For some reason I picked up an apple as I left the lodge. I shoved it in my pocket and threw my gear in the Land Cruiser. After almost 30 days away from home, I needed some alone time. An hour later I’d found it under an acacia tree at the edge of a wide savannah. The morning was Africa cold–just above freezing–but the sun felt good on my face. I remembered the apple in my pocket, and the first bite took me back to another cool morning, and with doves cooing in the distance, my mind got away from me.
I recalled Dad carrying me on his shoulders while we raccoon hunted, because my legs were too short to keep up with the hounds. I remembered how he’d explained the difference between red and white oak acorns, showed me bear poop, and taught me about using the wind to your advantage. I even chuckled, thinking about how he always let me shoot first when we flushed a grouse; I’d miss, and he’d kill it. And, a grin found my face recalling his advice before I went off to Basic Training, “Take care of your feet. If they get sore, you’re done.” He was right; it’s why I’ve always got extra socks with me.”
Time passes. Months turn to years, years to decades, and the sun was now much higher than it was when I found this stillness. With the wrinkles on my face mirroring my father’s, a wrinkle in time had found me, lost somewhere between the Allegheny Mountains and the Bushveld, between childhood and all grown up, I felt content and alone, but I sensed a hand on my shoulder. That’s when I caught a glimpse of movement.
I reached for my binocular. (Dad called them field glasses and never hunted without them. I won’t either.) It was a mature warthog, walking with his nose in the wind. I tossed the core of the apple onto the red dirt, grabbed my rifle, and started to cut him off. I paralleled him for several hundred yards until I’d cut the distance down to what dad would have called “a sure thing.” Finding the perfect spot for an ambush, I crouched behind a termite mound, and when the old boy stepped out, I shot him right between the eyes.
It’d been a good morning, which in a way had spanned almost a half-century. As I walked back to the truck, I thought about how far and close a safari in Africa and a squirrel hunt in West Virginia are apart. I also thought about how a passion shared between a father and son, fueled during a cool fall morning on a hickory ridge, could be the inspiration for a lifetime of chasing wild things, and a career where it never seems like I actually go to work.
A few days later my son and I were boarding the plane in Johannesburg for our flight home when my phone rang. My wife tearfully and painfully told me Dad had passed. Over the next 16 hours I tried to remember the last hunt where we were together. I couldn’t. Then I realized, it was just a few days ago. He knew I was on safari. He knew the day I was coming home. And, while he was not able to get his worn-out body out of bed, he’d found a way to be there with me.
That was five years ago and I’ve been to Africa several times since. While there, I aways take time to get away from everyone, but I’m never really alone; dad’s dead, not gone. He’s with me there, just like he’s with me when I’m sitting under a hickory in the Appalachian hills. And I always try to have a nice and shiny, big red apple to share with him.
