CM Sackett

They were there… just for an instant. Then that blasted Gulf-spawned fog rolled back over them (I mean, we were in the Brush Country of south Texas… not the Puget Sound!).

“Did you see that?” I whispered.

My friend Charlie lowered his glasses and peered into the mist. “See what?” he whispered back.

I stepped closer to keep our hushed tones from drifting into the thicket. “I swear I saw rams standing in that wash, right there.” I said, pointing with a nod of my head.

Charlie stared hard into the rolling blank greyness, then looked at me like I’d just given a dumb answer on Jeopardy, “There ain’t no rams on this ranch.”

All I could do was just shake my head… he was so encouraging sometimes. “Well, I know what I saw.” I hissed as quiet, yet ‘firm’ as I could. It was my best defense, with nothing but fog for proof. Yet, as Charlie was gathering himself to make some witty comeback, we heard the ‘click‘, like a hoof on stone. And it was coming from the direction of the wash. Charlie looked at me wide-eyed, like he’d just heard wind in church. As I returned his gaze, I proved to be the more mature and manly of the two of us… I stuck my tongue out at him.

Again, out of the shrouded beyond, that faint, but distinct ‘click‘… ‘click‘ ‘click‘ ‘click‘. And then, what sounded like a groan.

Now, for a couple of Tennessee hillbillies, me and Charlie was bold as the best of them around coons and possums and other bench crawlers-n-holler ‘haints. But this here was getting down right unnerving for both of us.

Then, as we strained to see through the soup, the fog melted right there, just enough for us to get a peek at several of what “ain’t” on that ranch.

“Man o’ man, would you look at that” Charlie said, a little louder than he meant to.

It got their attention, and three of them glanced over their shoulders and instantly saw us for what we were… a very small threat. But that didn’t stop ‘em from turning right around and leading the others into that thorn-crowned realm of safety.

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Me and Charlie had come down here for hogs and javies. Well, and bobcats, coyotes, bunnies… you know, anything that a south Texas March had to offer. But from the instant we laid eyes on those curl horned ghosts, we were after RAMS! Charlie said it would be “…easy. They’re just domestic goats.” He could be so persuasive sometimes. And so wrong.

For the next two hours, we stood right where we were, making a grand plan of attack. Let’s just keep this between ourselves… alright? But truth be told, it wasn’t because of our years of vast experience or colossal wisdom or unfathomably deep propensity for patience. Nah, it’s just, that for most of that time, we couldn’t see past the Snuffers on the end of our arrows.

Once the sun finally climbed out of its bed, somewhere in Pennsylvania, and burned a path of daylight into the landscape, we headed out after our new favorite challenge. Spent the rest of that day~~and right into dark working our plan and walking the Lama’s right off our Tony’s (well, you do have to dress proper for Texas, you know!). We snuck down arroyos, crawled through pig tunnels in the mesquite (made by very small pigs, I might add), became instant experts in the Texas Two-Step trying to get clear of a rattler we disturbed, and actually wondered if drinking water would do us any good. I mean, we figured it’d just come pouring out of all those new holes in us, if we did. And once in a while, we even caught a glimpse of those beasts, generally standing in some clearing about 150-200 yards ahead of us. They were always standing right at the entrance to another hellish haven of escape… laughing. I swear, they were laughing.

We played the wind. We played our hunches. We played our luck… and we played plumb out. The only ones who enjoyed that day were the rams, and our host.

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As we were having dinner at the LIBERTY Cafe that evening, our host, Mr. Smith, was fairly gentle with us. He waited until the chips-n-salsa were in place before he chuckled and said, “You boys look like you had a full day.”

We were too pooped and too hungry to argue the obvious.

“Saw them damn rams, didn’t you?”

That snapped us back to attention. Charlie ’bout spit chip chunks into my fresh bowl of cheese dip… he can be so uncouth sometimes! I covered up just in time, and then looked at Smitty. “Yessir, we sure did. Why didn’t you tell us you had rams on this place?”

“Because I don’t.”

“But we seen ‘em!” Charlie had cleared an airway and finally found his voice.

“Yeah, I know you saw them. But I’m not the reason they’re there. One of my neighbors came into more money back in the 80’s than he ever had brains for. He went out and bought a bunch of those beasts, and a herd of emu. Said they were the ‘beef of the future’ and going to make him ‘rich’. Well, it didn’t take them long to ‘migrate’ back and forth through the holes in the fence that the hogs make. The only thing they’ve been over the years is a smelly pain in the rump!”

“Well, why haven’t you just killed ‘em off?” I asked.

“Two reasons, my friend. One, them old smelly buggers ain’t that dumb-easy.” Then he leaned forward for effect. “You boys found that out today, didn’t you?” he chuckled.

I was too interested in reason number two to even let that one hit home. Charlie, on the other hand, was a little more inclined to catch it. Just as he was working up a rebuttal, I shoved the chips closer to him and asked, “Smitty, what’s reason number two?”

Smitty leaned back in his chair and smiled, like he’d just finished a fine meal~~and we hadn’t even started on our Mexican Plate #2’s yet.

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Smitty cut right to th chase. “I’ll tell you what, boys. If either of you can stick one of the ‘Brothers 3′, your hunt’s on me.”

He’d said Charlie’s favorite word… “free”. “We kill a ram, our whole hunt’s free?”

Smitty’s smile was faint, but ominous. “Not just any ram, gentlemen. It has to be one of the ‘Brothers 3′.”

“Who’s the ‘Brothers 3′, sir?” I asked (I liked a little more detail to my deals of a lifetime).

Smitty smiled. “They’re the chink-bossed, full-curled old demons that bested you boys all day, down by the tanks… the three that looked back at you in the fog.”

Now it was my turn to be a tortilla geyser. I was a better shot, got Charlie and the queso. “How in the Sam Hill did you know that?!” Charlie bellowed as his eyes followed the debris trail from his shirt, all the way back to my silent, sheepish ‘SORRY!”.

“Well, I was quite impressed with the fact that you boys weren’t deterred by that gift from the Gulf this morning. And since I didn’t have anything else to do after you left, I figured I’d just see how you Tennessee mountain men liked our Brush Country flats. And I calculated it was about time for those bearded bandits to cross back over to my place.” He gave it all time to sink in, then added, “I figured they’d get your attention. So, I went up on Calichi Hill to watch the whole show… and you boys put on a good one!”

I was liking this man. Ornery as Hell! But not mean, just full of the zest of Life.

I wasn’t against anything ‘free’, but something about the way Smitty just sat there at the end of the table, munchin’ on a chip and watching us, I began to feel like we were nothing more than lab mice… in a maze. And that old hombre had just dropped the cheese at the other end. We could smell it. And he knew we were gonna go for it, the confident, satisfied look on his face bore that out. But the fire dancin’ in his eyes made me wonder if there was an exit.

more to come…

I came up here to get a break from the ‘perfect storm’ of my life… and for three days, it sort of worked. I started this jaunt with fresh everything… except memories. I bought new wools-n-wets-gear, new boots, traded the Chrysler in for a new (to me) ‘73 F150 4X4 (it had character, I’ll give it that) and even a new hat. The tent and camp gear was all new, loaned cheerfully by a friend who knew the feeling… and also knew, that at the moment, there was nothing else he could do for me.

The only ‘old’ thing I brought into these mountains was the Howatt El Dorado, that my father had used to feed his family and his soul, in places just like this, for years and years. He had given it to me that November before the dementia finally closed the last window of his clear eyes and piercing wisdom. It was one of the few items of his journey on this land, that he had truly cherished (his loyalties and his treasures rested firmly in a broad audience of people… and the Almighty). I had always thought of it as just “that stick”. It must have shown when he handed it to me. He said, “Son, I’m dancin’ on the squall line for the last time, here. I can see the storm boiling into the valley, and I know where it’s headed.”

His eyes probed my face, then brightened as his chin lifted and he continued. “I know it’s just a stick, son. But if you’re willin’, it’s also a connection. That’s what it’s been for me for over 40 years… a connection.”

“With what?” I quickly asked. This was the first time in months that the man I knew as Dad had spoken through those lips.

He chuckled and reached up with a steady hand, and patted my face, like he did when I was a tike. “With the truth, son, that nothing is forever down here. Thank God, especially not the storms. I hunted because I loved it, son. But I went on the mountain, on more than one occasion, because I needed a break from the ’storms’ in the valleys of daily livin’. Up there, the thunder and lightning was just Nature’s music. And up there, I learned to dance to it… and to be a little less afraid of the noise and rain down here.”

“Does any of that make sense, son?”

I nodded yes with my head. But it wasn’t until this outing that my heart learned to join in.

I wasn’t much of a hunter. I’d learned to shoot fairly well when I was a kid. You know, one of those “I’m gonna be like my DAD!” things that never seem to get very far off the ground for some of us. And even as I grabbed it and the quiver of arrows off the display rack in my office the night before I left, I wasn’t real sure why. Except, reaching for it was the only natural thing I had done in weeks… and it felt “right” in my hand. So, I brought it.

And it had been sitting next to me now, in the tent, for three days of a downpour.

Some getaway.

I’d tried to hunt with it the first couple of days. I say ‘hunt’ almost in jest. I mean, isn’t it kind of funny to call plodding aimlessly up and down the cutbacks and logging roads, through the liquid misery, with your head down, and your mind full of everything but the animals you were scaring the bejeebees out of… hunting?

But that’s what I was calling it.

It was on the morning of the fourth day that I discovered a part of my father’s secret to Joy… and nearly lost my life in the process. The weather had broken for a while. The next fury of the season was hanging low, just a couple of ranges over. But it would have to claw its way better than 6,200 ft., over the knob of Roan mountain, before it could swarm me with its raindrop hordes. So I headed out for a high-base meadow that Dad had ghosted for five years, trying to get the better of the biggest buck of his life. I wasn’t even thinking about hunting… I was just glad for the change.

But as I crossed the benches and rounded the horn, the Howatt was feeling good in my hand. It, and the razor-edged shafts that his own hands had fletched, made me feel the part, anyway. And as I cut the gap that led into the meadow, the sight of deer feeding calmly amidst the ebony and chocolate sheen of scores of turkey raised my pulse… and calmed my mind.

That hadn’t happened it months.

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I guess I had been paying more attention than I thought to all the stories my dad had shared with me about his adventures, because I went into autopilot. I hugged that rain-sog’d ground and every dripping shrub and bush like I was Indian-born and brave-raised. I inched my way, just like Dad had spoken of so many times, toward this mob of the unaware. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the rich, heady perfume of this earthy vixen, this beautiful mountain that had captivated my father all those years, began working its magic on his wounded son.

I was doing pretty well, until my stealthy attitude slipped on my lack of stealthy experience. I had been so focused on a wad of turkeys and a young spike feeding no more than thirty steps from the brush I was slow-stepping to, that I didn’t notice the change in pitch of the already steep ground. Looking back, I would love to have had a camera.

My feet went out. My rump, went down. The bow, went thankfully, away from what followed. I rolled and tumbled and cursed my way through the bushes (like a foul-mouthed shepherd’s staff hitting the Red Sea), cartwheeled (thankfully!) over a couple of “ohh, that’s gonna leave a mark!” rocks and finally landed belly-first and slid to a fairly graceful stop.

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The turkeys had scattered like a group of muddy 5-year olds fleeing the word ‘bath’. A few free falling feathers were the only evidence of their passing. The spike, on the other hand, was as stunned by the event as I was. As I came to rest (I guess that’s what you’d call anything less flailing than what had just occurred), and before I gathered myself for the rage that would have normally followed such an ‘injustice’, I looked up, into the face of the most unhinged ungulate to ever walk the earth. His legs were splayed. His head was down. And he was looking at me as though he were waiting to see if that was the whole act.

And I started to laugh.

I laughed at the look on his face (which, by the way, helped him find his feet.  He ran three full strides in mid air, before he got traction). Then, I laughed at my good fortune of having not been crushed, broken, chewed, or dissolved. Next, I laughed at how good it felt, to be laughing.

Then I cried.

After a couple of minutes, I gathered myself and my weaponry and started back over the gap to camp. I’d made it about a mile and a half, with just one ridge and a couple of benches to go, when the leading edge of that storm crawled over the hump of the ridge. I was just about to slip into my old pattern of getting mad at my ‘misfortune’ when a great peal of lightning broke the growing dark with its sizzling brightness. And then… it thundered.

And I felt the warmth of my father’s hand gently patting my face, just like he did when I was a tike. And right then and there, with the Howatt in hand, I made the connection. And I took my first steps to dancin’ on the squall line.

CM Sackett

The scent of rain, as it patters and puddles outside the markets of Pike Place, in Seattle… the moan of a September’d wind tumbling down through the pines and quakies, along the drainages of the Bridgers… the soft, Hope-blooming warmth of an April morning sun, filtering through the fledgling canopy of the Delaware Water Gap… Ah, the things not only recalled, but warmly relived from the comfort of my front porch this mornin’.

The nature of my business and the bend of my personality have made a friend out of the “necessity” of travel. I’m a writer, and a teller of the Wonder and beauty, of the Hope, Valor, Honor and honest determination that I’ve been fortunate enough to find and witness in those travels. And on those days when the tempo of travel wanes, the company of these memories, and the view from this, my home, my own front porch… give me rest and get me fit for the next adventure.

I do not know if those of you who have taken time out of your busy days, to share in the wanderings of mine, have the treasure of a front porch, or of a view that fosters a crinkled smile and a calming heart rate (there were many a day when I did not). If not, I’ll pray you do soon enough. And until then, stop in when you can… I’ll share the sights-n-sounds-n-Southerly breezes from mine.

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CM Sackett

“Just stay on the switchbacks and logging roads, you cain’t get lost” my host had said. And, being this side of it all, I’ll agree with that. But there was a mornin’ and afternoon… and almost an evening, when I was strongly ’sidetracked’.

Tweren’t any trouble though. The sights-n-sounds-n-scents of the mountains were more than fair comp’ny. If that’s being ‘lost’, who needs a map?

My second day in the Bridgers had started in common-enough fashion. I’d left out from the cabin with bow in hand, and a bull in mind. But the folds and shadows and windsong’d drainages of these brooding sentinels were becoming a distraction. Like a feisty redhead to a man who swears he likes calm brunettes, these mountains were getting my attention. But, I had fifteen days, so I didn’t mind at all. Besides, there had to be an elk around here somewhere.

Only there wasn’t. Seems a fella who guided folk on ‘hunts’ down in the quakies of the flat had been on top the night before we arrived (two nights before season opened up) with a gun, a horn, and a plan… it worked. There were elk all over the valley, roaming in herds, like Herefords. Good for his business, a bit more of a challenge for me, here on the high side of things.

But that was alright. I had come here this particularly stormy September, as much for the challenge of this storied high ground as for the elk. And there was enough of the first, that the lack of the second never really felt like a ‘loss’. Now how’s that for fortunate livin’?!

And on this second day, after crossing three ridges, eight or nine startled range cows, more muley does than I thought God had made, and two sets of this season’s bear cubs… at close range… one set without a visible “Momma” (yep, that was interesting for a few minutes, to say the least), I came across a sight that brought this wind-suckin’ flatlander to a smiling stop. I had been working the logging road scratched between the bulk of two uplifts late in the day as yet another storm was growling and bulling its way over the western shoulders of the range. As I rounded the curve and topped a short rise on the southerly side, I hit the ‘notch’, that place where both giants give way enough for a man to see a bit of the glory beyond. I took a drink from my canteen, and then I just stood there, for almost twenty minutes, just drinking in the beauty and wonder and power of this oft-stepped dance between sky and sentinel.

When I finally made my way back to the cabin in the growing dark, my host was on the porch, pipe a’glowin… “You have a good day today?”

“Oh yes.”

“Get lost?” he says with a chuckle.

“Nossir, just introduced.”

That answer seemed to suit us both.

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CM Sackett

My sons do not share my Passion for those things Outdoor… neither did my father. I must be the rock-skip from older generations of our clan across the waters of Time. I can still remember my Grandpa Arnold mowing the grass on his little farmette, on the outskirts of Mt. Grove, Missouri. Until his 80th spring, when he went Home, he used a rotary push mower, Key overalls… and bare feet to keep the park-like presence ever fresh for Grandma’s eyes.

He farmed and cooned and hunted the hills and hollers of what became the Mark Twain National Forest nearly all his days. When he retired, he kept the homeplace and 6-8 acres for a summer garden, his beloved (and fairly famous) tobacco, and a firestoke of his own passion’d memories. I loved that old man, his gentle quietness… and the unveering path of manhood he blazed so straight through two world wars (he was born in 1888), two Depressions, pestilence, blight, drought, and a fiesty Irish wife… for whoever came next.

And but for this one thing, I might very well despair over the course my own days have taken. For you see, his children found no thrill in the being there~~no awe in the presence of oaks and willows, stone-bed creeks or rain. And with the exception of one daughter (who died a few month after he, and a few more before my Grandma), they found his character and metel to be of little value and even less use for their purposes (they fought to a blood-foamed frenzy… over 6-8 acres, a 2-bedroom house with grey shingle siding, and a 56′ Buick Special with a bad generator).

And yet, because these things were a part of the bedrock of who he WAS, not just what he hoped to be seen as, he lived his convictions and his Passions for the right they were, as he could see it… and for the pure joy they gave him. And he passed them on to the only one in his presence that found everything about his world… and his presence FASCINATING. The time was short (he moved over across the chasm during my 7th February). But there was no sense of hurry, no rushing of lessons or times, just a full, rich embracing of whatever moment we found ourselves in together.

It took me more years than I’m proud to admit to make that part of his character my own…

I do not own the future. My sons will, of course, have to finally do as they decide in all matters of character AND the Outdoors. But as I look out my office window at a warm August night overtaking what has been a pleasant August evening, I find myself recalling the sons of other men, who, for whatever reason, have over the years found value in the Trail I’m blazing (you see, the tangled vines and undergrowth of the Wild devour even the cleared ground of a giant… if not traversed constantly). And I smile at the joy and richness they have brought to the door of my soul.

Gift for gift.

They were not my “chosen” ones. They are the ones who chose, if even for a time, me. Even as I was not the one my grandfather originally prepared himself to share the richness he had found with. But I am so glad that when I showed… he did.

Ahh, but for this one thing…

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CM Sackett

Well sir, the lights are on and the “WELCOME” sign is hung on the porch… and meant.

This is the home of The “DOORWAY” Buck, the first in a series of 12 volumes from “The Endless Season” books. Based on the joys and wonder that a boy of any age can find as close as the fields and woodlots out back, these adventures go a little deeper than the events of an outing.

So, what’s the book about? Well, you might say it covers things I’m fairly familiar with; that not every young man has a dad, growing up… that’s just one of the facts of Life. But every boy should at least have someone who stands in the gap, and makes the road to ‘manhood’ a little less confusing, frightful… and long.

As they become available, take a peek for yourself at the excerpts from various chapters (I never cared for buying something ‘unseen’, so there’ll be plenty for you to peruse… and hopefully, more than enough for you to decide whether the images and stories in my mind are worth putting in yours).

But rest assured, whether you order a copy today or not, we’re glad you’re here. And it is hoped that every visit… and each volume you add to your collection, brings you some measure of Smile-Time and makes the rest of your day or evening a bit more like the feeling you get… from reading a good book.

As Always;

CM Sackett