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I’m trying to learn how to ultralight backpack, sleep in hammocks and learn to carry the lightest stuff that can get the job done.   My daughter and I went out to the WMA area and did a prep hike, carrying our gear and testing our legs.  Here are some of the photos.

Dad all geared out with beat up snake boots and homemade knife.

Kaley-Ann and her gear.

The total pack with hammocks and food/water/tarp first aid  etc.  came to around seventeen pounds.  Certainly not “ultra” light backpacking but not bad. In the above photos I’ve already gotten past the “I think I might stroke out!” moment when I first started out.  Hey, I’m over fifty and hiking in warm weather with twenty five pounds of boots and gear is a little much.  However, the worry past as I humped out pretty good for, as my kids call me, “an old man.”

Kaley-Ann took some great photos on the trip. She will post most of them on her Kaley’s World site, but here are some she took that I liked.

a pretty bird, no idea what kind!

A yellow and purple wasp feeding off a purple flower

Kaley-Ann and I walked to the end of the WMA and found a cute little picnic table set up by the WMA people.  It overlooked a slough and flag pond.  Nice setup.  Then we crossed the creek and after drying off our boots, went for a walkabout on the north side of the WMA.  There was plenty of sign.  We found a small pond which was home for a nice sized alligator.  On the way back we crossed the canal again, but in a denser area.  Kaley-Ann was not too happy about walking in swampy water.  It may have been something to do with the “old man” telling tales of hunting in the Everglades during the spring/summer and having to wade swamps then take the time to pick off the leeches!   I think she added blood sucking leeches to her “Things I hate that make me queasy” list.

After we crossed and made sure we didn’t pick up any hitchhikers we worked our way back down the road.  Suddenly a small furry animal jumped up onto the dirt trail and sat upright like a meerkat.    It took off with Kaley-Ann in hot pursuit trying to get some photos.  We figured out is was a Marten.   While she was sneaking along she heard something along the canal bank and took a peek over the top.  She signaled to me and mouthed “hogs”  holding up two fingers at the same time.  I joined her on top and sure enough here came two hogs rooting along the canal bank. No more than sixty pounds a piece they were totally unaware of our presence

A clueless pig and his buddy, out of season of course!

The old longbow shooting archer in me was wishing this was archery season. It was maybe eight yards and neither pig had a clue!  Even I could have made this shot, nerves and all.  But we took photos instead and while setting up another shot we spooked both of them.

Kaley-Ann in camp. Quick meal and a quick nap. All went well.

After the hogs we made it back to the truck and set up a quick day camp.  A small homemade cook stove for boiling water and we had lunch.  Kaley-Ann and I took a nap in the hammocks.  Now she went right to sleep, but I had trouble drifting off.  Two problems. One- I’m not much for closing my eyes when out somewhere when I’m not sure people won’t sneak up.  Two- the trip was supposed to be a shake-out cruise of my hammock camping and I learned a lesson about not finding trees close enough or too far away.  My hammock had me slung like a banana!

Still it was a good time, with my daughter loving every minute, which makes it all worthwhile to me.  Of course, a hour in a banana hammock (and yes I get the joke, my hammock is slung like  banana hammock, I’m IN the hammock so that makes me a five foot ten inch…) and a four to five mile hike with gear was not without penalty.  The day AFTER the day after the hike my muscles reminded me although my heart and mind may be twenty-five, my knees and hips, legs and back are not!   It was a couple of days before all that went away, thanks to BC powder (great stuff).    The best part of the walk was that after all the planning, I’m pretty comfortable we could load out about everything we need except for water and food for a two day camp for under fifteen pounds.  That includes pillows, hammocks, tarps, rope, stakes, stoves and fuel.   My buddy says to get a water filtration system and we could cut a couple of more pounds out.  I’m a little unsure of that whole filtering swamp water deal.  I’m sure the technology is sound, it is just that it makes me a little, as my daughter says, queasy.

It’s been years since I’ve hunting Florida.  I live here, but my hunting heart belongs to the great state of Alabama.  People are good, the weather is good, the land is exceptional and the hunting is solid-good deer, good turkeys, good small game, just good.  Back in the late nineties to around 2005 I hunted a public piece of land up the road from me called the Yucca pen.  The land was open, filled with ATV’ers and mudders.  People shot, hunted, goofed around and basically just “ran the woods” on the weekends.  There was a small population of pigs and a smaller population of deer on the land.  I ran a feeder or two and usually hunted in the mid-week.  It was fun, but not very productive.  I killed a few pigs, no deer but spent a good deal of time in the woods, which is where I would prefer to be.

Dad and the cart with a couple of deer in the way

A couple of unconcerned deer, in a different era, they'd be camp meat!

Several years ago the State of Florida bought the area up and sealed it off.  I pulled my stands and gear and left.  Years passed, finally I broke down and decided to try to hunt it with all the rules and regulations the State demands (I have a basic dislike for bureaucrats telling me where, when and how I hunt.  Who are they?  Most aren’t even outdoorsmen.)  But I bit the bullet and signed up.   I went on Google and printed down an aerial map of the area.  I quickly noted a series of flag ponds situated in the back corner of the property about a mile from the main road.  A friend of mine said most of the hunters stayed close to the main roads, so I figured this would be a good place to hunt.  Kaley-Ann and I made a quick scouting trip and I had to eat a little crow.  Whoever set up the area did a good job.  The staff and the rules were laid back.  I was surprised and pleased.  Kaley-Ann was even more pleased.  We jumped a number of small game and a couple of hogs, which was the goal.  We also saw deer- silly, stupid, non-afraid deer.  On the way back to the truck around dusk, a young spike refused to get out of our way.  In another time, my dad would have put him in the cooler without a blink of an eye.  But times change and we think about QDM a lot harder today.

Hog rub on a main game trail

Kaley-Ann really wanted to take a hog with a bow.  She had built her own bow from Rudderbows from a bamboo backed hickory blank.   It is a fine shooting bow, but a little heavy and she is working on trying to master it.  As a backup we decided to bring along her Remington .260.   On our first trip we walked to the back of the hunting area.  It was about a mile in.  Most of the other hunters tried to stay closer to the road.  We pulled along a game cart on the off chance we got something we could pull it out.  We went to the area we scouted and worked slowly into the wind.  We circled the slough where we had jumped pigs before.  About a hundred and fifty yards out, we heard the squealing and popping of teeth coming from the tall grass and palmettos surrounding the slough.  Kaley-Ann’s eyes opened wide in awe as the sounds of pigs fighting with each other echoed across the slough.  It was hard to tell if the pigs were in the palmettos on the far side of the slough, or in the slough itself which was covered with chest high thickets of grass under which the pigs a burrowed dozens of trails.  We both crept closer, Kaley-Ann readying her rifle.  It took about twenty minutes to circle downwind and come up from the south.   The pigs quit fighting so we were still a little confused as to their location.   We eased up to the edge of the slough with me a little to the inside.  I figured the pigs were so loud because they were in the palmettos on the far side of the slough so I kept an eye in that direction.  As we snuck up I caught Kaley-Ann looking past me to my right so I turned my head and to my surprise saw about a hundred pound boar walking along with us only fifteen yards away!  He didn’t see us because of the tall grass and thickets but we could see him from about the shoulders up.   Here I was between Kaley-Ann and a pig.  I backed up and drifted towards her and away from the pig, but I still could see both at the same time.  Kaley-Ann raised her rifle and fired.   The pig squealed and took off.   I figured he’d be DRT (dead right there) but he jumped into the slough and was gone.  No blood, no hair, no signs at all.  We circled the slough and even went through it on a grid search, nothing but other pigs complaining about us disrupting their day.  Kaley-Ann scratched her head, fifteen yards and a clean miss?  She finally admitted the adrenaline dumped when she saw the pig so close may have gotten the best of her as she tried to shoot through the tall grass.  (I think she overcompensated trying to shoot “through” the brush trying to hit the shoulder.)

Typical low land pine scrub

A view from a low climber! Each white spot is hog rooting. There were hundreds.

About three days later we tried it again.  This time we brought a climber on the cart and wheeled it back into the same area.  Kaley-Ann climbed up a tree about eight feet which was all the tree would handle.  I left her and went to another area to sit and watch a game crossing.  (It was more her hunt than mine.)  The day was breezy and just a little warm.  The kind of day you’ll find yourself dozing instead of paying attention.  Around dusk, I got up and went for a little walkabout.  As I approached a large pond a heard a rustling and two large pigs jumped out about ten yards away.  They didn’t stay long enough for me to get a bead on them, but I wasn’t that interested because Kaley-Ann had just radioed me and said she was covered up with pigs.  She was just trying to pick one that wasn’t surrounded by piglets.   A few minutes after my encounter, I heard her rifle bark.  She radioed me she had one down.  I walked over and sure enough a nice fat sow was lying dead on the ground.

Small slough with tall grass. You could hide fifty hogs in it.

It was easy money.   We went and grabbed up the cart, pulled it back and loaded the pig.  We started out.  That was when I learned a valuable lesson about weight, thin wheels and soft Florida mud.  To say it was easy to get out was an understatement.  Six hundred yards of pulling that fat pig through the slough and I thought I was having “the big one Elizabeth!”   I’m not twenty-five anymore.  I decided to lighten the load and gut the pig right there.  I did and it was a little easier, until we loaded up the rest of the gear including the climber onto the cart.   There are moments when we look back and say “this was a special time.”  The struggle to walk out with her prize, pulling side by side, talking and laughing about how weak we looked as the sun set and the moon began to rise was a special moment for me.   Towards the end, Kaley-Ann tried to persuade me to go and get the truck.  “Dad, they won’t care if we drive a couple of hundred yards!” she panted as we pulled the cart across another rut.  I said to her, “Rules are rules, and it would be my luck the game warden would drive by just as we were coming out.  Let’s just stay the course and we’ll be okay.”  We did and finally made it out.  The funny thing was by the time we got out of the woods and back to the check out station everybody had gone home!   I could have driven all over the place and nobody would have known or cared.  But it was still a good lesson.   However, one my back and arms reminded me of for several days afterward.  Now I see why all the other hunters hunted closer to the roads.

Dad,Kaley-Ann, Chloe and the pig.

Life is good when you spend time hunting with your kids.   This hunt was no exception, except for the fact that about half way out I had this great idea for an invention- a motorized game cart for old farts like me that tend to forget I may think I’m twenty, but my body is on the back side of fifty and has all the dents and dings that come with it.  Motorized carts, a sure money maker.  I’m just saying…

It was deer season again which meant a trip to Alabama and a stay in our wonderful single wide trailer on our fifteen hundred acre lease. Not many members were hunting as it was the last week of archery and muzzleloading season. Before I left I dug out my old .54 caliber Renegade and tried to sight it in. I hadn’t shot it in almost fifteen years, instead opting for bows and rifles. We had some trouble sighting it as it jumped from left to right and back to left. At one point, my buddy, Bob, wondered if the sights were loose. I pulled on the rear sight and it was fine. I pulled at the front sight and much to my dismay it moved back and forth easily. That explained the wandering groups! Several quick taps from a hammer and a punch rolled the dovetail down and the front sight was working again. We didn’t have a chance to sight it back in before the trip so we grabbed up all the gear and hit the road.

Now I love bowhunting in any form including crossbows. I don’t like wheels so I took along my Excalibur. It is a tack-driving weapon and I have the shaved and Robin Hooded bolts to prove it. However, it is an awkward weapon. Sorry guys at Excalibur, but it is what it is, and this creature can get in the way. Especially when sitting in a tree stand or trying to move around inside a shooting house. (Shooting houses on my lease are built on the basic 4×4 design. Good for rifles, bad for anything oddly shaped.) I knew my daughter would have trouble with it, so when we got up to the lease I had her shoot my old black powder and I’d use the crossbow. I should say that I may gripe about the crossbow’s design, but it is a deadly weapon. I killed a nice sow with it one year, hitting the pig at better than thirty-five yards in the near dark and nearly knocking her over. It sent a bolt with a Fred Bear Razorhead through her ribs and out the other side in a blink of an eye.

With a quick sighting in session and a few lessons on how to handle the rifle like how to     prime it with caps and the safe removal of the same, I sent my daughter out to a shooting house on our “400” property while I climbed a pine tree with my Summit at another food plot. As I struggled up the tree, it had been a year and my biceps were not used to pushing me and my gear up, I realized that being on the wrong side of fifty was starting to take a toll on me. Next year, God willing, I’m getting one of those sit down/pull up stands. Anyway, I get settled in and start to relax. It’s a good clear day and a good wind. I ranged a couple of trees and got ready for that six point I was after last year. It was only a matter of time. About thirty minutes later I hear BOOOM!!! from the area where Kaley-Ann had set up. I waited a minute and she radios me (we use radios to communicate when set up separately) “Dad, I got one.”

I was grinning under my face mask “What was it?” Hoping and not hoping it was that six point we both were after.

“It’s a doe.”

“Is she dead?”

“Oh, she’s dead!”

I figured as much. Getting hit with a 230 grain lead ball a half inch in diameter had to put the dinky-dink on that deer. So I realized my hunt was over and I got down so I could go back to the truck and drive down to Kaley-Ann’s location. When I showed up she had already tracked and recovered the deer. It was a small doe and I could see the lead ball hit her right through the chest. Kaley-Ann smiled and said it was right where she was aiming. However, she didn’t like the gun that much. “Dad. I’m not sure about this black powder deal.”

“Why? It seemed to work.”

“Because when the deer showed up I followed your instructions and pulled the hammer back. When I pulled the trigger the hammer fell but nothing happened. The doe looked up at me but luckily didn’t move. I so quietly pulled the hammer back again and pulled the trigger a second time. That time the gun went off! I couldn’t see the deer! The smoke was everywhere! Then I see her run off. When she did I saw my right hand trying to work the bolt like I do on my .260. But there’s no bolt, I’m out of bullets!!

Kaley-Ann firing the Renegade

I was laughing out loud imagining my daughter frantically waving her hand back and forth working a bolt that doesn’t exist. I pointed out the rifle did exactly what it was supposed to do, hence the dead deer on the ground next to the truck. She had to admit I had a point and we loaded her trophy into the bed of the truck and drove back to camp. We later figured out she didn’t have the primer set square on the nipple and the first strike set it up correctly. It went off on the second, as it was designed. Had it been a nervous six point, I think I would have lost a future black powder fan. As it turned out my Dad, who is failing steadily and giving away his things, told her he would give her his old .50 caliber Hawkins when he got back to Florida. That is a tack driving old style rifle, fully decorated in brass and wood. The old way for sure. It’s a hard way to gain a prized possession, but if he lasts till she shoots a deer with it, the moment will last forever in the stories told by our family. Isn’t that really what hunting and family and loving is all about?

I think it is.

P.S.- With this deer, Kaley-Ann has taken game with every type of weapon except a bow.   Although she did hit a running bunny with a blunt, just the wrong arrow head. Pretty good for a fourteen year old girl who has to travel 600 miles to hunt.

My wife as "Jeannie"

I have decided on occasion to pass along stories of my wife. A good hunter has either a good wife backing him, or a wife that encourages escape from the rigors of matrimony into the woods where peace and common sense apply. My wife doesn’t mind me going because when I’m gone the silly things she does go unnoticed. I was there for this one.

———-

For all of you that know my wife, she is a lovely woman, now forty-five years of age, who acts and models on occasion. She is in the process of building her portfolio with photographers and agents. She is constantly either modeling (as she did last week on the East coast and when driving back ended up in Orlando. Which is odd because we don’t live there… but I digress) or going to photo shoots. I’m not really sure about all of that; it’s an “artist” thing.

Another thing you have to know about my wife, if you don’t already, is she is a blonde. Tragically, it has gotten worse over the years, to the point now where I just do a “Jerry Sheffield” and shrug my shoulders. What else can you do? (Jerry is my father in law and the most patient man I know. He has had years of experience doing the shrug with a wife and three daughters. My wife antics resemble her mother’s more than she wants to admit and has led to more than one argument over the years between us. Truth is that apple not only didn’t fall far from the tree, it rolled back up against the trunk!!)

Now, yesterday she tells me she is going to Sarasota to do a photo shoot at a beach with some photographer she met on-line. Yes, the whole serial killer thing pops up, but she’s insured and hell you can’t tell her anything anyhow. So off she goes. Of course you might all want to point out that the current weather on the West Coast is unsettled at best and downright ornery at worse right now, and the chances of getting a nice sunset on a beach (I know, again the serial killer thing) is remote. But you can’t tell her that. So I do what I do, and shrug.

Marty and our double circa 1999

Marty makes it back around dark. It is raining, as it has every day for the last week and a half. She comes running in. Now try to picture this. She is dress in a light blue (turquoise maybe?) string bikini and three inch clog shoes. (I have to add tastefully; she had some “improvements” made this last year and in a bikini they are quite evident.) She has her hair up (actually it is a “fall” so accurately it is someone else’s hair, but that’s not important) and makeup on. She is running from her car to the house trying to drag everything in. She asks for an umbrella and says she is freezing to death. So now she’s running back and forth, in the dark, in the rain, in a turquoise string bikini, carrying a leopard print umbrella, freezing to death. She claimed later the reason for the umbrella was she that the rain running in her face “blinded her.” So more accurately she is running back and forth, blinded by the rain, in the dark (using some kind of sonar system like a bat?), in a bikini, carrying a leopard print umbrella, on clogs, and of course freezing to death. I asked her later why she was wearing the bikini driving back instead of, I don’t know, clothes, and her response was “The only other outfit I had was my Jeannie (from “I dream of Jeannie” TV show) outfit and the dress I wore up. The dress was wet from the rain.” I asked her wasn’t her bikini wet? “Yes, but that’s different.” (I know scratch your head moment) How I’m not sure, but I had visions of her in a car wreck or on a traffic stop with some trooper going, “Ma’am those are sure nice, but I’m going to have to write you a ticket anyhow.” Or “Jeannie? You gonna try and blink yourself out of the ticket?” An extra change of clothes would have been nice. That’s all I’m saying.

Now, some of you know me. I’m the guy who says “Y’know, I don’t think this is working out so well”, and tries to regroup and rethink the situation. My dad had a deer hunting dog like that once. If she got confused, she’d sit down and just mull things over for a minute or two and try to figure out what was going wrong. A hound dog. A dog… On the other hand, my wife tends to get an idea in her head and go with it, regardless of how bumpy the road gets, or if in fact there is even a road left after a while. She just keeps plowing along. Me, I would have probably come inside, changed into dry clothes, put on a raincoat, picked another umbrella other than leopard print- but that’s just a personal taste issue- and went back out to get ONLY the things I needed, not try to unload the whole car. Or, I would have done all of the above and then waited until the rain stopped before going back out. Really, I mean, does it have to happen right now?? Not my wife. Nope. She had to run back and forth like some kind of crazed Playboy bunny in a scene from Hefner’s highlights, complaining the whole way just how miserable she is.

Of course, as I watch this all go by I do what any good husband will do, I told my daughter to go and get the camera so I could get a picture of it all, which was about when my wife started cussing me.

Go figure. All that and no sense of humor….

I shifted uncomfortably in my climbing stand as I studied the surrounding Florida cypress head.  I tried to shake off the nagging mosquito that hummed in my left ear.  The whine would cover any subtle noise of approaching hogs.  I glanced around, looking over the short cypress and palmetto thickets.  All was clear, so I gave the mosquito a quick swat and it was quiet again.  My seven year old daughter’s voice echoed in my head, “Mommy says Daddy sure loves his hunting.”

My wife was right, I sure did.  She reminded occasionally, and not always sweetly, that I liked hunting a little too much.  But I had no choice; it was the way I was raised.  My dad introduced me to hunting when I was just big enough to be carried on his back through the swamps of the Florida Everglades.  I shot my first rifle, sitting in my dad’s lap because I wasn’t old enough to hold it by myself.

My Dad and me- many, many years ago

I leaned back against the scrawny pine tree I managed to squirrel up using my API climber and thought about my dad and what he had helped me become.  I have been thinking about that lately because my dad is getting older, his body is slowly winding down.  He can’t get around much anymore between the diabetes and his bad hips.  The diabetes has taken its toll and his health prevents him from doing too much too often.  A far cry from the man I remembered humping a young boy through waist deep swamp water while proudly wearing his “gookie” boots.  “Gookie boots” was the nickname his best friend AJ “Squeak” Allen gave the new moose hide snake boots my Dad bought.  Dad would walk around challenging rattlesnakes and water moccasins by stomping on them, daring them to defeat the thick hide with their fangs.  One day, Dad and Squeak ran across a rattlesnake that was well over seven feet in length.  Dad killed it with a pistol.  Squeak took one look at the snake which was longer than a man was tall and said “Ray, I wouldn’t stomp that snake if I had gookie boots up to my armpits!”

God, it seemed like it was just yesterday I would stay up all night anticipating the trip to the Everglades and the times my Dad would hunt the backwoods with me in tow.   Hunting was a blessing because it held us together through all my rebellious teens and early twenties.  Funny thing about getting older, I swear our parents get smarter the older we get, go figure!  Too bad we don’t listen when we are young men.  I could have avoided some painful lessons.

A couple of years ago, when my daughter was just a baby, I began to notice something happening to me.  I would glance in the mirror in the morning and just for a second I would see a face of a man who looked a lot like my Dad.  I also began catching myself studying my hands.  They seemed like they belonged to someone else.  My hands were weathered and wrinkled, with a good number of scars scattered across the knuckles from assorted briars, errant knife cuts, and stubborn nuts and bolts from rusty stands or truck parts.  You know what I mean.  My hands had been around for some time now and it took me awhile to realize I’d seen them before, they were my Dad’s hands.

They were the same hands that held the rifle for my first shot; the hands that picked me up and put me on his back when we had to wade some swamp deep in the Everglades.  They were the hands that built hunting cabins we stayed in or fixed that old workhorse ‘65 International Scout we drove.  They were also the same hands that held me in a viselike grip when I was being scolded for the times my mouth overloaded my-you know what.  They also pulled me to him for his demanded bear hug every time I came around, regardless of whether or not I as a young boy, or a grown man.  It didn’t matter if I was alone or with my buddies and the embarrassment was overwhelming.

They were the same hands that held a Winchester model 88 for more years than I have been around.  He bought the rifle in 1955, two years before I was born.  The tack driving .308 accounted for dozens of deer, hogs and turkeys while being held in those steady hands until he finally laid it down several years ago.  Last year he surprised me by giving the rifle to me after years of my good-natured hinting I would sure like to own such a fine weapon.  I took a deer with it last winter and it was a special moment for me.

My wife just doesn’t get it.  She sees me take my kids out into the woods, to experience what I had experienced when I was a kid. She thinks it’s just an excuse for me to get out, but it’s not, it’s a rite of passage, a link from my grandfather, to my dad, to me and now to them.  I’m showing them something they can pass onto their kids when they grow up.  It has been the one constant that has always kept my father and me together.  When I’m out in the woods, I think about the times we had and the things we did.  I thought about him as I looked down at my hands cradling the Mahaska recurve.  Several years ago, I rediscovered the beauty of traditional bowhunting that my dad had shown me when I was in my teens.  For some reason, picking up a bow had brought me full circle to a time when a middle aged man traveled the woods with his youngster in tow.

But times are different.  Just recently, when he was with me on a turkey hunt in Alabama, he spoke of growing old and how thinking about his life had changed.  At seventy, he was a more cautious and worried man.  I had noticed his wariness and occasional confusion with a deepening sadness.  As to make the point, one day when he was driving his truck with me next to him,  he started to turn the wrong way at an intersection and I had to remind him the property we were headed to, the same he visited the day before, was in the opposite direction.  I bit my lip and smiled as he apologized.  I stared out the window at the blue spring day and pretended to study the passing pastures.  How long would it be until the cycle would be complete?  First the father and his son, then man to man, and someday the son becomes the father.

The times have changed, the love hasn't

I thought about that moment again as I studied my right hand covered by my leather shooting glove and I realized my eyes had become bleary.  I tried not to think about a season soon to come where he will not be there, waiting to greet me with a bear hug and an “I love you son.”

Truth is I don’t mind those hugs as much as I did when I was younger.  I even start a few up myself these days.  My kids sure get tired of them though.  My five year old son begs off a lot, but I think he’ll get over the embarrassment in forty years or so.  Heck, he might even get to where he likes giving them himself.  I think about what my wife said.  Yes, I do love hunting, but more than that, I love my Dad.

I love sitting by the fire and watching it burn.  I think there is something basic, almost instinctive, in the relationship between man and fire.  My father loved to sit by a open fire, as did his father and his father’s father.

Tonight I spent time building and sitting by a fire in my backyard.  As a matter of fact, I had two going, one in a stone pit and one in a homemade tin fire pit.  The stone pit is made up of stones from my second home, the great state of Alabama.  For a while I collected rocks every time I went up and put them around my home as decorations.  With hunting on hold for me I spend time in the backyard chopping wood, gardening, building a fire to ward off bugs and give me a little peace.

Now today’s fire was a little different.  My wife was doing what wives do best, which is going crazy every once in a while.  So, I found it safer to sit- no hide- in the backyard!  I chopped some wood, built two fires, lit a Citronella candle (which doesn’t work by the way) and brought a water bottle full of Jim Beam with me.  I was a very happy backyard camper until the bugs ran me out.

backyard set up, hiding from the Mrs.

As I stood by the fire I began to wonder if the relationship between man and fire has something to do with how the fire burns.  When you first light it, the fire starts out small and weak. Add too much wood and the pressure causes it to go out.  Too little wood and it starves, but if  you treat it just right a fire will grow and burn brightly.  The young fire burns with an energy that gives off light and heat, it seems like it will last forever.  Soon though it slows, but it leaves you good coals, coals you can cook on, stay warm by, coals that last a long time, steady and strong.   After a while the coals begin to cool, their light begins to fade, although they still give off lifesaving heat, but their time is nearly over.   In the end, they quietly go cold, leaving only ashes.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that a fire mimics man, or is it that man mimics the fire.  As children we thrive the best if we are given just the right amount of encouragement, not too much pressure, not too little attention.  When we grow into young adults there is nothing we can’t do, nothing that can stop us. We burn bright with energy and hope.  But as we get older, we learn the meaning of life, that providing a solid, steady place for others to feel warm and secure is our job, our destiny.  In the end, we grow older and weaker.  We have less and less to offer, but if you huddle closer, listen a little harder, we still have something to offer.  Even as ash, long after we have grown cold, we offer the elements that the future can be built on.  A fire gives ashes to the earth that add nutrients so the new growth can flourish.  We give memories and lessons that our children and our children’s children can learn from and prosper by.

After a lot of chopping this is what left of the playhouse

Those were the thoughts I had as I watched the fire slowly grow dark and cold.  I didn’t mourn the loss, as I know it is the same for all things including us.  I hope that in the end I’ll provide the warmth and comfort to my family and someday my words will guide my children to a good life.