Put Your Feet on the Floor

6:08 AM – December 17, 2016 (Stone Creek Duck Blind)

It is cold, or maybe it’s just a lack of warmth.  In all honesty I am toasty, even with a wet arm (setting decoys while wading by hand can be challenging).  The little heater I brought is doing the job and for some reason I put on my big wool sweater this morning.  As I learned living in a maritime rain forest, wool is your best friend if you get wet, somehow you stay warm and it miraculously starts to dry.  After spending nearly a year in British Columbia I was wet on more than one occasion which enabled me to learn the invaluable properties of wool.

This digression could bring me easily into a fashion blog, which you may recall I promised when I originally started this voyage some six months and over 25 blog posts ago.  Hard to believe that a guy that sells dirt could put two sentences together, but it’s happening.

But it is 6:22 now and about 20 minutes from shooting light.  I woke up today at 3:30 AM thinking “put your feet on the floor”.  This is what my Dad always said when he came to wake me up to go hunting. The weather report is calling for light sleet, barometric pressure is falling along with the falling tide, and low temperatures have iced up inland ponds.  The duck gods are speaking…Go duck hunting! So here I am sharing these thoughts as the sleet is making the iPad wet.

If duck hunting were outcome oriented every duck hunter should quit now because they know how many hours of exhausting work goes into boats, blinds, decoys, scouting and dogs.  This is all ignoring the tough climatic conditions under which these activities occur.

But it’s a beautiful thing when it works and for those few seconds, as a black duck glides through the decoys or six geese pitch in coming out of the fog, it’s all worth it.  So ignoring the wet arm (almost dry) I am gonna start looking for ducks.  Glad I put my feet on the floor today!  Onward!