A Reverie on Failure Part 6: A Shadow Falls Upon a Friendship

Journal Entry

October 22

I thought it would be a good idea to smoke a pipe today in order to drive out the damp. I reached into my backpack and pulled out my tobacco pipe kit, loaded up the bowl with some tobacco which smells like the woods, and reached for a match. My matches were wet. Oh well. I should be ashamed. I am, really. What if I actually needed a fire? Actually, never mind that: I have a ferro rod for that.

Commentary

So I imagined clouds of smoke billowing around my head, wafting, as they do, from head-to-toe, lingering, questioning the breeze before beginning that slow journey into the ether. I ascended into godhood, rising from my place there, eighteen feet above the ground in a metal contraption hitched to a tree, breathing in the immortal, assuming a wisdom of the heavens, and I began to judge. I cast a first shadow upon a friendship.

Journal Entry

I had my first real disagreement with Mike. He is a far more experienced and better hunter than I am, and the land is his, but I still can’t disagree with him more in this case. When I arrive at his house and begin preparing for the hunt, we always start with an unspoken question: should we walk out or drive the four-wheeler?

I hate driving out: it’s uncomfortable and noisy. He hates walking out: he has COPD and had hip surgery last winter.

However, a doe stepped into view not far from his house, between us and the woods. I took it as a sign that the deer are up and moving, and we should use all diligence to move through the woods. He disagreed. “But I don’t know anything about hunting,” I said. “So, I guess you probably know better.” I deferred to him out of immense respect, but it irritates me.

Oh! The jays are going crazy across the field.

Commentary

Oh, how petty Kid Icarus! Why didn’t I just punch him in the mouth? I deferred to him? He deferred to me by not ordering me out of his house and off his property. I, some daft, passive-aggressive ignoramus would be so merciless to him because we spotted a solitary deer in the open. I was ashamed that I had forgotten to wrap my matches, but I was not ashamed for being angry at an aging friend who wants my company while he slowly disintegrates, if suffering the elements is the price. In my mind he cast the first shadow, but in truth, it was only me. No wonder I fell to the earth this season.

That’s Mike: long-suffering. We hear often of souls who do not suffer fools gladly. Well, Mike does, and it’s to his credit and to my benefit. This year of failure taught me many things: where certain gaping holes lay in my practice of hunting and where the shallow end of this fool’s soul is. Mike taught me those things without a word. He hauled himself out there into the damp, only mentioning in passing that his lungs felt heavy in it, and that the scar tissue was still tugging at things around his hip, while I went on and on about a little cramp I was experiencing. He is a mirror, see, not the kind that shows you what you want to see while you’re combing your hair and straightening your tie (still got it, baby!), but the kind that shows every pit and stain. He reflects in this way not because he is strong and you are weak. No, not at all! But because he is weak and he knows it. He accepts it. He accepts his weakness and he also accepts mine, taking mine within himself and absorbing it to become a greater man himself, with the hope, I think, of making me a slightly more tolerable person. Instead, here I am, levitating myself to imagined strengths.

At the end of the season, after a couple more disagreements like this one, he said, “I’ve killed at least one antlered deer on this property for 29 years, with one or two exceptions. But most years I’ve killed more than one, so I don’t mind so much the lost years.” That’s right: he heard me loud and clear, despite the thick veil of deference I feigned when I said, “So, I guess you probably know better.” He had waited a full two months before he thought it was time to respond.