The Great Outdoors
Even in the bitterest of cold January months, most of our eyes and hearts will start to drift toward spring. A few hunters, our family included, will stay focused on what we call the “deer woods” through mid-February, but even for us, after that, all eyes will turn toward the hope of seeds soon to be planted and blossoms to bud.
My wife, Hannah, loves to garden. We plant a row crop garden with the tractor and back yard gardens in what most folks would call a watering trough. Our girls enjoy gardening too… especially our youngest, Banks and our oldest, Bay. The Middle Princess, her name is Cape, well… she loves to hunt… gardening, not so much.
Cape, a senior in high school, hunts more than I do these days. Bay, now a Junior at Ole Miss, will “go” hunting with me, though she doesn’t always carry her own gun. She goes just so we can spend time together… “she and I,” as Randy Owen once sang. Banks, an eighth grader, hunts with me regularly, too. And Randy is right… that time she and I spend together is “great and wonderful.”
The girls’ grandfather, my dad, grew up in Sylacauga. He hunted quail more than anything as a child. Back then, quail were prevalent, and quail hunting was a favorite pastime of Alabama gentlemen hunters. His dad, though… my grandfather, was a deer hunter. In 1959 he killed what was then a massive buck – all eight basket points. I still have the deer mount hanging on the wall in my study. He signed his name and dated the plywood backing. It smells slightly of formaldehyde, and it looks like a fawn hanging next to some of the deer we have taken in more recent years. He killed that buck near Talladega… in the National Forest. It was a prize that is rumored to have made several newspapers at the time. 
And though its small compared to more well-developed deer, it’s a prize to me today. Because of the memories it represents. Sometimes when I write about fishing adventures with my grandfather, or time spent at his Lay Lake cabin, I stare at the now 63-year-old relic… and recall catching bream or snapping turtles. For you see… that deer mount is not a trophy. To me, it’s something of an Ebeneezer Stone that reminds me of the things my grandfather taught me. Every time I see it, I think of him and the lessons I learned along the way.
I’ve been intentional through the years to Shepherd my girls into adulthood, by way of the great Outdoors. Fact is, every time we go hunting, or work in the garden, or any other outdoor adventure we have, they learn so much more about life than they do about anything else. And I want to teach them those life lessons, because others did the same for me…
What say you, all who are winter baron in the doldrums of a cold world? What seed do you plan to plant when the thaw comes? I pray its one that will bear fruit… for the harvest is plenty.
Let’s go…. Shepherding Outdoors.
-Walt Merrell
A Christian Outdoorsman who writes of his adventures with his family, with the hope that others might be inspired and encouraged to embrace God’s tapestry, otherwise known as the great outdoors, as a means of finding Common Ground. You can follow him at Shepherding Outdoors on FB, YT and IG and at shepherdingoutdoors.com. His most recent book is available at shepherdingbook.com. Read his faith story here.
