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by T. Duren Jones
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Raining on Our Parade (er, Hunt) |
Life is filled with enough disappointments. Why must I deliberately add more categories—like hunting—to fail in? |
 Bill & Joe, before the torrents
Rain, rain, go away. Come again another … hunting season!
Life is filled with enough disappointments. Why must I deliberately add more categories—like hunting—to fail in? No one is forcing me to go out into the wilderness, get up at 3 a.m., stumble through the forest in the dark, slosh through marshes and streams, sit on a log and cramp up by a game trail (with the vain hope that some beasty might mosey by), and walk for hours in driving rain back to camp. I choose this. Bow hunting season scoreboard update: Elk 2; delusional hunters 0; weather 1. For my son-in-law, Joe, our good friend Bill and me, this past weekend held as much promise, and mistaken fantasy, as our season opener did a couple of weekends ago. In our minds and plans, we would see game, bugle in a big bull elk to fight for the ladies, “bag” it, and have bragging rights to match other successful hunters we know. Right. I will say this: If we were to strike out, we could not have selected a more beautiful place to do it. This deep-cut valley with the steep slopes up to jagged mountains, by Silver Jack Lake, in the Umcompahgre National Forrest, is just a spectacular setting. We were enjoying the scenery as much as the hunt. That is until the storms came … and didn’t leave. Afternoon thunderstorms are expected in summer in Colorado. But what I’ve loved in the past about archery season in September is that the weather is a little cooler, the fall leaves are turning yellows, oranges, and reds, and typically you can count on it not to rain. Not this year. It rained, and it rained, and it rained. And then it rained some more. No elk in its sound wapiti mind would be walking around in these torrents. Not like us! Soaking wet from head to toe, we stumbled into camp well after sunset. At least we’d be able to get out of the weather into our dry tent, change into fresh clothes, have a simple dinner, and climb into our warm sleeping bags. Well … guess who left the tent window and front door unzipped for ventilation. (Hey, it wasn’t supposed to rain this late in September!) Our sleeping bags were wet, our jackets soaked, even our camp pillows were damp. We couldn’t even get around in socks, as the tent floor was flooded. We did the best we could to hunker down for a while in the truck cab, munched on P, B, and J sandwiches, and tried to dry things out with the defroster on high. It rained all night, with high winds at times, keeping us awake most of the time. And it was still raining in the morning, dampening our spirits. We called it quits. The elk beat us again—this time aided by foul weather. But, we’ll be back the next weekend, the last of the season. And then we’ll wait a long year to start it all over again. This will surprise no one who has ever hunted. That’s the funny thing about hunting: It’s about hope, anticipation, dreams, and opportunity for success at something (and hopefully shortened memories about failure). With hunting, rain or shine, there is always yet one more chance for achievement. Life doesn’t always offer that. More adventures |