The hill has an odd name. It is named after the same man as
the town it is in, but that is all I’m going to tell you. Years ago it was out
in the middle of nowhere and I hunted deer there and birds too. A memory sticks
of walking out of the woods, moments after legal shooting time had passed, and
seeing a monster buck ghost cross the woods road ahead of me. But that is
another story.
What made the hill special were the old farms. Up on the top
there were two, both long abandoned, but marked with sagging homes settling
into old stone foundations. In the overgrown fields game had trampled paths
between the scraggly apple trees and the cedar swamp down below. Old tote roads
crisscrossed the upper wooded slopes, and every single one of them seemed to
lead exactly where you wanted to go. It was that kind of magical place. In a
field, halfway down the eastern side of the hill, stood a box-like camp where
an old woman lived by herself during the summers. I wish I could remember her
name, she was in her seventies when we met.
Somehow, two decades slipped by without visiting that hill,
but finally I went back with my German wirehaired pointer pup named Chara and
my Parker shotgun that had turned a hundred years old that year.  |
| Busted up country |
Unbeknownst to me a horrific ice storm had flattened the trees
a few years earlier, obliterating most of the landmarks. Up on the top of the
hill two homes had been built near the ancient fallen ones and the old fields
there were posted. Travel through what had once been woods was impossible, with
ice-shattered trees broken and lying in a tangled mess. Chest high raspberries
flourished in the new sunlight, with waiting claws that seemed incredibly sharp.
After an hour or so of searching, we found that little camp in
the field halfway down the hill. Someone had been there recently and it looked
much like I remembered it. Above the house a basin had been re-dug next to a
spring and firewood was stacked on the far side of the porch.
Where an old footpath came down the hill into the field, I
tried to pick my way between the raspberries’ thorns. A fallen maple trunk
blocked the way, then another, then six more and the path disappeared among tangles of new raspberry vines. And then Chara flushed a grouse.
She went into overdrive, pushing under or jumping over
obstacles and oblivious to the vicious briars. Several more grouse exploded
into the sky. I sat on a log and watched, knowing she would be back eventually and
was learning a lesson along the way---dogs can’t catch grouse.
Her tongue looked a foot long when she came back panting. Even
that had been pricked by the thorns and wore flecks of blood. We found that
spring fed puddle near the house and she stretched right out in the icy water
to drink her fill. I wondered what had become of the woman that used to live
there, she should have been over a hundred at that point. And who kept the
place up, mowing the grass and piling the firewood? Obviously someone used the
place in the summers.
Sauntering out the old tote road toward the truck, Chara
continued to hunt, but at a slower pace. It was obvious she would grow into one
heck of a bird dog. I carried my old Parker shotgun broken open and draped over
my shoulder. It had been quite a day. And of course a lone grouse dropped out of a busted-off old spruce
and flew straight away down the road, offering one of the easiest shots a man
could ever hope to see.
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| Chara in her younger days. |
