Oak Tree Revelations

WARE — I’m 20 feet in the air as I write this. Or at least I was when I started.

It was a voluntary decision. I’m sitting in a deer stand. I realize I just lost some of the audience, and am being judged. That’s okay. But stay with me.

I’m strapped into a steel platform attached to the side of a moderately-aged oak tree, and I could not be happier.

It’s a beautiful Saturday in Elmore County, Alabama. The morning started chilly, but as sunlight starts to bloom across the ground it’s turning into quite a pleasant day. And it is quiet. 

Relatively. 

There’s a shooting range across the river that has apparently discovered a missing cache of automatic weapons and ammo, and is proceeding to bust the rounds out at whatever target it has set up. But it has to be pretty far away, as even the repeated shots are somewhat muffled. 

Then there’s the approximate 73 squirrels that are rummaging for food all around me. Ask any hunter, and the number of times the sound of a horse-sized deer has turned out to be a squirrel with impulse issues or a raccoon turning in from the night shift far outnumber the amount of actual horse-sized deer in this country. 

There are also a lot of birds. Birds in the woods as the day unfolds are very similar to the crowd at a football game; slowly they file in and their cheers at chants become a soundtrack all their own, serving as a meter of what’s going on around them. 

I’ve been up here for two hours, and the only thing I’ve seen is the wind moving the tree every so often. And you can’t marinate the toughness out of hickory.

But that’s okay, and to be expected. I’m a far better fisherman than a hunter. Always have been, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. 

It’s a crisp, but not cold morning. The sky is a bright blue, and a cold wind blows every so often. The sun pierces through the leafless trees with a kind warmth, almost apologizing for the oppression it provides in the summer. 

In short, it is my kind of day. If I can be honest with you, I’m perfectly content if no deer show up. 

I don’t hunt for sport. I hunt for meat and I hunt to spend time with my dad, who’s not getting any younger. I hunt to spend time with my friend, Jordo. And I hunt to spend time in nature. No emails, no notifications, no calls–unless I want to check them. And I don’t. Just hours sitting and detoxing from being plugged in all the time. 

I do a lot of thinking out here. About the future, about the present, about how to make the two meet. I think about my wife. I think about how I want to be a writer again, how to make this site better, how to grow our teammate podcast/website The Message Pitch. In all honesty, The Kudzu was started up here. 

Sometimes, the thoughts aren’t always good. You can assess and diagnose a lot of failures and shortcomings up here. Why you aren’t where you want to be and what can you do to get there. But the beauty of sitting in nature is it provides hope: the sun always comes out eventually after the rain, leaves regrow on trees, the warmth of spring always follows the cold of winter. And such, if you can’t work out your problems in your head, you trust that they will be resolved. 

Closing in on hour three, and still nothing to be seen but the aforementioned squirrels and birds. Somewhere off in the distance I hear an owl, and I see a warbler and it’s bright yellow feathers sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the grey trees. 

The breeze picks up a couple of times, in a way that both grabs my attention with its temperature but also is gentle and reassuring. Brisk, but not intense. Honestly, I’m trying to remember the last time I stopped long enough to notice a gentle breeze. And that in and of itself is a problem.

The land I’m on is old, and has been relatively untouched for as long as trees have grown. It’s been in our family for several generations. I’m told at one point my mother’s grandmother’s people had some 800+ acres; after a century of family trees branching, we’re down to 150 of mostly floodplain hardwoods along the Tallapoosa, bordering a field that a distant cousin uses for crops. When they till the field in the spring, it’s not uncommon for legitimate arrowheads to be found.

It ain’t much, but it’s beautiful. And it’s quiet.

Truth be told, The Kudzu got started on a slow day in the woods from this tree. A dream, a domain name, and a credit card came together in this stand and gave way to launching the site and Instagram. And the rest is history.

It’s closing in on getting down time. I’m out of Lance snack crackers (a pack of these and a Coke rivals the RC and a Moon Pie) and the deer have taken the day off. I start packing my things and take a look around. The birds, squirrels, and wind are at full song and in harmony. The trees are stretching toward the sky, leafless branches outstretched and basking in the winter sun.

Some would say there’s nothing going on here. That it was a terrible day of hunting. But it’s quiet, and it’s beautiful. And best of all, it’s nature.

And I have loved every minute of it.