Friends Old, New, and Soon to Be,
For about twenty years I ran ultramarathons. An “ultra” is any race over 26.2 miles and it’s an obsessive’s sport, though one I’m less obsessed with since I crested fifty and my hips and back began objecting more stridently. I was never competitive within the field of runners with whom I lined up. I competed against the distance and myself because I have always been psychologically pulled to efforts in which my success is at best unassured.
The weekend days spent running from pre-dawn till early afternoon, the overnights running till time to shower and go to work, the hours of back and forth over coastal bridges as a means of preparing for mountain trails and inuring myself to boredom, all of it could prove for naught on race weekends and, of the five times I attempted to run one hundred miles, I was only successful at three. Along the way though, I learned a lot about persistence, adaptation, and grit in the face of a pursuit that leaves most folks asking, “But…why?”.
North Carolina’s turkey season is soon upon us and even as I wonder whether I will ever again toe the line for a long day or two of running, I again have cause to think about obsession. Turkey season is the month I spend the other eleven thinking about. It’s a consuming pursuit about which I recently spent an hour on the phone with a man I’d not spoken to in a decade because it only just came to my attention that he’s an avid turkey hunter. When he said, “That first gobble…if I could bottle it and have just a little bit for the rest of the year, that would be enough,” I could not help but think of anticipation and regret and the pursuit of things that matter simply because they speak to you in a way other things cannot. I had occasion to consider that further this past weekend as I read Field Journal contributor Monte Burke’s exceptional book, Lords of the Fly: Madness, Obsession, and the Hunt for the World-Record Tarpon.
In prose simultaneously fun to read and worth ruminating over, Burke tells the stories, and history, of the obsessive anglers who expend vast amounts of time and capital pursuing and fighting a fish no one eats on the tackle least likely to bring the fish to the boat. It’s something of which many people, even other passionate anglers, might reasonably ask, “But why?”. In an admirable attempt to answer that, Burke brings matters of the soul into comprehensible focus. I recommend it to any sportsperson, for our passions are generally the underlying motivation for a life afield.
Obsession aside, I am coming to accept that the first third of this turkey season will see me unable to put my back against a tree. It’s an unavoidable reality I would only change if I could be two people at once, sending one of me to the woods as the other took care of more critical, real-world, obligations. But though I understand the appropriate prioritization of chasing gobblers against family and finance, I’d be lying if I said I won’t be more than wistful to be somewhere other than the turkey woods on opening day.
Last year I watched the sun bring the world into focus as I counted the minutes till legal shooting light. Two minutes before the season commenced, the year’s first bird resounded in the distance. I am surprised and thrilled and recaptured every time I hear them, factors heightened as the gobbles get closer and closer over hours, as they did that day.
It didn’t end as I hoped. A quieter, more effective hunter than I happened to be between us, a fact I learned only when the unknown shotgun thundered, and the bird went silent. The rest of my season was similar, a series of tantalizing interactions without resolution that left me pondering why it is I persist in standing at the starting line, excited by the task, with no certainty of reaching the finish. Someone free of obsession might reasonably have decided to spend their time on pursuits with a better likelihood of tangible results. But that would require me to ignore the fact that the intangibles are what sustain an obsession far more than the occasional victory. It is the heart-thumping pursuit, the incremental lessons learned in becoming credible, and the constant thought that “It’ll be different tomorrow if I…” that speak to us. Well, that and a sudden glorious tremolo reverberating through the woods. Here’s hoping you hear it.
Yours,
Russell Worth Parker
Editor-in-Chief, Tom Beckbe Field Journal
