Sitting with It

I am sitting on a plastic bucket, tucked into a hedgerow of sunflowers and goldenrod and bluestem grass, a sliver of the real Great Plains eking out an existence on the edge of a cut wheat field.

The wind is constant. This is the prairie, after all. Blowing a steady 25 miles per hour, the roar robs me of my best asset while dove hunting: my hearing. I almost always hear doves coming before I see them. That tell-tale whistle of their wings gives them away. At least the wind also hides my small movements.

It’s hot. Really hot. The truck’s thermometer read 102 when we started. The heat pressed down on the world. But that’s part of the bargain when you hunt doves.

A rickety motorized dove decoy dances and jangles a few yards in front of me, its gray and white wings rotating madly in hopes of drawing the real thing close enough for me to take a shot. Tinkerbelle rests across my lap. She’s a 20-gauge Franchi over-under that I have carried as my main shotgun for 25 years now. She and I are tethered in ways that only a few humans can match.

There are no doves in the air.

I reach for my cellphone. No service. I smile. Here it is.

Unexpected, but welcome, I found myself with a chance to be alone with my thoughts. It’s all too easy to get lost in the buzz of a cellphone. To be sure, it’s not like I have a kid, or need to tend to a family, but that mind buzz is real nonetheless. It felt good to set it aside.

I close my eyes. The wind takes over my world. I smell the earth. I smell myself, the sunflowers and a vague whiff of the cattle lowing and moaning several hundred yards behind me. I am still. I love it.

At first, I am a jumble of thoughts. Work has been challenging — my latest book is not taking off as I had hoped — and I stew on that for a while, then entertain a torrent of random thoughts about football and tonight’s dinner and that woman I went on a date with the other day and look, there’s a carpenter bee!

“True Blue” by a band called Boygenius runs through my head in its entirety. It’s a song about being seen clearly, flaws and all, and still being held as worthy. Still no doves.

A funny looking caterpillar flies off the stem of a sunflower and hits the back of my neck. I look at it. Not a swallowtail caterpillar, but something close. I’ll have to look you up later, little dude…

The jumble begins to fade. My mind moves toward people who matter to me, to moments shared. Sometimes, in that quiet, I think of conversations that have changed me, or of laughter that still feels close even across months or miles. My nostrils fill with the scent of a past lover, an olfactory hallucination that closes my eyes and spreads a smile across my lips.

I shake it off and look around. Still no doves. I check my watch. It’s 5:41. I’ve been here an hour. Sigh. I guess I won’t shoot a limit today.

A dove whizzes by. I rise, swing, shoot… and the dove flies off untouched. Ah well, those were my first shots since the previous November, ten months ago. I have every right to be rusty. Now I am fully awake.

There is a thing in hunting, fishing and gathering: The appearance of our quarry, a bite on a hook, a single mushroom, the flight of a dove, all will juice our enthusiasm for a good half hour or so. Every time.

A half hour passes. No more doves. I fade back into thought. This time about others, their gardens, their cozy kitchens, their busy lives. Where do they find stillness? When? After all, we all need spaces where time stretches and we can breathe again.

Hunters and anglers get this chance on the regular. Not fly anglers — they’re too active. And not grouse hunters. Again, that pursuit is too active. But time in a stand or blind waiting for deer, or staring at lines while trolling for hours are both time-stretching moments. There are others.

Often I use this quiet to work on myself. I notice how often I reach for certainty, for knowing what comes next. It’s an old habit from childhood, but I’m learning to let it go, to let the world flow within and around me. Sometimes it’s enough to sit still and trust what arrives.

I’d been rolling this around in my head like a walnut on a Thanksgiving table when I heard it: there’s that whistle! I looked up, and there he was, a dove cruising by on my right. I stood, swung and shot — and this time the dove fell. Phew! At least I’d get one today.

Mostly these days I am grateful. Grateful for my readers. For what success I’ve been blessed with. Grateful for all the people in my life, even those who walk with me at a distance. Maybe especially them. While I love moments of solitude, silence can make me (us?) restless, but it can also make us ready — for the next conversation, the next meal, the next moment. It is a deep breath for the mind.

One more dove flew by, which I missed, before the sun set on the Oklahoma prairie.

As I walked back to the truck, lonesome dove in one hand, Tinkerbelle in the other, it occured to me that sitting still can be its own kind of abundance. What lasts isn’t perfection, or knowing everything in advance. It’s patience, it’s laughter, it’s being known — the rarest gift of all.