I had a friend in college – in fact, he’s still my friend, though I live in California, and he
lives in utterly rural Iowa. He raises hunting dogs, and winds up selling them to rich people for ungodly amounts of money. We are both the same age, and I have it on authority that he, too, yells at clouds every now and then. But he still puts on boots, warm clothes, a slicker, gets hisdogs ready, and goes out hunting when the weather is right. He still chops his own wood, which I gave up long ago. He started hunting with his dad and his friends, but he didn’t enjoy the experience at all.
They went out as a hoot, for camaraderie, and they’d be laughing, telling jokes they would never tell in front of their wives, and drinking deep from pocketed flasks. He didn’t like anything about them. And when he went out with them a few of them started shooting at billboards and stop signs, and that was enough. He went out by himself, and realized that it was what he wanted from the experience in the first place. Some quiet and peaceful solitude.
We went out hunting once, in Ohio. We were living in the same apartment, and he woke me up at 4 am and told me to get moving. He had a thermos of coffee in the front seat of his pickup and several bologna and cheese sandwiches on white bread, and we drove mostly in silence for almost an hour. It was pre-dawn, misty, and I had no idea where we were or where we were going. He had a 12 gauge shotgun, and I had a 20 gauge shotgun that I had never fired. I still have the gun – in the garage. To this day, it hasn’t been fired.
We walked away from the car and into a wooded area. He gave me brief instructions on how to use the shotgun and what not to do. We walked until it grew light out and the mist gave way to an early morning brightness. There was very little talk, as he knew it would scare the game. We kept on walking until it was warm out, and we stopped for about five minutes to take off a layer of flannel shirt, eat the bologna sandwiches, and finish off the coffee in the thermos. We went on and on until it was three in the afternoon. We had seen animals, but nothing to bother shooting at. And there were squirrels aplenty, and even a few wild turkeys, walking along in the brush.
That was primarily what hunting was to him – peace and solitude. When we got back to his pick-up truck, he commended me on my ability to keep still and refrain from mindless gab. He also appreciated the fact that I didn’t find it necessary to shoot when there was nothing to shoot at. We figured we’d do this again sometime, but a few
years later, he got married to his high school sweetheart, and moved away. So we never did.
I guess I still have the gun – the one in the garage – in case of something traumatic, like a zombie apocalypse, or a break-in. If my wife wakes me up at 3:40 in the morning and says someone is trying to break in, all I have to do is put on a pair of pants, run into the garage, get the gun down from the rafters, find the shells that I secreted away in a crock pot we never use, and run back inside, ready to fend off all n’eer-do-wells. Hopefully, the burgler will give me five or ten minutes to do all this. I’ve heard that shooting off a shotgun inside a house is really something, and no one involved will hear well for a week. I guess we’ll see.
OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD
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