‘Adventure days’ provide memories

Outdoors

June 17, 2012

‘Adventure days’ provide memories

Chris Ellis For The Register-Herald The Register-Herald Sun Jun 17, 2012, 01:14 AM EDT

BECKLEY — When I was a child, my family would take Sunday drives. Dad called them “adventure days.” I was never informed prior to the excursion where we were going or why; I was simply a backseat passenger along for the ride and the sounds and smells open-window drives provided.

The smell of a freshly cut hayfield, creosote-soaked railroad ties alongside a track or the coolness of a river as its water snaked through a water-willow shoal were often brought to my senses as the car’s tires crunched the gravel on some backcountry West Virginia road. It was on just a road my life would change forever.

Dad pulled the car under the shade of an enormous poplar tree that stood just off the road. My brother and I perked up and looked out the window toward the river — neither one of us had the nerve to ask why we were stopping. Under the canopy of the ancient tree stood a shack of a house with brush and junk leaning against its tired board-and-batten siding and barely visible from the road was a sun-bleached sign that read, “For Sale.”

The property’s backyard was steep banks that lead to a sandy river bank that had a river birch arching over the water. In the tree was a rusty light fixture with a bullet hole in the shade and the bulb was broken. The family watched as Dad walked the property studying every corner in great detail and not saying a word we could understand. All we heard were mumbles and grunts as his eyes fell on something he found unsightly or displeasing. After a thorough inspection, he whistled for us boys and we ran to the car in high anticipation. All he said as he pressed the accelerator and turned the wheel onto the gravel road was, “We’ll buy it if the price is right.”

We spent every weekend for the next two summers hauling rusty trash and cutting sticky briars off the property. Everything we touched in the old house either needed repaired or destroyed depending on who was in charge of the particular project. My brother was a rip-it-out-and-start-a-fire kind of worker while Dad and I were more into saving things that gave the camp house character. After we would complete our portion of the “project list,” Dad would turn us loose to fish the riffled waters of the shoal upstream while he continued on his last project, which was generally to create another to-do list for his boys.

The camp eventually was livable, at least for long weekends, and we spent most of our family’s free time there. It’s where I first learned how to paddle a canoe, where I caught my first trophy smallmouth bass, learned how to fry frog legs, roast a pig in the ground, how to shoot passing ducks and, most importantly, my love for water and porch swings.

As life passed by, so have the camp and my father. I no longer have the joys in my life of his laughter or the smell of Elk River from its screened-in porch.

This past week, my son and I took two days to tear down an old building at a river camp I just purchased. In all the sweat and spiders, I paused to hope he too someday will think of the camp and his father on Father’s Day and recall the sounds of moving waters and hear his father’s laughter in them.

Text Only

Outdoors

Hunting has become more mainstream
As sportsmen, we live by an ethical code of conduct. We are taught by our mentors not to take our way of life for granted and to be aware of our actions as not to cause offense to others. In short, we are taught to behave in a manner as to not make a non-hunter into an anti-hunter.

May 5, 2013
Birding among outdoor passions
If you love the outdoors, there are probably some activities you like better than others. Maybe it’s trout fishing or deer hunting. My passion is birds. I love the spring migration when new species return almost daily.

May 5, 2013
Setting the record straight on rabbits
Thanks to cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, the rabbits we see in our backyards, eastern cottontails, are familiar to almost everyone. And yet I suspect that most people think they are rodents. They are not. Rabbits and hares are lagomorphs, members of the mammalian order Lagomorpha.

March 23, 2013
Fickle weather can wreck plans
Well, it’s officially spring. We have “sprung forward” into daylight saving time in hopes of long, sunny evenings to play and work outdoors in the glorious, warm rays of the sun. In return for our daily routines being altered by the time change, we are awarded with unpredictable weather and mud season — gee, thanks!

March 23, 2013
Black deer among nature’s rarities
A few weeks ago, Joan Robinson contacted me after she noticed something out of the usual while driving along a Hampshire County backroad in the Eastern Panhandle. It was so unusual she even questioned herself at what her eyes were actually seeing.

March 23, 2013
Male half of nesting eagle pair feared dead
One of southern West Virginia’s much-loved and only confirmed pair of nesting American Bald Eagles is suspected dead and the pair’s eggs located at the tip of Brooks Island off W.Va. 20 are in jeopardy.
Wendy Perrone, executive director of Three River Avian Center, said National Park Service Law Enforcement was notified that an Amtrak train hit the eagle Sunday around 10:30 a.m.
Since Sunday, the Park Service, Three Rivers and dedicated volunteers have scouted the track and surrounding area from Brooks Island to Sandstone Falls, but no one has recovered the bird. The male bird, affectionately called Whitey, has also not returned to the nest, leading experts to believe he was killed.

March 20, 2013
There is help for anglers getting started
According to statistics from the National Surveys of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, which are published every five years, the number of anglers in the U.S. is in a steady decline. Over the last 20 years the number of anglers has dropped from 35.6 million in 1991 to 33.1 million in 2011.

March 16, 2013
Beckley among places to ‘talk turkey’
This past week brought us snow and rain. Like my kids are fond of saying in a very sarcastic tone, “Really?” For the sportsmen in our area, the last couple of days of winter can be a downtime in the action. For those needing to scratch the hunting and fishing itch, I have a little news that might just do the trick.

March 16, 2013
‘How do robins survive winter conditions?’
Winter must be winding down because I’m getting letters and e-mails about winter robins.

March 10, 2013
Sequester impacting hunting, fishing industries
A news release from Bass Anglers Sportsman Society (B.A.S.S.) Communications came across my desk this week, and I felt the information was worth sharing.

March 10, 2013
More Outdoors Headlines

Outdoors

Search Results

‘Adventure days’ provide memories

Site Map

Contact Us