Good things never get old, they only get better.
Christmas is a time of miracles.
And they can take on many shapes – a crow, a child, a dog, an old man, and a surprise.
I’ve written about many miracles in the past. But good things never get old, they only get better.
Let’s start with the surprise. Good friend Joe Lemire was hunting high up in a tree stand, more still than the low clouds that scudded overhead, when up on his swaying rooftop of a tree rose such a clatter! It was a huge wild turkey that landed on a limb a short distance from his head. The two shared the slight breeze and fresh air together. Those who enjoy the out of doors often share such a moment.
Another wrote that when he rode his ATV through a certain section of woods a ruffed grouse several times flew along beside him. And then came the day it landed on the handlebars and shared a ride. I might have given a ho-ho-ho, but like Joe he had a camera with him. Not a bad idea for all outdoors people to carry as a companion.
My confrontation with a grouse was during a walk in the woods.
A mother grouse and her chicks strolled in on me by mistake. She immediately limped off, dragging a wing, fluttering her eyes.
When my eyes returned to the chicks they had disappeared. Impossible. Sort of. Until I remembered reading when chicks disappeared nearly before your eyes, they had grabbed a leaf and turned over on their backs, hiding themselves.
I lay down on the earth, eye parallel to the ground, and Voila! With a big ‘V’! It was a chick. And there were others nearby. And I did not have a camera. Rarely after this did I enter the woods without one.
Encounters of the close kind do not happen every time one heads into the outdoors. But if you visit enough times perhaps you will have such a miracle. My job (a poor word – let’s make it my great good fortune) has gifted me with enough incidents and miracles to fill a Christmas stocking.
The Big Guy in the sky, whose son we celebrate today, is in charge of this department. Many moons ago I was visiting patients at a nursing home when I spotted my wonderful friend, Monsignor Thomas Devine, preparing to bless a group of seniors and I tried to fade into the distance.
He beckoned me back with the words, “Come here Frank, you can use this.” I kneeled with the group preparing for my first blessing from a priest. I wanted to hit him with a joke, as he was blessed with an ungodly sense of humor (I wanted to ask him if the blessing “would hurt.” It didn’t.)
If I had known blessings could take place so swiftly I would have made standing in the blessing line a full-time event. I had no sooner been blessed when a volunteer walked by with a Labrador retriever. A little old lady in a wheel chair beckoned the smiling tail-wagger with the words, “Here doggy.” A nearby nurse stood aghast and uttered the words, “She hasn’t spoken a word in years.”
On a later visit a nurse told me she had spoken again since
MINK STOLE ANYONE?: Yes, miracles can be small and hairy. Our first dog was a small ball of white fluff then known as a spitz, Mister Butterball. Butterball for short, loved to hunt the open field opposite our house for anything that moved or smelled good (or bad).
One day he brought home a mink he had bettered in battle.
We could hardly afford a mouse pelt in those day and my bride of 60 years visualized Butterball bringing home a mink a day and that her Prince Charming (guess who?), would stitch her a regal garment befitting a queen.
She heaped praise on the little dog as he dropped the mink at her feet.
But not all dreams end in a first-class manner. For the next several days he proudly dropped his homage to her at her feet – including a skunk and even lesser trophies.
But watching him seek other trophies to draw such praise as the mind led to, the little guy would walk upright in the tall grass for 15 minutes at a time.
Another happening also involved a mink. I was hunting ducks in Bachelor Brook in Granby after a crystal snowstorm when a glistening mink swam out of the brook and posed for me in the snow. This was plenty of glorious nature for me but the giver of miracles smiled down on me and a cardinal, as red as the gowns of Rome, landed inches away from the furry fellow of the brook who wind-combed his fur dry.
Afraid this vision would disappear if I searched for my camera, I took the photo in my mind’s eye.
Such a gift of nature’s love is special. Love also has its prickly situations. I was bow hunting from an old apple tree in a long-abandoned orchard high in the hills of Vermont when a porcupine ambled by beneath the tree. I dropped an apple on its head and the walking pincushion changed direction and started to climb the tree.
When it got close I pushed it away with my bow until it tumbled from the tree. I felt a little guilty, disturbing its thoughts of amour, hoping it had learned its lesson, I learned mine and never bonked a porky off the bean again. It was a happening of the strange kind.
HAWKS IN FLIGHT: Topping the list of miracles was when I could to sing out to the earth below, “I can fly, I can fly, I can fly!”
I had written a column about Williams Distributing Co. aiding the hawk migration count by leading its motorized glider to the birds. To try to actually catch up to the migrating group in a glider failed, as hawks were using the same thermals.
A motored plane would disburse them.
But a motorized glider could pick up speed, cut the engine and glide silently into the thousands of hawks without disturbing them.
We glided into them and they actually acted like we were not there. Although on occasion a bird would tilt and take a peak under its wing at us, probably wondering who this big bird was.
This next flight was my first two free flights – one in the air and the second under water.
It took place because someone mistook me for a wise guy.
I had ventured to a peak of the Mount Holyoke Mountain Range to do a story on a group ready to take their first hang glider flight.
I was informed the first flights would not take place because the would-be fliers had not taken the first necessary step – running down the slope, kite held above, jumping off and heading the kite nose down slope to pick up speed before lifting the nose and soaring.
Each had fallen from the boulder as they lifted the nose rather than heading it down and thus fell to the ground.
I asked the instructor “What’s so difficult?”
The instructor must have taken me as a wise cracker and asked me to try it. He said, “Remember nose down at first, then up, up and away. Too go left, push the bar you are holding to the right; and push it right to go left.”
Which I did and within moments I found myself high over the mountain top and peering down on the Connecticut River, which appeared as a thin silver stream.
And indeed I cried out, “I can fly, I can fly, I can fly.”
Of course I hadn’t been told how to land. I made the transition from euphoria to cowardice before finally touching down, butt-first, since there are no landing wheels on the kite.
My sore tail feathers have long since mended, but that miracle lingers on. Lingering right up there is the soaring more than 100 feet below the ocean in a drift dive off the Yucatan Peninsula with daughter Dianne Gordon while and toothy moray eels flew with us.
There are many, many other miracles that let you know what tiny egotistical things we humans are.
HORSEY MIRACLES: There are dozens of people of several generations who told our family that they had ridden our gentle horse Gypsy.
And we should all be as happy as that small pinto was – even to the end. I had come home from work, grabbed a couple buckets of water and brought them down to her corral.
She was conked out on the ground, appearing to be soaking up the sun.
I talked with her for several minutes before I realized she had passed on to the place where horses go, the place we all hope, wish and pray to get to.
As gentle as Gypsy was, Zephyr was wild.
He was given to a Mount Holyoke student who finally abandoned him at a local livery. We learned we could have the giant purebred if we could get it into a van.
It was wild after three years of being ignored but six men with ropes finally got Zephyr the Wind into a horse van and home, where he kicked down shed walls, bucking like he had burrs under his saddle.
Daughter Joanne took the wild one under her care, holding many ear scratching conversations with him.
Then there was the miracle.
He would lay down in our front yard and Joanne would lie beside him, using his neck as a pillow.
TIME OF THANKS: Christmas is not only a time of miracles but a time of giving thanks as well. Thanks for our four kids, our 16 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, with apparently more to come.
It was just before Christmas several decades ago that I was involved in an incident that could have ended any Christmas to come.
The city of Chicopee was my beat at that time. While investigating that a child might have gone through an opening in the middle of the fast flowing Connecticut in the Willimansett section, I was told by the parents they had to know whether their child had gone through the ice or perhaps had been kidnapped by a known pervert seen in the area.
The private dive team was preparing to leave after informing me the flow was too strong under ice and so cold that slush balls were forming that could freeze a scuba regulator device.
I said I would go under and was loaned a pair of magnum fins. A short while later I was in a small boat pushed across the ice to the opening.
A police officer and a patrolman were twith me.
I attached a lifeline around my chest and told the young patrolman to only play out as much line as I called for by pulls on the rope.
I was in almost immediate trouble as slush kept catching in my regulator, which in those days were double=hosed and on the back on the tank top.
This meant losing air swiftly before it was cleared each time. I figured one good check for the child then a swim toward the shore would be safe. Within a comparatively short time I had to pull my reserve and headed back to the boat, but was greeted by a complete horror scene that left me much colder than the ice water inside my wet suit. The current grabbed a magnum flipper and snapped it off like a fish without fins.
The line disappeared in a giant loop in the darkness down river.
The line tender had let out way too much safety rope, thinking the pull of the river was my tugging for more line.
The last gulp of air came swiftly. I could see the line hoop in the distance, undid my lifeline and swam toward where I hoped the boat was.
The only thing I could do was climb up on a street sign with a cement base, which kids had apparently torn out of the ground to use as a hockey goal. I powered my way into the ice, hoping the old-fashioned high valve would break through.
It did. I found myself only feet from the hole in the ice and the boat.
The police officer reached out and took my hand.
To this day I can feel the warm tears that spilled down my icy cheeks.
I have no problems to this day in hugging grand- and great-grandchildren along with other little kids who also call me granddad. That is a year-round thing, the hugging.
If I could give All Outdoor readers a gift, it would be that you hug a child on this wonderful day and every day thereafter.
A happy and loving Christmas.