Finding calm after Hellene

30 feet up in a deer stand.

Meandering down a path that has been mowed in the hayfield, I make my way under a waning crescent moon and a sky full of sparkling stars. The air is brisk and my breath looks like smoke in the light coming from my headlamp. I feel the weight of the gun that is slung over my shoulder by an aging brown leather strap. I veer left onto the woodland trail I raked clean a few weeks ago so that I could hike in quietly to my deer stand just a few yards beyond. At my deer stand, I take the rope with the hangman’s noose and slip it around the butt of my rifle, cinching it tightly, and leaving the gun hanging in the air with the barrel pointing at the ground. Then I climb the steps into the deer stand 30 feet above. The metal is ice cold to my bare hands because I forgot to grab my gloves on the way out. The thermometer on the back stoop near the door read 40 degrees when I left but I misjudged how glacial that would feel in the darkness.

Reaching the top of the stand, I pull up the rope with my rifle. It’s a Browning 30.06 automatic that was my daddy’s. Once I have it in the stand with me, I quickly pull back the lever that releases a bullet into the chamber, then sit down leaning the gun against the front rail of the stand, imagining myself a great-horned owl. Peering silently around me in the blackness awaiting the illumination of the world.

Listening to the trucks on the highway and being enveloped by the silence in between, my mind begins to wander and wonder. Going over the events of the last couple months since hurricane Hellene. The feelings and emotions she uncovered. My perfectly constructed mask I wear to get through each day…blown away. The filter I use to say all the “right” things…blown away. Trust and security in people…blown away. I’m slowly building myself back, but the things I’ve seen and emotions I’ve felt have changed me. There are life events that have this effect on me, that stops me in my tracks, and makes me question everything. In 2005 and 2006 it was the loss of all the “grown ups” in my life, in 2020 it was Covid, in 2021 it was my son’s sawmill accident, and in 2022, on my 50th birthday, it was the shattering of a dream. Hurricane Hellene will now be what marks 2024 as a pause, a moment in time where I felt lost and had to find my bearings so I could continue to move forward.

Listening to the “hoooooooooooo” of a great-horned owl in the distance as the sun brightens the world, I realize my toes feel frozen in my boots. I should’ve worn thicker socks, I admonish myself and I begin to question why I bother hunting. It’s Thanksgiving week and my quiet solitude in still hunting will end on Thursday when the dog hunting club, who leases the property adjoining mine, releases their hounds for a style of hunting I will never understand. Deer hunting season came in October 19th in Georgia but I don’t like to hunt until it’s cold, because we process our deer on-farm, and it’s quite unpleasant when flies and yellow jackets are still swarming. Not to mention, the hurricane snapped the tree my deer stand was on, so we were in a mad dash to find a new location. I decided on a long leaf pine that stood in the arms of a live oak “seeing” tree under which I had deemed my on-farm “sit spot” in late summer.

My deer stand had been on this pine for sixteen years, before Hellene snapped it like a matchstick.

A new home for my deer stand. My husband, Ken, always gets me set up for hunting every year.

Streaming through the treetops on the horizon, the first rays of sunlight bring much appreciated warmth to the woods both visually and physically. A pair of gray squirrels are dancing and chasing each other in the oak tree on my left. This oak which I believe is Quercus georgiana has lost all of its leaves and one of the squirrels sits on a limb against the trunk with its tail curled over its head munching on an acorn, while the other climbs halfway up the trunk and shakes its bushy little tail in a mocking gesture. Then they begin to chase each other around and around and they leap from that tree into the live oak that surrounds the pine I’m sitting in. I’m praying they don’t jump on my head.

Looking up the lane as the sun streams in brightening the wire grass, reindeer lichen, and prickly pears on the sandy ground, I imagine a herd of deer ghosting into view. In the sixteen years I’ve been a deer hunter on this land, it’s never been that way. I’m lucky if I see two at a time weaving amongst the scrubby oaks and tall skinny pines. I don’t hunt for horns or trophies. I hunt for meat, not because I have to like my ancestors did, but because I enjoy being connected to my food. There is no connection with the perfectly packaged meat from the grocery store. Do we even realize an animal gave its life to feed us? Do we ever ponder how that animal was treated leading up to its death? Hunting is a reverent activity for me, much like when we process animals on-farm. I appreciate the sacrifice they give to fill my freezer.

Watching a group of dark-eyed juncos chirping and hopping through the smaller, scrubby live oaks beneath me, I think about the hunting that has happened throughout the years on this farm. I was not taught to hunt by my daddy or grandpa. Most of the deer they killed here was with a head light in the back of the field. I did watch daddy shoot one from the bathroom window one afternoon, and I believe he did a bit of still hunting as well. Growing up, I loved eating venison but I never participated in the harvesting, cleaning, or processing of it. We were poor. During the summer we ate pan fish from the river, and when the river was too full in the fall and winter, deer and squirrel were our main protein sources. Someone in the family always grew a well-stocked garden and all of this helped poor folks survive.

Basking like an anole in the warm rays of the sun that is now fully over the tree tops, I’m getting ready to climb back down and get my day started. I look around at the peaceful beauty that surrounds me. The cluster of oaks on my right, now leafless but revealing twisty gray limbs reaching for the sky. The pin oaks that are still holding onto their fall-colored orange and red leaves on my left. I’ve got to get started on our Thanksgiving meal. Broth to make, herbs and turnips to pick, cornbread to bake for dressing, pie crusts to make for a pecan and pumpkin pie. Another year of Thanksgiving for two, but there will be plenty to share should anyone stop by. Thankful for this time spent finding my calm in the woods just 150 feet from a little block house I have known as home for forty years.

Broth started for dressing.

Purple top turnips planted a week before Hellene arrived.

Sage I was able to find amongst my wild, untamed no-till garden.

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Thank you for reading my small offering. I pray you and yours have a calm and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday.

Blessings,

💜B💜