Whip-poor-will (a hunting story)

"and then he found that he had been asleep because he knew it was almost dawn, the night almost over. He could tell that from the whip-poor-wills. “

----Willam Faulkner from “Barn Burning"

The moon rises over the trees in Pisgah National Forest near Brevard, North Carolina during and early spring Turkey hunt.

I lay on the ground cold and shivering, trying not to rustle the leaves.  I wasn’t being quiet out of a need to be stealthy.  In a short while, I would be making an excessive amount of obnoxious noise in an attempt to aggravate my quarry into shouting back, and revealing his position. Rather, I was being quiet out of some primitive instinct not to reveal my position to whatever imagined monster roamed out there somewhere in the dark.  The moonlight shone through the spindly arms of trees not yet in their full spring plumage; and when the wind blew, shadows danced through the forest.  I told myself the same thing I always say in this situation.  My inner thoughts berated me with the voice of my father.  It shamed me for the fear that I was feeling, as well it should.  The rational part of me is weakest at these moments, and it rises up in anger at being ignored, while deference is given to my fight or flight response.  When it finally comes to terms with the futility of its rebuke it changes tactics and seeks to be a comfort.  It tries to encourage.  The voice becomes that of my grandfather who reminds me that I am the greatest and most feared predator in these woods.  All creatures great and small flee from my presence.  I am the terror, the bringer of death and when my presence is known; be it through sight, sound, or scent; a call rings through the trees and hills,  “Man is in the forest.”  

It’s a comforting thought I suppose.  To see oneself as the villain is often the response of people, cultures, and societies that live in subjugation and uncertainty.  The rational being to overcome the fear of the monster, one must become a monster to the monster; even if that monster is only shadows and conjured beasts. 

I’ve been afraid of the dark for as long as I can remember.  It’s not something I readily admit.  I never hesitate to share with folks my irrational fear of spiders and water.  These are easy to admit.  The fear of spiders is comical, and the fear of water (considering my chosen profession) makes me look more courageous than weak.  I only admit to my fear of the dark now I suppose because I am growing older.  I was once told by an older man “Son, there is nothing out there in the dark that ain’t out there in the light.”  His admonishment gave me hope that I would grow out of this, that I would become more comfortable with it the more I did it.  Foolishly, I followed up with a question to him about when it was he stopped being afraid of the dark, and he responded with yet more wisdom “I never said I wasn’t afraid of the dark, I don’t think I’ll ever get over that.”

A cold breeze blew up the back of my neck and I pulled my hood up over my head for both comfort and warmth.  I had dressed for the afternoon and not for the morning.  I checked the clock and sighed, 5:43.  It had been exactly three minutes since the last time I looked.  Staring out into the darkness I tried to engage the rods and disengage the cones in my eyes.  I picked the darkest spot among the shadows where even the moon and starlight didn’t penetrate and strained to see into it in the hope that all other things would become brighter.  I could find no shape or form out there in the amorphous void but my heart began to race as my eye caught the slow spectral movement of a ghostly form.  I froze and strained harder and the form grew thicker yet less defined.  My breathing began to match my heart rate, and now more of these pale figures began to race by and encircle me.  

A few minutes ago it was a maybe a bear, or more likely a prehistoric tiger from my prehistoric brain,  that I was so concerned with encountering in this predawn paranoia.  I and my neolithic mind were prepared and ready for such a scenario.  Now the arrows in my quiver, the knife on my belt, the high pressure pepper spray on the other side of my belt; would be of no use against this apparition should it turn out to be a sinister one.  At the moment when those little glands atop your kidneys pump enough drugs into your bloodstream to give your body the courage it needs to break from the shackles placed upon it by your mind.  In that moment, when legs and arms, chest and back, fists and feet cast off the authority and dominion of the statesman politician of conscious self; and assert that in a time of war definitive and decisive action of the unconscious despotic limbic system takes precedence.  In that moment, just before everything pent up breaks loose and you run wildly through the dark crashing through tangles of dead limbs, thorns and briars.  In that moment, before your raise up and charge the threat with the rabid untamed aggression common to members of the weasel family.  In that moment, you realize that this thing you wish to flee from or attack, is nothing more than your own breath.  It’s cold out and your breath hangs in the air, dances in the moonlight, tricks your eyes, encircles you, rides the thermals out the end of the point, and then down into the valley below.  

I checked the clock, 5:45.

The waves crashing on shore begin to subside as the flood tide of Norepinephrine goes out.  Watching the ocean of panic and aggression recede you can see sails in the distance heading over the horizon.  You know this ship.  It is a ship of fools, crewed by many versions of yourself, and returns to this shore to take on new members every year.  Its gunners are band of angry teenagers, it’s sailing master a cock sure twenty-something, its boatswain an overweight and under-confident thirty-something, a middle aged man with a tempest for a mind serves as its quarter master and first mate, at the helm stands a freckle faced boy with a sword to heavy to swing, and a captain’s hat that falls down over his eyes.  The ship is sailing away east, its sails and masts silhouetted against the silver sky that appears just before dawn. 

I checked the clock, 6:15.

The shrill sound broke the silence of the forest. The call of the whip-poor-will. Hank Williams senior claimed to hear it in conjunction with a midnight train.  A host of writers have equated it with lonesomeness, and it is often mentioned as an evening sound or a bird of the night.   But this bird to me is not lonely or “of the night.”   It cries out at first light to announce the morning.  The mourning dove with its evening call puts things to bed and brings a solemn conclusion to the day, but the whip-poor-will wakes the forest and rouses it to possibilities and hope.  

I know when I hear the call of the whip-poor-will,  shadows flee.  He is for me, in a tree, like a gothic gargoyle perched atop a medieval cathedral.  The call of the whip-poor-will signals the beginning of the hunt, and the casting off of the fears of the night.  

The first rays peer through the trees, the morning fog begins to shift through the valley, spring smells and sounds abound through the forest.  I gather myself and slowly rise from my position.  I am listening for the thunder of a Tom Turkey off in the distance.  There is light at my back, a clear path before my eyes, and hope in my heart.  

The night is over and a new day dawns.  The uncertainty and disinformation of the darkness, the lurking shadows of things not there, the fear and loathing and vulnerability of confused faculties and strained senses, now give way to lungs full of air and eyes full of light. 

A ship disappears over the horizon, and a new man greets a new world.