Late in the summer, when the first cool wind blows in the evening, and the first leaves begin to dot the ground, long before the blaze of autumn, a visceral feeling has stirred in me since I began hunting regularly as an adult. I get excited in a way that is hard to describe. I feel it in my bones, like a call to action. I remember the weather will soon change, and that it is time to prepare for the seasons ahead.
I have felt this feeling so powerfully and so consistently every year, that I have become sentimental about this late-summer excitement itself. I look forward to it every year. By midsummer I have forgotten it will come, immersed in the watery world of summer outdoorsing, but on some random evening in August when the heat breaks for the first time and the night is cool… the feeling hits hard. Plans take shape and become action. Lists are made and checked-off. Purchases are made… and the excitement builds.
Peter Laurelli might have said it best in his ‘Northeast’ fly-fishing film, “The beginning of fall is really an amazing time- Life is so concentrated, and it doesn’t last… and so there is this feeling that you have to be in front of what’s happening, because you don’t know that it’s going to come again; You don’t know where you’ll be the next time it happens.”
It’s hard to make time, but that’s what you have to do. You can’t neglect your family or responsibilities, but we only get so many years, and sometimes to chase our dreams we just have to make more things work. I get excited beause this is the point in the year where I figure out how to make it work. Back to school, back to sports, holidays, the busy time at work, it all needs to be accounted for and fit into the plan.
Soon the trees will turn. The Oak King will fall asleep as his veil is shaken from the land, and the Holly King will be revealed again, stalwart and evergreen. Soon the geese will be honking as they follow the sunlight and warmth South. The marshes will buzz. The bait will school up inshore. The birds and big fish will blitz. Game big and small will be hungry and on the move preparing for the coming winter.
Where will you be when it comes? … “you don’t know that it’s going to come again.“