For paid subscribers this month, a memory from kindergarten on Dandy Point Road.

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I rode the bus. Each morning, I carried my lunchbox down the long gravel drive to the rusty old mailbox and waited for it. I could hear its diesel engine chugging before it rounded the blind curve on Dandy Point Road. The doors would swing open, and I’d climb the steps, take my seat, and sit there dreading where it was taking me. Every afternoon, I climbed back down and headed for home.

The bus was worse than school. At least at school, there were rules and somebody pretending to enforce them. On the bus, kids were in charge. The driver was just trying to survive. So was I.

One early September afternoon, a big third grader dropped into the seat in front of me.

“Hey,” he said. Big kid voice. Mean kid voice. I think his name was Butch, which feels about right for a school bully. “Is that old Halloween house really where you live?”

I had no idea what he meant.

“You know. The place the bus drops you off. That falling-down house.”

“What?” I said, totally lost.

He leaned in closer and raised his voice, like that would help. “That place is a dump.”

For reasons I didn’t fully understand, that statement lit me up. “That’s my house. That’s where my parents live,” I shouted back, trying to sound bigger than I was.

“Then your parents must be poor,” he spat over the seat, then turned away like the conversation was over.

But I wasn’t done. “What are you talking about?”

He wouldn’t look back. Instead, he sat chanting, “Alice is po-or. Alice is po-or.”

“I’m not poor.” I hissed back, not really even sure what he meant. But I did know it was meant to be an insult.

“Then why do you live in a falling-down Halloween house?”

The Joneses don’t take insults lightly. Even when they’re true. I didn’t really understand comebacks, but I reached for the biggest truth I knew.

“I’m not poor. But you know who is? Jesus. Jesus was very poor.”

How could anyone argue that? Insult the poor, and you insult the Son of God.

Butch stopped chanting and turned around, confusion and irritation written all over his grumpy face.

“Jesus wasn’t poor,” he said, as if I’d just insulted him personally. In the South, attacks on Jesus are not taken lightly. Since being poor was apparently a huge flaw to Butch, I had committed a serious sin.

“Jesus was definitely poor,” I said, looking him square in the eye.

“No, he wasn’t. He had like sheep and stuff.” Butch wanted to argue, but wasn’t quite sure of himself.

I may not have really known how to argue, but I knew my Bible stories. I was thoroughly confident that Butch was dead wrong.

“You’re an idiot,” I said, thinking I’d just won the argument.

“What did you say?” Butch growled, standing up.

“You’re an idiot,” I repeated, wondering if he was deaf as well as stupid.

Then he slapped me hard across the face.

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Summer is settling in. Here are some things that are taking up space in my head this week.

Currently writing…

an article on bank fishing for bass for MeatEater.

I’m also honing a memoir chapter about killing my first turkey. I have serious misgivings about calling this thing a memoir. Whenever I tell people in real life that’s what I’m writing, there’s usually a brief pause followed by what feels like an invisible eyeroll before they change the subject. So mostly, I don’t tell people.

Lately I’ve been wondering if I should just call it a collection of essays and see if the eyeroll still shows up.

Currently reading…

Will Brantley’s Skinning Catfish in Mary’s Kitchen.

I’ve hunted with Brantley, and he’s a damn fine woodsman (which is surprisingly rare in this industry). He’s an even finer storyteller. What strikes me most about the book is how much ground he covers without ever sounding like he’s trying to say something important. It’s proof that the best outdoor writing sneaks up on you instead of trying to beat you upside the head with a message.

Currently worrying about…

Iran firing ballistic missiles at U.S. troops in Kuwait. I still don’t know where my son, Silas, is. It is quite probably Kuwait.

I’m also worried about squash bugs destroying my zucchini plants, though that feels like a ridiculous thing to worry about next to everything else.

Currently excited about…

a day trip this week to NC’s Outer Banks. It may involve surf fishing. It may just involve me reading Brantley’s book on the beach while soaking up sun and negative ions. Whichever happens, I’m planning to follow it up with a poke bowl dinner.

Currently noticing…

the pair of wood ducks nesting in the willow oak outside the second-story window of my writing studio. I’ve caught the hen disappearing into a hollow knob several times over the past several weeks. I’m intrigued. This tree is a good quarter mile from the river, and that hollow knob is a solid 40 feet off the ground. That’s gonna be a helluva trip for those ducklings.

Currently carrying in my truck…

several sets of binoculars. I’ve already started coasting backroads and glassing fields to spy on bucks in velvet. This is one of my favorite summer pastimes. No scouting agenda. No trail cameras to check. Just seeing who’s around and imagining what they might look like come September.

What’s taking up space in your head right now? Shoot me a message or a comment.

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Where else I showed up this week…
”Stop Abusing Your Gear in the Offseason” (MeatEater)
Hunters and anglers like to strut around in well-worn gear like they’ve earned a merit badge. Worn gear may tell a story, but mildew and battery corrosion just tell on you.

I was there on a media trip, which is one of the only reasons I occasionally find myself in that kind of restaurant. The kind with more forks than you have hands and specials that are hard to read and harder to pronounce.

It was housed in an old white clapboard house in a small coastal town. Inside were wide-planked hardwood floors, shiplap walls, exposed beams that looked hand-hewn, and enough candlelight to make everybody look like they have more money than they probably do. The bathroom faucets were designed to resemble old hand pumps, though they lacked the standard-issue rusty squeak.

The menu leaned Southern. Duck thighs with blackberries. Grits with fancy cheese. Collards sliced into ribbons. A wine list thick as a Baptist hymnal.

Growing up, we never ate at restaurants. It was a rare treat to get McDonald’s. Even then, we’d usually eat it in the truck, balancing our Big Macs on our knees. Daddy didn’t like eating inside. He said people stared at his dirty boots.

Sitting there that night, I felt like I was getting awfully close to being outside my tax bracket. And yet the whole place felt familiar, like it was built from pieces of the world I came from.

Not the hard parts, of course. Just the pretty ones.

I’m not criticizing the restaurant. The food was damn tasty. The atmosphere was cozy and relaxing. And that’s exactly what got me thinking.

Nobody spends that kind of money trying to recreate the feeling of a suburban strip mall. Nobody installs fake hand pumps in the ladies’ room because they remind them of some corporate office park.

People are drawn to front porches, old wood, cast iron, wildflowers in mason jars, and weathered barns. You can see it everywhere. Farmhouse sinks. Rustic wedding venues. Social media accounts devoted to chickens, gardens, and canning jars.

Even workwear has become fashionable. Carhartt jackets that once belonged to mechanics, farmers, and construction workers now show up in places where nobody has ever swung a hammer or fixed a carburetor.

Rural, working-class life has become a popular aesthetic.

I mean, I get it.

I grew up with front porches and pickup trucks, cast iron skillets and tomatoes fresh from the garden, work boots and collard greens cooked low and slow. I just didn’t know we were participating in an aesthetic. I thought we were just living our lives.

But the older I get, the more I find myself wondering why people seem to love where I come from as long as nobody from there shows up to the party.

The first time I really noticed it was my freshman year of college. I had hitched a ride home for a holiday break, and the drive from East Carolina University cut through miles of soybeans, cotton, and tobacco. Old houses were set back from the road with rusting old trucks parked in dusty yards filled with barefoot kids and lounging canines.

It didn’t look weird to me at all. That could have been my cousins and me chasing each other in front of those rickety front porches.

The girl driving made conversation the way people do on long trips. A good hour into the drive, she gestured toward one of the houses and said, “Can you believe anybody lives like this?”

It sounded more like disbelief than judgment. But I remember looking out at the same landscape and realizing we weren’t seeing the same thing. It all looked familiar to me. She seemed in disbelief that it could feel like home to anyone.

That was the first time it clicked for me that the places and people who raised me don’t land the same way for everyone else.

Looking back, I think Daddy understood something long before I did.

When we ate our McDonald’s in the truck, it never occurred to me that we could eat inside and enjoy the restaurant’s perfectly good air conditioning. It was just what people like us did. We sat in the parking lot and ate our burgers and fries where people wouldn’t look at us.

Every now and then, Daddy might mumble something like, “They think they’re better than you.”

But that was just Daddy being Daddy.

I mean, his boots were dirty because he’d been working. His jeans were stained and frayed because he’d been working. His hands were calloused and his fingernails were dirty because he’d been working. Most of the men I knew back then looked exactly the same way.

It never crossed my mind that somebody might see those things and think they knew everything they needed to know about him.

But now, all these years later, I realize he was just seeing something I didn’t yet understand.

I love old farmhouses. I love front porches and cast iron skillets and collard greens. And if somebody wants to hang gingham curtains and put wildflowers in a mason jar, I can get behind that. Because all of those things are beautiful.

What strikes me is how often people seem to admire the symbols while remaining suspicious of the people attached to them.

The old barn gets romanticized. The farmer trying to keep it standing, not so much.

A Southern accent sounds charming right up until it belongs to a person applying for a job.

Work boots are rugged and authentic until somebody wearing them walks into a McDonald’s.

I think that’s why that restaurant stuck with me. Every exposed beam, every hand-pump faucet, every collard green ribbon was meant to evoke a particular kind of life. The kind where people fix things instead of replacing them, where supper gets cooked in cast iron, where children and dogs play in dusty yards, and somebody’s grandmother has a recipe she never bothered to write down.

And those things didn’t come from nowhere. They came from real people. And a good number of them had dirt on their shoes.

The older I get, the more I think Daddy wasn’t really embarrassed by his dirty boots.

I think he was just tired of people deciding who he was because of them.

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Last week disappeared into all the last-minute details of my daughter’s wedding. We were swimming in silk flowers, wedding favors, dress fittings, hair appointments, and plastic cutlery. There were approximately 6,000 decisions that absolutely could not wait another five minutes.

Nobody warns you that hosting an outdoor wedding also turns you into an amateur meteorologist. I spent most of the week staring at my weather app and trying to strike a deal with a looming thunderstorm. The weather held, so I guess I was successful.

I staggered into Saturday already exhausted, but the second I saw Emma in her wedding dress, none of it seemed to matter much anymore.

Before the ceremony, our family gathered under an old oak beside the beanfield for her first look with her dad and brothers. One of those brothers joined us by video chat from somewhere in the Middle East.

Two whitetails were feeding about sixty yards out in the beans. Heads down and tails flicking. Paying us no attention at all.

Emma walked up behind her dad and brothers while the photographer got everybody in place. One son stood there in person. I held up my phone so the other could see his sister from halfway around the world.

Once everybody was in place, the photographer said, “You can go ahead and look.”

At that exact moment, one of those deer lifted its head and looked toward Emma.

My other daughter leaned over to me and whispered, “That’s PopPop.”

I don’t really believe in omens, and I rarely assign meaning to moments involving wild animals, but sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m too cynical.

Maybe it’s because so many of my memories of Daddy live outdoors.

I still associate him with beanfields and deer stands and oak trees. Some people inherit jewelry or silverware or a good chunk of money. But my family heirloom is a way of paying attention in the woods.

So when that deer raised its head toward the oak tree at the exact moment her dad and brother turned around to see her standing there in her wedding dress, I felt something drop heavy in my chest before my brain had time to argue with it.

It isn’t that I necessarily thought Daddy had magically returned as a whitetail so he could attend his granddaughter’s wedding. It’s just that grief gets tangled up with landscapes after enough years.

The deer dropped its head and went back to feeding after a few seconds. The photographer kept snapping pictures. Somehow, the call with my son got dropped. I adjusted my corsage and tried not to let the tears ruin my mascara.

Like all important family moments, the whole thing kept moving forward, whether I was ready or not.

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“You should have been here three days ago.”

The charter captain, John Mauser, said it before we’d even cleared the dock at Morehead City.

The sky was bright Carolina blue, the kind of sky people on tourism boards pray for. But the wind was hammering out of the south, making Bogue Sound look mean.

Story of my life.

Somewhere out there were the fish we could have easily caught three days ago. What I wouldn’t give for a time machine.

Back at the hotel, I’d eaten a breakfast of Dramamine and strawberry yogurt, chasing it with coffee. I was trying not to throw up before noon.

Although my family proudly hails from coastal waters, and I spent my foundational years on skiffs catching fish and pulling crab pots, I’ve always gotten seasick easier than I should. As a kid, after tossing cookies on my Uncle Terry’s boat while cobia fishing, my Grandma Alice shook her head and said, “She can’t be a Jones.”

I’m still carrying that one.

Mauser tried to sneak his way behind Shackleford Banks in a fruitless effort to find some shelter from the wind. By the time the Cape Lookout lighthouse came into view, we were getting hammered by sun, spray, and waves. Salt dried on my face until my skin felt like sandpaper.

We spent the morning searching for fish that, according to everybody on the coast, had apparently been everywhere three days earlier. By three hours in, I was getting suspicious that the fish were just a myth.

Like Sasquatch. Or the Loch Ness Monster.

We were just running from rumor to rumor, scanning the water, squinting into the glare, trying to conjure any signs of nervous bait or diving birds.

Nothing.

Optimism was leaking out of the day, slow and steady, like a faucet left trickling.

We slipped between the shoals below Cape Lookout and pushed toward a wreck offshore. The ocean side was rough. Big swells lifted the boat high before dropping us into the troughs hard enough to rattle my teeth. I focused hard on my shoes and tried to let the Dramamine earn its keep.

The mood on the boat had changed. Less hope. More quiet. Every angler knows that slow, suspicious feeling that you just barely missed the magic. The stories were true yesterday, but useless today.

Maybe you should’ve been here three days ago.

We headed back toward the shoals, hoping to spot something before calling it a day. I remember thinking, this is stupid, when somebody pointed.

Birds.

Just a handful of terns, white against that painfully blue sky. They dipped to the surface and lifted again, like they were trying to stitch together a rip in the ocean.

The energy on the boat shifted. Still quiet, but now intent.

Sage Marshall grabbed a fly rod and started stripping line, the boat tossing him around like it was shaking up a can of beer. Mauser pushed the throttle forward and then down. He was committed.

We closed the distance fast. Wind hit harder as we came off plane. The water got worse, not better. Waves stacked with no pattern at all, just lift and slap and churn from every direction, like someone was hitting the surface of a bathtub with both hands. I remember thinking it looked wrong for fishing.

But there were fish.

I could see a school of bluefish in flashes between the whitewater. Birds dropping, the surface breaking open for half a second, then sealing itself.

And then we were in it.

I took one look and knew a fly rod in this was out of my league.

“I’m not doing that. Hand me a spinning rod.”

After that it was chaos. Wind and water working together, trying to throw the boat sideways and push us into the shoal.

But the fish.

A wave rose up and I could see them, the sun shining through like holy stained glass and the blues suspended there like angels through the veil. Beautiful, graceful things.

I threw the bait straight into the wave as it peaked.

When the bait hit, they turned in unison. Phantoms locking onto it, zipping like speed demons to chase it as I reeled it through the water. The lead one hit it like a freight train. The other fish surged in front of the one on my line, crowding it, trying to see what he’d grabbed. Pure instinct. One bit the leader clean through.

I grabbed a second bait, but there was only time for one cast, maybe two, before the boat was thrashed out of range. We circled back.

And there they were again, like cobalt shadows caught in a prism refracting light, every shade of blue in the universe thrown back at my eyes.

I pitched the bait again, as I pressed my thigh against the center console, trying to find some sliver of stability as the boat pitched. I was reeling hard and then the bait just stopped, the rod bent, and it was all muscle and survival instinct. Mine against his.

It took all I had to wrestle that fish away from the one that had just snatched Sage’s fly. Lines crossing. Rods bending. Two fish at once, both of us barely keeping it from turning into a knot we couldn’t undo. Mine tried to run under the boat. Then away from it. Then back again.

And then the boat was out of range of the school. Sage pulled his fish to the boat and released it. I got one quick photo with mine before I set him free, both of us thankful.

Mauser whipped the boat back around so we could take another pass at the school. Sage was sitting in the bottom of the boat, breathing hard. We traded a fist bump as I smiled ear to ear, and then it was on again.

Fish were flashing like blue diamonds suspended in the cresting water. I pitched the plug again. Clean, bouncing it right off one fish’s nose. I lost sight of them for a second, but when the next wave pitched up, there they were, little torpedoes in the foam, locked on in hot pursuit.

One crushed it, and the fight was on again.

It went on like that, as we made pass after pass at the school. Jasper and Sage trading turns on the fly rod up front while I worked a spinning rod. A minute of chaos, maybe two, then washed out of position and back again.

It was violent and beautiful at the same time.

And then it was over. Mauser turned the boat toward the dock. My hands were still shaking a little. My shoulders loose in that weird way they get after holding tension too long.

I’ve been turning over the memory of it like a stone in my pocket all week. Wind. Sun. Salt. Those perfect fish suspended in broken water. The rod bent hard in my hands.

It lasted maybe fifteen minutes.

I know I’ll still be reaching for that stone on my deathbed.

I’m glad we weren’t there three days earlier.

This trip was hosted by the Crystal Coast tourism board. We fished with Captain John Mauser of Tailing Tide Guide Service out of Swansboro, NC.

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It shouldn’t surprise anyone that kids these days just aren’t getting outside very much. Drive through any suburban neighborhood on a Saturday, and the bicycle gangs and impromptu street football games that were so common just a couple of decades ago are gone.

Corralled indoors by overprotective parents and the allure of passive electronic entertainment (the average American kid spends 53 hours a week using entertainment media), today’s kids are missing out on the vast benefits of being outdoors. Here are some reasons to make Little Johnny back away from the game controller, slip on some shoes, and head out into nature. He might grumble and complain, but someday, he’ll thank you for it.

And you should probably get up and head out there with him. There are plenty of benefits for adults, too.

1. Exercise

Childhood obesity has more than doubled in recent decades and it shows up in more than just statistics. It shows up in kids who tire quickly, avoid movement, and spend most of their day sitting still with only their thumbs in motion. Children’s bodies were made to move, run, jump, and climb, not sit for hours at a time indoors.

Outside is where movement happens naturally. It is where kids run without being told to run, climb without being told to be careful every five seconds, and burn energy in a way that feels like play instead of exercise.

2. Sleep

Exposure to sunlight helps regulate the body’s internal clock. It supports melatonin production, which plays a central role in sleep cycles. It is not just an old idea that kids sleep better after a day outside. It is how the body is wired.

Most parents know this without needing a study to back it up. A kid who spends time outside tends to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Tired in the right way makes all the difference.

3. Happier Mood

Sunlight also boosts the body’s level of the hormone serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate mood, memory, and appetite. More sunlight means less depression and happier kids. So, if your kid is feeling sulky, irritable, or just generally grumpy, he might just need a trip outside.

There was a reason our mothers sent us to play outside when we were sullen and grouchy. They knew what they were doing without reading all the latest scientific research.

4. Healthy Immune System

There is growing evidence that exposure to natural environments supports a stronger immune system in children. Playing in dirt and grass is not something to avoid at all costs. It is part of how the immune system learns to respond appropriately.

Sunlight also helps the body produce vitamin D, which plays a role in immune function and overall health. There is even research suggesting links between adequate vitamin D levels and lower risk of certain chronic conditions later in life.

The point is not to romanticize dirt. The point is that kids are not fragile glass objects. Their bodies are built to interact with the world.

5. Social Skills

Free, unstructured outdoor play forces kids to figure things out together. They negotiate rules, settle disagreements, invent games, and change direction when something is not working. None of that is guided.

Even when kids play alone outside, something useful happens. They learn how to handle boredom without panic. That alone feels increasingly rare.

Those small, unsupervised interactions build skills that carry forward into adulthood. Cooperation, flexibility, and the ability to handle conflict without adult intervention all start in moments that look like “just playing outside.”

6. Improved Learning

Studies have shown that being outside, even for just a few minutes, helps people diagnosed with ADHD to focus better. Other surveys indicate that schools that still offer students free-play recess have higher test scores (While admittedly not always the best indicator of actual learning, it is the most readily available). Being outside also helps improve memory, proving that trees, fields, and flowers are the best cognitive enhancers.

7. Free Thought

Spontaneous, self-initiated play outdoors fosters independence, ingenuity, and resourcefulness in a way that structured and supervised play does not. Without a script, scoreboard, or adult constantly directing the next step, kids create their own structure instead. They make up rules, test them, break them, and rebuild them again. That process teaches problem-solving in real time.

It also teaches something harder to define. A willingness to explore without waiting for instructions. That matters more than it sounds like it should.

8. Stress Relief

It might sound strange to say children experience stress since they don’t have mortgages, home repairs, or bosses to deal with. But modern kids are under constant pressure to perform in school and sit still for hours on end. Add on after-school activities and their packed schedules create their own kind of strain.

Time outside helps ease that pressure. Even brief exposure to natural environments has been linked to lower cortisol levels, a hormone associated with stress.

A classroom can feel a lot like an office for a child. Outside breaks that pattern. It gives them space to reset without needing to explain what is wrong.

9. Better Vision

A substantial body of research suggests that time spent outdoors helps reduce the risk of nearsightedness in children. A 2012 study published by the American Academy of Ophthalmology found that increased time spent outdoors may slow the progression of myopia.

Eyes were not designed for constant close-up focus. Screens and books dominate much of childhood now. Distance matters more than most people think.

10. Hope For The Future

There is something about being outside that pushes thinking forward. Not in an abstract way, but in a practical one.

Some research suggests that exposure to nature encourages future-oriented thinking. That matters in a world where short-term rewards are everywhere.

Kids learn, often without realizing it, that the world is bigger than what is immediately in front of them. That lesson does not come from a screen. It comes from wandering, climbing, observing, and getting a little lost in the right way.

Those of us from an older generation still remember our childhoods with fondness. It was a time when being outside meant freedom. It meant boredom that eventually turned into something interesting. It meant scraped knees, muddy shoes, and coming home only when someone called your name from the porch.

Kids still need that. Maybe now more than ever.

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This week was the final stretch of turkey season in North Carolina. I had one more tag burning a hole in my pocket, so I hit the woods, pulling out of the driveway well before the rest of the world woke up, zipping down two-lane backroads to some tucked-away public land. I haven’t hunted public much the past few years. But with my favorite woods currently under the saw, it was the best I could do.

That tract of public land was relatively quiet. I had it mostly to myself. No headlights at the gate before sunrise. No barking owl hoots from hunters trying to shock loose a gobble in the dark. Very few boot prints at the trail heads.

It felt like it was just me, early morning birdsong, mint green oak leaves…

And hens.

Lots of them.

I couldn’t buy a gobbler. It was like they’d all vanished into some parallel universe.

I still spent the mornings walking logging roads and creek beds, watching the sunrise with my back pressed against a towering loblolly, just for the sheer pleasure of being there. Turkey season always ends the same way. I spend weeks keyed up and overly caffeinated, slipping into the woods before daylight, listening hard, moving slow and quiet, carrying around equal parts hope and delusion in my turkey vest.

Then it’s just over.

Everybody goes on with their lives like nothing is missing, like I didn’t just spend weeks pouring physical and emotional energy into those predawn woods. Like turkey season wasn’t, for a little while at least, the center of the whole freakin’ universe.

Mother’s Day came right on the heels of that.

I spotted a couple of birds feeding in a freshly plowed field on my way to have brunch with my grown kiddos. We ate too much. I got some cool gifts, including a sweet tote with my granddaughter’s handprints all over it. And one of her dad’s. It blows my mind how those same man-sized hands once curled so delicately around my fingers.

The phone rang in the middle of it all.

Silas.

It was the first call we’ve gotten since he left the U.S. We got ten minutes. But he is alive and well, although sleep-deprived. I still have no idea where in the world he is right now.

Motherhood didn’t get any easier once we were out of the infant stage. It didn’t slow down once the kids slept through the night, or when they were potty-trained, or when they traded my address for one of their own. My heart will forever be walking around outside my body.

Meanwhile, we are now less than two weeks from Emma’s wedding, which means we’re smack dab in the middle of the logistical panic stage of event planning.

There are so many overlooked details, last-minute Amazon orders, and miscellaneous boxes arriving at my doorstep daily. I’m pretty sure the dog’s prescription meds disappeared somewhere beneath a pile of monogrammed napkins and disposable plates.

And because I thrive on bad timing and questionable decisions, I scheduled a last-minute trip to the Crystal Coast this week.

Nothing says “responsible mother of the bride” like disappearing to fish right before the wedding.

I know myself well enough by now to understand this is less about fishing and more about coming up for air before a major life moment. I’ve always headed outside when life gets loud. Some mothers book spa weekends. I prefer standing in a salt marsh, getting sunburned while throwing bait at things with fins.

Everybody has their own process.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been this week: wandering the turkey woods, crying over ten-minute phone calls, helping plan a wedding, and preparing to run away to the coast for a couple days before reality catches up with me.

Spring is funny like that. One season ends and another just comes crashing in behind it.

This year, I’m feeling every bit of it.

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Where else I was this week…

“Two Montana Men Charged After Allegedly Killing 223 Ducks” (MeatEater)

I love a trip to Bass Pro Shops. It’s one of the few places my feminine shopping genes fully kick in. I can lose hours rubbing jacket fabric between my fingers, trying on boots I absolutely do not need, and studying soft plastic worms like I’m selecting paint swatches.

I make it a point to stop at every Bass Pro we pass, even if we’re just cruising down some highway trying to get from here to there. My husband rolls his eyes, but plays along. Bless him.

That’s how I ended up in a Bass Pro in Ashland, VA. We were on our way home from an anniversary getaway to Mount Vernon when I screeched the wheels of our Tacoma into the parking lot.

“I just need to stretch my legs,” I told my husband.

“Okay, but we don’t need any more purple worms,” he said. He knows me too well.

Somewhere between the taxidermy waterfall and a display of twenty flavors of beef jerky, I realized gear companies are no longer naming hunting products. As I read product names aloud to my husband, it started to feel like we’d wandered off the Bass Pro showroom floor and into a low-budget action movie.

I passed a wall of backpacks called things like the Predator XLT, the Alpha Assault, and the Ridge Reaper Pro. I saw a cooler whose label claimed it was tough enough to survive grizzly attacks, Category 4 hurricanes, and possibly limited nuclear fallout. A folding camp chair had the word “elite” stitched into the backrest like it was preparing for CQB instead of holding a middle-aged man scarfing down Little Debbie Christmas tree cakes in some pre-dawn box blind.

I couldn’t take three steps without running into something tactical, elite, or alpha. Coveralls, protein bars, coffee, beard oil. Everything sounded like it had been cleared for a covert operation.

Apparently, modern outdoorsmen can no longer carry a simple pack. We now require the Summit Reaper Elite XT Recon System. Complete with MOLLE straps, a tactical hydration system, and enough interior space for a backwoods operator to stuff our treestand snacks, some extra gloves, a flashlight with dead batteries, and some emergency T.P.

Outdoor companies aren’t selling gear anymore. They’re selling fantasy. A backpack isn’t just a backpack. It needs to feel like you could insert yourself into a mission brief and come out on the other side with one helluva story.

Maybe plain names don’t sell it anymore. “Backpack” feels too honest. “Flashlight” feels too small. We need something that sounds like it came with a parachute drop and a classified briefing, even if we’re just walking into the woods before daylight with a thermos of bad coffee.

Grandpa hunted in a plain red flannel, with a scuffed-up lever-action, and boots held together with duct tape. He didn’t need “operator energy.” He just wanted meat on the table, a little time with friends, palatable coffee, and a good story to tell around the campfire. I can’t help but wonder what he’d think about all the hubbub.

I walked out of the Ashland Bass Pro thinking about all those old timers back in the deer camps of my childhood. Their camo never matched. Their backpacks were just backpacks.

Even the Army surplus gear they sometimes carried stopped feeling tactical the moment it hit the deer woods. Because they were just there to hunt, not live out wartime fantasies.

I still love Bass Pro Shops, even if I didn’t leave with a backpack. I just paid for my package of StrikeForce Predator Pro Series XT purple worms and headed for home.

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1. My phone rang before I left for my Nebraska turkey hunt. It was my younger son, Silas. “Mom, I’m deploying. I can’t say where.” He said he’d try to call again before he left the States. I tried not to cry on the phone.

2. Silas is a turkey hunter, a much better one than me. He started at eight, practicing on a double diaphragm my dad cut down to fit a mouth still full of baby teeth. He drove me crazy with it. I threw him outside to practice on the back steps. Damn, can that boy run a call.

3. Cell service in Nebraska is shit.

4. I kept my phone on me anyway. Switched it to airplane mode so it wouldn’t kill the battery. I used it for photos. The rest of the time, it was just a weight in my pocket.

5. Tuesday, somewhere between hunts, we hit blacktop. Only for a few minutes. I turned service back on. Just in case.

6. Three minutes of nothing. Then two bars of 4G.

7. The notifications poured in all at once. Two days of texts, emails, social media noise.

8. And then the phone rang.

9. Silas.

10. I had just enough signal to say what mattered. “There are turkeys everywhere out here!”

11. “I love you. I’m proud of you. Be safe.
    We’ll head out West when you get home.”

12. Then the line dropped, and I choked it back in a truck full of people I barely knew.

13. The next morning was one of those golden mornings, where the sunrise filtered through frosty fog. The birds were right.

14. My pot call broke in half somewhere along the way, probably in the snowstorm the day before. I scratched it anyway. Four soft yelps with a hardwood striker.

15. It sounded all wrong, like something sick and raspy. A hen bird with a sore throat. Definitely not pretty. Not like Silas’s calls.

16. Two hens came in anyway. Curious, confused, maybe concerned.

17. Two gobblers followed, spitting and drumming and throwing massive fits. I could feel it in my chest.

18. The sunrise was beautiful. So was my shot.

19. I slung him over my shoulder and headed back to the truck.
    The weight bounced against my shoulder blade.

20. That bird was heavy.

21. That wasn’t the only thing.

By the time this dispatch hits your inbox, I’ll be somewhere in the Nebraska Sandhills chasing gobblers, hopefully out of cell service and not thinking much about anything else. I’ve never hunted turkeys west of the Mississippi, so I’m not sure how it’s done out here. I’m more than willing to learn.

Last week, I simmered the thighs off the gobbler I killed opening weekend of North Carolina’s season in a couple cans of beer. Before that, I browned them in fat from December’s black bear. Once the meat started falling off the bone, I made a quick gravy with the cooking liquid and some broth from the leg bones of the buck I killed in November.

I piled it all over a plate of oven fries, topped it with cheese curds, and stood there in the kitchen eating it like it was something rare and uniquely special. Because it was..

This season has been a dream come true. Not only do I get to chase gobblers in Nebraska, I also tagged my first bull elk in Idaho. But the real magic happened in my home state, and I wanted to cook a dish with the animals from my state slam.

I set out to tag a buck, a bear, and a bearded turkey in the same license year, all in the same state. It’s something I’ve been itching to do since I was a kid. This year, I managed to pull it off in North Carolina. (Special thanks to Gerry McGinnis for getting me on that bear.)

That NC poutine tasted like a lot more than meat. It tasted like years of getting up before daylight, hiking out by headlamp, frozen fingers and tired feet, and the kind of sunsets you don’t forget. It tasted like early morning birdsong, like hard work and gratitude. And as hard as I try, I’ll never be able to put everything I felt shoveling those gravy-covered fries into my mouth into words that do it justice.

But I’ll say this. It was downright delicious.

Where else I was this week…

“Not Your Granddad’s Turkey Vest: Chief Upland Flydown Turkey System Review” (Gear Junkie)

If you’ve ever wanted to redesign your turkey vest from scratch, this is your chance.

“String of Montana Poaching Cases Lands Tennessee Man a Lifetime Hunting Ban” (MeatEater)

It takes more than a single bad decision to lose your hunting and fishing privileges for life. For Tennessee resident Jerry “Trey” Truitt III, it came after years of poaching violations across western Montana.

“Colorado Turkey Hunter Still Missing After Massive 6-Day Search” (MeatEater)

Kaden Sites was reported missing around 7 p.m. on April 15. He left for a short hunt around 1:30 that afternoon and planned to be back for a doctor’s appointment at 3:45 but never showed.

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Spring is coming in hot. Everything is changing, sometimes by the minute. Leaves coming in, flowers blooming, birds building nests. Things are moving fast, and it’s hard to keep up. This week, it’s felt like the ground won’t hold still enough to find my footing.

My husband was on spring break, so we pointed the truck west and started driving, just far enough to trade flat ground for mountains. We had plans to hike Mount Mitchell. It tops out at 6,684 feet, the highest peak east of the Mississippi. I know that’s nothing to my friends out West, but for those of us who live our lives at sea level, it’s something else.

So we packed the tent, the dog, and more optimism than is probably healthy and headed for Pisgah National Forest.

Getting there wasn’t exactly a simple affair. Roads are still closed from when Hurricane Helene ripped through there more than 18 months ago. It’s easy to forget from a distance what a storm like that can leave behind.

But there are still whole hillsides peeled open, trees snapped like matchsticks, their remains tangled in heaps. People still living in trailers beside mudcaked foundations, all that’s left of family homes. Small towns with their grocery stores still shuttered, and their gas stations left dark and deserted. In places, it feels like a movie set for some apocalypse film.

We didn’t make it all the way up the mountain. There were too many trails still washed out or closed off. More than once we heard, “You just can’t get there from here.” So we hiked what we could. Picked our way through debris. Stopped to stare, probably longer than we should have, like disaster tourists.

Back home, things weren’t all that different.

I headed out to the hunting property on Tuesday afternoon to pull down my treestands. Logging started on Monday, and there was heavy equipment parked everywhere. They’d cut right up to my first stand, opening the canopy in a place that’s always been thick, dark, and dank. The naked stumps and the harsh light cut wrong. It felt like walking into my house and finding someone moved all the furniture.

Taking down treestands is just as hard as setting them up. It’s slow, awkward, humbling work. My husband provided some muscle and paid for it in poison ivy. But we got everything down without beating it to pieces.

I thanked the trees out loud, and apologized for something I’m not responsible for, but somehow feels like my fault.

At home, I put in most of the summer garden. Last week felt more like July than April. The temps climbed into the 90s, and the dirt felt warm in my hands. Then Sunday morning dropped into the 40s. Spring likes to keep things interesting down here.

The seedlings didn’t seem to mind. They’re still standing. That feels like a small win.

I’m already hungry for fried green tomatoes, red pepper jelly, bread-and-butter pickles, and yellow squash cooked down with bacon until it barely holds together. I know my taste buds are counting their chickens before they hatch, but a girl can dream.

And speaking of chickens…

The Dixie Chicks are laying like they want bragging rights. We’ve hit the point where I try to sneak eggs into every meal. Quiche, frittatas, pound cake, omelets. I’m even cracking one over Penny’s kibble every morning. We’re handing off cartons to anyone who will take them, and we’re still drowning in eggs.

I keep wanting all of it to make sense, of storms tearing things up and woods being mowed down. I haven’t made much progress.

But the garden feels right. The chickens do, too. Sometimes all you can do is take what’s been given and try to pass along what you’ve got too much of. Not everything stays the same, and most things don’t go back. But you just have to keep rolling anyway.

And when life hands you too many eggs, you make a big ole batch of egg salad.

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Where else I was this week…

“5 Ways to Sabotage Your Turkey Decoy Setup” (MeatEater)

He did everything you pray a gobbler will do. He flew down, cut the distance, and came in on a string. But he broke strut at 60 yards like he’d hit an invisible wall…

I shot a turkey opening week. Later that morning, I posted a photo to my social media of me with the bird slung across my back.

That hunt had been one wild ride, with birds hammering from the roost, one gobbler turning into two, then three, then four. And me trying to keep up. There wasn’t enough time to second-guess the move I’d just made, just running on pure instinct and adrenaline. I captioned that photo with the only words I could come up with.

What a way to live a life, y’all.

The congratulations came in quick. And then one private message: “Nice. Were you hunting public land or private?”

I hesitated. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because I knew what the answer would mean to certain people. There’s a quiet status game that plays out in online hunting circles now. It’s like you get some sort of merit badge for tagging an animal on public land. Like it somehow counts more.

I was worried that confessing to a private land hunt would somehow shrink the morning. That it might take something away from the bird. From me.

But I grew up hunting public land.

Back then, it wasn’t a badge of honor. No one bragged about it. It was what you did when you didn’t have anywhere else to go. And it often felt like a consolation prize, because hunting it was hard, frustrating, crowded.

I’ve hunted both kinds of land. I’ve parked at locked gates long before daylight and walked in with a headlamp, knowing another dozen trucks were coming in behind me. I’ve listened to gobblers get worked over by three different hunters before they ever hit the ground. I’ve walked back to the truck empty-handed more times than I can count.

I’ve also stood on private ground where I knew mine were the only boots in the woods. And I’ve still felt like I earned every bit of it.

Both are hunting. Neither feels like cheating.

I can’t figure out why we’re keeping score, why we assign value to the ground instead of the experience. It’s not like one kind of dirt makes you a more legitimate hunter than the other, especially when that dirt can change in a heartbeat.

I stared at that question in that message for a good while, trying to decide how to answer it. It should have been a simple one-word response. But I was feeling some kind of way. Because I got a call from the landowner not 10 hours after I walked out of those private land woods with that gobbler slung over my shoulder.

“They’ll be logging it tomorrow.”

On Thursday, the Senate voted to overturn a long-standing mining moratorium in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, which could lead to acid mine drainage leaching heavy metals into Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the most popular and pristine pieces of public land in the country.

One vote is all it took.

That Senate vote and that landowner phone call didn’t destroy land overnight. But both remind me how fragile all of this is.

The Boundary Waters aren’t special because it’s public land. It’s special because it’s wild, the water runs clean, and anyone can go there.

That’s the part that’s actually at risk. It’s not your reputation or mine. It’s not which side of a fence a bird was standing on when it was shot. It’s the places themselves.

Because I’ve had land I love go to logging, without a debate, a vote, or a single headline. Just a line on a map and a crew showing up with bulldozers and chainsaws. It’s still gone. Just in a way that doesn’t make people rally.

We sure don’t post about that version much, and we don’t argue about it in the comments.

There’s no status in that. And there’s none in the Senate vote either. Just loss.

Every place we have left to hunt is worth more than any monetary value we can slap on it. It doesn’t matter if it’s public, private, leased, inherited, or borrowed. Every one of those places can change. And the fate of the dirt we love is often decided by people who will never set foot there.

We’ll argue until we’re red in the face about how we hunt. We’ve gotten good at that.

I’m just not sure we’ve been as good at protecting where.

I almost didn’t go.

I’d slept like crap and woke up with a peri-menopausal migraine that was kicking my butt. More accurately, it felt like it was kicking me in the head. Repeatedly. Staying in bed felt reasonable when my alarm went off well before daylight.

But being miserable in the woods sounded a lot more fun than being miserable in bed.

Turkey season opened in my home state this weekend. And even though it felt like a wild animal was trying to claw its way out of my head from somewhere behind my left eyeball, I got up, pulled on my camo, and hit the woods anyway.

It was still dark when I turned onto the property, only to find another truck already parked in my usual spot.

“Dammit.”

I strung together a few more colorful curse words while fighting a strong urge to turn around, head home, and crawl back under my covers. Luck did not seem to be on my side. But I was already (mostly) awake and there. So I parked at the other end of the property and stood outside my truck to see if I could hear anything.

I did. One faint gobble pretty far off, somewhere across a muddy swamp I wasn’t prepared to cross. I’d left my rubber boots at home, expecting I would stick to the dry ground on the side of the property where that stinking truck was parked. It was a rookie move. Always bring your rubber boots.

I slipped into the woods and started to head that way anyway. You can’t just pack up and head home after you’ve heard a gobble on the roost. It’s against the rules. But I was hoping a closer bird might light up as the sky began to gray.

It did. A bird hammered off, this one much closer. Jackpot.

Light was coming fast, so I picked up the pace and headed in his direction. I’d gone maybe 50 yards when the woods exploded. Multiple gobbles rolled like thunder through the hardwoods. I was right in the middle of it.

Oh, Shit.

Adrenaline spiked as I dropped to my knees, afraid the birds in the trees overhead would see me in the growing light. I hadn’t exactly been careful and stealthy on my way in. I quickly pulled a feeding hen decoy out of my vest, shoved the stake into the soft mud, and then pressed my back against an old oak while I tried to slow my breathing.

I no sooner got into position than a hen roosting not 30 yards to my left sent out a series of tree yelps. I looked up to see her silhouette against the graying sky. Four different gobblers answered her. I was surrounded on all sides.

I eased a pot call and a striker out of my vest pocket and matched her, letting the fellas know there was more than one lady in town.

For the next several minutes, it was a full-blown conversation. Birds were talking to each other in the trees all around me. I added just enough to stay relevant.

Then I heard the chaos of wings as one gobbler hit the ground and went quiet. Then another bird off to my right flew down hard. It was close. I swung my gun slowly around in that direction.

I gave a few soft yelps, and through the brush, I saw a bird fan up. Less than a minute later, that fan floated out into the open, flanked by a buddy still running his mouth. The two of them pirouetted and do-si-doed each other on the other side of a muddy creek, while taking turns gobbling, trying to tempt my hen decoy to fly over and join them. They didn’t want to get their feet wet.

They were stuck at 40 yards. Too far.

I’ve tried to stretch lead shot from my 20-gauge that far and had birds run off like nothing happened. But I knew I could throw a pretty decent pattern at 30. I wanted them closer. So I just waited and tried to slow my pulse and steady my breathing.

Then the neighbor hen cranked it up as she prepped to fly down. I was afraid she’d put feet on the other side of that creek, and my fanned-out friend and his wing man would follow her off, leaving me sitting there with my plastic imposter.

I figured my time was running out, but I wasn’t ready to bust up the party and ruin the whole thing. Then the closer gobbler took a few floating steps right up to the very edge of that creek. He dropped out of strut for just a second.

I took it.

Thirty-six yards.

He flopped. His buddy ran a few steps, then turned back, putting like he was telling him to get up. I jumped up and ran across that little creek, soaking my boot and my sock. But that gobbler was down. I put one hand on the bird to say thank you as he shivered one last time and then went still.

I took a few pictures. Texted my son (who is also my hunting partner and ultra-talented turkey whisperer), who was stuck at Fort Bragg for opening week. Then slung that bird over my shoulder and headed back to the truck, blood dripping down the back of my pant leg.

I’ve hunted that property for eight seasons now. I killed my two biggest bucks there. I know where the creek turns, the spots that flood after a hard rain, where the fox squirrels feed, what the wood ducks sound like when they cut over my favorite treestand at first light.

It feels like home, and I’ve fallen head over heels in love with that place.

Later that night, I fried up a big batch of wild turkey fingers for family dinner. We were just finishing up when the landowner called.

“They’re starting to log it tomorrow. Just wanted to let you know.”

I knew this was coming, but it still felt like a gut punch. And I know the landowner doesn’t want to mow down the hardwoods that have grown on his family land for generations. He needs the money to pay off some debt from a messy divorce. Life doesn’t ask permission.

And I feel like I’m losing a friend.

Because that land will never be the same. At least not in my lifetime.

I keep thinking about how close I came to missing that morning, to missing the chaos in that river bottom, my heart hammering in my ears louder than those thundering gobbles. That was one of the most exciting hunts of my life.

I almost stayed in bed.

I know there’s some clichéd moral to this story. But I’m two drinks into a Wild Turkey toast to that bird, that hunt, and that land. And I’ve cried enough tears tonight that I don’t really care what the lesson is.

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I was standing on Realtree Farms in backwoods Georgia with a Crown Royal cocktail in my hand when someone said, “Camo is having a moment.”

Like she was talking about hemlines and handbags.

We were there for a partnership between Realtree and Crown Royal. A new fashion line with a reality star spokesman. Limited drops. Even the whiskey’s signature purple bag had been reworked in Realtree EDGE (which I admit, is pretty dang cool).

That morning, the bus full of writers wound its way up the long wooded drive and stopped in front of a timber-framed clubhouse.

A few Realtree guys were waiting, clad in camo and leaning against Silverados like they’d just come in off a hunt. No one told them how to stand. No one had dressed them. They just looked like they belonged.

One journalist leaned toward me and said, “Man, these guys really live their brand.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have words.

I grew up in Realtree.

My dad bought it the minute it hit the shelves at the sporting goods store, convinced it was the best thing that had ever happened to hunting. He wore it until it gave out, then passed it down to me.

It never fit right. I was a skinny teenage girl swimming in worn-out, man-sized gear. The cuffs were always frayed. The knees worn thin. It had the smell of woodsmoke and sweat baked in.

But I wore it anyway. Like it meant something. I was wearing it when I killed my first deer. My first turkey.

Daddy was wearing Realtree the day he had a heart attack in the woods. The last day of deer season. He was trying to catch a pair of hounds hot on a buck that had crossed onto the next property.

His buddies threw him in the back of a pickup and drove until they hit blacktop, taking turns doing CPR until they could get him to an ambulance.

The EMTs cut his jacket off to work on him.

He was mad about that later. Said they’d ruined a perfectly good coat.

Daddy died three days later, hooked up to machines in a hospital ICU.

I still have that jacket.

So when I hear someone say camo is having a moment, I don’t know what to do with that. Because I’ve seen it stiff with cold. Torn on barbed wire. Soaked in blood. Dragged through mud. Laid across a tailgate while somebody catches their breath. Cut off a barely-breathing body.

I’ve seen what it looks like when it’s earned.

Now I see it on mannequins. Already faded. Already broken in. Like the work is part of the purchase. And when it’s paired with perfect manicures and pristine Timberlands, it feels almost profane.

In the woods, it meant disappear. Blend in. Don’t be seen.

On a city street, it’s the opposite. It’s meant to be bold. To be looked at. To draw attention.

Maybe that’s all this is. Things changing shape. Meanings drifting. And maybe I’m just getting grumpy in my old age. This might just be me shaking my fist at the sky and yelling at those pesky kids to get the hell off my lawn.

But I believe something important is lost when the story isn’t there to back up the wear.

That’s what I can’t shake. Not the clothes. Not the fashion. Just the idea that you can wear the look without ever touching what it came from.

I still want the real thing. The kind you don’t style. The kind that smells like smoke and sweat and blood. The kind that comes home torn, with a story still stuck to it.

The kind they have to cut off you in the end.

All my father ever wanted was a piece of land.

He got eight acres. Long and narrow, more like a strip than a parcel, but it was his. He bought it the year before he died with the $10,000 he got when his sister bought out her siblings’ rights to their parents’ property. It was a consolation prize bought with all the money he could scrape together.

My mother handed me the letter, and it carried enough weight to feel like a boulder.

Sussex County. Public hearing. April 6.

By the third read, the language started to translate itself.

“Utility-scale solar.”
“Battery storage system.”
“374 acres.”

A project big enough to have its own vocabulary. Big enough to swallow everything around it.

Including Daddy’s thin strip of woods.

That piece of property wasn’t much, at least not by the standards of people who’ve always had land. Too narrow for a homesite. Not quite right for hunting. But he walked it like it mattered. Because to him, it did.

And now it’s about to sit next to something loud and industrial, ugly and permanent. That doesn’t sit right with me.

For a long time, I’ve thought of land like something you either inherit or you don’t. And I’ve been jealous that I don’t have dirt that’s been passed down for generations. Angry even. I’ve hunted land that’s run through bloodlines for hundreds of years, and though I’ve loved that land, none of it is mine. I’ve craved land that birthed me. Land that raised me. Land with my people in it.

Then it hit me…

Somebody has to go first.

This isn’t unfamiliar territory. I’ve been the one to go first before .I’ve stood in the gap. Stepped out of things that were supposed to keep going. The one who didn’t carry forward what was supposed to be passed down.

Poverty.
Abuse.
Alcohol.

I just never thought about land that way.

Until now.

Because that land in Sussex County wasn’t Daddy’s dream. It was what he could afford when the dream ran out of road. But I’m walking land now. With my husband and my oldest. Looking at tracts that wouldn’t turn heads passing by on their way to somewhere else.

But they might hold a future.

For me. For my kids. For my grandchildren.

I don’t know what will happen to Daddy’s land now.

Maybe it gets sold. Maybe it just sits there, smaller than it used to feel, pressed up against something bigger than he ever imagined. Either way, it’s not holding what he hoped it would.

I can’t change what he had. I can’t change what’s coming next door to it. But I can decide where this goes from here.

Because legacy doesn’t have to be inherited.

It can start with us.

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Where I was this week…

“When to Use or Ditch Your Turkey Decoys” (MeatEater)

“Three-Year Poaching Investigation in California Uncovers Close to 30 Deer” (MeatEater)

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I remember the smell of Daddy’s faded red tackle box.

As a kid, I would lift the lid, and the smell of soft baits and plastic worms, laced with the faintest hint of old fish and dampness, would hit me in the face. I would take a long inhale and stare at the lures.

It felt like a toy store. The bright colors of the lures pulled me in, the realism of plastic crawdad bodies, the painted sides of frog-like jitterbugs.

Daddy told me I could look as long as I didn’t touch. Everything had its place, arranged in an order that only made sense to him. He didn’t want me messing up his system. But I didn’t really want to touch them anyway. The tangle of treble hooks threatening to pierce the delicate skin of my fingers was enough for me to keep my hands to myself.

He always kept a realistic soft-bodied bullfrog in the top right-hand spot.

It was one I had picked out at Wilcox’s bait shop. The green and black patterns on its back had drawn me in.

“Daddy! Get this one,” I had shouted. I thought it looked real enough to fool a bass.

He bought it, even though it was probably too expensive, tossing it on the counter next to a pack of purple plastic worms and a cold Pepsi.

It rode in that spot for decades, barely used.

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I’m late sending this out, and here’s the truth…

This one almost didn’t go out at all. I’ve got too much to say that I can’t say out loud yet.

Life is wringing me out right now.

But here’s another truth…

There are still beautiful things, if you’re willing to notice them.

I hit the river yesterday. Just to cast from the bank for a while. The shad run has been disappointing this year. It hasn’t been worth the effort to launch the boat.

Not a single flash of shad.

But the wisteria is in bloom.

And those pungent purple blossoms are like a time machine. Every time that fragrance drifts across the water, I am instantly a five-year-old in pigtails, toting a short little fishing pole, afraid to cross the bridge to my cousin’s pond because of the bees floating in and around those delicate purple flowers.

There are so many memories knitted through my brain from that little farm pond. I caught my first largemouth bass there. Took my first ride in a rickety jon boat, clutching the sides for fear of it tipping. I remember family picnics on the cool, pounded dirt banks. My mother with the sun on her face. My father with fish slime on his hands.

It was a rare thing for them both to be happy at the same time.

And winding through all of it is the wisteria. Tangled in the trees. Climbing the banks. The smell hung thick and sweet, almost too much, like a fog.

My memories are drunk with it.

And I find myself longing for those days. For red and white bobbers and soggy peanut butter sandwiches and dirty hands. For a world where the biggest problem was a swarm of nectar-heavy bumblebees blocking the path to a pond full of panfish.

I can’t go back to that pond. My cousin’s farm was sold off decades ago.

But this week, with the air thick with wisteria, I’ve never wanted to more.

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Besides wasting time on a wisteria-laden riverbank, I also showed up here this week…

“Saskatchewan Teen Charged After Running Down Deer With Truck” (MeatEater)

A 17-year-old has been charged after allegedly running down and killing three whitetail deer with a truck outside of Maryfield, Saskatchewan, on March 9.

Dinner was a relief. I’d spent the cocktail hour sipping drinks and rubbing elbows with (mostly female) journalists from publications like People, Parade, PopSugar. They chatted about Love Island, why they’d gone vegetarian, what boots Taylor Swift wore at her last public appearance.

I sipped a cocktail and smiled in that polite way that doesn’t reach my eyes, trying to add something to conversations when I could. Small talk drains me, especially on topics I can’t hold my own in.

We filed in to sit at the outdoor dinner table, all decked out with fresh flowers and candles, silverware lined up like soldiers beside pretty plates. Place cards with our names handwritten in looping calligraphy. I found mine, stood behind the chair, hand hovering as everyone started to settle.

My eyes slid sideways before my head turned, scanning the table like I would scan an oak flat from a treestand. Slow. Cautious. Like I didn’t want to be found out.

That’s when I saw it. All the women at my end of the table. All the men at the other. Even the guy in skinny jeans and a black leather jacket. The Realtree crew might as well have been in the next county over.

As everyone pulled out their chairs, I realized I was stuck. I wondered if anyone would notice if I disappeared. I considered locking myself in the bathroom until dinner was over.

Fried green tomatoes and cornbread hit the table. I pulled myself out of the noise long enough to register the conversation around me.

“Camo is so in right now.”

I stared at the napkin in my lap. Someone laughed from the other end of the table.

Twenty-four hours earlier, we were all at a small steakhouse off a two-lane Georgia road. Gravel parking lot. Laminated menus. Nothing to impress you. The kind of place you don’t find by accident.

I met Bill Jordan. He reached out his hand and told me his name. But I knew who he was immediately. I’d watched him kill dozens of Monster Bucks on old VHS tapes my dad played on repeat.

I said, “I know who you are. I grew up wearing hand-me-down Realtree.”

I sat down in the middle of it, elbow to elbow with the guys from Realtree. It didn’t feel like work. It felt like deer camp after a long hunt, only the food was a helluva lot better.

We talked about people we knew in common. My writing for the Realtree blog. Turkey hunting.

I pulled out pictures of my bull. They leaned in. Nobody was humoring me. They complimented the size, asked about the details, waited for the story.

Everyone spoke the same language.

The senior VP commented that I was probably the most outdoorsy guy there.

It felt like a compliment, but it sounded like something he had just noticed out loud.

We stayed late enough that nobody was watching the clock yet. Long enough for it to feel like I had landed in the right room. It felt a lot like being home.

The next morning, I toured Realtree Farms with a group of journalists. Managed timber sat in clean blocks. Water cut into the landscape like it had been planned from the start.

The clubhouse hit different.

Inside, Monster Bucks lined the walls in rows. Shoulder mounts frozen mid-sneak. I recognized a few from those old, worn-out VHS tapes. The ones I used to rewind just to see the bucks step out again.

Back then, those hunts were like bedtime stories from another world. Now I was standing inside them.

I didn’t talk. Just drifted from mount to mount, while the other journalists chatted about coffee and travel schedules.

“I told you we’d see Monster Bucks,” Bill Jordan said, brushing my elbow as he came up beside me. We started talking about where a few of them had been taken. About what grows big bucks. Management versus genetics.

At some point, someone called the group forward and I got pulled back into the tour.

Before lunch, we stopped at the pond to fish. While the Realtree guys threaded live crickets on hooks for the other journalists, I grabbed a spinning rod, tied on a white spinner bait, and headed off on my own.

I worked the edge of the pond, skirting some structure, working the lure low and slow in the water. A few casts in, something grabbed it. Just clean. Nothing dramatic.I set the hook and reeled it in. I lipped the little largemouth as someone jogged over to snap a photo before I tossed him back.

The fish came easy. Dinner didn’t.

“Can you pass the biscuits,” asked the woman on my right.

I reached for the plate and she added, “Never mind. I don’t eat red meat. Do you think they have any without the bacon jam?”

In response, I grabbed two, deliciously dripping in jam, and plopped them on my plate.

Conversation moved around me. I just chewed my biscuits and watched the table. Courses came and went. Every so often, I heard laughter from the other end of the table. Placecards cast shadows in the candlelight.

I just waited. Quiet. Watching the evening light fade.

The same way I do in a treestand.

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Last week, I went on a media trip to Realtree Farms in Reynolds, Georgia. Every once in a while, this profession hands me an opportunity that makes this girl from humble redneck roots want to pinch herself. This was one of them.

I got to sit in the driver’s seat of one of Dale Earnhardt’s race cars, eat my weight in wild game, catch largemouth bass on the Realtree Farm pond, and spend a few days with people who’ve built their lives around the outdoors.

It felt an awful lot like going home. At least, mostly.

Part of that feeling came from meeting Bill Jordan. I grew up in hand-me-down Realtree. My dad loved the brand from the moment it hit shelves in the mid-80s. He swore it was the best thing to happen to hunting since the centerfire cartridge.

So meeting Bill felt like meeting a genuine celebrity. I fan-girled big time. I was never the kind of teenager to pin rock stars or teen heartthrobs on my walls. But Monster Bucks? I 100 percent would’ve plastered my bedroom with those posters if they’d been a thing.

And those mounts were something to behold. Lined up in rows, dozens of them from episodes my dad wore out on VHS tapes. All I could do was stand there and gape, mouth-breathing like an idiot.

I can be in awe and simultaneously admit that Bill Jordan and those VHS tapes pushed the pursuit of big racks and set impossible standards for hunters like me. It’s hard not to measure your own deer against that, even when you know better. And I know that watching Monster Bucks on repeat in my formative years plays a part in the equation that makes me feel like my biggest bucks are embarrassingly tiny.

Still, Bill Jordan and the Realtree crew are genuine Georgia good ole boys, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Authentic, proud of their brand and hunting heritage, and masters of Southern hospitality.

But trips like that mix all kinds of people in the same place. Different backgrounds, different priorities. Not everyone approaches hunting the same way I do, which I sometimes forget because I like living in my own little bubble.

And even when a place feels like home, a simple seating chart can make things uncomfortable fast. Just because someone thinks you fit a certain category doesn’t mean you actually do.

I’ll tell you more in this weekend’s essay, so stay tuned.

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Where Else I Was This Week…

“How to Catch Spring Shad” (MeatEater)

“I became a shad addict on a quiet backwater creek in eastern North Carolina, just trying to find a way to kill time outdoors until turkey season kicked off….”

“Gun MacGyver Sentenced to 3.5 Years in Prison After Decades of Wildlife Crimes” (MeatEater)

“There are lines most hunters won’t cross, even without a game warden breathing down their neck. But one Washington man crossed those lines again and again…”

Where I grew up, it wasn’t an insult. It was more like a job description or a code of conduct.

The first time I realized other people meant something different, I was working front-of-house at a fine-dining restaurant. The kind with white tablecloths, fresh flowers, dishes you have to sound out, and wine service that comes with a lecture.

I felt wildly out of place at first. I didn’t know the difference between a dessert spoon and a soup spoon. I had never tasted caviar (although my palate was well-versed in shad roe). And I was fairly certain nobody in my circle had ever cared about “wine pairings” beyond which flavor of Boone’s Farm wouldn’t wreck you the next morning.

But the job was fun. The money was good. And I got to try things I’d never eaten before. Like foie gras. Which is just goose liver. Rich, buttery, dressed up like it belongs to a better class of people.

But strip it down and it’s dirt road Southern. I grew up eating fried gizzards and chicken livers without ever needing a white tablecloth. Goose liver only turns fancy when you spread it on an expensive cracker.

One evening while pouring a well-dressed woman dripping jewelry a fresh glass of chablis, she commented on the necklace I was wearing. Nothing special. I’d grabbed it off a Target clearance rack because it looked decent with the black turtleneck I wore during dinner service. She asked if it was David Yurman. It cost me five bucks.

I just smiled and said thank you. Didn’t correct her.

That one moment probably says a lot about me. It also says quite a bit about David Yurman.

That same night, I heard someone at that table use the word redneck. Like it was something foul they’d stepped in and couldn’t scrape off their expensive heels.

They didn’t mean it the way I understood it. They meant it as shorthand for ignorant. Crude. Backward. The sort of people who, in their minds, probably couldn’t pronounce foie gras, much less serve it.

I remember thinking, Huh.

Because where I come from, redneck meant something else entirely

It meant your dad came home dog-tired from a full day of swinging a hammer, sunburned across the back of his neck, and still crawled under the sink to fix a leaky pipe.

It meant neighbors showing up with a truck and a chainsaw before you even asked for help.

It meant food made with more love than expensive ingredients. It meant not eating much beyond what you could hunt, fish, or grow.

It meant patching, fixing, reusing, and figuring things out with whatever you had on hand, even if all you had was duct tape and WD-40.

It meant working hard when you had to and then playing hard when you had the chance.

In other words, it meant working people.

Which, interestingly enough, is exactly what the word meant in the first place.

Long before it became a punchline, “redneck” described farmers and laborers whose necks burned red from working long days in the sun. The name stuck because it was obvious.

And in 1921, thousands of coal miners in West Virginia tied red bandanas around their necks as they marched during the labor conflict known as the Battle of Blair Mountain. They were called rednecks, too.

Hardworking people. Practical folks. Not afraid to get dirty. The kind who didn’t fuss over impressing anyone.

Somewhere along the way, the meaning shifted. These days, when people who wear David Yurman say the word “redneck,” they mean backward. Lazy. Uneducated. Cheap beer.

The truth is, “redneck” has become a way for some people to feel superior without having to say what they actually mean.

Most of the time, what they mean is poor. Or rural. Or the kind of people who work with their hands and not their laptops.

But those words sound a little too honest. A little too ugly. So they just say redneck instead. Because it rolls off the tongue easier. It gets a laugh. It signals that you’re the “right” kind of people.

I figured that out standing in that dining room, balancing plates of goose liver and pouring wine that cost more than my grocery bill. People who had never skinned a deer, filleted a fish, or fixed an engine were very comfortable using the word like it described some lesser species of human.

Meanwhile, the people I knew who might actually qualify as rednecks were busy doing things that kept the world running. Driving tractors. Laying shingles. Welding pipe. Pulling neighbors out of ditches when it snows.

They never worry about using the right fork, because they’re too busy getting the job done.

And a lot of the people who toss the word around like an insult couldn’t survive without rednecks growing their food, fixing their cars, and building their houses. They just prefer not to think about it. Probably because they’re busy feeling superior.

That’s fine.

They can keep their version of the word. I’ll keep mine.

I’ll keep the work. The loyalty. The habit of fixing what’s broken and feeding whoever shows up. I’ll keep knowing where my food comes from and how to take care of the people I love. I’ll keep knowing how to back a trailer, skin a deer, shoot a shotgun, have fun on the cheap.

I’ll keep all of it.

And I’ll keep a healthy suspicion of anything that needs a white tablecloth and expensive jewelry to feel important.

Because where I come from, being a redneck never had anything to do with being backward or ignorant. It had everything to do with work. With loyalty. With taking care of your people and not making a big show of it. It meant your word mattered. It meant you showed up. It meant you didn’t quit just because something got hard.

Call me a redneck if you want.

I know what it means.

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