Tranquility Base: Holston River - September 12, 2009

Tranquility base here! The peace and beauty of the early morning is often my tanquility base. If that peace is to be interrupted, let it be the whistle of wingbeats or the quack of a low-flying hen cutting across the top of the fog to break the silence. And, occassionally, the thunder from the old Red Label Ruger Over and Under is a welcomed disturbance.

It was the wood duck, not the eagle that landed this mid-September morn. While peace and quiet were momentarily shattered, as surely as the sun rose, the Holston returned to tanquility base.

Opening Day: I Am Glad

This entire summer has been more like those of my childhood than any I remember for years. The days have been mild, humidity has been tolerable, nights cool, and rain plentiful.

This time of year I associate the beginning of school and high school football with the fourth Saturday of August when squirrel season opens and September 1st when dove season opens here in Tennessee.

Unfortunately, for the last several years, it's just been too hot for me to enjoy opening day in the dove fields. My what a contrast this past Tuesday was to the normal opening day heat wave.

My friend, Danny Horhrychuk, has long held an opening day hunt and barbecue. The food is marvelous. The company is grand. And sometimes the hunting is good in spite of the heat.

This year was near perfect.

Upon arrival one is immediately greeted with that heavenly smell of hickory wood smoke lingering from smokers hard at work. Danny's picnic area runs parallel to Bent Creek so the smoke traverses the course of the creek.

The meal includes fried green tomatoes, grilled corn on the cob, cole slaw, pork of all varities, grilled chicken, smoked summer sausage, and banana pudding. The trick is to moderate the intake so the hunt can be enjoyed later.

A short walk down the trail led us to a field freshly mowed with grain plentiful on the ground. This standard agricultural practice certainly improves the numbers of doves in the area. And, there's that unmistakable smell of a field recently cut.

The next field had some of the crop tilled under. The pungent smell of earth turned over appealed to my agrarian roots.

My pulse quicken as I heard the rapid fire of shotguns as a group of doves circled the field. And I reached olfactory nirvana as I got in on the act, firing several rounds through my Red Label Ruger over & under generating that burned gun powder smell.

At times the shooting subsided allowing me to gaze about the field to take it all in. The long shadows finally confirmed fall is upon us. My primal instincts are peaked and my hunter/gatherer DNA is obvious to me during this time of year.

I am glad.