Trails to Treasure

In the mountains east of us, miles and miles off the pavement, I have a place in the dark old-growth timber where I hunt each November.

Imagine an open hand. Your fingers are ridges running down into your palm. Between each finger runs a little seep-fed creek, and deep between your thumb and forefinger runs a creek carrying the name of the screaming beast that bounded through the treetops after Grandfather in the Big Woods.

Ancient white firs rise a hundred feet off the slope. Giant moldering nursery logs lay sprawled across small openings where sun-starved young pines reach for the sky. Larch, spun with their candle-glow needles, and lone bull pines, girthed like Yellowstone bison and shouldering twenty and thirty feet to the first massive limbs, headstone little openings in the cedar and fir timber. It is a dusky, timeless world where a snapped twig marks noon, and the whicker of pileated woodpeckers echoes forever. Down at the feet of the trees, lions and wolves pad soundless in and out of the draws on their endless hunts, and the whitetails and elk file through the sun-dappled openings.

It is a wild place, redemptive and truthful, where I walk the aisles of trees before God, and His voice hallows the silence. There I wanted to take my son Asher hunting with me. This dream had become as much a part of my hunting gear as my knife. We would hunt this wild place together, and I would lead him through the beauty and power of wildness.

I awoke in the dark and shook Asher awake. He stumbled groggily to his feet, his talk still slurred. We dressed and packed and headed down the twenty miles of tight curves and potholes, with walls of trees in the headlights. We watched for lions crossing the road and spoke the odd, disjointed talk of little boys awake in the early morning.

“Will I find a shed?” he asked. I have piles of shed antlers from my days in the woods, and he is eager to collect his own. It was just light when we parked the truck at a pullout where an old road wound down into our drainage. I loaded my rifle, and we adjusted Asher’s pack. We hunted slowly into the great forest, walking a careful stone’s throw before stopping and checking all directions for movement or sound. We touched rubs, bent over fresh sign, and watched squirrels. We stood over whitetail scrapes and whispered studiously. Asher wandered with the native freedom and curiosity of children in the woods. Touching, exploring. Timeless questing and directionless roaming.

“Dad! Look at this!” Asher hissed from behind me. I turned back and squatted at the log he had rolled over. A big black beetle lumbered dazedly across the duff.

“Whoa,” I whispered. “Look at him.”

A big pileated woodpecker came swinging up onto an old snag and savaged the punky bark. Asher watched him rain down wallet-sized wood chips and lope around the tree in big spirals.

We climbed for a time, then came down lower, past an old camp with a game pole in a tree.

When we got hungry, we sat and ate our lunches.

Asher said, “My feet are wet and cold.” I looked at his shoes; it was true. His shoes and lower legs were soaked.

“We’ll make a circle and hunt back to the truck,” I said. It was important to not push him too hard. So much hung on this first hunt.

We moved faster now, talking more, watching less. Crossing the little creeks remained high adventure. Could he jump this creek? He would step back for a good approach, ramp up the drama, and hurdle across onto dry ground.

When we came to the creek that should have been on our right but was on our left instead, I felt a sudden deep uneasiness settle in my stomach. No. Not today. There was too much at stake here. We could not end up lost in the dark, my son traumatized and ruined for wild places on my watch. But there was nothing to do but bear east and climb until we intersected one of the old roads.

I had to tell him. “I don’t know,” I said looking around. “We might be on the wrong side of the creek.”

“Are we lost? Because I don’t want to be lost when my feet are wet and cold.”

We pushed uphill, into heavier brush and steeper slopes. I knew we would hit the road eventually, but after how long? And more importantly, what would remain of my credibility with my son once we finally got out?

I was cheery and distracting, finding odd and interesting woods trivia, talking and visiting about anything of interest to a seven-year-old. He was doing so well, head down now, slogging along in his wet pants and shoes.

I was a few steps in front of him when he decided to bring things to a head.

“Dad” he said, lifting his hand, “stop.”

I stopped.

“Where is the truck? Point toward where you think the truck is.”

I waved vaguely up the mountain, “Up there somewhere, I’m not totally. . .”

“No. No. It’s not. I know it’s over there.” He pointed to his right.

I chuckled reassuringly and turned, and he fell silently in behind me. We kept climbing for another hour. Asher was slipping and tripping and silent by now. Several times I told him to sit on a log and rummage in our packs for any remaining food, while I pushed fast, exploratory hikes up into the steeper and brushier terrain, hoping to intersect one of the old roads that ran somewhere above us.

We had stopped at the edge of a small opening. I was on my way back to Asher, who sat slumped silently on a log below me, when ten feet downhill I saw a five-point whitetail shed antler. I waved him up to me and pointed. He dove onto the antler and came up with his tired face lit with a smile fit to kill. We examined the shed and agreed it was a nice enough buck and ventured a guess that it was a year old. Now for the other side. I climbed uphill to the top of the opening and immediately found another shed. When I scanned the ground to my right, I found the other side twenty feet away. Three sheds in minutes! Asher was running now, peering under fallen trees, up and down, back and forth. Suddenly he screamed in sheer joy and waved another five-point shed. We held it beside its brother, the first one we’d found. Two sets in fifteen minutes.

“I cannot believe this, Dad!” he said. He stood with the sheds in his arms, a two hundred-watt grin on his face. We tied our loot to my pack and resumed our search for a road, leaving the opening and side-hilling west on an old game trail. We weren’t fifty feet from the opening when from behind me Asher screamed again and snatched up yet another shed. “You stepped on it! You stepped right on it!” He laughed in helpless pleasure. This shed was old, with most of its six points chewed off. We tied it to the bundle of antlers and reluctantly left the little opening. We clawed up an embankment fifteen minutes later and found an old road that led to the main road and the truck.

“It was worth it, Dad,” he said on our drive home, his feet up on the truck vents. “I think.”

It was just another day in the journey with my son. I have hopes and high ideals, and the reality is almost unrecognizable when things go south and I lead my son across the wrong creeks until his feet are wet and cold. But my Father gives mercy and grace, and I have learned to hold plans loosely and to be nimble and fluid with expectations. There are always new paths, different routes, and alternative options. Take them with courage—they may be lined with shed antlers.