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| A photo I took several years earlier of Snow geese and their reflections |
My secret place is quiet and serene, and beautiful even in the starkness of full-blown winter. There are no roads into it; I get there by boat. Sometimes in the winter there are grey skies threatening rain and waves are whitecapping out on the lake. Sometimes it is a still warm day that hints of spring. But not today. I just motor to a protected cove and I head up into familiar hills.
Flying south on the north wind, a big flock of snow geese come over me. Just above me only 200 feet or so, they break into a concerted, frenzied cry, as if they are tremendously excited all of a sudden. When they sound like that, they are envisioning a place to alight and rest, and I am sure it was within a few minutes of them, a bottomland field across the lake somewhere.
Even tired snow geese do not often favor landing on the water when they are in large groups. They want an open field somewhere, with vegetation too short to hide a predator. I thought back to times in past years when I have laid in Canadian harvested crop fields, covered with concealing straw, watching flocks above me like that one, so loud you can feel the excitement in their crescendo.
In the woodlands, where giant oaks and hickories and cedars are as big as any I have ever seen anywhere, I find scrapes and rubs freshly made by buck deer. Not far away are the remains of a fireplace and a rock foundation only about 10 by 15 feet, where an old cabin once stood. There are the remains of a rusted iron bedstead there, and nothing more. A cedar growing out of it has to be a hundred years old, so the cabin has been gone at least that long. I wonder what the people were like who lived there a hundred years ago and perhaps much longer back. I hope the six piles of rock on a small flat area above the creek aren’t graves, but they may be.
My back, recently injured in some way, has me in agony, and so I sit down against a big chinquapin oak. A shortened evening is advancing with no sunset. My back problem will not keep me from walking where I want to go, but it will make me get there slower. A slower hunter though, is a better hunter. You have to make the most out of each situation you face in life. Do what you can and give no thought to what you cannot. Age has taught me that.
In sitting, I notice that woodrats have an advanced nest around a nearby tree with a root system favoring a tunnel beneath it. It is quite an arrangement of sticks. These woods are filled with dens of one type or another, beneath rocks and crevices, under the roots of huge fallen giants, in the boles of standing, but rugged, den trees. There is such a variety of wild creatures here it is amazing.
This is my place, this large acreage of land set aside on an Ozark lake. It is everyone’s. There are thousands of acres of public land here. Much of it is typical of the Ozarks, with small pockets of clearing, stretches of cedar glade and open, mature forest. In this I can lose myself, forget whatever has been bothering me, and wonder if God isn’t behind me somewhere, aware that I have returned to marvel at the greatness of his unspoiled creation. I am hoping he isn’t upset with me for missing church, but I seek out a greater place to talk to Him.
This secret place of mine seldom sees humans, unless it is the opening days of deer season. Earlier in the day I picked up two recently discarded beer cans, to show me some nitwit passed here who didn’t know what he was doing. It is a sacrilege to come to a place like this and leave something to defile it. I am convinced that most deer hunters are not like him, but nothing brings out the bad side of hunting and hunters like deer season.
Before that, along a winding old overgrown lane, I found hundreds of frost flowers, erupting from the base of stems of composite plants. They are unique, white, fragile ice formations that form in the night as the dead plant somehow emits a freezing water vapor. Each is a piece of sculptured art. You cannot find two alike.
In the lateness of the day, as small flakes of snow fall, intermingled with drops of rain driven by the wind, I gain my feet with little sign of the pain I had felt an hour before, and slowly head back to my boat, watching for whatever I may not have seen earlier. I know that I am far from my boat and it is so late in the day I may have to motor back in darkness. But the sun will shine here again and I will be back. It is something to remember, when skies are dark and grey and winter’s ominous breath is strong and cold above your collar. The sun will shine brightly here on another day! Spring will come soon, and I will be back.
A 17-year-old boy recently killed a19-point buck and the antlers have been stolen from him. Read the whole story on the internet at www.larrydablemontoutdoors.
