Communication is a mysterious subject, often difficult to obtain commercially or personally. The dictionary states that communication is “the imparting or exchanging of information or news.”
That’s a pretty icy definition for a subject than can be so very important to an individual or group of individuals. In highly charged emotional situations a wrong word can have tremendous power to hurt or offend. We’ve all wished we could bring a careless sentence back.
We communicate in many ways. By words, often inadequate, eye contact, body language, tone of voice and inflection, even the subtle electric field we give off. Our thoughts may remain unspoken, but unless we’re very careful, they reveal themselves inadvertently to others, especially to those who know us well.
I talk to my daughters often on the phone and know immediately if things are amiss simply hearing them say hello. A single word, yet a revelation. Communication is not as simple as the straightforward dictionary definition may appear, it covers a vast network of impressions, understanding and intuition.
I simply love to hunt and fish. It’s not merely something I do, it’s an important part of who I am. If forced to give either up I could never be truly happy. As a writer I attempt to describe why and how the outdoors are so critical to my happiness and sense of self. So many of you tell me I’m successful in these attempts, but I often feel I only scratched the surface of my feelings.
Music is a form of communication that is purely emotional and accurately describes itself to the listening ear. Oftentimes, songs are attached to a certain time or event in our lives. Just hearing the song brings back the time, place and emotion so very clearly, sometimes to tears, perhaps the closest thing we have to a time machine.
A turkey gobble is a pure thing. It’s musical, unique and intensely moving to a turkey hunter. If you’re not a hunter, the gobble catches your attention, you listen intently, smile and appreciate it for what it is. But to a hunter it is all of that and immensely more.
A turkey gobble brings a hundred dawns to mind. The ink black darkness slowly dissolving, the ridge tops changing from indistinct blurs, becoming ever sharper against the bright dawn until they’re a razor sharp line, black against the glowing pinks and yellows of the coming sun.
As the light increases you wait tensely. Is the gobbler still there? If so, will he gobble? If he gobbles where will he be roosted? Did you climb from the warm sheets for nothing or is an exciting hunt before you? A thousand thoughts and questions fill your mind as the minutes creep past.
Then, it happens! The bird gobbles, his brash challenge ringing out clearly in the crisp air as an electric thrill runs through your body as life giving as the beating of your heart. The contest is about to begin, the priceless gift has been given and success is not as important as that magic sound which awakens in your essence an integral part of life itself and the magic of the hunt. The gobble that awakens the dawn within you which would ever slumber without your wily opponent.
You don’t have to be a fishermen to communicate with the bright brook as it tumbles past. But, unless you’re a fishermen the musical voice of the stream is heard, but largely uncomprehended. Sure, there is a degree of appreciation, but the character and bounty of those gurgling waters means little to those who never have harvested from it. Can a piano stir the same emotions in one who cannot play that it does to one who does? No, the living essence of it, the awakening of its potential is known only to the master who becomes one with and part of that incredible potential.
To stand in the rushing, eager stream in early April, after the long cold winter, is a baptismal of spring. The waters figuratively rinsing off the debris of dead winter in a rebirth of spring and soul. The surface tells a tale. The troubled tumble of rocky rapids, the uplifting swell of the large, unseen rock rising close to the surface, the circling of the eddy caused by an outlying point of land, rock or tree.
Their velocity and character all subtle indications of whether a fish can lie there or not. The current speed also informs the angler just how far upstream he must cast to allow the bait to settle to the bottom just above the location of the fish is holding.
In your hand is a thin sliver of graphite, strong, thin and flexible it seems impossible it has the strength to land a fish of any size. On it a tiny reel, a modern miracle of engineering, but most incredible is the thin, thin line that holds the hook and has the strength to land your quarry.
To be able to cast, hook a trout and bring it to net from the swirling deep seems a miracle. How can it be possible? You can’t even see them. But a miracle it is and the satisfaction and magic never tire.
To a fisherman the stream becomes many things, beautiful, magic, orchestra, provider, miracle worker. The communication possible depends wholly on the quest mingled with knowledge and skill.
