And Now We Shall Do Manly Things

If there's one thing I enjoy in any memoir it's candor.  Speak to me honestly, don't put on makeup, give me the real you.  A writer who displays his own shortfalls unapologetically and without casting blame, placing all that he isn't out there for the world to see has my respect. As I read Craig Heimbuch's recent release, And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (not just a clever blog post title), I found all of the above woven into a tale about a man wrestling with the tribulations of manhood as he takes up bird hunting.

Heimbuch's quest begins when his father gives him a 12 ga Winchester, more in a "Here's something pretty cool" way than an ill-disguised prod to go hunting. Curiosity gets the better of him and the result is a year-long chronicle of discovery, missteps, perseverance and self-realization.

A journalist married to a schoolteacher raising three young children, he is consumed daily by a job, paying rent, and the endless challenges of parenthood.  Here is a guy who doesn't have hobbies or passions as much as he has roles: employee, employer, provider, husband, father, fixer of all that breaks.  "Life is too much about compromise," he notes, a sentiment painfully familiar to many of us. For Heimbuch, hunting evolves into a departure from an existence devoted mainly to the well-being of others.

The story is funny, at times laugh-out-loud funny, without seeming silly or contrived.  The simple truth of lines such as "like our toys, pheasant were imported from China," kept a smile on my face while an extremely witty, albeit fictional, exchange between Ted Turner and Mark Zuckerberg had me spitting milk through my nose.

"Hello, Ted?  Hi, it's Mark Zuckerberg."

"Who?"

"Mark Zuckerberg.  I created Facebook."

 "Look, if this is one of them cults or Amway or some other foolish thing, I don't want any and Jane don't live here no more."

The relatively one-sided conversation continues with Zuckerberg intent on shooting one of Turner's bison and Turner, well, just being Ted.  Heimbuch possesses a well-grounded sense of humor and never falls into the trap of taking himself or the story too seriously.

The book offers a somewhat sobering glimpse into the declining number of hunters, one extending beyond the loss of habitat and the urbanization of America.  Heimbuch experiences the difficulties facing a guy who hasn't grown up in the sport but would dearly like to give it a try, the closed doors and skepticism encountered by a grown man who wants to hunt.  Were it not for several accommodating relatives this book might never have happened.  Our sport is one that's difficult to figure out on your own, at least before you grow tired of getting skunked and give it up for something less cryptic.

Oddly, the father who gave him the shotgun and who is an avid lifelong hunter only plays a peripheral role in his son's passage into the shooting sports.  We're left to wonder whether this was intentional or merely bad luck on the calendar, but Heimbuch leaves little doubt how much he wanted his father included.

I learned of this book through an email from TLC Book Tours who subsequently sent me a copy and included this review in a month-long virtual tour.  At 324 pages it's an easy read and one any bird hunter would enjoy.  George Bird Evans or Datus Proper it's not, nor is it meant to be.  It's a modern story that most guys can relate to, and fortunately it happens to be about wingshooting.

Okay, it's not wingshooting but...

...it bears mentioning nonetheless.  There oughta be an award or something given to Tosh Brown and Departure Publishing for bringing back my favorite fishing book.  It had been out of print for about twelve years when I first heard of it, then it took almost two more to find an affordable copy on the used market.  And it still wasn't cheap.  Now Tosh has partnered with the author to publish it in ebook format for less than the price of a movie ticket.

The book is Marquesa: A Time & Place With Fish by Jeffrey Cardenas, his story of a month spent alone on a houseboat in the Marquesas off of Key West.  In the late summer of 1994, Cardenas slowly motored a houseboat towing his flats skiff across the Boca Grande Channel and anchored in the uninhabited atoll.  Excepting a few visits from friends, he was alone with the sea and his thoughts, passing the time snorkeling, fishing or just watching the goings-on in his new neighborhood.  The story is perceptive, reflective, enlightening and completely enjoyable. Replete with the harsh realities and irreplaceable wonders of nature it shares one common flaw with any good book you've ever read: at the end you find yourself wanting more.

Every now and then I wish I could live a series of decades in my twenties.  Maybe three or four and then turn sixty having done all of the things I couldn't fit into a single decade and couldn't pull off in the succeeding ones.  Granted that wish, this adventure would be on page one of the program.  Solitude and the outdoors always adjust perspective and immersion on this level has the potential to be life-changing.  Or merely euphoric, depending on where you started.

If you like fishing - especially saltwater fishing - do yourself a favor and trade some pocket change for this book.  In case you haven't clicked on it already, here's the link:

http://departurepublishing.com/marquesa/

If you need something good to read this summer...

Yes, this is subjective as hell.  Anyone who's traipsed through this blog for a while knows that I'm partial to Guy de la Valdene.  My only complaint with his work is that there's not enough of it for my consumption.  Were he as prolific as some mainstream writers - John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Stephen King - I might never pick up a book written by anyone else.  That's a bit of a stretch I know, but hey, passion runs deep sometimes.

la Valdene's latest release, The Fragrance of Grass, is another memoir of sorts, this time loosely wrapped around the grey partridge.  Following a theme of previous works centered around woodcock and bobwhite quail, he gathers decades of stories from places as distant as his native Normandy and remote Saskatchewan.  Colorful characters from a life lived between the extremes of society offer a glimpse into the realm of people beyond the world of the average reader.  Farmers, poachers, royalty, singers, authors and more find their way into these recollections, each leaving something to ponder.

True to form, la Valdene paints life as it is, himself included.  Very few modern writers are so willing to open up about their transgressions with such candor.  He is as equally understated about his successes and unashamed of either.  While lessons learned early in life did not ward off all mistakes, they did leave impressions that he translates into timeless pieces of knowledge:

"My first bird dog taught me that personalities dictate decisions, which in turn affect events."

This line is not set off from the rest of the text but could easily be.  Many of the areas covered in the book - from learning to shoot to the stocking of bird populations to the excesses displayed in taking game at various points in history - all can be boiled down to this simple observation.  His perspective is that of a man in the third quarter of his life, looking back with the wisdom gained only from having been on the field the previous two quarters.  Widely traveled with plenty of days in the field, the experience is a solid foundation for the reflections he shares.

I remain amazed at his command of the English language, his second language, no less.  Neither blunt nor flowery, he has a knack for choosing the right word or expression to convey the feeling of situations that we as hunters often struggle to voice.  It's hard to summarize this book in a single line, but one in particular stands out from the rest:

"In the quiet of the night I confess to the dog closest to me my heartfelt wish to be a child again."

Don't we all.

Baby, it's cold outside

Actually, it's not nearly as cold as it was earlier in the month and if it were, I could deal with it.  It's worse than cold right now - it's raining.  And raining means I'm stuck inside for the weekend.  When it comes to the weather you play the hand you're dealt, though, so I made the best of it and devoured Larry McMurtry's second memoir, Literary Life, which proved a relatively easy and thoroughly interesting diversion. As Chad Love noted in a post on his blog several weeks ago McMurty mentions that he was, earlier in his life at least, a hunter.  That's about as far as the memoir goes on the subject but the author expounds a bit further on the topic of re-reading selected books, a habit I've developed over the years as well.

While I don't have quite the list of re-reads that McMurtry does, I do have a few that I continue to pick up at unplanned intervals as the years tick off.  One of those is a somewhat obscure text by an equally obscure writer that is simply my favorite hunting book ever.  Guy de la Valdene's For a Handful of Feathers is a first hand account of the author's efforts at nurturing and hunting quail on his estate in north Florida, an account that strolls through a year on the land knee deep in the relationship between the landowner, the dirt, and the resident wildlife.  Lyrical enough to remove it from the category of simple journal, it appeals to me mostly because of  Valdene's incredibly candid, bare-bones, take me as I am style.

Valdene is no stranger to literature, having run for years in a Rat Pack that includes Tom McGuane, Jim Harrision, Tom Corcoran, Jimmy Buffett and others, but his manner is boldly unique.  At one point he describes beating the summer heat by plowing his fields buck naked, a visual I could do without but much appreciated for its shameless honesty.  The message that unfolds, however, is one that bears repeating and re-reading.  In a time when more and more are throwing in the towel when it comes to the future of the bobwhite, Valdene proves that while it's not always effortless, it is far from impossible to return huntable numbers of birds to a piece of land.  If you're already one of the naysayers, well I feel kinda sorry for you but don't let that come between you and a fantastic story.