The Evanescence of a Huntress

There was a time I was a deer huntress.  I say that tongue in cheek these days, as it was only a thought on the drawing board in my head.  My reputation was to evolve into that dreaded place where no one ever wants to go, that lonely place of being just a tag along.  

My early thirties, in another lifetime with another husband, I was trying to find something more as a couple to do than just being there.  Dissappearing for days at a time during deer hunting season, husband always brought back a deer carcass.  

The meat was processed at a butcher shop which also rented out small freezer lockers to keep the meat in.  When I wished to cook venison... okay, let's rephrase that last thought.  When I was forced to cook venison to use the meat up before the next hunting season, I drove to the butcher shop to bring home a supply.  

I knew all the methods of cooking delicious venison, but I think delicious is a matter of opinion.  Some cuts weren’t too bad half drowned in red wine, but overall, I was only mildly impressed.

My thought was to turn deer hunting into a couple thing, but what I got was me just going along for the ride.  I had a rifle in my childhood, so I knew how to shoot.  A Remington 6 mm rifle was bought, but I never had the practical garb to outfit myself.  I bundled up with whatever I had.

Target practice was minimal.  My first adventure was getting up at three in the morning to pack up, then meet a friend at a truck stop just outside of Reno on the road to Carson City.  I never understood getting up at three in the morning just to eat breakfast, but it was the ritual that the men followed.

We drove somewhere into the hills not that far from the city, and I was positioned at the top of an outcrop of boulders.  Then the two of them disappeared into the dense fog.  This was the days before cell phones, and to be in fog with only the feeling of tall trees around me, well… that sinking sense of dread and foreboding kept me anxious and alert.

Now that I think about it, I probably was considered a hinderance and placed there so I would be out of their way.  The only thing that passed through was a group of coyotes doing quite a bit of howling, yipping, growling, screaming and barking.  

I stayed exceptional quiet trying to fade out of existance, while figuring out how many I might be able to knock off before they got to me, even though all I could see was fog.

They passed by, and all became so unbelievably still.  Gradually the fog dispersed, birds began to be heard, and the men, empty handed, appeared.  We hiked back to the car; the men went to work and I was at home on my day off.

I’ll tell you a camping story, as it was the nudge my husband needed to hunt a particular area.  We had a GMC vehicle with 4-wheel drive that we camped in by putting the seat backs down, and laying a double sleeping bag on top.  These few trips were a favorite of mine.  After dinner we’d snuggled into the sleeping bag and listened to Mystery Theater on the car radio before falling asleep.

Woops!  Let’s go back further in time, to when my husband had a pickup truck… back at the beginning.  I worked swing shift and husband worked day shift; and camping was always my idea.  I cooked up much of the food beforehand, and we would camp overnight in a favorite area of ours. 

Homemade blueberry turnovers were part of the menu on one of these trips, and the left-over ones were still sitting on the table in a storage container waiting for breakfast the next morning.   We retired to bed, tucking ourselves into the sleeping bags in the flatbed of the truck.

It was after midnight when I was awakened by strange, muffled noises at the campsite.  It was so faint; I couldn’t form an opinion as to what was causing it.  I sat up but saw nothing.  I listened quietly for quite a while before it faded into the moonless night; then fell back asleep.

Woken by sunlight early next morning, shivering, we got up to light a campfire and discovered the lid pried off the container of blueberry turnovers and just blue smears with crumbs left on the table.  On closer inspection, the ground was profusely covered with hoof prints of deer.

Fast forward to the GMC camping trips… in particular, the deer hunting one.  After setting up camp, we scouted the area above the small lake to find the best advantage point for me.  My husband determined that he would drop me off before the sun came up and I was to hike down the hillside and wait at the bottom to see if any deer came to the water’s edge before dawn.

The next early morning he did drop me off in total darkness, and where he stationed himself… who knows.  I could barely determine the outlines of almost nothing, so the walk down the rocky hillside was slow with me proceeding sideways carrying a rifle, blind to what was around me.

I kept hearing just a faintness of movement, but each time I paused to listen, all became silent with what I would later discover was the sound of quiet breathing.

At the base of the hill I settled myself in and listened to a pair of owls… one would let out that haunting hoot, then the other would answer, then the first would hoot again.  At the first light of dawn I looked over my shoulder and discovered a hillside full of cows.

I’m thinking my decent was so slow, a cow would move out of my way as I was approaching it.  I have no other explanation as to why I never bumped into one.  Luck was definitely on my side that early morning.

The big deer hunt with my husband and his work friends, was the one I drove 291 miles from Reno to Elko, to join the hunting party already there.  There were maybe a dozen men, with me as the only woman.  

Since I literally stepped out of my car and joined the group,  it was determined that I would ride in the pickup truck in between a stocky driver and a very, very broad deer hunter.  I never had a chance to get out of the truck, so that first day was a disaster for me.  I complained that evening, and the next day joined the men hiking.

The goal was to hike up a forested mountain ridge, across the top, and down the otherside following the gully all the way to the dirt road and back to our cars.  Besides dress shoes for work and sandals for warm weather, the only other shoes I owned was a pair of Minnetonka moccasin boot shoes with a smooth sole.

A bitterly cold overcast day, the men seemed to be more interested in my choice of footware than hunting.  I kept hearing comments of how unbelievable I was to chose them for hunting footware, and the more I heard, the more I was determined to finish the day without a murmur or complaint of hardship.

The distance between me and the hunting party kept widening, as I was the fastest hiker of the bunch, and soon I could no longer hear their comments.  I hiked over the mountain easily, as I was used to hiking during my upbringing.  The extremely difficult part almost defeated me; trying to hike above the bramble line all the way to the end of the gully.

It has always been in my character to clinch my teeth and carry on, no matter how many times I want to give up.  I saw zero deer.  I hiked to the car and waited for the men who began to appear after the sun set.  No one had spotted a deer.  

Now the comments were of amazement that I had managed to out hiked them all wearing a pair of moccasins on my feet.  I was super woman for the rest of the evening.  We ate dinner, then back at the motel we played the pinball machines until we tired and went to bed.  The next day I drove home to go to work in my casino job.

Sometimes in one's life what we wish to happen is never our reality.  This was my last deer hunting trip.  I began doing the things I liked most, and that usually meant I did them alone.  Would I have packed that freezer full of my own deer meat if I had spotted a deer?  It was a different lifetime, when I was young, and felt the world could be my oyster.  I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

An

October Walk

in

the

Garden

*

Above: Brown-Eyed Susans, Rudbeckia triloba

*

Below: Green/Copper Bee, Augochlorella

I looked at the bee photos and book ID 

until my eyes refused to focus.

Who knows, I'm sticking with the above. 

...on Clasping Aster, Symphyotrichum patens

I think a tiny Flower Crab Spider, Misumena vatia

Flower is about one inch across.

I did not see it until I enlarged the photo.

It is a bit out-of-focus, sorry.

This aster is special in that it's flower petals curl as it ages.

I think, a Small Carpenter Bee, Ceratina calcarata.

I talk about it on a later photo.

 

~ Rain has fallen from Hurricane Helene ~

*

Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur' on left 

and Joe Pye Weed on right 

with seeds mostly fallen from plant to patio in the heavy rains.  

Dark leaves on second plant from left is a wild petunia.

Sixth plant from left is a type of wild plantain.

On some types of plants, the rain water beads up on the leaves...

American Hornbeam, Carpinus caroliniana

Part of the Beech family of trees.

Look carefully and one may see the hanging seedheads.

Northern Cardinal

Swamp Sunflower flower buds

“When she...walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike afterlight- 'a haunt of ancient peace'. There was a freshness in the air as of a wind that had blown over honeysweet fields of clover. Home lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Anne's heart, and she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it. 'Dear old world,' she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”

A still shot in motion, or as some might say- bad photos.

Above

Bird in the Viburnum

Below

Cardinal by the Bird Bath

Drives one's eyes crazy

And

We 

Continue

Our

Walk

* 

Above: Northern Cardinal

*

Below: Clasping Aster and last of the purple coneflowers

Purple Beautyberry and White Beautyberry

Itea virginica 'Saturnalia', Virginia Sweetspire

Winterberry, Ilex verticillata 'Sparkleberry' 

 Eastern Bumble Bee on Solidago caesia, 

Blue-stemmed Goldenrod

I haven't always been accurate with my bee labeling,

but I hope I will do better with the ID book I purchased.

If you have read about the static electricity 

and Bumble Bee studies,

this looks like the perfect example of

negatively charged pollen transferring 

to a positively charged Bumble Bee.

According to the Princeton Field Guides

Common Bees of Eastern North America,

I think this is Ceratina calcarata, Small Carpenter Bee.

This book does not list common names, 

so I looked it up on the internet.

I thought maybe a different black bee, but it isn't in season.

Here's looking at you.

Eastern Bumble Bee

Small Carpenter Bees

Swamp Sunflower, Helianthus angustifolius

...with Winterberry.

European Honey Bee on Swamp Sunflower

drinking nectar.

Bumble bee

European Honey Bee

Sometimes, with the right backlighting, 

these little insects look exquisite.

Frost Aster, Symphyotrichum pilosum

Covered in small bees, bumble bees, and wasps.

Fills in any space it can, 

and moves in from other yards around us,  

so we must thin it out every year.

It's one of those annoying native wildflowers

that insects love with a passion,

and gardeners hate with a passion.

I think, a paper wasp.

European Honey Bee

I still have a few wild petunias to dig out of the shade and transplant into the sunny area of the Ash Tree stump, but all the potted nursery plants are in the ground… what a relief!  Frost is in the forecast for next week, but the first frost rarely affects the native plants.

My time outside lately has had to do with appointments, garden work and photography, and the only time I have sat down to relax has been indoors.  How do I write about the outdoors at this moment?  I don’t think it will happen this time around.

Vic did count the Ash Tree stump rings and declared, give or take a year, it was ninety-two years old.  A sad ending to a grand tree that lived for fifty-three years in the wilderness before contractors built a house within its parameters, then another, and another, and… you get the drift – an entire subdivision emerged within a season.

The only wilderness we experience these days is the state park over eight miles away.  Every time we have visited the park, we have picked up ticks, so it is an area I only wish to see in wintertime.

Temperature wise, Fall is definitely in the air.  We received over four day of heavy rain, off and on, from hurricane Helene, and now no rain is in the forecast for weeks to come.  

My next step is to set up the double walled pots on the deck and fill with soil, since they will support native plants.  I’m hoping to find fragrant ones this next spring to plant, as I ran out of time this year.

I’m off to look at my last batch of photos and wrap up this post, hopefully for your enjoyment.  Life... it’s a great gift to be here at all, so please take care of the nature in your garden as if it's your family, because it is your family.  Time to relax and take in everything autumn has to offer.  Enjoy!

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