Hunting Stories

When they opened the door and entered the diner with their heavy boots, everyone stared. They always did no matter who entered, no matter what. People stared, and then came the head nods.

“Hey. Hi, how ya doing?” the father would say while raising his hand in an informal salute to the various hunters sitting all around. This diner, filled with tacky train memorabilia was a home to orange. It thrived during opening weekend, and maybe just maybe they could use the money to replace the water stained painting in the backroom. Or, maybe the 70 year old waitress could have a weekend off.

They preferred her. Knowing that she covered the tables in the backroom, they passed the clean empty booths near the door, and instead chose the only available one in the back. They waited patiently as the waitress came bustling in with a coffee pot in one hand and a wet rag in the other. The table was covered in sticky syrup and mug-rings.

“What can I get you guys to drink? Sprite for you right? Orange Juice? Apple Juice? Anybody need coffee?” She would ask as three of them flipped their mugs over simultaneously. Two drank it black, the other, obviously young, added a creamer and a pound of sugar. After licking the sugary-spoon, she picked up her menu and decided to quick focus on breakfast before she was completely lost in thoughts of the morning.

The family favorite was kielbasa, half an order of potatoes-extra crispy, one egg (over-easy for the girl over-medium for the rest), and wheat toast, but that’s because there wasn’t much to choose from. Here, you got white or wheat, and the girl was thankful because the extra decision would make it that much harder, and she was hungry enough to eat the menu.

“So did you get anything?” The mother would ask, always prematurely, and always averted by the father.

“Well,” he would respond. “We have a story for you.” His eye brows rising as he lifted his mug to take a drink, and say no more. No, the mother would have to wait until the breakfast was set down to know if there would be venison in the freezer, and she was growing impatient due to the shortage of ground-meat. The hunting party would entertain their mother/wife with little stories, like the squirrel that came so close one hunter saw a birthmark, or the deer the sister saw that just wouldn’t come any closer. Impressively, and magically, the waitress would seemingly deliver the breakfast within minutes.

“Can I get you anything else?” She asked, already eyeing up an empty mug two tables away.

“Mustard,” The girl and father would request simultaneously. Amid the scraping forks and inhaling breaths, the mother would try once more.

“So, did you get anything?”

The three hunters exchanged looks and smirked.

“We have a story for you.”

Meditation

“Now tell me your problems,” said the tree as it kneaded a knot out of the woman’s lower back.

“I’d rather not,” she replied. “I’d rather rest.”

“Ok you close your eyes now,” the tree responded. “Just relax.”

…

“What are you thinking about?” The tree asked, noticing the woman’s eye settled on the rising sun.

“My friend,” she responded.

“She was beautiful like the horizon,” the tree said, gently shaking it branches, playing a musical eulogy. The woman watched as a leaf fell down to the ground.

“I loved a man,” she said picking one up, pulling it apart in her fingers.

“And he thinks about you,” the tree reassured. A turkey gobbled across the land, back from where she came from.

“It’s too far away?” The tree asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “It won’t come here.”

“So we will wait for another,” the tree replied.

…

“My feet are numb,” the woman said as she slowly pushed her feet straight out before her.

“Stand up. That will help you feel better. Move slowly, and I hide you so you won’t be seen.”

“Thank you,” she replied twisting her neck. “I sit around too much,” she said, rubbing her legs.

“Then go for a walk,” the tree replied.

“I need to stay still right now,” she answered. “I will when I get back.”

“Ok. When you get back,” the tree nodded.

…

The woman heard a distant shot, and watched as the day slowly left her. She stood up pressing a palm against the tree for support.  She hefted her shotgun over her shoulder and sighed preparing to leave.

“I want to be…”

“Then be,” whispered the tree. A group of turkeys gobbled from atop a roost nearby. “I will see you tomorrow.”

"All Things of Nature"

My body is filled with sunlight, boiling beneath my skin (because I’ve been trapped indoors for too long). Soon I must return to where I am from.

I am happiest in the dark early mornings, before the birds are awake, when I am blind in the woods and finally focused on what’s going on around me, inside me. There is no hum of machinery, slowly and constantly fraying my soul. There is no concrete, only snapping twigs if I venture off course carelessly.

When I am so lucky, I can lean against my family, and with their support watch the horizon as new color marks another day. The sunset brings pink, the flushed cheek of a friend whose face I can no longer touch; the orange of the pressed flower I sent my grandmother in the last letter. I wonder where it is now, that flower? Broken in the bottom of a storage box? Pressed into a bible? It shouldn’t matter. Soon all is the shade of blue, of white, and there are flowers growing beside me.

Here in my home, lessons are easier yet much more complex than the foreign language of classroom conversation. I am growing as an elm, my mistakes turning into mushrooms at my feet. I can be as a fiery red thorn bush, aggressive and angry, ripping at you if you come too close. Tomorrow I will be an apple tree. You can bury your favorite dog under me.

My home is my soul which belongs in nature. I am the woods and it is me. I breathe because it lets me, I breathe because it tells me that life should be so simple. And I breathe because of the wind, because when it blows I am inspired to finally exhale. I cry because even the clouds need release.

And I smile, because every morning there’s a sunrise, and my promise to return.

No reflection here

Does anybody besides myself ever have those ridiculous moments where the inner you hates the outer you because the outer you is making you as a whole look like a dumby, a biatch, or completely out of character. Um- theme of the day! Chatty kathy or more appropriately chatty katy had no filter.

This is what happens when I come back to "civilization" after immersing myself in the woods. I lose the inner-reflection, I forget to tell myself to slow down and think about things, and then feel like poo for apparently no reason until I make myself sit down to figure out that I am indeed mad...at myself. I need to take a walk.

Last Morning of MN gun deer

I sat barely concealed in the woods, on a blue chair, in bright orange, waiting for a parade of deer. At least thats what it looked like. Ha, I even had my legs crossed, my giant boot-blanketed foot looking like the stylish stiletto in the woods. I was on a slight slope you see, and this classy sitting position, gave me an arm rest. I would have been embarrassed had any one walked by.
The only things I saw today were squirrels, big ones, small ones, all loving to create a good startling racket. It was a good workout though, raising my gun up every two minutes because of a deceiving rustle. But, it was always a squirrel.
It is unfortunate that the only deer action on my last morning was a deer blowing because it smelled me this morning. It was still pitch black. There was nothing I could do. You know, I'm going to retract the term "unfortunate" from my other sentence, because its not. There was nothing unfortunate about the morning at all. That's better.


Bottle up the calm and save it for later, when it can weigh down all the unnecessary worries. It better last because I won't be back for awhile.

Zzzzzz

Man am I tired (and its only 9 p.m.) so I'm going to make this brief.
I almost got a doe this morning. Right away too, like 6:30 a.m. It was staring right at me. My gun was raised, my sight on, by safety off. I was slowly squeezing the trigger and before it could completely clamp and activate, the doe raised its tail and ran the way it came. Shoot. I mean I didn't shoot-Dang.
No more close ones after that.
And now its evening. I just got done barely making a dent in the growing pile of unfortunate school responsibilities. I can feel the timeline choking me a bit, and that unfortunately is effecting the loveliness of my time in the woods. No way am I going to feel guilty. This is what learning is! Right now its not just about writing fictional plots and feelings associated with pent-up-ness. I want to experience and get my face wind-burned! I want to do so much in a day (really, a full day from beautiful sunrise to sundown), that sleep is both a mental escape and a physical rest. Usually I'm just a fatty who falls on the bed in habit. Now I'm a hiker who's worn to the bones, crawling in for a few hours before another early morning ahead.
In fact, that bed is calling, and tomorrows the last day. I have some doe-tags to fill.

Bang Bang (but really just one bang)

I kept falling asleep all morning. Its amazing I can zonk out so effectively with my chin tucked into my collarbone. I would open my eyes in panic and scan around me. Twenty seconds later my head would be lolling forward again. I ended up standing for awhile to jolt the senses, and not long after sitting again, I saw movement and I watched as a camouflaged tan body made its way up the bluff (on a deer path) and in my direction. I frantically moved my hand at my side, shaking it to get my dads attention beside me. I even hit the gnarled bark of the giant oak tree next to me, just short of panicking to let  him know. I discretely pointed to the deer, and he put his scope on it. I could tell it was a buck. I couldn't tell how big it's antlers were.
It made its way closer, slowly climbing  to my right. I watched through my sight, I kept the shaking red dot focused in the right place when he finally said "take the shot." That's all I needed to hear (that the buck was big enough to take), so when it stopped, perfectly displaying its side for me to shoot, I slowly squeezed the trigger. Whoops. The safety was still on.
Shaking even more, I watched as the deer made its way through thick brush. Dang it! I blew it. Its not going to stop now (insert additional frustrated shaking that inspires additional panic shaking). When it moved out of the brush, I followed with my gun, and again pulled the trigger (only this time the safety was effectively disabled). I shot him in the neck and he dropped instantly.

I got my first buck on 11-11-11. I already envision the mini antlers on display in my future outdoorsy, fire-placed library in my cabin home up north. I'll look at them, scanning to the very large and unbelievably impressive trophies next to it (including the red stag) and I'll think, yes, that one was memorable because it was a first, because it made my heart skip, because my sister was there to give me a knuckle bump, and because once again I had my dad there to tell me it was of legal size, to tell me to take the shot, and to reteach me how to field dress the deer (and take over when I puncture the stomach).

Comparisons: hunting and the ride home.

It only seems appropriate that when driving back to Wisconsin after a so far unsuccessful Minnesota hunt (in terms of harvesting a deer) I almost hit two, one being a nice buck. The drive back took forever, mostly because I didn't want to go back. For once I didn't almost fall asleep being behind the wheel in my normal narcoleptic state, but instead I scanned the road for hazards, almost like scanning for deer in the stand eh eh? You like that?--My comparison between the natural world and the transition back into a world of waking after sunrise, and mindless jabbering (I'm quiet in the woods)?
I arrived back at my huge and crappy multiple-leased mansion with a headache. I hate driving at night. Brights or no brights, I get blinded, and I end up squinting the entire way (especially when driving under the speed limit and scanning for the silhouettes of deer). You say you want another comparison? Well of course! How about trudging to our spots in the morning, crunching on invisible sticks on the path beneath our feet, almost being adjusted to the pitch black morning when my dad looks back (wearing his mini red light strapped to his forehead) to see where we (me and my sister) are at, or to show us where a steep incline is:  inward groan at the shrinking pupils! That also has to do with being the walking sleepy dead.
Ok so now I'm back in my college town. I missed four classes today, and I am leaving back home for more hunting on Thursday, adding three more to the list. Eh whatevs...happy senior year!

Strange Encounters...err with squirrels.

Today I learned the difference between the red squirrel/pine squirrel, and the fox squirrel. Both are red, but only one looks like its hungry enough to eat your face.

When I encountered the red squirrel, I had been in a tree-stand. Hearing a quick rustle I would lean down, hoping to wake myself out of a sleepy trance by watching the little guy run around. I'm pretty sure they all have ADHD. Watch their tails. With every little chirp, it moves in a new direction. The eyes are wide open in perfect spheres, unblinking, staring yet looking unfocused, freaking out and becoming excited over a leaf, a gust of wind, the blaze-orange a hunter wears. Chirp, chirp. My dad told me he once saw a hawk swoop down to take out one of our spazztic friends. At the last minute he (our spazztic friend) sprung into the air and out of reach. Of course he knew it was coming. Of course he was quick enough to escape--he is always aware.
The fox squirrel is a big guy. For this encounter, I was leaning against a large fallen tree. Again hearing a rustle I looked to my left, and watched as the ginger monster unknowingly approached where I was sitting. Scampering forward atop my back rest, the chubbster had his hands-er mouth full. Go figure. It took him awhile to notice I was there. When he did, he stood up, and I stared at his soft squishy light belly, at his two palms lazily facing me (his right had a freckle near the thumb), at his black little fingernails. I looked at his fur, how the orange was intermingled with tans and black, how from root to tip it was transformed. He looked at my face, and tried to determine if I was male or female. Then I made the eye contact. That was a mistake. It was a duel, one I most definitely lost. My eyes crossed, my vision blurred, and he kept moving closer, making my breath catch. I thought if I looked away, if I moved a little, he would startle and scamper, giving me my accustomed space from the tree climbers. Instead he ran up the log, clattering behind me (chirping threats as he passed my head), and continued his life of obesity and constant bullying of humans.
The rest of the night's hunt the grey squirrels kept making my heart palpitate. The rustle of leaves! A deer-- it must be!
The species are tricksters.

Trails

Today was the first day of the MN gun deer hunt. My face is on fire, both because it is horribly sensitive, and because it was a very windy day on the bluffs. It was sunny. There were deer.
Southeast Minnesota has a four-point restriction regulation. One antler must have four points. I am really bad at seeing this and counting in my adrenaline-pumping state. A buck came, the first I've actually seen ever the woods as I've only been deer hunting for three years now. Anyways, it came and my eyes were too watery and blurred from sleepiness and constant wind. I couldn't tell, so I didn't even raise my gun (regret). My dad, sitting in the tree stand above me (two stands in one tree), took the shot. Then we watched it lope away.
We looked for blood and finally we found some...until we trailed the crimson red splotches to a dead end and a chunk of deer coarse white fur. We decided to let it bed and come back later. Unfortunately, when we met up with my sister at her separate stand down the hill, she informed us that she saw a buck run through (a nice buck). And we saw the trail continue...and continue...onto someone elses land. A dying deer wouldn't run that far.
My dad doesn't think it was a kill wound. We just hope that another hunter gets the buck and stops its suffering. I just wish I wasn't a dope sitting numbly in a tree stand, watching a wounded deer run away when I could have shot it (my dad has a muzzle-loader, so it takes civil war finesse and time to reload). May tomorrow bring faster reflexes, better eye-sight, less wind, and early morning vigor-perhaps also a fancier blog post!

Ugly cakey fake face

My ugly face feels like it was dipped in syrup. Yes, thats the kind of day it is, the wake up and know all you can do is cake an inch of heavy and obvious makeup in an attempt to cover the acne that comes with stress, shitty food, producty-hair all up in the face, and the constant tired face-rubbing. I raise my eyebrows up and down, up and down, and its slow, thick, nasty-uncomfortable. I left campus today to hide out in my room, wasting gas but saving face, only appearing before sunlight by necessity. I'm tempted to throw on my hunting mask early, walk around like a creep, feeling prettier, and actually quite warm. Blech. I'll do my eyes ridiculous, that way, people will be like dang whats with that girls eye makeup instead of dang why is her face a shade darker, cakey, and failing at concealing the red blotches. For some reason that seems better: getting called out on being dramatic, versus trying to hide.

I am a tame cow.

Lifting that shovel, I realized something was wrong. I scraped metal against the metal of the wheel barrow, repetitively lifting soil and transporting it to the compost, slowly adding a layer to encourage the lovely long process. My arm muscles slowly started to burn, and instead of enjoying it, I tried to recall the last time they did that- worked hard. I imagined and predicted the coming hunting trip, stepping over fallen logs, ducking under branches, crouching, standing, squats, pushups, hiking. I may die. I’ve become a walking breadstick dipped in ranch. I’ve become a girl whose workout comes from a once-a-week garden hobby. I’ve become heavier, both in the hips, and in the mind, and I realize that right now I choose booze, food, and laziness over a finesse that could survive in the wild. I am a tame cow.

Is this really a new post?

I kept putting off blogging. The last time I wrote something was in September, almost two months ago. I wait for inspiration, for something new and ingenious to share with the cyber world, and as you can see, nothing really made the cut. I'd felt that my writing and thoughts were getting repetitive and that scared me.
Now that deer-hunting season is upon us, I've prepared myself with thoughts of woodsy-memoirs, willing to make the binding internet promise of blog postings, when I obviously fizzled out with my South Dakota Turkey Hunt.
Writing inspires reflection, inspires action, inspires inspiration.
The internet is not a book page. A blog is for reaction, discussion, sharing, so I need to just write away. This is a place for typos, musings, and creativity:  I can always hit the edit button. :)

Sometimes the hardest thing is forcing yourself to take time and do something you love.

I am from

My body is filled with sunlight, boiling beneath my skin (because I’ve been trapped indoors for too long). Soon I must return to where I am from.

 I am happiest in the dark early mornings, when I am blind and finally focused on what’s going on around me, inside me. There is no hum of machinery slowly, constantly fraying my soul. There is no concrete, only snapping twigs when I venture off course carelessly. When I am so lucky, I can lean against my family, against their bark, and watch the horizon as new color marks another day. They support me as I see pink, the flushed cheek of a friend whose face I can no longer touch; the orange of the pressed flower I sent my grandmother in the last letter. I wonder where it is now, that flower, broken in the bottom of a storage box? Pressed into her bible? Does it matter? Soon all is the shade of blue, of white, and there are flowers growing beside me.

And it is today. Here in my home, lessons are easier and much more complex than the foreign language of classroom conversation. I am growing as an elm, my mistakes turning into mushrooms at my feet. I can be as a fiery red thorn bush, aggressive and angry, ripping at anything that comes too close. Tomorrow I will be an apple tree. You can bury your favorite dog under me. My home is my body, my soul. I am the woods and it is me. I breathe because it lets me, I breathe because it tells me that life should be so simple. And I breathe because of the wind, because when it blows I am inspired to finally exhale. I cry because even the clouds need release.

I am a tree replanted in front of a house. My feet are buried in cement. I try to hear the birds and I try to blink and be happy but my limbs are being bent to allow for power lines.

South Dakota Day 2: Friday April 15, 2011

Windburn, Gobbling, and Much Needed Exercise

Note:  Like a fool, I procrastinated the documentation of my wonderful South Dakota Trip day two. Although I will never forget the heart pumping, adrenaline-filled last day of the trip, the in between long hiking days are fading from my mind but they are not to be forgotten. They too have a lesson, so I will try my best to remember and recreate, using my vague notes and my slowed sense. I will also try to keep the emotion behind each entry the same as it was during the hunt. Everyone knows attitudes change over time, and I’m afraid that once again I am a new version of myself.

4:30 am – 12:30 pm

                I woke up early from a horrible night of dreams involving an unsuccessful quest to get to sleep. What horrible luck that is, to dream about restlessness and insomnia only to wake up feeling the same. My only hope to get moving this morning was to chug coffee from local gas station (four sugar packets, two creamers). We drove around on the windy roads this morning, stopping to send out calls, begging for the wind to carry with it a gobble and also to die down enough for our own yelps to be heard. Soon we gave up realizing that we could barely hear each other through the screaming gusts. Instead we put our heads together and asked the famous question:  If I were a turkey where would I be? The answer:  Somewhere out of the wind where I am able to display for my lady hens.  So we jumped back into the car and carried on, following the dirt road to the valley where we stopped to clean my bird last year (and where my dad got his while my sister and I made a prolonged feathery mess during a not so professional cleaning). We hiked for a little bit that felt like a lot considering the amount of hiking I am used to (panting up and down the school stairs).

I must admit that I wasn’t confident about this morning’s conditions. It was windy to the point that I felt my face falling off, and it had snowed the day before after the initial change to spring had already teased us. I thought my sister was being hopeful and delusional when she said she heard a gobble that my dad and I had missed.  Soon however we were ducking down-- squatting in search of the Tom we heard rapidly approaching over the crest. We would creep forward in pursuit and then take our turn in hiding. It was a stalemate between aggression and shyness. He would come forward as we became trees. We snuck a few feet his direction when he turned his back or his gobble became more distant.  Finally, as we crouched listening, trying to locate the nearby and camouflaged bird, I saw the beauty. It was 100 yards in front of me, displaying, and slowly moving away from us. After my initial surge of adrenaline, and after my heart returned once again from my throat to my chest, we stood up and continued after the bird. We climbed the hill in pursuit, my own face flushed from excitement and windburn until eventually, at the top of the mountain, it ran away… spooked…most likely from my eagerly peaking head.

And now, In order to distract you from my amateur mistake, I will describe the weather. You will appreciate the scene painted before you, and maybe, if I’m lucky, you will tell yourself that the tom merely had grown excited about the sun’s appearance. He was running off to a field to soak it in. Realize, although it was windy and there was snow on the ground, it was melting fast. The sun, like I said before was out and depositing happiness on everything it touched. The sky was blue, and I was sweating from all the hiking/rock climbing. Actually, although initially the snow seemed like a stupid surprise from Mother Nature, it ended up benefiting us. We used it to follow the spooked bird’s tracks, and figure out where it came from. We followed the three-pronged prints as they joined and separated from other sets. We reenacted in our minds the strutting tom as we saw the drag marks from the displaying wings. Eventually, after bobbing around with the seemingly random paths, we found their roost site. We now knew where we were setting up for the evening hunt.

Once we got down from the hill/mountain, I was almost running to the car to celebrate the fact that I A.) was able to change out of my too warm and without traction boots into my hiking ones and B.) I was soon going to be able to use the bathroom which my now adrenaline-free-self realized I needed badly. But of course as we were driving on the road away from our morning hunting area, we saw a group of turkeys feeding at an opening between two hills. Of course we turned around and pursued them, stealthily jogging the side of a parallel hill. And of course after scaling the side of a hill, we got too close, and ended up lying flat on our backs and not moving for an hour. Eventually after tests of patience, leg-cramps, and full bladders we backed off since none could be identified as Toms. Of course I enjoyed every second of it. Eventually we arrived back at the hotel.

1:30- 7:38 pm

To kill the time of the usually inactive afternoons, we travelled down the back roads sight-seeing and reminiscing. We visited the land where I shot my first Merriam last year. We then headed back to our estimated roost site from our morning tom. We scaled the hill again (better boots this time) and sat waiting. We heard gobbles, but we saw no birds. Later as we descended the hill after shooting time expired in the eerily light night, all I could think about were the smells around me. I must remind myself to look up the type of cedar I was leaning against. I need to collect and store in my memory all of the scents of the plants as we descended the hill that night. I don’t know if it was the large moon, the blue tint of the darkening sky, the dew collecting on the grasses, or really just the crushed aromas of the plants below our feet, but this rushed momentum down the hill passed too quickly. It was Wonderful.

The Answer

The Answer
By Katy Turner

Let me walk with no agenda
to where the failed days are still rewarding.

No judgment,
no burden, no facade.

Let me take off all that is me
and become what is meant to be,
Who is meant to be.

Let me drop what is now and
run to the woods,
my solace, my love.

Let me rise with the sun and let it warm my heart
like you never could.

Let me sing with the barred owl at dawn,
and let me scream my lament with the crows.

Let the dew upon my feet be the tears
that wouldn't fall.
I wipe them off so easily.

I am the moon, I am the sun,
the displaying turkey, the loping deer.
I am the morel living with the dead.

Let me be the maple,
the bramble, the peat.

Oh just let me be.
Let me be me.

In my home.
In the woods.


With the answer.

Nature Journal: Deer

• Ok, yes humans are more evolved then deer. We have a higher "intelligence," yet when we enter the deer domain we are weak. Would we still be good hunters today if not for the ammunition, the gunpowder, the machine that we have at arms length that only takes a finger to operate? There’s the bow-hunting yes, but as a society, how much would the world be different if we devolved our culture a bit? Just a scrambled thought I had today when thinking about hunting. In the end the deer and the human make different uses of their surroundings. One is with it, is the stealth of the slow swaying tree beside it, and the other? The other is marching, banging drums, and roaring to the surroundings “I am man, I am man: Do you see this concrete beneath me? I have built it!”

Nature Journal: Geese

As I see the geese line up around the river getting ready to fly away, I am filled with envy. Their wings have no limitations. My legs have a sort of ball and chain that was issued to me when I chose this path. Most of the weight is money, responsibility that I took on when I began taking out loans, but there are also expectations. It just kills the wild in me thinking about all the years I will be spending to pay off this debt. I think about how heavy that chain will feel, and though with time it may come off, I wonder if that old bird inside me will be fit enough to really fly. To really feel the wind whip across my face. I would be the grayest goose, zigzagging across the sky, honking up a storm. Free.

Nature Journal: Change

• It’s the smell I think that excites me about the fall. The summer is beautiful, heavy, bright. The fall brings a wonderful aroma to my face. The crunching of the leaves adds a music to my ears as I walk about. The colors stimulate my mind as I paint the them in my memory, but they too fade with time. Perhaps weather is the only change that I truly welcome. Usually I drag my feet with anything new, or my heart explodes in tragic anticipation. With the changing of the seasons, I feel weight getting lifted as I tell myself that with the changes around me, so I can change, Like the leaves on the tree before me, I can be beautiful. I can figure things out. When the snow falls I will be closer to being who I want to be. Perhaps with the chill will come a confidence to take another step forward.

Nature Journal: Escape

• One thing I love about the woods. The isolation. A pressure gets lifted off my back when I enter that haven. I feel like screaming right now, my eyes are stinging in frustration. I hold it together. I let it grow, that black bulk; if I were on my own with the free trees I would run as fast as I could. I would throw myself to the floor and writhe in anger. I am afraid though that if I were to enter the woods at this moment in time, that I may never come back to this world. What’s the point?

Nature Journal: Climbing a hill

• Using your legs, pushing on as your body screams in protest (passionately), as you feel pathetic realizing that the elliptical at the gym did not prepare you for this terrain. In fact spending so much time at the gym ends up equaling hours of staring at moving TV mouths, people sweating, and machinery whirring. I prefer the land. Unfortunately I will remain a gym-goer merely due to the fact that land, hilly and beautiful, is not often available, and everyday pointless life restraints do not allow the necessary wandering excursions of the little nature remaining, known, or available around us.

South Dakota Turkey Hunt Day 1

Day 1:  Thursday April 14, 2011

ESCAPE, IMPATIENCE, AND COLD

6:32 am

                I’m driving away from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and towards my wild self. I am abandoning my problems, the stupid ones--of course in calling them stupid I am not implying that any problem is not so. I’m leaving the irrelevant that is detrimental to the life I value most. The life I am working towards.  Sitting buckled in, surrounded by suitcases, I’m exhausted but I’m breathing easy. My hair is thrown up atop my head in a dirty mess and my face is my own. No I’m not sick as I’ve been asked before when wearing no makeup. This is my face:  Wrinkles, blemishes, uneven blush. Only now do I feel beautiful, with the people I love, dressed up as trees.

                As we drive towards South Dakota, pre-hunt talk about supplies and strategy are discussed. We devise a plan that involves splitting up in the morning. I’ve only hunted this property once before and I suddenly find myself panicked with the idea of pitch blackness and growling cougars at my back. Only after this initial silly frenzy do I realize another reason my nervous heart is pumping:   I realize that the only think I know about hunting is how it makes me feel—And only as I crush that leaf beneath my boot do I forgive myself for loving a man who has crushed my heart—no thoughts are not enough! I have no sense of direction.  My knowledge of when to call, when to move, and when to sit is amateur. Hopefully during this hunt I will learn to be more independent, more conscious about the logistics, and conquer my fear of decisions.

3:04 pm

                Beth and I woke up from our car-comas to a blizzard. We had to stop to dechunk the windshield wipers with our frozen fingers and upon reopening my car door, the entire handle shattered in an explosion of ice-shell. In fact, the entire right-side of our suburban was now a muted maroon, cocooned in a possible horrid foreshadowing of a miserable hunt to come. I can only cross my fingers in hope that we are leaving this nightmare behind us. I must now selfishly relate this blizzard to my feelings (for after all, this is my journal): Ahem…

The bitter wind upon my face was for naught—for my dear friend stood but facing me, saving me from constant erosion with her back. With the snap of a finger and the blink of an impatient eye I felt the pounding of cold wet-drops stabbing my face, my heart; for I was now lying on my back and my friend hovering over me with a giant overflowing bucket of resentment and a face of indifference. The wind kept swirling from each direction, tolerable wind! But in combination it was lethal:  the horrid gusts freezing each of those bitter cold drops faster than I could wipe away, recover. In order to survive, I must push her from me, wiping my face of moisture and emotion. In order to survive, I must forget about that time she stood facing me.

Yes I’ll clean off the windshield, shatter all the ice away, and move forward.

                We stopped at Cabelas around noon. The underarmour we purchased should help us not die, or want to die in this colder than anticipated weather. Beth and I also bought our first mouth calls. The car then filled with the beautiful music of natural diaphragm users.

Note: Walking through this store I became relieved. Although yes, a lot of the merchandise would be nice to have, I was not thrown into my normal shopping frenzy where I need to fight my impulsive shopping self that is set on the notion that a specific article of clothing will make me love myself. Here I realized that yes, that is a nice camouflaged -jacket, but the one I already have is nice too, and it allows me to crawl through dirt and fall against a tree just fine.

7:02 pm

                It’s cold outside and I’m still in my travel sweatpants and light jacket. We’ve spent too much time chatting about arrowheads and the history of South Dakota with the landowner. Of course this comment and complaint is stated under the assumption that a reader will not take it in the wrong way. This is under the presumption that the reader remembers the lengthy car ride, the weather, and the tease of escape.

 And now the snow is melting and my boots are caked in mud. The clay on the roads and now the car floor matches the red cliffs around me. Hopefully tomorrow morning no white will be in sight.

My First Unsuccessful Hunt

My First Unsuccessful Hunt

With each rushed step towards the car I felt my shoulders regain their tenseness (before they had never completely relaxed). Everything was too rushed and now all I had to look forward to was a three and a half hour car-drive back to school; I practically had to run from the woods and onto the road in order to get to work on time. Hours later, as I approached my college town, I realized I wouldn’t have time to change clothes. I would indeed be working in my camouflaged outfit. As I stood in front of that building on that black-topped lot staring at the window to my reflection, it felt wrong. I didn’t like having the real me stand so close to this façade. Everything seemed darker, shadowed, harsh, as I found it impossible to make excuses for enduring the little things that before I would ignore. Usually the hunting trip at home revived me, giving me strength to get through the tough repetitions of the town but it was different this time. This time I was a deer eating out of someone’s backyard, forgetting that I didn’t even like corn, that it was too loud here, and that people were watching me. This time I was unhappy.

            It had been a long spring turkey hunt in my home of Minnesota. We were walking my favorite parcel of land. I knew the hills here. I knew the tree I had leaned on three years back when I got that Tom with my sister, the golden field where we saw the coyotes, and the ditch that once had a washing machine thrown on its side. Trees grew around and atop it until finally, years later, it was finally taken away.

            Every morning my Dad, sister and I would get up; them energetically, me yawning as I would klutzily get ready. He would drive and they would talk while I dozed on and off until finally we would arrive at the hunting land. Slowly we would press our doors closed and walk around to the back. I would put on my vest, one call in my left pocket, another in my right. I would dig out four of my yellow shotgun shells. Picking up the gun I’ve held since I was 12, with all of its scratches, I would load one at a time and listen to the harsh forbidden clicks in the still dark woods.

            “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all?” Is the Barred Owl hoot my dad would mimic to the forest. Gobbles would echo back to us, and we would start walking towards the perfect trees to lean against. Usually I would stare around me, completely void of thought, not knowing if I was truly awake or not; just present. This day I felt exhausted and I let my head automatically fall forward until my chin met my chest. Soon again my head would bolt up scanning and sore, aware of the flapping of wings and rustling of trees as the turkeys flew from their roost to the ground below them, ready to start the day. And thus would begin our chatter with the turkeys. Soon however, my chin dropped down again. We didn’t have luck that first day, didn’t see anything. They continued to hide.

            The second day seemed as hopeless as the first with very little action in the quiet woods, but hours later I found myself creeping toward birds we heard over a hill. I looked over the incline in front of me, ready to shoot. Lifting my gun, I lined my site up to discover the battery was dead. I had accidently kept my site on from the moment we first heard movement; which was long ago. I panicked, thought I saw the dot of pink fair enough to make a shot, and that turkey lived on. I rushed, I shot at nothing, I was angry. It was the first time I’d ever missed a turkey.

            That last day I woke up with a panic I wasn’t accustomed to. I didn’t realize how important it was for me to leave those woods with a trophy, as if I needed a bird to show that I had gained something that weekend. As the hours ticked down to the deadline for my departure, my heart started sinking, wondering why I blew the one shot apparently I was going to be given. As the last fifteen minutes of the hunt loomed I tried to breathe in the beautiful afternoon. The moment was tainted as I kept getting premonitions of the tired dreary drive ahead of me, but then, there was a sound.

            We called back and soon we were making music with a very confident bird. It was coming fast and I barely had time to situate myself facing the opening it would soon encroach. As I saw the beautiful Tom breach the hill I also saw the quake in my arm; my legs providing no rest, stuck folded beneath me on the ground. It came closer and I felt the panic of missing again. I couldn’t believe how close to the time I had to leave this bird arrived, and it seemed it could only be a test, a taunt, perhaps even a cruelty. My weak left arm would soon fall off if I didn’t shoot now. My heart paused, I shot, the bird dropped, I hugged my dad goodbye, and I ran to my car to leave the woods.

            As I drove, and the land becoming flatter, the car stuffier, and my eyes heavier, I realized my dissatisfaction with the hunt. It seemed that for the majority, I had forgotten the reasons I love to be out there. I rewound past memories of hunts where I wouldn’t shoot a bird in front of me because it didn’t feel right, I couldn’t get the perfect shot, or simply because that day I just wanted to watch. I remember shaking my head throughout the drive wondering where that hunter went. I realize that in the end, shooting that turkey (although it provided me with meat), didn’t provide me with satisfaction. Instead, I had felt like I had had to prove something. I felt like I had to erase my embarrassment of my rushed stupor earlier in the week. I had felt that if I walked out of the woods with no bird, I walked out with nothing.

 I’m not sure the second shot during that hunt was much better than the first. Somewhere along the line it was forgotten that I was first a nature explorer, and second a hunter. I walked into those woods with a deadline that led to foolish mistakes and an edgy demeanor. As a result I had forgotten to breathe; to enjoy. Instead of feeling the throbbing in my left arm, waiting to align the perfect shot, I should have been enjoying, watching the confident animal. I should have watched it as it strutted to and fro before me, as its fan opened and closed after each gobble. Maybe then, there wouldn’t have been a constant throbbing in my head, still burdened with the artificial aspirations of the college life, human life.

            This hunt, I was a woman with something to prove. I had dragged my feet through that land, getting lost in my head. I wandered wearing a foreign demeanor. Yes, just like the uncomfortable me trying to wear her hunting clothes to work, here out on the land, normal apparel/attitudes are forbidden and should immediately be stripped. If one stands out, the entire purpose is defeated. Even the sound from the shotgun seems to harass my ears as I pull the trigger. It screams:  I am human; hear me, hear me! But I do not want to be heard. I do not want to be seen. I just want to be. I want to stand next to the tree and be its sister. Soon I believe, I will stand still so long, breathe so evenly, that my feet will become roots, my gun will turn into a branch, and I will stay there forever soaking up the sun; growing.

The sounds of Nature

I messed around on this website for far too long today. Unfortunately listening to nature is the only a fraction of the experience. Unfortunately listening to it while staring at a computer screen sort of defeats the entire purpose. I love the snow, but the cold makes me claustrophobic; stuck indoors. I cannot wait to get out hunting this spring, to feel the bark against my back, to smell the green of the crushed grass beneath me. I need to feel the cool breeze on my face, and most of all, I need to hear the barred owl and the turkeys gobble with a hope, an anticipation to see them as well.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1C9quZ/naturesoundsfor.me/Rainy_evening_1