Soul.

From the prologue of Guy de la Valdene's memoir, The Fragrance of Grass ...

It is in the cabin overlooking the pond that I study the partridge and ruminate on how the bird has affected my life as a hunter and as a man. I read old manuscripts, query the Internet, talk to authors and biologists, take notes, and feign disinterest in the bald eagle harassing the osprey hunting the fish outside my window. Of all the sounds that touch my soul these days, the most beautiful one of all is silence.

Not much has changed for me in fifty years. Introduced early on to the arena of dismal human behavior in half a dozen boarding schools, I chose an alternative life to that of my peers. Accordingly, shotgun in hand, I have hunted the moon and the tide, the wind, the marsh, and the meadows. I have encouraged every dog I have owned to lead me through changing landscapes and uneven light with the notion that sooner or later the enticing scent of a game bird would interrupt its path.

I find myself willingly at the mercy of creatures that speak a language dictated by necessity and weather, and, in the case of my dogs, by the subtleties of their olfactory senses. In short, my life has been one of idleness and uncomplicated pleasures, an existence of good fortune and sport, of limited accomplishments and few regrets.

Uninterested in the excited state of mind exhibited by those who have allowed cement to capture their imagination (I once found a misguided woodcock flattened on East 57th street in New York City), and because it is what I do, I will keep aiming my dogs at juniper trees that rise reluctantly out of the slopes of Montana, and I will urge them through the interminable wheat fields of Saskatchewan until I cannot walk anymore.

I have explained to my dogs that the reason I don’t kill a significant number of the partridge they locate lies buried in my excessive past. I tell them that instead of hunting with the purpose of killing, I now enter nature’s domain as I would enter the territory of dreams. The pale blue eyelids of a mourning dove in consult with its colleagues on a telephone wire, the foreboding silhouette of a goshawk in a winter tree, the topaz-colored eyes of an anhinga in love, all fill me with a sense of wonder, and I am saddened by the knowledge that as a man I played a significant role in the humiliation of nature’s sanctity.

In the quiet of the night I confess to the dog closest to me my heartfelt wish to be a child again.