are messages for the ears, yet there are
times in autumn when the air is lined with shimmering strands
of spider silk, as if each tiny creature has suddenly found it
necessary to leap into the breeze, sending me a visual message
to tempt my fate, attached to a long, single rainbow of thread.
These lesser gods and the beauty of their message are not yet
lost to those who will listen.
When I am in my covers and along my creeks, my mind is quiet.
I can listen and heed their voices. It's not as if I receive
any words. There are no spooky echoes in my head. Rather the
feeling is one of being in harmony with everything around me.
The way I walk, pause, turn, and stop is not chosen with any
conscious thought on my part. A likely looking grouse corner
is approached by one direction this day and the opposite direction
the next. I am successful both times.
In other places and circumstances, people call that following
a "hunch." The whole concept is now an established
legal principle called "probable cause." It is nothing
more or less than paying attention to the nagging thought in
the head and doing what it says. I think that in my quiet mind
the "gut reaction" is just being obedient to another
will. I have, from time to time, tried to force my thoughts onto
the task. It doesn't work.
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This year I searched for some new places.
I selected each piece of land because it had, on paper, all the
necessary logical elements of a place where birds would be found.
But within fifty yards or so, I knew by the feeling in my gut
that the cover was no good. It had everything that grouse need
to get by: trees of the right age and gray dogwood in the right
places, but it had no "soul." There was no harmony
for me to blend into. Admittedly, I hear what pleases me, and
sometimes I don't understand it all at once, so I often spent
a couple hours trying to prove my inner voices wrong. But I could
hear something after I quieted my mind.
The voice said, "You're wasting your time."
I have other covers that are pretty much birdless, but I don't
go there for the hunting. These are just beautiful, spiritual
places to be-churches in the natural world. They speak to me
and I walk in them to listen to the voices and soak up what they
have to tell me. When I come home my wife asks me if I "got
anything." I always answer yes and go downstairs to clean
the gun and hang up my hunting clothes.
"Where is it?" she asks.
I just smile and pat myself on the chest. It's in there. I can
feel it, stored away in small parts I don't understand right
then. Not all messages are addressed to the mind; some are communications
with the soul. The intel |
lect is but one small part of the whole. When I do understand,
I get a lump in the throat and a thrill in the heart.
These waters of the Mayo and the Stoney are, through their puddles
and streams, in my heart and at the heart of my every appearance
in them. Water is, as I said at the beginning, the mother element-part
salt, sun, and time; pulsing in our blood; sustaining life; bringing
into being nine-tenths of everything alive; creating a water
brotherhood in the leafy places where men and grouse wander.
Water has a way of going beyond the reach of its rivers. It is
the paper for the words of the lesser gods.
I am native to these places. I know them intimately enough that
I can say where the lesser gods live. I have stayed long enough
to listen for their voices.
Ted Lundrigan hails from central MN
We have let you read about eight pages of this 207 page book,
for more of the same book simply go to Guldans.com and buy the
book for $25
© 2002 Ted Nelson Lundrigan Reprinted with permission
of Countrysport Press, Camden, Maine (www.countrysportpress.com).
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