On waiting...

© Joshua Stark 2017

I've never been very good at waiting.

Oh sure, I can sit stock-still for a good time in the company of a buck, or scan the skies from a duck blind, or even watch the end of a stick with a line coming out of it into the water.  I could do these things, and things like them, for hours on end.  But that's not really waiting.

Watching and listening are active pursuits. Yes, a person can drift off during these times, but that's all a part of it.

For many hunters, this past Monday marked the first day of Waiting.  Duck hunters (good friends of mine, and family) are especially moved at this time -- memes flew around the social media last weekend talking about the dreaded Wait.  The End of Duck Season.  Questions of, "where were you when it happened?", soft-light photos of the final sunset over the marsh (surely, a tear was wiped away during the shot), and wistful, thoughtful, sometimes poetic eulogies made their rounds.

This is good.  Hunting is filled to the brim with ethical-minded people who absolutely, wildly and passionately love a place and an activity.  Make no mistake, any one of us could get up this morning and go poach a bunch of animals, but the thought never enters our minds.  The end of season is as final and truthful as the sunrise for hunters. And it is wonderful to see (often) grown men wax philosophical and wistful -- men who otherwise think that their joking love for a particular brand of beer is as emotional as they are allowed to get.

It is the end of a season, of a cycle, and we, like millions before us, now wait for that cycle to come round again.  We know that next time, it will be different, yet completely familiar.  Especially this year, we know that the deluge we've received will have altered the hunting grounds in unknown ways.  That is a beautiful thing about hunting: it is ever the same, yet each time, absolutely unique.

And in truth, many of us will take up a rod and reel in short order and hit these swollen waters after fish.  I'm already waiting like a dog in a kennel at the edge of the corn field for the warden to swing open that door and send me shooting out after shad.

In May.

Of course, it's February 3rd.  Which brings me back to my original thought here.

Since I'm no good at waiting, I'm sure to put too many irons in the fire.  In the leatherworking realm, I've gotten completely stuck trying to finish my first, custom-made chef's knife roll for a friend/customer, and I'm therefore backed up on an order fixing another friend/customer's custom-made guitar strap.  I'm not getting any new orders from the internets so I've less of a fire lit under me, and that, coupled with the wide-open nature of a new product sometimes makes it hard to actually just start stitching pieces together.  There's a fear that comes from hovering over a $100 piece of leather with a knife or punch, wondering if you'd measured right.

I picked up an old classic, the oldest, in fact -- I started re-reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, written probably two thousand years before the "Iliad".   I'm also reading "A Sand County Almanac" with my son as part of his reading log homework every night.  I get a chuckle out of writing it down on the check-in report to the Kindergarten teacher, but it has turned into an actual event now.  We are able to talk botany, biology, and even some math as I defined and drew out an example of "diameter."

I've also collected some absolutely beautiful feathers from some of the most gorgeous birds to ever grace the skies: greenwing teal, with breast feathers that resemble shad eyes and sienna-colored mottled neck feathers; northern shovelers who, at first glance, look like 70's game-show host throwbacks with their powder-blue feathers, but up close, show incredible subtleties; and a pintail -- perhaps the most beautiful duck on Earth.  The flank feathers, alone, can set me up for years tying wet flies and salmon flies, something I haven't done in years.

The garden continues its slow decomposition, with the exception of two swiss chard that sprouted up on their own (that stuff is nigh invulnerable).  We received half our annual rainfall in five weeks here, and another week-long rain has just rolled in, with two inches expected over the first two days, which means that there simply is nothing I can do out back, but wait.  The leaky old shed continues to rust my tools, and the 50+mph gusts mean that even my tiny overhang at the back of the house does little to keep things dry.  When we finally start to dry out, there'll be many trips to the dump in my future.  At least the trees haven't blessed us with too many large branches (a redwood tree branch is the equivalent of a regular tree falling sixty feet, horizontally, from the sky).

And my archery side-business is on hold, as well -- no rains + no indoor facility = no teaching.  I am lined up for March, however, which is right around the corner, so I should probably get to organizing and fletching up my arrows, and even looking for a better way to hang my targets.  Ah, the targets!  The rain is also beating down on them...

So, much of what I do now is wait.  Waiting for the rain, waiting for confidence, waiting for the seasons to turn.  Many projects sit half-finished, and I'm not very good at waiting.

Marginal lands this week!

© 2011 Joshua Stark

It is the time of year in Northern California when those of us who know it start hitting the marginal lands, those places on the edges of civilization, looking for good things to eat and a great time while we're at it.

You see, it is Summertime when these lands really provide.  We've got fennel blooming, ripe berries and fruits, great fishing, and rabbit season just started.  This week, I'll be hitting some of my favorite spots, looking in particular for blackberries, gooseberries, figs, and bunnies.  I'll also be trying two new things:  Trapping crawdads (which, though not really new to me, still something I haven't done in ages), and possibly bowfishing from a canoe for carp.  Hopefully, I'll cajole somebody with a camera to come out, especially for the bowfishing. 

Getting back on the horse...

© 2011 Joshua Stark

There's nothing like a New Year's resolution to give you a kick in the pants.

I jest.  Although I did make a resolution to to tie a dozen flies per week, I've quickly fallen behind.  No, what did get me back to the fly bench was a combination of events and, as Frost might put it, "promises to keep."  But, in a good way this time. 

Last year, a very good friend of mine got married.  She'd invited us to the wedding, but it being in Massachusetts, we were unable to attend.  Instead, I began making some presents to send their way.  I packaged up some nocino and some green walnut ketchup and some fig preserves.  I also endeavored to tie them some flies, since he is a fly fisherman, and I believe she is now, too.

I sat at my bench with the idea of tying some impromptu salmon flies from some beautiful feathers that Holly had given me, as well as some feathers from our ducks and a couple of snipe unlucky enough to have flown in front of my shotgun last season.  I looked at my cache of feathers, floss and thread, and after a few attempts, I realized that I needed to practice some of the basics.  It had been probably two years since I'd really tied any flies.

Other life events quickly overtook me.  I lost my part-time job, and we had our baby boy.  The weeks ticked by, turned into months.

At one point, I commented on some birds that Chad Love had taken, mentioning that I'd love to tie some flies with those feathers, and he responded with an offer to send me some.  Then, Holly started photographing feathers, and I offered to tie some flies for her, too.

What was I doing?

Today, it hit me:  I was getting myself into trouble, that's what.  Not really; really, I was subconsciously kicking myself into doing something I love to do.  I love tying flies.

Many writers better than I wax poetic about the endeavor; all I can say is that there is a poetry inherent to it, a chance to make something beautiful and functional out of some beautiful and functional materials.  It is amazing, and quiet, and reflective.

So instead of trying to jump back in with the more complicated salmon flies, I backed down a bit.  I tied two elk hair caddis and an adams. 

I hope to get back into the fly-tying swing of things soon, and I'm finally off to a good start.

A different kind of harvest

© 2010 Joshua Stark

Since I moved my 'Lands on the Margin' concept over here to Agrarianista, I feel more free to talk about my other passions, my outdoor life.  As I've said, California is blessed with a huge variety of climates and conditions, from which has arisen a vast diversity of plant life.  It has also, therefore, been blessed with a vast diversity of animal life, which, though greatly impacted by urban sprawl and industrial agriculture, it still provides in abundance.

Ever since I can remember, I've been fascinated by animal life.  As a kid, we used to always play "animal", pretending to be one or another sort of creature (almost always ending, by the way, in one of us being a badger or a wolverine, those symbols of the utter wild in the West).  I also birdwatched, and we took a spotlight out on the 'back roads' looking for nighttime creatures.  I've had a deep and intimate relationship with one Olaus Murie, but until about 6 years ago, I had no idea he was a founding father of the environmental movement - to me, he (along with my Dad) was the man who taught me how to track.  I fished, too.  And, I hunted.

I didn't know just how big an impact hunting would have on my life when I was a child.  I was just attracted to it the same way a cat has to get that little string you jiggle in front of her.  With my friends, I hunted from the day I got my first BB gun.  When I got older, I thought about the ethics of hunting and death, and I decided that not only was it okay to hunt, to me it was actually morally preferable to other ways of living (if you are interested in my ethical philosophy, take a look at my other active blog, "Ethics and the Environment").

Today, much of my professional life and my personal choices are due to my outdoor experiences.  And California has blessed me with an abundance of outdoor choices, from kayaking and birdwatching, to telemark, mountain climbing (should I so choose to try these things), hunting and fishing. 

More generally, hunting and fishing are grand traditions in a homesteading, agrarian life, and I see no reason why living inside city limits should change that.  Within 30 minutes of my door, I can hunt anything from rabbits and doves to deer.  Oftentimes, in places like California, foraging, hunting, and fishing actually can provide quite a consistent meal, more efficiently turning the local Sun, water and soil into something to sustain us.  In fact, in light of the constraints on animal husbandry that city life brings, hunting and fishing may be the only ways to directly acquire meat.

And so it is Fall here in California (regardless of the high today of 75 degrees), and that means hunting seasons.  Expect some conversations to follow about game, should some of my hunting friends get lucky enough to want to share...

If you have any questions or comments about hunting and how it might fit into urban homesteading and urban agrarianism, please let me know!

If you are a waterfowl hunter, click on this image to be given the shakes.