No Luck Today

I got up early and went turkey hunting again this morning, but no luck, for me, that is, but luck for that big tom or jake.   If this keeps going like it is, I'm going to have to go to the local Food Lion and buy one.

But it was by no means a waste of time.  The sun was filtering through the light-green of the budding maples, poplars, and other hardwoods.  As an extra bonus wild dogwoods are in full bloom with their whites gleaming through the green like an errant snowfall.  All kinds of "critters" were out and about this morning.  The spring warblers (of which I can identify none) were singing their hearts out.  Cardinals and noisy bluejays were resounding their individual notes through the woods.  Sometimes I imagine my being an Indian and waiting for that buck or turkey.  I was in perfect harmony with nature - I killed what I ate or I didn't eat - meaning  if I were unlucky, just branch lettuce, arrow root, and what we had put away from last year's harvest: pumpkins, beans, corn (maize).  There would be some dried fish, but I would have preferred the native trout in streams rife with them.

Several years ago I was traveling from Maryland and driving through Virgina going south I saw a river far below me.  It had an old rock weir.  It stretched across the river, most of it intact, with the center a funnel-shape for herding the fish into it. It was exciting to see something like that that Indians had made and it had survived all those years.