October...

...is moving right along.  One of my favorite months, its almost half over.  My daughters birthday was the first and my fathers is the thirty first.  Halloween...it was always a big day and not for all the saints.  Funny...but, I see so much of my mother in my daughter and my wife and my sons and I have  turned into my dad.  I see him in the mirror...when I'm brave enough to look.  I'm in the october of my life...a wonderful time for the knowledge gained along the way.  Knowledge of the future, too.  But, why fear the winter when its october...a lifetime of living in the now has taught me nothing if not to enjoy the Octobers...

The days are beautiful...each morning taking kids to school has clouds hanging on the hillsides and a deep fog over the kickapoo.  I have to remember to turn my lights on before I get there.  Sometimes it is as thick as soup...another good thing about October,  Soup...yesterday it was cabbage soup from our garden.  It was good to enjoy our labors over the summer especially since the racoons got most of our sweet corn.  In just two nights...and I shot five of them and one skunk.  October.  Wyley and I went up to our treestands.  I saw three and he drew his new PSE bow on a big doe but it didn't give him a good enough shot.  That made me proud.  I've taught my kids that hunting was a part of life.  We respect the deer and last year didn't take any.  We could of...after hunting big bucks all season we had fat does in our sights but for one reason or another we just didn't.  Not the least reason was they had made it that far.  We missed the venison all year...

This year new bows have us fired up...and there is a youth gun hunt this weekend.  Wyley can shoot a buck with his rifle.  It would be his first deer but he kind of wants to get his first with his bow...like his big brother two years ago.  That was a big deal...I was in the woods when HW took his nice 8 pt buck.  I saw the buck walk over to him, heard the arrow hit and the deer crash.  Five minutes later he walked over to me and tried to act like nothing but he was walking too quickly for the deer woods and when we made eye contact it only took a second for him to give me a pumped fist.  It was the best buck.  October...

Trout season went out with fireworks, too.  I always knew it would come back...even when others thought I had lost it.  Its been back for a number of years now...only I prefer to go alone.  Flyfishing for trout has been with me for fifty years and will never leave.  Its just that I've done it with different perspectives.  Losing two sons will change that perspective.  They fish with me every time I go out... as my two young sons and daughter do.  Its good again...but, a perspective without fear.  Other than the death of another child.  The same perspective that allows me to hunt deer and eat the occasional trout and feel right with the world.  Its the October thing...