar which had lost its life, and I went for my radio to tell Leslie about it and discovered that I’d lost my radio somewhere in the snow during the slide.

    Winner with the loser

    There are other kinds of loss, too, of course, some good and some not so good. One of the good ones is maybe the main reason I hunt: to lose myself in the quest to find birds to shoot. Identity evaporates, and there’s no there there. We all need a break from ourselves once in a while, and projecting my self onto my dogs in breath-taking country is an all-expenses-paid vacation from man handing on misery to man (apologies to Philip Larkin). I’m sincere when I say it’s a shame this economy requires the killing of something truly innocent even though it sort of exists outside the equation; it’s incidental and it isn’t. I guess there really is no such thing as a free lunch.

    A certain slant

    And then there’s the loss of daylight as the season progresses, and the sense of loss that comes with declining temperatures and angles of light, which helps me better understand one of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems:

    There’s a certain Slant of Light —
    Winter Afternoons —
    That oppresses, like the Heft —
    Of Cathedral Tunes —

    Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —
    We can find no scar,
    But internal difference —
    Where the Meanings, are —

    None may teach it — Any —
    ‘Tis the seal Despair —
    An imperial affliction
    Sent us of the Air —

    When it comes, the Landscape listens —
    Shadows — hold their breath —
    When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
    On the look of Death —

    Dave and Aspen in a familiar place

    And then there’s the cycle of dogs. Although Aspen wasn’t a hunting dog, he hunted, and spent most of his days in the forest. And my brother-in-law lived through him. Sudden massive cancer, a few days left, maybe. Losing our dogs is an imperial affliction we knowingly set ourselves up for, a loss we know is coming from the day we take the pup from its litter-mates or rescue it from the shelter.

    As the bell curve of a dog’s vitality starts to line up with our own, the profit and loss intensifies, like the lowering light in the last month of chukar season. And we’re all aware, and it’s okay. Losing stuff is better than okay. It just is. It’s where the meanings are.