Postcard: Otsego Lake, Opening Day
Nov. 15th, 2005 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
If you painted it, it would have to be a watercolor in shades of gray. Gray, dripping pines, the polished metallic gray of the water, blotched gray sky, the far shore a slightly more solid streak of gray in the sea of grays, and more than anything else, the wave after wave of drizzle drifting down in an all-day soak.
Today the deer hunters wait for their prey as they always have, as their fathers and grandfathers did before them. The mist blurs the edges of things until only what's real can be seen. In the mist, nothing has changed, and because nothing has ever changed it's all the same storm it was--
The inside of the Oldsmobile was warming. The windows steamed up. The drizzle came down and the windshield wipers slapped. Dad had WJR, the Detroit station, on. As far as I knew he never listened to any other station as long as he was within the borders of the state. Now it was playing the MSU Spartans football game, but the signal was so weak and blanked by electrical noise that I couldn't tell who they were playing.
"It's a good piece of land to hunt," Dad said. I didn't care, really, the big thing was to be with him for a little while, living in the World of Men for a litle while. "You can hunt by the birches, I'll take the cedar swamp across the trail. And then there's that abandoned fire trail heading northwest. It's a good, easy walk. It's perfect for Grandpa--"
--blinked as the drizzle misted his thick glasses. Normally, since his cataract surgery, he wore contacts and normal glasses, but out in the woods the contacts wouldn't do.
He hefted his old Mauser. It was a war trophy somebody (likely he himself) had "sporterized" by dropping action and barrel into some mail-order "deluxe" stock. It looked about as much like a sporting rifle as a war surplus Jeep would look like a sports car if you painted racing stripes on it, and it must have weighed a ton. But he wouldn't think of trading it.
He looked into the woods, a soft look on his face. "This is my last year to hunt," he said.
I smiled to myself. He'd said that every year for years. But a pang of terrible sorrow hit me. He seemed so frail, so tired. And if this wasn't his last hunt, that last hunt would come soon. He kept saying it was his last, and soon, inevitibly, he would have to be right--
The drizzle falls, and the world is both tiny and huge. It is the swirling edge of the coming winter, a storm as old as the seasons themselves, never changing, always the same storm, as it has always been and always will be. And those of us who for a moment love it, or ever have, or ever will, are for that little time all together again, just as we have always wished and dreamed.
Today the deer hunters wait for their prey as they always have, as their fathers and grandfathers did before them. The mist blurs the edges of things until only what's real can be seen. In the mist, nothing has changed, and because nothing has ever changed it's all the same storm it was--
The inside of the Oldsmobile was warming. The windows steamed up. The drizzle came down and the windshield wipers slapped. Dad had WJR, the Detroit station, on. As far as I knew he never listened to any other station as long as he was within the borders of the state. Now it was playing the MSU Spartans football game, but the signal was so weak and blanked by electrical noise that I couldn't tell who they were playing.
"It's a good piece of land to hunt," Dad said. I didn't care, really, the big thing was to be with him for a little while, living in the World of Men for a litle while. "You can hunt by the birches, I'll take the cedar swamp across the trail. And then there's that abandoned fire trail heading northwest. It's a good, easy walk. It's perfect for Grandpa--"
--blinked as the drizzle misted his thick glasses. Normally, since his cataract surgery, he wore contacts and normal glasses, but out in the woods the contacts wouldn't do.
He hefted his old Mauser. It was a war trophy somebody (likely he himself) had "sporterized" by dropping action and barrel into some mail-order "deluxe" stock. It looked about as much like a sporting rifle as a war surplus Jeep would look like a sports car if you painted racing stripes on it, and it must have weighed a ton. But he wouldn't think of trading it.
He looked into the woods, a soft look on his face. "This is my last year to hunt," he said.
I smiled to myself. He'd said that every year for years. But a pang of terrible sorrow hit me. He seemed so frail, so tired. And if this wasn't his last hunt, that last hunt would come soon. He kept saying it was his last, and soon, inevitibly, he would have to be right--
The drizzle falls, and the world is both tiny and huge. It is the swirling edge of the coming winter, a storm as old as the seasons themselves, never changing, always the same storm, as it has always been and always will be. And those of us who for a moment love it, or ever have, or ever will, are for that little time all together again, just as we have always wished and dreamed.
