The ground is silver and the sky has just a hint of dawn's early light. I am walking an old road along a gently rising ridge heading for that special place where all the action happens when night gives way to day. I can see the field ahead of me and I will soon be sitting at its edge, my back against a rough Post Oak a few feet still inside the woods. It is here that the deer are found trading places with the squirrels, the former slipping like gray ghosts to their beds in the thick brush while the latter begin collecting acorns (pronounced a-kerns) with greedy claws, some for a quick breakfast and some for saving in secret vaults to be uncovered in the cold days ahead. A gang of crows fly over, loud and obnoxious like noisy neighbors, waking up the rest of the woods.
I feel completely exposed in my flourescent orange vest and cap, like someone just caught crashing a party they weren't invited to.
Suddenly, to the south a falling star blazes across the sky and dies with a bright flash that lights up the fields and woods like a flare. It had been a tough choice to leave a warm bed to walk in sub twenty degree chill and sit by a tree in near darkness, but now I remember why I am here. I want, for a few moments, to be a part of something that goes on every morning and evening, an unending play that is performed daily in silence and song on a stunning stage by characters who always play their roles to perfection. It's not that the woods come to life at dawn; things are happening all night, morning just brings a change of cast.
I find the big oak selected the night before to be this morning's front row seat and quietly sit down and lean my back against it. My breath is making smoke signals and my fingers are already numb so I lay my gun in my lap and rub my hands together. And that movement, so natural for me, so strange in the woods, is all it takes for the big buck to know there is something in his living room that doesn't belong. I smile as I hear him snort and see his graceful leap over the fence, watching him fade instantly into the thick brush. It's not the first time I am out-smarted by a deer, and it won't be the last.
I settle in and try to be still. Stillness is something I am very rusty at but gradually I am absorbed by my surroundings. I see a cardinal in a hawthorn bush, a splash of red on a canvas of brown. I hear a turkey cackle somewhere up the valley and also the sticcatto "tap, tap, tap" of a red headed woodpecker. Cows start to bawl down in the fields and dogs begin barking.
I am amazed by the movement of this symphony, the way it all sounds, the rests of silence in between, all in perfect harmony with the light show breaking over the hills to the east.
This is why I am here. I was invited to sit here by this old Post Oak tree...a tree that was old when I was a young boy roaming these woods. It has stood watch over this place for countless sunrises, offering itself as home to generations of gray squirrels. It knew that old buck when it still had spots and rested under it's branches. It has proudly survived rolling thunderstorms and persistent woodpeckers. It has the rare qualities of being both strong and flexible.
Like us, it is made to exist in two realms, with roots deeply secured in the earth and its branches lifted toward the heavens. I lean back against its roughness, and I thank God for this day and for trees and especially for that one tree that held my hope so long ago, hanging suspended to unite both realms. And I realize, as the first rays of sun break through the trees, that at some point I stopped hunting and started seeking.
