I know folks are having a hard time with this intense heat and dry conditions, so in an attempt to make the situation a little easier to endure, I offer this diversionary account of a time not far away at all. Just find a cool place in your basement where you can’t see the scorched dry landscape. Then lean back in a comfortable chair, relax and close your eyes and read this column.

…. There’s a persimmon grove to walk through and some of the trees are loaded with pink-tinted fruit, not quite ripe yet. It looks like a good place for possums and coons, especially with that little creek splashing along below it. There the hunter pauses by the clear water and cups his hand. Fed by the spring above it, the water is cold, and delicious. There is music in the sound of the cool water falling over a small rock ledge, trickling into the small pool. He slurps up a handful, and then another. The red and orange and yellow of sumac and persimmon and walnut reflect brightly in the cool water. The rain, which fell slowly all night, was followed by the cool front, and he is glad he brought the jacket. There’s a trail crossing the little gurgling spring branch, and deer tracks in the softness of the ground. Then you see the freshly rubbed sumac branches near by. It’s a small buck, he figures, but the rub is not very old. Chances are he isn’t far away.

The hunter eases up into the woods along the hillside, as a cool breeze brings yellow hickory leaves down around him. Damp leaves are thick on the game trail he walks, but they make little noise beneath his boots. Two fox squirrels bound along the rocks above him and into the hollow of a old red oak tree, 10 or 12 feet above the ground. He aims his shotgun at them, but he is not here for squirrels. Wild turkeys roost in the trees along the trail, beneath the steep, rocky hillside above him. When he was younger he would have scrambled up the slope to the level ridge top where the white oaks and hickories grow, but nowadays he goes slower, and picks more deliberate routes.

Before him is the old tree stand he built 20 years ago. The graying planks blend in well with the forest edge and the iron steps are solid. The hunter unloads his shotgun and ties it to the old cord, which hangs from the tree-stand, and gingerly ascends the steps. It isn’t a really high stand, but a comfortable commanding perch, which offers a good view of the small field to the left and the woodlands to the right. The bucket, so long used as a seat, has water along its rusted rim, so he brushes it away with the brightly colored leaves that have settled there. The old nylon safety harness is still strong, so he wraps it around his chest and buckles it before pulling the shotgun up.

A blue jay sights him, and sails in to alight on a neighboring tree branch to screech a warning that there is a stranger in the woods. Nothing is more exasperating than a blue jay and the racket they can put up. The hunter finds an old walnut hull on the tree stand floor and hurls it toward the blue jay, and the bird retreats when it smacks against the branch beneath him. Finally it is quiet again.

There’s a gentle but persistent northwest wind, and as the afternoon sun slips lower, it seems to be cooler. The hunter senses there will be a light frost come the night, when the wind calms and the temperature drops from the high 40s to the mid 30s late in the night. Seems like only yesterday it was a 100 degrees for days, and now the hunter is a little uncomfortable in the chilliness of the waning day.

There is a distant sound, familiar and old. He picks up the faint cry of wild geese high overhead. Looking up through the branches he can’t see them, but the music of the wandering flocks is becoming stronger. These are the first of the migrating geese, which pass over in huge numbers for two or three weeks, high above, never settling in the Ozarks… bound for south Arkansas and Louisiana. They are speckled-bellied geese, which some call white-fronts, and they have a most peculiar call, very distinguishing. He squints to see them in the sky above him as the wild, free music grows strong. Finally he makes out a long thin line against the patches of blue sky where breaks in the clouds allow them to be seen. There are several strings; high, wavering, southward bound, and then they are gone, saluting the passing hills below with a chattering, squealing song. Oh to be so free and unconcerned about yesterday and tomorrow, the hunter thinks to himself.

He begins to call with a slate box, his attention directed to the fact that a flock of young turkeys have been seen chasing grasshoppers just across the creek in the small field. He calls loud and often, like an old hen trying to find some lost poults. Suddenly drops of rain begin to fall, splashing cold against his face. He pulls his collar tight, and his cap low, leaning against the tree trunk to use its shelter. The rain increases for a moment or two, and then as quickly as it comes it is over, the leaves dripping in its wake.

Glancing back into the timber, the hunter catches a glimpse of brown, and quickly makes out the shape of deer… there are two, no three. The first two are does, but in the trail behind them is a fork-horn buck, thinned a little perhaps by the hot dry summer now well behind them. His antlers are polished, gleaming almost white on the tips. They pass in a determined but cautious path, only about 20 yards before him… “Darn” he thinks to himself, “if I had just brought my bow.” Then it occurs to him if he had brought his bow, he would probably be seeing wild turkeys about now.

A half hour later, a slow rain returns as the wind calms. It is getting too cold to sit in the stand, and it is a poor place to hunt turkeys from. They see a hunter too well when he is up off the ground. It is getting dark earlier, so he heads down the trail toward his home, a mile or so away, light rain in his face, his hands growing cold. A pileated woodpecker makes him stop to watch, and listen, and he hears a hen turkey calling in the woods back behind him. “Darn,” he says to himself, “it is cold for October.”

And October is right around the corner. But if you are in a cool spot, relaxing with your eyes closed, picturing those yellow leaves drifting down in a light rain, just stay there awhile. You don’t want to go outside right now.

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com and my e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net. You can write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo, and if you will send me two dollars worth of stamps I will mail you a copy of our June July magazine, The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal.