First Saturday Green 101: Trail of the Timberdoodle—Act 3 (final)

timberdoodle.org

By motomynd

[Sequel to "Act 2"]

A call to my satellite phone, as I sat in camp hard by the Kenya/Somalia border, brought the crushing news of my uncle’s suddenly failing health. The next two years were a blur of post-9/11 work overseas, and as many rush trips to Upstate as the schedule could possibly allow. Since age 12, I had marveled at Carl’s hunting and fishing tales, and his trophies from Canada and Alaska. On our last few visits I finally had my own trophies to share—photos taken while walking amongst elephants, rhinos, lions, and other animals in Africa.
    And then Carl was gone.
    On a cold afternoon on Tug Hill we spread his ashes around his favorite deer watch – what we would call a stand here in the Southeast—a rock the size of a Porsche 911 set in a triangle between two birch trees and a larch, which blocked the wind yet was low enough to provide a perfect gun rest for a steady shot. At sunset I stood alone in the backyard hoping to see or at least hear just one more woodcock take flight from the bog that separated the backyard from Lake Ontario. The wind was cold and bitter, too bitter, and the birds had long since flown south. Even though I stood there until midnight, drinking my share of a bottle of Scotch and Carl’s portion as well, no magic happened. No late-season woodcock, no geese flying over in the dark, no coyotes calling, and no Northern Lights above. It was a disappointing end to a bad day.
    Driving back toward Virginia the next morning, I thought of Carl’s last woodcock, careening through the tangled alders and birch trees of its beloved bog, on wings pumping strong and fast—and I realized that powerful, artful flight was the last thing it knew. It died on the wing, doing what it did best. I thought then, and I think now, what a wonderful way to go. For some reason, I smiled, as I do now.

    In the 10 years since, I haven’t been to Upstate and I haven’t thought of woodcock. The little bird was a marker for 40 years of my life, but that life is gone. I smile briefly about it at times, but too soon I think of how different it could have been if I had grown up there, on a farm near the wild shore of Lake Ontario, instead of in a city in Virginia—and I turn away. Someday, I will go back to see the backyard, the woodcock, the camp on Tug Hill. Someday, I tell myself, when the calluses finish forming.
    Nature has a way.

Several times a week I go for a run as dusk falls along the country road that snakes past our house, out in rural farm country west of Chapel Hill. I hate this place in the heat of summer, but I love it in fall and winter. There is a huge farm next door, lying fallow like our old family farm in Upstate, and the road runs past it for more than a mile. When the temperatures drop, the sunsets turn red, and the coyotes howl as day gives way to night, it looks and feels almost like Upstate. There is no Lake Ontario, of course, only small farm ponds, but the gently rolling hills, the red skies, and the wild howls—especially when those haunting cries ring through descending darkness as I jog home—are all wonderful reminders of a life I sampled, and should have lived.

    A few evenings ago I was running back toward our house when I heard a noise that stopped me in mid-stride. The sound was an insect’s buzz, followed by a bird’s chirp, and then a strange whistling. Sensing movement to my right against the nearly dark sky, I spotted the bizarre, moth-like, fluttering flight of a bird the size of a Bobwhite quail.
    Fortunately we have no close neighbors and only a couple of cars passed before it became pitch black. Even at that I worry that those two drivers probably alerted the neighborhood watch about the strange man they saw by the road. A man standing in the gathering darkness, arms wrapped tightly across his chest, looking straight up into the night sky, laughing, and slowly spinning in a tight circle like a child.
    Every possible evening since then I have walked and run past that small section of boggy lowland just off the road only a half mile from our house. One night I identified by sight and sound more than 20 woodcock in a quarter mile of habitat. That is more than I have ever spotted anywhere at one time, even on Tug Hill. The birds that winter here, seeking softer temperatures and feeding heavily as they fatten for migration, will fly north this spring, searching for their favorite summer wetland. Some of these very same birds may finish their flight by pitching into the alders and birches of the boggy woodland that separates a certain Upstate backyard from Lake Ontario.
    This year, when they arrive and begin their strange buzzing calls and whirring flights, they may pause as they hear a sound they know from their winter home. It is the distinctive note of a much-modified, well-aged, v-twin motorcycle making its first trip that far north, carrying a rider who should never have let so many years pass before he went back.
    Yes, it would be more much more impressive to get there only by the flapping of arms, or by covering the same bi-polar distance as the Arctic tern. But when the years reach what we politely call middle age, riding a motorcycle 800 miles will have to stand as accomplishment enough.
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Copyright © 2013 by motomynd

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