As October wanes my days have become crowded.

October began hot and dry with a lingering summer-like miasma pressing heavily on the land and foliage, which seemed to be browning toward an inglorious lackluster end. Small branches like Owl Hollow and even Cabin Creek had stopped flowing. But it is miraculous what a little rain can do. Streams are full again and the woods are coloring up, though the various species of “red” oaks are still green. We are having a pretty autumn after all, though at October’s end there had not been a killing frost. The drought-savaged tomato and pepper plants in my garden are still alive and hold tiny green fruit that can never grow and ripen. But the garden year will go on. Now that it has rained my turnips are beginning to ball up.

With the Northern red, Shumard, and scarlet oaks of our old limestone rocky bluffs dropping acorns, it is a happy fall. Mid-month I began going to the woods to squirrel hunt again. On the morning of the 30th I got position on a huge Shumard oak that leans out over the slope and has a twisted trunk. Three grays were working in it and a fourth arrived as I watched. Grays high in the canopy of a big oak are small targets difficult for old eyes to follow and they twist around much when feeding on acorns, but I dropped all four of them. My return to the woods has proved that I have not lost my skills, which is a good finding in times when I need some positives.

Rain kept me from the woods on Halloween, a day which I have traditionally tried to spend partially in the woods, even taking off from work before my retirement, because it was once the closing day of the first phase of squirrel season and also the day of my father’s birth on Big Cabin Creek at Cottageville, Lewis County, in 1910. The little house is gone, but it was in the area behind the house where Bub Simpson lived. I pass the spot while starting on one or two squirrel hunts each season in one of the few places left where deer have not prompted outsiders and outfitters to acquire control of hunting access. On this Halloween autumn made its first real advance, bringing to our soul a Melvellian “damp, drizzly November” a day early, so there were no outdoor adventures and no good memory making. Stand-down and stay-in days are not what I need.

I closed October with mornings in the woods and afternoons along the waters of different small impoundments. The woods trips have not been easy, and while on them I have often thought fondly of the waters as safer, more desirable places. I envy those who can tackle the challenges of the outdoors with the anticipation and enthusiasm I once had, the effect of the modest successes of each of my efforts helping only somewhat to revive my spirits.

This October, like the last several, kindled in me an anxiety, a pang of conscience that I was squandering too many of its precious thirty-one days—days I would not see the like of again without weathering another hazardous year. It is hard to outclass October as it finally turned out in its last days, leaving us all too little time on which to see into its pageant of mixed sparkle and sadness, of ironic bright death more lovely even than October’s foil April brings with its life-renewal.

October has been the time for self-inventory, of retrospective evaluation of what we did well with the season and of what we could have done better. It also has been a juncture to examine the time-toll another twelvemonth has exacted on our stamina and skills.

October’s going does not bother me overmuch because it is the prelude act to a greater show that follows. October is grand, but more and better days are coming for those who find fulfillment with rod and gun. The fields, forests, and waters are about to spill forth the bounties of their horn of plenty. Blessed are we of the outdoor heart to live them!

Sam Bevard
https://maysville-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/web1_Sam-Bevard_2.jpgSam Bevard

Sam Bevard