Deadly is the Winter

The winds whip at my face, and the clouds loom like forgotten mountaintops.

"Might start snowing, hope you dressed warm enough." Dad lights up a cigarette. He always smokes before we leave the car, says it's for good luck. I think he's just addicted to nicotine.

"I'm good. I'm wearing like, five layers. The new gloves are snug, too."

"Good, good." He inhales deeply, then slowly exhales his cloud of nicotine and death.

"Mom always said those'll kill you." I motion to the cigarette.

A frown creases across the old man's face. He doesn't like talking about Mom. Not yet.

"You'll be using the muzzle-loader today. You remember how to load it?" He pops the trunk of our old Explorer and drags our supplies into reach. He hands me a hunter-orange vest, which I put over my outer coat. He dons his own vest shortly afterwards.

"Pour the powder down the barrel; get the bullet started then tamp it down with the rod - make sure the loading rod goes flush with the barrel or it won't shoot straight; pop the breech and stick the primer in the little hole-thing." I recounted.

"Yep, you've got it. The 'hole-thing' is called a breech plug though. I already loaded the bullet, just put the primer in it and it's good to fire." He hands me the muzzle-loader, a factory-cut heirloom from a local sporting goods store. Its wooden stock is splintering towards the front, and it shoots as true as a politician. It creaks as I work the hinge and fill the breech plug with a tiny primer, and whispers a click as it locks back into place.

Dad has his own firearm, an old Remington shotgun, loaded with three shells already. "It's good to have you back home, Jack." His eyes are tired and bloodshot, and it strikes me just how much he's changed since my childhood. He still looks the same - the same beard, a little less hair perhaps, but all the color has leeched out of him. He's only a touch darker than the snow dripping from those monolithic clouds. Even the orange of his vest seems dull.

"I know, Dad." That was all the emotion we could admit to, so we start crunching through the thin snow. The walk from the car to the woods is an uneventful three minutes. We duck under a broken chain-link fence that hems the forest in like a watchful shepherd, and cut further into the woods. We had always hunted here when I was young, so I knew the area in a fuzzy, barely-remembered way. I realize something I couldn't have grasped when I was a child. "Are we trespassing?"

"Yep." He responds coolly. "Keep your eyes open, Burt said he saw a 12-point in these woods last week."

The aspens shake and quiver in the cold; snow drifts through the bare branches above and coats the forest floor in splotches of brilliance. I'm still warm, my precious heat trapped within all these coats and layers. The cold has always been the worst part of these trips.

Another ten minutes pass, silent except for the noises of the woods. The crunch of snow and branches as we march. Wind howls, louder and louder as the woods sing a shivering litany, groaning and swaying like a crazed choir in response. Snow falls heavier now, erasing our tracks as quickly as we move. The oaks and maples thin out as we travel. A clearing comes into view, a thirty yard eye in the middle of this storm, with tree-stands situated at the east and west ends.

"I'll take the one on the right, you take the one on the left. Burt should be coming around to drive those woods to the North pretty soon, so keep an eye that way." Dad's beard was heavy with ice, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Okay, good luck."

"You too."

We split apart, he heads to the east and I take the western stand. It hangs fifteen feet up a tree, and has a well-secured ladder bolted into the tree itself. The climb up the ladder is difficult, loaded down with the muzzle-loader and the bulky jackets, but I scramble to the platform. It leans against a rough-barked tree, a green ash, and I wonder if it's a victim of the invasion of ash borer beetles. I hope it doesn't collapse.