Packing Away the Season

Hunting and memory sure leave a mess

I cleaned turkey season out of the truck this weekend. It’s wild how fast things accumulate when you throw yourself into something — living out of your vehicle, jumping into the driver’s seat well before dawn, burning your tongue on hot coffee as you race the sun to the woods before the world even thinks about waking up.

Turkey season only lasts four weeks, but the cab of my Colorado had built up a mess — crumpled wrappers, half-empty water bottles, and a thick layer of Edgecombe County mud. Two turkey vests had exploded across the backseat, scattering spare gloves, mesh masks, extra shells, and a small flock of Thunder Chickens. It looked like a Cabela’s had vomited all over the cab of my truck.

But turkey season has been packed away until next spring. Unfortunately, no turkeys were harmed. But my feelings ended up hurt on numerous occasions.

Once, when a strutting gobbler hung up at 60 yards, dancing in circles just outside the range of my TSS.

Again, when a hen wandered in between me and the gobbler who’d been engaged with me in a call-and-response duet since before he left the roost. I was certain it would end with him strutting right into my lap. Instead, he and his new lady disappeared together into the golden morning like the end of a Hallmark rom-com.

But it’s over for now, and I’m feeling an ache over the whole affair. Not just because I didn’t tag out, but because I won’t be a real part of the woods again until fall. I’ll slip in to check cameras, hang stands, dump corn. But that’s background work. I’ll be an observer, not a participant.

It’s a familiar shift.

A few weeks ago, my family cleaned out the attic. It was a purging long overdue. I carted bags of well-worn cloth diapers and tiny baby clothes and long-forgotten toys. Things that once mattered every hour of every day. Things we hadn’t touched in years.

I cleaned my kids’ childhoods out of the attic.

This cleaning leaves a different kind of melancholy this time, heavier in ways I hadn’t anticipated. They’re grown now—responsible, wonderful. And I’m no longer in the thick of it. Just watching their lives from the sidelines.

I miss the work, the exhaustion, the throwing myself into the thick of it. I miss the soft breathing of sleeping babies in the dark, long before the world stirs.

Childhood only lasts a few short years. But my heart filled up way more than turkey season left my Colorado.