Spring Woods Walk
One wrong step and ice water is now beginning to run down the edge of my boot, and I can feel the frigid tingle begin to penetrate my sock. It’s not like falling into a trout stream right after ice-out where the shock steals your breath for a second before you realize you’re not going to drown. This liquid ice is more like upland water torture: slow, steady, painful.
I’m at a marsh about a mile from the house in northeast Connecticut in what has become a favorite spot. I took the winter shortcut across the back end of the marsh to a stream to fish and made a poor decision. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have been disturbing it anyway. I discovered the marsh last fall while hunting woodcock along the tiny stream that feeds the 10-acre marsh. Shallow in most spots and packed with snow and ice just two weeks ago when it was easy to walk across with snowshoes, now this 10-acre mix of downed cattails and dead water lilies in the deeper spots and large tussocks of thick grasses in the shallow end is just a few weeks away from greening out. Hopping from tussock to tussock, I think I’ll make it to drier, higher ground, but my boot slips off a large hummock and in I go. I struggle to release my foot from the ooze from which it is embedded and off comes my knee-high rubber boot. Using the rod tube for balance, I’m back in the boot and safely detached from the pungent, primordial quicksand. And this was supposed to be an easy day; I wasn’t even going to wade into the raging stream runoff.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der Spring 2023-Ausgabe von The Upland Almanac.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der Spring 2023-Ausgabe von The Upland Almanac.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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THE BIG HURTS
my Uncle Pat once told me that both pain and disappointment were good:“The more of those you have experienced,” he explained, “the longer you have lived; suffer but a little, and you’re in an early grave.
Day's End
NEAR MISSES
Hunting Dog Hypoglycemia
The first time I ever saw a dog have a seizure from hunting dog hypoglycemia was 25 years ago while hunting pheasants in western Kansas.
Profile of an Artist: MATT DOYLE
Throughout Matt's life, there has always been an active passion for the great outdoors. As a young Pennsylvanian boy, his dad and grandfathers would take him out fishing and later hunting to share their deep-rooted respect and enjoyment for God's country. It became very clear that their passion for the outdoors would soon develop his passion for it as well.
DESERT CATHARSIS
Miles of sagebrush and grasslands slipped past during the 10-hour drive between Bozeman and Denver.
RED CAR WHITE DOG:
A Riff on Sporting Vehicles and Other Matters
UENATOR CAUE (HUNTER BEWARE) A FIELD GUIDE +O HUNTING LODGES
From ice bars to plywood shacks, in-room hot tubs to a kitchen staff uprising, the hunting lodge experience can be fascinating and frustrating.
Charles Helles & Sons, London
“Some enchanted evening ... you may see a stranger across a crowded” – gunroom.
ON POINT: Finding My Way with the Help of an English Setter
Becky came into my life in a rather unusual way. My friend Tom McGuane had just bought a home on Mobile Bay as a place to retreat from the cold winters of his Montana ranch.
Tail feathers - STANDARDS AND PRACTICES
\"An armed society is a polite society,\" the NRA says in one of its dicta, cribbed from Robert A. Heinlein, a 20th-century American science fiction writer.
