In the Thick of Things

My friend Steve Quill invited me to duck hunt with him in Port O'Connor this past week.  The season ends in a few days and I begin chemotherapy soon.  So, I skipped out on some things and rearranged others in order to spend some time in the duck blind.

The bay and lagoons around Port O'Connor teem with wintering waterfowl. Teal, redheads, widgeon, bluebills, pintails, golden-eyes and more spend their days feeding in the flats and soaking up the winter sun that reflects off the reefs.  They join the pelicans, cranes, cormorants and myriad other shore birds in crisscrossing the jetties, lagoons, islands and sandbars of the larger bay.  Ducks loaf the short winter days away, floating and paddling beside tailing redfish and surfacing dolphins.

We watched all this activity become visible as the full moon sank and the sun began its rise on the chilly morning of our hunt.  Four of us stood in brushy pit blinds on a small island no larger than a suburban driveway.  Retriever Jake crouched in his place near the water's edge, ready to bolt for downed birds.

After an hour or two, we'd taken our legal limit of redheads, as well as a pintail or two.  We stood up in our blinds to watch the clouds of redheads fly over us, picking out the shiny, rusted heads of the drakes and the subtle browns and grays of the hens.  Clouds of them flew over - hundreds of ducks at a time - swooping down to take a look at our bobbing decoys before they careened past us for more distant and enticing water.

One group, however, did not pass.  They swooped low over us and then circled up, high and back - heading straight for the open water amidst our decoys.  In a rush of swishing wings, the entire flock landed in the water not 20 yards from us.  They floated and bobbed, fluffing their wings, shaking off water droplets from the splashdown.

Before we could even look at each other, another group buzzed in from behind us and joined the ducks on the water.  Then another group came. And another.  And still another.  Within about 60 seconds, approximately 1000 redheads landed in our decoys right in front of us.

We were breathless.  Not even our salty old guide who's hunted Port O'Connor for 60 years had ever seen anything like this.  We looked at each other, giddy with amazement and joy, repressing the urge to speak so as not to scare them away.

At some point, I said aloud the only thing that came to mind:  "God is good."

My friend Steve, a retired Lutheran pastor, smiled and nodded.

The ducks stayed with us for 5-10 minutes.  Then, in one magnificent explosion, all of them rocketed up from the water at once and left, flying east for other waters.

For me, to hunt is to participate with intention in a fundamental law of life on this planet: that some things die so that other things may live.  To hunt is also to socket myself down into the thick of things.  Into the flow of life, of the earth, and of the world.  Into the Rhythm of Life that was here before we were, and will be here when we are gone.  Into the primal, natural realities that ground and determine our lives here whether or not we acknowledge them.

With the redheads - both the living and the downed - I feel my own soul expand into the Soul of the world.