The Ghosts of Autumn: A Season of Hunting Stories by Joel Spring

Author:Joel Spring [Spring, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Hunting, Shooting, Outdoor Skills, Antiques & Collectibles, Firearms & Weapons, essays, nature, animals, Wildlife
ISBN: 9781510704831
Google: lHSCDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2016-04-12T23:47:48.152811+00:00

17

OCTOBER INTO NOVEMBER

THE FLOWERS said it all.

One cold morning, I was on my way to work when I should have been on my way to hunt something, and it was garbage day in Lewiston. Trash totes and giant recycle bins lined the roadside in the growing daylight, an army of blue robots awaiting their orders. One raised its lid in thanks as the frigid autumn wind had carried it out into the road and I narrowly avoided sending him to the trash-robot afterlife, whatever that may be. Just before turning up the hill that would take me to the four-lane that would take me to work, one of the overstuffed garbage totes flashed briefly in my headlights. Three pots of chrysanthemums were tossed on top of the trash, two with roots up and one with its frostbitten yellow flowers reaching up as if to beg for just another few days on the porch. It wasn’t to be. Just as certainly as those mums would soon be in the landfill, the celebrated month of October would give way to the misunderstood and seldom appreciated gray of November. Sometimes I think only hunters love November. Everyone else I know thinks of November as a somber funeral for another year. For me it’s the start of the most exciting time in all of hunting season. I do, however, mourn for October before diving headlong into the coming month.

Most people love October, even those that crave the summer months. For their own reasons, everyone is sad to see it go. My reasons vary. Maybe it’s that October is so full of bird hunting and bow hunting and mountain trips. It is the first immersion into the heart of hunting season after the slow burn that is the squirrel hunting and equipment preparation and target shooting of September. September is a fine month. October, though … October lives in my imagination during the summer months. I never think much about November until it’s on my doorstep ready to kick off the pumpkins that have gone a little too soft. October is fiery and red and bold and easy to love. During the summer, October daydreams are blue skies and flushing rooster pheasants and grass that crunches underfoot. When it finally arrives, October is so full and fast-paced that it is gone before it ever had a chance.

The flowers in the garbage can were a not-so-gentle reminder of how most people hate November. Our own mums were still on the porch, not yet destined for the mulch pile. Throw them in the trash? You have to be kidding me. They were keeping the softening pumpkins company and adding a splash of real autumn brown to the front stoop. It’s not that I was leaving them there as a reminder of October. It’s just that I’d been so busy hunting. By the time I tried to move the big rotten pumpkins, I had to get the wheelbarrow. Even then by the time I arrived in the backyard, I had little more than tepid pumpkin stew to pour onto the pile.

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