THE SPORTING LIFE
TheIt’s View From the Roost time to make some new memories in 2012 By Tom Bryant
The hustle and bustle of the
holiday season was gone, leaving the rest of January 2012. I was up in the roost putting together a column for PineStraw, thinking about the past year and wondering what was to come in the next. The roost is what my bride Linda and I call the little apartment over the garage where I do most of my writing. There were a couple weeks left in duck season, and then it would be time to roll out another of my favorite times of year: February and March and fishing down at Everglades City and Chokoloskee Bay. Time flies when you’re having fun.
But I get ahead of myself. Today, in mid-January, was a time for reflection. Looking out the window over the “back forty,” as we call the area that faces James Creek, I was trying to remember how everything looked in the spring. I have a real problem with that, remembering details in the landscape from one season to another. So this year I’m going to pick an area in the woods, set up my camera, and take a photo from the same spot on the first day of each new season. Whenever I need a reminder of how the woods change, I’ll have it. As I stared out the roost window, I thought about 2011, a rough year for our country. A lot of our citizens were struggling to make a living. Things were tough. I had been retired from the work force for about five years but was fortunate to be able to stay in touch with my old career as a newspaper guy. The industry was changing drastically, but the folks where I used to hang my working hat were on top of it, thanks to knowledgeable, quick-reacting leadership. The outdoor world? For me, 2011 was an active year, from duck hunting during the month of January to camping in our little Airstream Bambi down in the southern tip of Florida in February and March. Florida is not one of my favorite places, although I have a long history there. My grandfather had some property right on the St. Johns River; and as a kid, I spent a lot of time with him fishing that world-renowned bassproducing river. Today, though, the St. Johns has turned into more of a water highway for big pleasure craft cruising up and down from Jacksonville to Deland. The big bass that I used to watch school like blue fish are long gone.
When civilization began encroaching more and more on even that remote part of Florida, my grandfather moved farther south to a little fishing lodge on Halfway Creek right outside of Everglades City. I was fortunate then to be able to fish with him on Chokoloskee Bay and the Ten Thousand Islands. That was years ago, and I had not been back in the area until recently, when Linda and I decided to visit Key West. On the way down, we took a side trip to the little town, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was basically the same as when I visited Granddaddy there in the mid-fifties. In 2011, we spent a couple of weeks there camping in the Airstream and fishing the bay. We hope to do it again this year. With the exception of out of the way places like the Everglades, Florida has turned into a haven for winter-ravaged Northerners looking for some warmth. I hope Chokoloskee stays off their radar. 2011 will probably go down as a year of transition. Our country seems to be moving faster and faster to more electronics and computers. The youngsters I’m acquainted with spend a great amount of time playing computer games. I often wonder how this is going to affect outdoor sports. Television has already taken time away from too many kids’ enjoyment of just playing outdoors. These computer games are yet another distraction. 2011 was also a year when I suffered another birthday with a zero in it. Time marches faster and faster when you get to my age; and like Calvin and Hobbs, my mantra of late seems to be “Go faster. We’re having fun but not enough fun!” Which brings up the last two weeks of duck season. Unfortunately, January 2012 ushered in some warm weather that did nothing for duck hunting. Our impoundments at Mattamuskeet have been seriously lacking in waterfowl in any numbers. Next week is predicted to be the coldest of the year with weather moving out of the northwest. Maybe that will help. As I’m writing this a bright red cardinal has landed in the dogwood right next to my window. For a minute I didn’t know who was observing whom. It was a stare-off. He would hop from branch to branch, never taking his eyes off me. Then he seemed to say “nothing interesting in there” and flew down to the ground to do some browsing. The bird reminded me of a summer afternoon when I was taking a break from some yard work, resting in a chair on our side deck. I was leaning back thinking about fishing when I saw a small dot high in the afternoon sky. As I watched, it fluttered aimlessly, softly buffeted by warm breezes. I soon determined it was a butterfly as it drifted slowly toward the area where I was sitting. I sat very still and the butterfly, a big Monarch, flew down and landed on my knee. It sat there for about thirty seconds, wings moving back and forth. I scarcely breathed, mesmerized as the beautiful black and yellow butterfly walked around on my knee, then flew back into the afternoon sky and disappeared. It was no more than a few minutes of my life, but it was an event I’ll never forget. OK, Bryant, I thought to myself. Enough musing. We have a brand new year just waiting for you to do something. You can start by packing your duck hunting gear, calling the guys and checking on who’s hunting this week. Do like your mama always told you, “Go on out there and create some memories.” As I got up to head downstairs the cardinal flew back in the dogwood tree and looked in the window. PS Tom Bryant, a Southern Pines resident, is a lifelong outdoorsman and PineStraw’s Sporting Life columnist.
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February 2012
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