Getting Older

Who’s gray hair is this?  Old age, well it tries to sneak up on you and catch you unaware and usually does a comparatively good job at it, but being the viligant and alert middle aged youngster that I am (middle aged if I live to be 100) I caught it before it developed into its final stage…….although I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet.  I know I didn’t see it coming, at least not blatant and out in the open.  I guess there were subtle hints here and there, a place that hurt where it did not before, the river banks getting steeper, the deer getting heavier and being harder to drag out, the recliner more comfortable, people whispering and mumbling, fuzzy letters and seemingly smaller print etc.  You get the picture………unless it’s abstract art then I don’t see how anybody gets it.  I thought it was kinda weird that aquaintances I had not seen in a while were looking old when I see myself in the mirror everyday and I had not changed at all and then I happened to look at some photographs when I was in my twenties and thirties, wait a minute I thought, is this really me?  Where are the gray hairs and whiskers?  The person in the picture actually has a neck! The body weight seems about the same, but poportioned different and the glint in the eyes in the picture seem the same only not quite as tired looking.

When in my teens, I would dream of hunting, trapping and fishing.  Especially trapping, deer hunting and running throw lilnes in the Washita river basin near where I live.  I could hardly sleep the night before I was to partake in one of these adventures.  I might get 3 or 4 hours of sleep, but still be in the deer stand well before daylight or running the trap line or throw lines at day break.  This lasted into my early twenties and then I got married!  I still had the hunting, trapping and fishing drive and desire in me and although I still got up and went, it became more of a chore since I had to extract myself not only from a warm bed, but now also a very pretty woman and the warm bed.  As life went on and I came into fatherhood it became even more of a battle between the will to have a early morning hunt or wake up with the family.  I would often times find myself up a tree sitting in a deer stand and start thinking about those two little boys back at home and what I might be missing and down I would come.  Finally when they were old enough to tag along (which was when they got out of diapers) I got to experience it all anew again through their eyes and actions.  It became a new pleasure and there was a new found joy and excitement in hunting again.  Not that the thrill of the chase or the excitement and anticapitation of it had ever left me, although those had wained a little because priroities change when you become a dad.

My boys have followed me all over the country side hunting, fishing and learning about nature and wildlife and making memories and more often times as not they had a friend or two accompanying us on those excrusions.  My wife even developed an interest in deer hunting after having to sit with one of the boys wihile I sat with the other in deer stands during the early years when they were too young to hunt by themselves.  Now that the boys are young grown men and either have other interest or would rather hunt and fish with friends, I find it hard once again to remove myself from that same warm bed beside that same and still very attractive woman.  I have my hope’s and dream’s that in a few years the cycle will start all over again with granchildren.  I can wait, and in the men time me and MG are spending some of that quality hunting and fishing time together.  When the time comes for my grandchildren to start enjoying the outdoors I hope I can be there for the first squirrel, duck  deer and fish, but would not take the joy of the “first” away from my sons but I hope to be in on the “first action”.   I  am looking forward to making those memories.