The more I learn about hunting and fishing, the more I recognize how much I don’t know. Adding a kid to the mix has really driven that humbling realization home for me. Not only do I have the perpetual need to refine my approach in the field, but now I also need to develop, Read More
The new neighbors are a noisy bunch. They’ve been raising hell every morning for weeks now. I put the neighborhood watch on the case. “There’s um, Dada there’s three now. I know because’n I heard a quieter one from way over… um over there and it had a different pattern,” reports my four, Read More
“Is the otter awake Dada?” asked my four year old, sleepy eyed and soft as he strolled onto the little sand beach. He’d silently navigated fifty yards of forest between the tent and me, and materialized at the tree line as casual and unaffected as he would have in our kitchen back home. “Good, Read More
The epic. You know it’s out there. Hell-bent graupel riding vindictive gusts beneath a leaden sky; wet feet and chapped faces, cold to the quick with everything on and nowhere to go; nylon flapping and slapping and dripping all night; short tempers and long days – roll the dice often enough and you’ll find, Read More
“Hey Dada look, a exoskeleton!” said my four year old, thigh deep in the river, pointing to a stonefly husk on a midstream boulder. “Seriously?” I asked, incredulous. “Of course, it’s from the molting, cause see,” he continued quite conversationally. “Did you actually just drop exoskeleton… and molting in casual conversation? Who’s kid are, Read More
My four-year-old son has a lot to learn. Teamwork, self reliance, judgment and decision making, risk management, delayed gratification, initiative, critical thinking, loyalty, faith… the list of skills that’ll he need to make his way in the world goes on and on. It’s an overwhelming educational endeavor, before you even consider all the straight-up, Read More
“Whoa ho ho! Dada did you see that one?” asked my four year old, going rigid for an instant with surprise and excitement. “We just missed him!” I replied. “Yeah cause that was a nibble and I felt the nibble and he wanted our bug real bad.” He was right about the desire, but, Read More
It’s a park now, mown green-space and graveled paths owned by the city of Williamsburg Virginia. But when I was a boy, not so much older than my son is now, “Government Property” was a tangle of tidewater forest and marshland where earthen battlements – remnants of the civil war – lay hidden in, Read More