Musing, Mumbling and Muttering

As a beginning trout fisher I had problems that day. I could ferret out the lies and make a reasonable approximation of the proper presentation, and my casting skills were up to the task, but hooking the fish wasn't easy for me. I caught a lot of fish, but for every one I hooked I missed eight or ten, literally. Nymphing upstream with an indicator is a technique I had little experience with at that point, and I was just too damned slow. It was like a shootout in a dusty street. I cast each time knowing the fish would strike, keyed up for the quick draw. Then the fish would strike and spit it out before I could react, and I fell in the dust with my pistol half out of the holster.

Now, when we switched rods I was playing a game I know how to play. A million bluegills caught on surface flies prepared me for what was to come. Since I only intended to cast your rod six or eight times and return it, I left the dry fly on. I had tried swimming a nymph to the fish in the pool already, and had seen a couple of surface rises near the tail of the pool, so a dry seemed a good thing to try. I really wasn't fishing, though, just getting a feel of the delightful little cane rod. Then a fish made a huge boiling rise close by in the tail of the pool, so I dropped the fly right in the center of it. WOW!

I have a confession to make, my friend. There was a short time during that fight when I would rather your rod broke than the tippet. Sorry 'bout that. Happily, neither did.

Streams ring my chimes. I've been in love with the mountain streams for many years, have hiked by them, photographed them, sat by them for hours just looking at and soaking in the healing ambiance. Moss covered rocks tumbled willy-nilly, stair-step pools repeated endlessly, the sound of multiple waterfalls and the feel of cool spray in the air...it fits into a picture which I can't get enough of. Now an extra element has been added, stalking trout in them. I'll never look at one the same.

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The natural world presents a never ending procession of marvelous events, large and small, which entertains me more than most anything. There's always some delightful surprise, if you just stay attuned. Some things are easy to spot, though.

I climbed the stairs to get a cup of hot tea this afternoon, and one of those delightful happenings happened. We feed birds outside the kitchen window, which is on the second level at the back of the house. The main feeder is a "squirrel proof" one, a cylinder of mesh filled with seeds, surrounded by a wire cage with openings calculated to be just too small for a squirrel to enter. About 3 weeks ago, the feeder was knocked off the gutter where it hangs by our resident raccoons, which we feed every night. The feeder landed on the concrete two levels down, and looks a bit lopsided, now, being generally sprung. I glanced at it as I reached the top of the stairs, and saw a big, fat gray squirrel *inside* the cage, gorging herself with sunflower seeds. She had found where one of the solder joints had come loose from the trauma, spread two wires and squeezed in. I knocked on the window, but she ignored me. I opened the sliding window and stepped out, 2 feet from the feeder. Well, she went bonkers, thrashing around in her self-imposed prison like a whirling dervish. This gadget is small enough that she had barely room to turn, and she could not find her way out. Watching her head constantly, I reached out and touched her back. More bonkers, in spades. That was so much fun, I did it again, for five minutes, stroking her belly, pulling gently on her tail, feeling her back, holding her foot. Bonkers, bonkers, bonkers! Then, in the midst of what must surely have seemed her worst nightmare come true, she grabbed a sunflower seed from the cylinder and proceeded to eat it! Amazing. Taking pity, I sprung the loose wire and poked her in such a way as to make her find it, and out she popped. With her hair standing straight up, her tail helicoptering, she jumped from the deck to the ground one floor down, raced to a nearby tree and up to a big limb. She immediately started the loudest, most indignant string of squirrel cursing I've ever heard. Crows ain't in it. She was most insulted, ravaged even, and wanted all the world to know.

I'll remember the encounter forever. I wonder if she remembers it, even now.

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This spring a pair of Cooper's hawks, Accipiter cooperi, are nesting in my yard, and I've been able to watch them going about their daily lives. It's really something to see.

The pair consists of an obviously larger bird and a smaller one. The larger, probably the female, began working on an old stick nest in a tree not forty yards from my back door almost five weeks ago, and I saw her frequently, down on the ground walking around like a long-legged chicken and gathering sticks. She would then fly quickly to the nest and work for a few minutes, then drop down to look for another. This went on for two or three weeks, and the smaller male was nowhere to be seen.

I saw her hunting the small birds in the yard, saw her catch a couple, but more frequently saw her eating one or the leavings where she had done so. She has established a 'butcher's block' on a large, horizontal limb of a walnut tree nearby, where she usually brings her catch to consume it, and there are usually one or two robin carcasses left lying on the limb. I've seen her carry a few birds to the limb and eat them.

Eventually the smaller bird put in an appearance, and I now get to see them both flying around the yard at all times of the day, zooming up to the nest, streaking around the house with set wings, trying to surprise a feeding bird. They frequently perch close by, and my binoculars bring them up close and personal. They are one of the most attractive of the hawks to my way of thinking... slate blue wings, back and head, breast horizontally barred with rusty red, horizontal grey stripes under the tail. Most impressive, though, is their fierce face, full of concentration, with eyes to spear you with. They have the same regal, intent look as the goshawk, but without the prominent white stripe over the eye which is so impressive in that larger accipiter. Gorgeous. Accipiter fly with a particularly confident, aggressive, purposeful style which demonstrates their marvelous adaptation, and can streak through the heaviest foliage without touching a leaf. Supremely capable birds. They hunt down in the trees and brush, always going with a rush, and that's the only way I've ever seen them behave, the way I have always thought of them. Until today.

This afternoon I noticed both birds engaged in an ariel display low over their nesting tree. Dog fighting ain't in it! They swooped and turned, dived and rolled, constantly close together, usually tail chasing. This went on for a couple of minutes, then both birds swooped into the nest tree, the large female landed near the nest, but the smaller male continued climbing. I was astonished to see him catch a strong thermal right over the tree, set his wings and start a spiraling climb in the rising air. He hardly flapped at all, and looked like a miniature red-tailed hawk climbing for altitude. I've never seen an accipiter do anything similar. The thermal quickly carried him three or four hundred feet straight up, and then he left it and went sailing off, wings still set, to the south and out of sight.

I assume this is in no way a part of his hunting, but rather of his behavior related to his family duties. Strutting his stuff. It can't be long before the young hatch, and I can't wait to see them begin their awkward and clumsy school days. I wish them all the best luck. There just can't be too many Cooper's hawks.

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Friend: "I prefer Mother Nature under the sheets of clouds, rolling and tumbling under the moving covers, mysterious and wet and full of surprises. But...I'll take her any way I can get her."

Wonderful imagery, wonderful. Atavistic understanding crowds to the surface of my mind, becomes not quite knowledge, subsides. A refusal. Overpowering sense of blending, merging, becoming one. Rather, the impossibility of not being one with Mother Earth, only a rekindled awareness of the immutable fact of it. Comfortable, fecund, receptive, nubile, giving Mother, ultimate source of all I am, ultimate recipient of all I was. Star stuff, both she and I, each part of the never ending cycle. Nothing more is needed.

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Excerpts from a conversation with a Friend.

Friend: "However, beasts of the mind are excellent predators."

I take me with me, wherever I go. I am the center of the universe. Travel and search as I may, I always wind up in the center of my own circle, with myself as sole companion. No other person can travel with me, no other person can enter my inner circle. There I experience the ultimate loneliness, and any battles to be fought are mine to do, alone. I think there's a clue, there.

Friend: "And a good one it is. I think that there is a psychological dynamic that allows for additional travelling company though, don't you? I agree that at our core, we are indeed alone. Naked. But into the woods (or wherever else I might go) I carry an entire cast of characters from The Big Play. As I think we all do. I have felt, and usually enjoyed, the presence of many others while alone in the swamp, up the tree, in the creek, atop the mountain. Keats, Lorca, McGuane, Monet, Vivaldi, Plato, Service, Ikkyu, Basho, Hokusi, Stanley, Buddha, Spencer, Cranor, Deer, Mouse, Redtail and a thousand others. We are by ourselves, but are we really alone? I don't know."

I'm convinced we are. I think of the analogy of the Jewish Holy of Holys in the old testament. Various levels of priests could go beyond certain curtains, but only the highest priest could venture past the vail which surrounded the Arc of the Covenant. So it is with our ultimate 'self', contained in an impenetrable cubicle. We can carry traveling companions in our mind, but they are limited to the outer circles, never allowed access to the innermost.

*****

Friend: "There have been many days, or more accurately evenings, where a drink or two has had the most wonderful effect upon my soul."

I can't imagine anyone experiencing any more wonderful 'effect on my soul' than I can conjure up, occasionally, out of thin air. If I had any sort of help in bringing that about, I'd always be suspicious of the reality of it, I'm afraid.

*****

Friend: "Alone by choice and alone by circumstance are very different things, I think."

The aloneness I'm speaking of is the one that follows us into the largest crowds, and has nothing to do with whether there are people about. We exist on many, many levels, and we have people with us in most of them...social, sexual, intellectual...but not that innermost one, where we live and die, and, even more importantly, where we decide the quality of our life and death.

*****

Friend: "Which is really better: Yin (darkness, cold and death) or Yang (life and heat)? One without the other cannot exist."

In the end, and in the overall scheme of things, it really doesn't matter. We each get to live one life, and the way we live it is strictly up to us. That's fair and I could never argue with a man who decides either way. The problem I have is that I doubt we any of us can make that decision on our own. We carry too much psychological preconditioning around as overweight baggage to make a clean decision about any of it, I'm afraid. As Eric Bern said, " I don't know if I'm playing the piano of life, or if it's a player piano. It doesn't matter, so long as the music is beautiful".

*****

Friend: "When you write of death: "...and not at a great distance in time", I assume you are speaking generally as opposed to any specific a priori knowledge?"

No special knowledge, just the awareness of my small place in the grand production, and what a small bit part is mine. You can intellectualize about that, but you can't really understand, at your tender age. In 25 years, all will be clear. Do you know how the water emptying from a sink seems to go so slowly for the longest time, but seems to accelerate at the end? That's similar to the feeling we old farts have about time. Obviously, the flow is steady as the universe, but it's a game of percentages, and the perception is of a final rush, a hastening to be finished with it. I can feel the beginnings of the whirlpool, and in the odd moment, my mind turns to speculation of....

A realization came upon me recently which is interesting to consider. Dying. I suddenly knew that I have no fear of going, or of what is beyond, only that I really hate the thought of all I'll leave behind. If there were virgin forests and tinkling brooks to look forward to, instead of streets of gold, I might even become a believer.

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Ahhh! Memory lane once again. Years ago, I noticed a pair of turkey vultures frequenting an old abandoned house out in the boonies. I suspected they were nesting there, so I gathered up my camera gear (I was in my National Geographic phase at the time) and went to investigate. Hot as hell in July or August. In the attic I found a nest of half-grown specimens of what must be the ugliest creature on earth. I got my pictures, but learned a valuable lesson...projectile vomiting is a good defense mechanism, especially for carrion eaters. The combination of vulture puke, sweltering heat and angry wasps caused me to concede the territory. Still got those pictures around here, somewhere.

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We circled the pond several times, Skip fishing and I giving instructions and controlling the boat to put him in the best position possible. He is a beginner at flyfishing, enthusiastic but awkward, as we all are at first. During the afternoon he caught 2 bass, the largest just under 2 pounds, and was tickled pink. As the sun slowly sank into the haze and turned blood red, Skip got tired. He said "Here, take my rod and fish for a few minutes and let me rest." We were on the northwest corner of the dam, so I took his Orvis 10 foot, #7 weight and started fishing the black Dahlberg Diver he had on. When we reached the other end of the dam, where the brush extended well over the water, I thought it was time for a lesson, a demonstration of the side cast. I told him to watch and cast well back under the overhanging brush, right in the very corner. I immediately got a soft rise and struck hard. Then again. Wow! The fish made a powerful surging run to the right, fortunately staying clear of the brush. I backed the boat out into deeper water and we settled down for a real tussle. The fish fought deep for 3-4 minutes, then exploded in a spectacular head-shaking jump. Amazing! She was BIG! She jumped three more times in rapid succession. On the last she ran under the boat and came up in a really splashy jump behind me, throwing water all over Skip. I finally got her in the boat, and she was the largest bass I've caught for several years. I slipped her back into the pond with a promise to meet again, soon.

I had been telling Skip what impressive fighters our southern largemouth bass are, and he seemed convinced.

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Over a lifetime of hunting and poking around in the outdoors I've had many close approaches to a variety of wildlife, what I like to think of as close encounters of the best kind. They usually come as a pleasant surprise through no effort on my part. Since the eyesight of most critters is optimized for motion detection, I just happen to be invisible to them when I'm sitting in frozen immobility on some stand or other. I've had several squirrels come very close, a few to actually climb on me. Sitting with my back against a tree, I've had two of them climb down the tree and onto my shoulder. You can hear them coming by the scrabbling of their nails on the bark, and if you hold absolutely still they will never realize you aren't just another limb. Sitting on a fallen tree trunk lodged at an angle, bow hunting for deer, I had one climb up my leg.

In another situation, calling foxes late one night while standing in an open field, a similar encounter occurred with a raccoon. A great horned owl responded to my calling, and I was trying to catch it in the beam of my headlamp as it swooped repeatedly over my head only a few feet up, when I felt a tugging at my britches leg. Looking down I saw an adult raccoon intent on climbing me, looking for that rabbit. I didn't manage to hold still, that time, and we parted company quite quickly.

Sitting on a fat limb in a large oak tree, just at dusk one evening, calling foxes with a wounded rabbit call, I had another great horned owl swoop in and land on the limb I was leaning against, its head only two feet from and level with my own. Swiveling my head very slowly to the left, I stared it in the eye and watched it watching me. Beautiful! My, Grandma, what large eyes you have! After a minute or so, it became alarmed and launched itself, striking me across the face with the tip of its right wing as it departed.

Raptors frequently answer the call, and I had a large redtail hawk land atop a four-foot fence post which I was sitting leaned against. It sat there for several minutes, looking for the food, then glided away across the field.

Sitting on a limb ten feet up a small tree on the bank of a small stream, I had the privilege of watching a mink feed for almost an hour directly below me. A small log was angled into the water of a quiet pool, and the mink used it as a feeding station. It repeatedly slipped into the water in search of crayfish, and would return to the log to eat them whenever it found one. For much of the time, it simply played in the water, like an otter in miniature. Grace in motion. What a marvelously adapted creature, and what a treat to be able to study one in its natural state, doing its thing. I was very sorry to see it go, and I had hardly thought of the deer I was hunting all the while it was cavorting.

A large covey of bobwhite quail fed within feet of my boots as I sat with my legs stretched out, leaning against a tree in the creek bottoms of my farm. Their steady little chirping sounds of communication as they fed steadily along were sweet music, indeed. I've heard their characteristic call thousands of times, but never that quite gossiping.

Many deer have wandered within feet of me, I've nearly stepped on skunks, several times, I've found a copperhead in the doorway of my small tent on awakening in the morning, a hen turkey nearly stepped on me, foxes have approached me to within a few feet in broad daylight, various hawks have attacked and occasionally caught their prey within feet of me, and it has been a thrill each time. I like to carry a camera on the small chance I can record some of these encounters, but it rarely works out.

Yesterday was the exception. A wild cottontail rabbit was feeding in my back yard, and I got my camera and began attempting to approach it. It remained strangely calm, much more so than several other rabbits which I have seen recently. They won't usually let me get within 20 yards of them. Speaking to it in a soft voice and moving very deliberately and slowly, I got within three feet, and it continued to feed. Calling on my years of reacting with game animals, I seemed to get in sync with it, to know what I could and could not do. Ever so slowly, I sat down in the grass within arm's length, and spent quite a long time studying it. Twitchy little nose, hare lip, fuzzy ears focusing like radar dishes, nervous whiskers, huge black eyes. Those are all parts of a rabbit we expect, but they seem much more rabbity when you are that close to them. While I took a series of nice close-up pictures it continued to feed, only showing slight alarm whenever I moved a little too quickly. We seemed isolated from the world around us, and the usual predator/prey relationship seemed suspended for the moment. This continued for about ten minutes, then I slowly stood, turned, and walked away. It watched with interest, then resumed its feeding. I wouldn't trade that little chat for an introduction to the President.

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Yes, I just had a fix, too. I'm gathering walnuts for that dyeing project, as I said. I sit out in the back and knock the hulls off with my tomahawk on the end of a billet of firewood, chunk them into the big vat of hulls collected so far, and just ...watch. There's always something going on. This evening, there were nine squirrels on the ground and another half dozen working in the hickory trees, raining nuts down like the end of the world. As I sat there, quietly, just soaking it all in, surrounded by the delicious, earthy smell of green walnut juice, I noticed a motion in one of the larger trees, high up. It was a Cooper's hawk, feeding on a small bird of some sort. Feathers drifted in the slight breeze like thistledown, signaling the marvelous continuation of the eternal cycle, life given that life may continue. Awesome. My turn will come, and not at a great distance in time. It's alright. I'll still be star stuff.

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Can I bring my flintlock? I'd rather kill a ruffed grouse with my flintlock than an elk.

Cool air, color, wood smoke, lickety-lab, crunching leaves, lookoutbehindyou, klatchphittboom, sulphur smell, "Back!", giggle.

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The first sandhill crane I saw was in Nevada in about 1974, while on a family tour of the northwestern states. Sailing along the highway, adjacent to a small low area bordering a stream, I spotted several tall, stately birds standing in a small group. The Peterson's bird book confirmed their identity, and we gladly added them to our life list of birds identified. It was years before I thought of them again.

One bright fall day at the farm, I heard a peculiar and unfamiliar bird sound high overhead, similar in tone to sounds Canada geese make, but not quite the same, and with a distinct trilling roll. More penetrating, and carries further, but raises goose bumps on your neck in the same way. Searching the sky, I spotted several groups of large birds wheeling almost directly overhead, calling incessantly while making up into a larger formation. They wheeled and called for quite a time, then lined out for the south, obviously in the process of migrating. Too high up to be seen distinctly, they could only be identified by their sound, which I assumed was the call of the sandhill crane.

The next year, I spotted s similar gathering over my home in town, very high, and composed of many more birds, a truly huge flock. Binoculars showed the characteristic shape and the slow wing beat of the sandhill, and I was thrilled to learn that so many of these magnificant birds were using our area as a migratory flyway. The next spring, I spotted several loquacious flocks trading to the north, reversing their fall path. They have been spotted many times since, both spring and fall, and it is an unfailing thrill.

One late fall while stalking the wily whitetail deer on my farm, I had the best opportunity to observe them that I could hope for. Unlike all previous sightings, which had taken place when the birds were high in a clear blue sky, this one was in weather fit, as they say, for ducks. A dark, overcast evening, misty rain in the air and dark windblown clouds streaming by at very low altitude, almost down in the trees. I heard them before I saw them, as is usual, and immediately spotted them, hundreds upon hundreds of them, passing in review not two hundred yards away, over the boundary of the farm, sometimes only a few feet over the treetops, sometimes lower. Scud running, as we pilots say. The number of them was astonishing, enough to gladden a bird lover's heart. I suspended my hunt and simply stood watching the parade for a long while, more than and hour, until the already low light faded to night. The unending gabble of hundreds of cranes all calling simultaneously continued in the dark until I drove away.

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Happy Birthday to me. Went to the farm in the early AM, kicked up a rabbit just above the Sundown pond, rolled him clean with one shot at twenty yards. That felt good, if a little short. I had planned to wander around for a couple of hours, reminiscing about hunting rabbits as a boy, killing my first at the age of 14 in 1947 with the old J. C. Higgins bolt-action 20 gauge, but it was over in five minutes ...rabbitus interruptus... and I went back to town. Never want more than one to eat, so that's all I kill. Good day, and I really like hunting rabbits with that flintlock smoothbore.

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Some interesting points of view have been expressed on the list recently, in relation to game laws and our treatment of them. When I go afield with my muzzleloader, I'm no threat to the many types of wildlife I encounter, other than the legal ones I'm hunting, and then only in a very small way. I haven't shot a legal limit of any game species in over twenty-five years, since I became a black powder shooter.

I'm not only old, I'm old fashioned. I'm a firm believer in the game laws set up to manage the resources in any area by the Fish and Game people and the wildlife biologists. I know beyond reasonable doubt that they know more about what any game or other population needs than I do, and I don't try to second guess them. To do so would be pure arrogance on my part, and would fly in the face of reason. Feeling that way, I'm one of those nuts who abides by the laws, even when I'm alone, and no one would ever know if I didn't.

I've been a student of the natural systems for several decades, now, and I've learned one thing, for certain. Nothing in it is ugly, evil, malicious or deserving of being eradicated. Everything is a beautiful end product of millions of years of evolution, perfectly adapted to its niche environment, and an integral part of the marvelous whole. Man is the only species who judges other creatures by their looks or behavior, and that judgment is almost invariably superficial and uninformed.

I have no respect for a poacher of any variety. The commercial ones are the worst, of course, but they are far outnumbered by the many average citizens who 'bend' the law just a little for their own pleasure or convenience. As a culture, we need look no further than our own back yard to see what harm such behavior has done in the past. Who has seen a passenger pigeon or a Carolina parrakeet, lately? I have little hope we will ever learn from our mistakes, though, because I've seen this sort of behavior all my outdoor life.

Some people will shoot anything which moves, just because they have a gun in their hand. I've never been that way, never will be. The natural world will, in the vast majority of instances, balance itself much better than we can ever do it, and the way to help that happen is to leave it alone. All those 'varmints' people talk about and take pleasure in shooting, are part of the cycle, each has a proper niche, and the overall health of the system depends on each species doing its part. Only man, in his arrogance, has the ability and the will to disturb the balance.

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I saw them first when they were 250 yards away, over the creek and going from me. I called a series of plain yelps, and they both broke into a run for the creek to my right, disappearing behind the edge of trees and brush there. In seconds they reappeared on my side, and then hesitated. A few more yelps, softer this time, and they headed straight for me, first at a run, then at a cautious walk, not stopping until the lead bird was two feet from the decoy directly in front of me, with a most amorous expression on his face. The gun seemed to fire by itself, instantly, and I hardly noticed the recoil, noise and smoke. Down he went, in a pile, and those big wings began their slow flap of death.

Turkey season, already? No, just supper. I fixed the last of the turkey breast from the spring season, tonight, and, as usual, just had to relive the experience which put the delicious food on my table. Thin turkey breast fingers, breaded with flour in which a little curry, salt and pepper were mixed, then sauteed till golden brown in olive oil flavored with garlic. Three Sisters.... butternut squash, fresh corn cut off the cob, baby green lima beans, cooked together and seasoned simply with salt, pepper and butter. Hot biscuits and milk gravy made from the pan drippings. Another biscuit with butter and grape jam for dessert. Excellent, almost a period meal, and the best part was the turkey breast, which I hunted, called, shot, dressed and cooked for myself.

The best part of all was the daydreaming, though. Every time I eat that turkey, my eyes glaze over, I lapse into a reverie, and the entire sequence of events involved in the taking of it plays in my head, complete with all the sights, sounds and emotions which were there on that special day. You know, sort of like the wood which warms you twice, once when you chop it, again when you burn it. This is a more important warmth, though, and seems to soak directly into my center, right where I need it most.

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Game for even more? Page Three

Copyright © B. E. Spencer 2001-2002 All rights reserved.


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