Sports: Outdoors

Picking right battlefield also crucial

Bob Kornegay

THE SOUTH GEORGIA WOODS, LAST MONDAY — The Virginia Creeper is reddening a little. ign of an early fall, maybe? Surely not. It’s only mid-July. Maybe I’ll call old Jack Wingate. He knows and interprets natural anomalies. He’s right much of the time, too.

It’s already warm and humid this morning, despite the overcast and the thin fog stubbornly persisting against the steadily climbing mercury. I don’t “do” heat and humidity well, as a rule, but I think I should stay here awhile. It’s one of those places; a wild place, a place that is at once church, half-empty bottle, and therapist’s couch.

Strange, it isn’t one of those other, similar, familiar places I’ve come to consider “my own.” Actually, I’ve never been here before. I have permission from the owner, but I’m not certain about the property lines. Heck, I might even be trespassing.

There’s flowing water here, a feature always conducive to thought and meditation. It isn’t the clear, babbling mountain water of pastoral poets and high-country granola eaters. It is the tea-colored, slow-moving water of the Southern coastal plain. It creeps like molasses between tree-lined banks and smells like black earth; heady, rich, and just a little intoxicating. It is life itself to bluegills, turtles, water snakes, and the occasional belligerent cottonmouth.

Here, in this swamp, are deer tracks, otter slides, and what remains of a bullfrog carcass;  a leftover from a raccoon’s evening meal, no doubt. Life must be easy for ’coons just now. This one ate the back legs and left the rest. There’s a ’possum out here somewhere who’ll appreciate that later.

This old white oak against which I’m leaning makes a fair backrest. The ground beneath its gnarled branches is a little damp, as is the seat of my pants and what it covers. Better here, though, than the drier leaf litter favored by brown recluse spiders and deer ticks. And chiggers. Lord, I hate chiggers. I’ll just sit here and do penance for forgetting my waterproof cushion.

The fog’s burning away now. Almost gone. Last night’s condensed dew has begun dripping from the leaves above me. Now and then a drop falls onto a notebook page. I just write around it. Maybe I’ll show these notes to someone later who’ll think a gifted, sensitive writer was overcome by emotion and cried onto his paper. On second thought, maybe not. It’s more likely folks’ll think the fool was just too stupid or lazy to get up and move.

Outdoor hacks don’t cry, anyhow. Only poets do that.

It’s getting warmer. No, scratch that. It’s hot. And the hornets are on the move. A big old baldface just lit on the toe of my shoe. I have a thing about hornets. I’ve been trying to work on that, so I’m just sitting here being very still and quiet. I think I look quite cool and nonchalant. He’d better fly away soon, though. I really, really need to jump up, dance about, and flail my arms right now.

Good. He’s gone.

I’d better go, too. I’m sweating and I’m thirsty. My water (along with the forgotten cushion) is in the truck, which lies somewhere, let’s see, in that direction right there. Besides, some scavenging critter is probably right now lurking in the wax myrtle thicket over there eyeing that frog carcass and waiting for me to leave. Better leave him to it before the fire ants get at it.

Mmm. Good water. Not cold, but wet. Pretty fair morning, too. I wasn’t feeling all that chipper when I got here.

That’s the thing about wild places. No matter where they are, hundreds of miles distant or a short drive from my front door, they always seem to somehow chase away the blues, at least for a little while. Better, a “session” there doesn’t leave one hung over, $100 per hour poorer, and there’s no necktie required.

It’s a far-from-perfect placebo, of course, but I highly recommend it. I mean, even if that old blue-funk, down-in-the-dumps feeling does start gaining on you again; you can always go back to your wild places and fight the good fight.

After all, picking your battles is important, but sometimes it’s where the battle is fought that counts.

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