I was 15 years old when I found my place in the world. I had struggles as a geeky type kid, not adept at team sports in a town that worshipped football. My father was typical for the age. He spent more time working than I wanted him to and my mother was left to raise me and my siblings. So when he bought me my first gun and announced that we were going deer hunting – after taking a grueling Hunter Ed course – I was curious about what this expedition would mean.
Around 9pm my father went to bed and I, still dressed in my Levis and flannel shirt, stood downstairs in the “Wreck Room”, watching the snowflakes come down in monstrously large clumps as I cleaned my Winchester 30-30 for the third time. I breathed in the smell of the Hoppe’s Solvent and ran the cotton pads through the barrel again, just to make sure that there was no residue left from factory test fires. I coated all the darkly blued steel, dreaming that maybe one of my friend’s fathers had smelted it in the small steel town in Pennsylvania where we lived. Without a gun case, I placed it tenderly back into the green and white cardboard box in which I had received it.
I opened the French door to the outside and under the spotlight behind the house I could see that the white stuff was piling up quickly. I stared into the light and watched as the large flakes seemed to define the limits of my vision. It was as if the world was closed in around me and comforted me. When it snowed this hard it felt as though even a kid of 15 could melt into its largesse, like being encircled by Mother Nature’s arms. I decided that I needed to alert my Dad to the fact that the driving might get difficult and that we had better get going earlier than planned. After all, we would be driving into the mountains of Central PA and the ride, under normal circumstances, took about 4 hours. I snuck up to his bedroom on the third floor and creaked the door open. He wasn’t sleeping. I whispered to him that we might want to get going early because it was snowing “like heck” and there was already 6 inches on the ground.
He agreed! Holy cow! We were going to get started! I had already packed the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser with both of our belongings. I had run the checklist of necessary hunting items through several times, adding a new item each time. Jon-E hand warmers. Check. Leather boots with bacon grease for waterproofing. Check. Wool mittens. Check. The list went on and on and ended with hot chocolate in thermos. Check. As we pulled out of the driveway past the cherry tree, which was barely discernible except for the branches which were bent to ridiculous positions laden with the heavy snow, I thought “This is it! Just me and Dad! A true wilderness experience.
He snaked the old station wagon through back roads North to Zelionople and on to Interstate 80 East. He drove the old Vista Cruiser like it was an 18 wheeler, plowing through drifts, and while others’ vehicles were sliding off the road, he captained that old wagon like a Captain of the Highway. There was no stopping us. He had the window rolled down and was listening to WWVA 1170 AM. I was lying down in the folded down back seat with a sea of blankets and a sleeping bag as a cocoon, insulating me from the cold air filtering in through the driver’s side window. He was singing along to old country songs from Merle Haggard, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. I thought I hated that music. I was young and rebellious. I liked Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and anything that made my ears ring. Like my 30-30 did. Hmmm. Maybe I needed to re-think this music thing.
As we slipped North through the dark night I would lie on my side and watch the heavy snowflakes in the lights of the big trucks and imagine talking to them on the CB radios. “10-4 back door. Got your ears on, good buddy?” Soon, we pulled into a truck stop in Strattonville. Big diesels with bright colors and fancy scroll designs on their cabs were everywhere, rumbling quietly with their parking lights on. My father said, “Come on Brad. Let’s get a little something to eat.” I was in heaven.
As I walked to the door of the truck stop I forced my eyelids open t glance at the tall streetlights that lit up an arc of solid white flakes. I felt like this was the greatest adventure I’d ever been on. I was with my Dad. And it was just me and him. We walked in and sat at the overly cheerful yellow counter and placed our orders. The waitress took a keen interest in these two wayward travelers dressed in hunting attire. My father had a deer shooting outfit that was red and black and the pants puffed out at the thighs like some old English riding britches. He looked like Friar Tuck and I was embarrassed at first, but when the waitress acknowledged that we were courageous souls to be driving on a night like this, I welled up with pride. We were, after all, intrepid deer hunters and nothing could stop us!
After a giant plate of turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy on a slice of white toast and my first cup of coffee, I knew that this trip was more than just a Sunday drive with Dad. I was being indoctrinated into the world of grown ups, where men make decisions and take chances on things that are actually thought out and not impulsive. We rolled on through the night in the old Vista Cruiser and I stared out the window of the roof and started to sing along with my Dad to the Grand Ole Opry. I would let no one know of this for decades.
Arriving in the town of his birth, Grampian, we were blasting through drifts 2’ deep and sliding sideways around old logging roads that weaseled their way through the old strip mining town and up into the hills. Just when the going got to a point that I thought the old wagon could push no further, we turned into an driveway that was nothing more than a tunnel in the snow. My father floored it up to the camp door and laid on the horn to announce our arrival.
Introductions were made to a bunch of old men who were dressed in flannel shirts and canvas pants. Many were holding glasses of beer and mixed drinks and a few were smoking cigarettes. Throughout the camp the rooms were bathed in the warm golden glow of kerosene and propane lamps. It seemed to me that here was a place that all of the rules of proper society were being shattered in a glorious cacophony of glasses clinking, raucous laughter, cussing, teasing and general mayhem. Everything that I had been being punished for at home was here, being celebrated, free of all judgment. I was being initiated into manhood in it’s most primitive and crude form. It made an indelible impression on a sensitive young man.
I remember the smell of the woodsmoke from the chimney and the pungent aroma of slightly moldy furniture, an tattered sofa with a tapestry covering over it in front of the fire. The smells are what really hooked me. Scotch. Coffee. Beer. Cigars. Woodsmoke. Bacon. My senses were overloaded with happiness. I was a man. For the whole weekend and then a few days afterward, my father and I were stranded together at this deer camp.
During the day we would plow through waist deep snow walking down to the pines, where the deer would yard up. We sat under big old spruces and peered through the mountain laurel for brown fur moving up the hillside to the wind-blown fields above.
We never saw any deer that weekend but the hope and connection to the nature that surrounded me made a permanent connection. I had found my place in the world. For the next 36 years I would harbor a dream in my heart of hearts to be able to recreate this period in my life. When I was lonely or sad I would meditate on the images of this place. When each deer season came around I would feel a deep longing for those times. It took me about 30 years to figure out that longing. I had a profound existential desire to connect. Connect to nature, my father and myself.
This deer season I realized that dream. At the beginning of this year I was offered a deer camp in the town of Huntington, Vermont for lease. It was a run-down, dilapidated and vandalized shack at the end of a nearly impassable logging road. I had gone there for a few years under its’ previous owner, Johnnie MacDonough, when I knew that I had found my home.
Johnnie welcomed me into the fraternity and I hoped that someday it could be mine. Late at night, when everyone was asleep, Johnnie would coach me on how to run the camp and tell me that someday this would all be mine. “But how?” I thought.
A few years later Johnnie passed away and I thought my heart was broken. I loved this guy like my father. The property was sold to an investor in Great Britain and was going to be managed by a forestry company here in the states. They had no interest in leasing another camp. That is until it was vandalized and they realized that it was better to lease it and have someone looking out for the place. In April of this year it was offered to me. I swooped in and took it, inviting 3 other of my favorite men to join me, Steve Osborne, of Williston, my father-in-law, Brian Hoyt of Charlotte, and Chris Thayer, also of Charlotte. We banded together and nearly every weekend during the summer and fall we worked tirelessly to renovate the place.
We put on a new deck, we removed an old non-functioning refrigerator, we re-plumbed the water system that ran from the brook. With the help of Lynn Osborne, Steve’s dad and a master handyman, we re-worked the entire gas system and added new propane lamps. We cleaned out the toilet and primitive septic, moved the shower next to the hot water heater, built bunks and put new cabinets in the kitchen. We replaced the chimney and woodstove with a used Vermont Castings Defiant. We cut and chopped wood and stacked it on the porch. And before we knew it the season was upon us.
We put up 2 ladder stands and waited for the Opener. It was bright and crisp and warm…not exactly what deer hunters hope for. But we all saw deer and I passed up a shot on an 8 pointer that was standing behind a fallen pine tree. He never came back. But the purpose of the season was yet to come.
For Thanksgiving weekend, the end of our rifle season and historically one of the most well attended hunting weekends of the year, I invited my father, Arthur Spencer. He traveled all day by Amtrak to arrive here. After a bountiful harvest feast on Thanksgiving Day, Chris, my father and I piled ourselves into my truck and, after an essential grocery stop we headed up the old logging road, bumping the chassis and plowing through mud and rock.
When we arrived at the camp, I took a moment to stand on the deck beside the gurgling brook and the bathtub full of beer and announced “Thank you all for being a part of my dream.” After unpacking and getting the woodstove lit, I offered up the Lazy Boy recliner in front of the woodstove to my father. I toasted the crew that we would be living with for the next few days. The smell of woodsmoke and the clinking of cocktails swept me home to that place, where as a young man, I knew that I belonged, in the company of men reveling in their escape to the great woods.
We all found ourselves breathing in that divine moment of the present, content with the knowledge that we would rather be here than any place in the world. Throughout the camp the room was bathed in the warm golden glow of kerosene and propane lamps. Then it began to snow. Big white flakes. I watched them float down through the rustic wooden window as far as my eye could see.
