Red sunrises. Blue skies. The smell off a cut wheat field. Tiredness from walking up and down soft dirt, recently plowed fields. A five-point tan buck clapping its front and hind legs into the air and jumping higher than anyone ever expects, running faster than anyone ever expects. Miles of nature, rolling along, without a sign of man-made work anywhere. A sunset that could hardly be seen because the white shiney moon was so big. Exhaustion. Revitalization. That was hunting
This particular fall semester he was hunting in an area that was new to him. He was going out across the Palouse hills -- the amber waves of grain -- where mirror images of thousands of grain-fed deer blend perfectly into the yellow fields.
He was connecting with an older huntress who was a widow living in a town of less than 400 that was located smack dab in the middle of the wheat and lentil fields, combines, barns and periodic crop-dusting yellow airplanes.
She'd passed the word through town that she was looking for a hunting companion as her husband's death had left her solo.
That's how at 5 am one October day, a 19-year-old almost man in camo came to be riding in the passenger seat of a white double-cab F150 with deep tread tires as a healthy 60-year-old dark-haired, dark-eyed woman covered in camo drove under the still dark morning sky on a gravel road.
"Damn ... f**k the washboard on this road," Tom muttered with annoyance while keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
She hit another stretch of bumpy gravel lit by her intense fog lights. They jostled up and down. She said to him, with a voice that was low and quietly calm, "Yeah, why they don't oil and level this road more is something I don't understand, potty mouth, particularly given that all the farmers living on this road are wealthy.
"They don't seem like it..the farmers ..that is. They don't act like it. God gives them the right amount of rain, the right amount of sunshine and the right type of soil ..and you'll have a hard time finding any one of them who'll boast about the wealth he's earned from that. But, you who drops F-bombs too easily, I'm getting off the subject, which I have a tendency to do. What I meant by all that is the least the county could do is use their tax dollars to level and oil this road once or twice a season."
He was carefully listening to her words. He fidgeted a bit as her neatly tucked zings sharply entered and quickly exited, briefly stinging. Odd woman, he thought, keeping those words to himself.
They continued to bounce along the road in the blackness. Around one corner, they saw the bright tail lights of another pickup truck, about a mile ahead of them. It didn't seem appropriate to interrupt the morning dark with conversation but sure enough Tom had to say something.
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