In October, during my sophomore year of high school, my schedule was: school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., football practice 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., and a couple of nights working at the gas station.
And then on Fridays, I’d come home, and my dad would be packing for that weekend’s hunting trip.
This was what every dog craved, every dog dreamed of, the heroic duty they’d been bred for, for tens of thousands of years!
Usually, we’d be joined by my dad’s doctor friends and their kids of a similar age. Forming a caravan, our party would drive the three hours from Portland into the high desert and then onto the land of a rancher friend.
Into the wild
Arriving late at night, we’d continue several miles into a sagebrush and rimrock canyon, the cars and trucks rocking violently up and down, side to side on the primitive road. Often the only thing visible was the swirling dust in the headlight beams in front of us.
We’d camp near a small stream on a flat spot beneath some trees. Once the cars had stopped, we 12- to 15-year-old kids were forced out into the bitter cold to help set up camp. It seemed an impossible task, our hands instantly numb, the darkness impenetrable.
Somehow we did it though — with our dads’ supervision. We gathered the tent stakes, unrolled the canvases, unpacked the folding tables and camp chairs.
When I let the dogs out of their travel cages, they would tear around the campsite, apoplectic with excitement, utterly ecstatic to be in this remote environment, so rich with the presence of undomesticated animal life. New smells, new creatures, so much to explore and investigate.
A dog’s life
Warmed by activity, we pounded the tent stakes in and lifted the formless canvas tents into habitable shapes.
A Coleman lantern was lit. And a fire. If it wasn’t too late, our dads would enjoy a hot toddy and sigh to themselves, happy to be away from civilization, the hospital, their schedules, their wives.
But the dogs were the happiest of all. They too were finally free of civilizational restraint, the bloodless world of kitty litter and doggie treats, leashes and poop bags.
Now they were in the wild, in the realm of predator and prey: wolves, coyotes, deer, and rattlesnakes. And best of all, birds that they could chase through the brush and brambles in furious contests of speed and agility.
The danger, the adventure, the thrill of the hunt! This was what every dog craved, every dog dreamed of, the heroic duty they’d been bred for, for tens of thousands of years!
Bottom of the bag
When it was time to sleep, I would unfold my cot and spread out my sleeping bag in the faint light of a flashlight.
The high desert altitude and bracing cold always left me punch drunk, and by the time I climbed into my sleeping bag, I could barely keep my eyes open.
My father was a heavy-set man in his 40s. Originally from Iowa and of Scandinavian descent, he seemed unaffected by the frigid temperature. He stripped down to his underwear and once inside his sleeping bag, instantly fell asleep and began to snore.
I, on the other hand, was small and slight and was more of a “fetal position at the bottom of my sleeping bag” type of kid.
Desert dreams
Once my bag was warm and I was somewhat comfortable, I’d realize I forgot to piss. Which meant the life-or-death decision: Do I get up and go outside? Or try to hold it through the night?
But no, there was no holding it. I’d better piss. I just had to be tough. I had to be a man. I was on the frickin’ football team for God’s sake, I could get up and take a piss in the cold!
So I flung open my sleeping bag, rolled off my cot, and pushed through the tent flap, exposing my nearly naked body to the knife-like cold outside.
I stepped gingerly through the dirt and sagebrush in my bare feet. I then relieved myself, realizing as I did that it wasn’t that cold, I wasn’t going to die, and that in the moonlight, the desert was vivid and hushed and almost welcoming in its austere beauty.
Layers of ice
It would be very cold the next morning. Even colder than it had been at night. There would be frost on the ground. Water left out would now have a layer of ice.
But somehow, over the course of the night, I’d grown up a little. I’d morphed into someone a little more resilient than the suburban 15-year-old I’d been the day before.
So out I came from the tent, unafraid and without complaint.
The campfire was restarted. Breakfast was made and quietly eaten. Now there was talk of logistics. Where the birds might be. The options for the morning hunt.
The dogs were fed. Extra food for them. They would be having one of the greatest days of their short lives. They would barely be able to walk by nightfall.
Morning has broken
The first morning’s hunt was usually the most energetic. Everyone rested and ready to go. The dogs raced through the brush and over the rimrock, knowing without instruction exactly what to do and when to do it.
Like war, hunting is mostly walking and waiting, and waiting and walking, and wondering if anything will ever happen.
Followed by short bursts of extreme excitement, chaos, noise, and adrenaline when a covey of birds exploded into the air all around you.
RELATED: Defending the last place where men can be men
ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images
Rest and relaxation
We’d return to camp for lunch. And then back out again if the hunting was good. Or if there were no birds, maybe fishing in the afternoon.
Or sometimes, my dad would just take a nap. And I would relax in a camp chair and read a couple chapters of my assigned books for sophomore English: “Huckleberry Finn” or “Catcher in the Rye.”
All parties would be back in camp by dark. If you’d caught or killed anything that day, you cleaned it now. The camp stove would be fired up. Often freshly caught trout would be fried in butter for dinner. If not, there were usually steaks in one of the coolers.
The dogs would have to be attended to. More food. More water. And extra praise and meat scraps, as they were the ones who dove into impenetrable thickets, dashed across precarious rim rock, or chased a pheasant into a treacherous ravine.
Always, the dogs were the heroes of the day and then the thoroughly exhausted warriors of the night.
Arriving back in Portland, late on a Sunday night, I would take a long, hot, deep-scrubbing shower and retire to my warm and comfortable suburban bed.
The next morning, it was back to my warm and comfortable suburban high school. But doing so with a secret and special experience of a type most kids would never have.
Birds, Dogs, High school, Hunt, Lifestyle, Nostalgia, Portland oregon, High desert, Fathers and sons, Hunting, Blake’s progress
