Tuesday with…

It’s strange that a New Year greeted us mortals this morning, so why not peer down the long misty highway and revel in the happy memories of the year now history?

What better way to greet the New Year than to look back on all the good things of 1990 and hope for more of them in ’91? You’ll be amazed at the number that will come in a flashback lasting a few seconds. They’ll bring an enthusiasm for living, a deep feeling of satisfaction, and a great outpouring of Thanksgiving to your Creator.

These are things I revel in as I look back: Lou Graves playing the organ and my favorite melody, “The Happy Wanderer;” a sizzling T-bone venison steak served on a bright yellow, metal plate; a song-sparrow’s song trilling with the dawn breaking over the Upsalquitch River; a rickety, ancient fiberglass skiff poled over the bonefish flats off Treasure Key in the Bahamas; and a white spruce laden with fresh snow.

Also: a gorgeous fireball in the west, the late afternoon sunset over West Grand Lake; out of Dale Wheaton’s packbasket, gleaming clean, white plates and cups; a whippoorwill singing in the night, the most delightful lullaby known to man; wet camp roofs beneath the lamplight; rainbows across a cold Labrador sky; the strong crust of friendly bread tabled by friends in Aiken, S.C.; matching golf strokes on the Oaks course with Ted Williams at Citrus Hills in Florida; the crazy, weird call of the loon in the Pierce Pond country; and the blue bitter smoke of wood.

I love family gatherings with the grandchildren gathered around my favorite chair while knots of Don Hanscom’s hardwood crackles and colors the glass-front of a wood stove; the soul-satisfying sympathy of a mother for her children, paving the way to self-confidence; the tender, loving care of a young mother for her baby; the laughter of children; school kids scampering along a roadside carrying lunch boxes and their athletic equipment; the dignity and freshness of a high school girl who dresses smartly and acts with class.

I thoroughly treasure the camaraderie found at the Penobscot River salmon clubs; I love the rollicking, boisterous sing-songs the first night in an old-time Maine deer camp; half-cooked wieners roasted on a sliver of pine; eating cold beans and drinking coffee along some salmon or trout stream; the shrill chattering of red-wing blackbirds at Lazy Tom’s Bog, northwest of Kokadjo; snowshoe rabbit tracks on new snow; and umbrella-like elms in a pasture with cattle grazing beneath them.

Also: a mushrooming strawstack in a barnyard I recall seeing late in last year’s March at Thorndike; the quiet of a cathedral’s interior; fat ducks waddling across a busy farm road; gleaming white sails in Penobscot Bay; the wind in my face in an outboard-powered, 21-foot Grand Laker; the patience and good humor of an old-time cop; a pugnacious house wren when a swallow tries to take her nesting place; regal water lillies in a tiny coastal pond; crocuses before the snow has gone; the raging white water of Dog Falls on the St. Croix river; woodland moss in April.

I love quiet; so quiet one is startled when the last log on the fire falls apart; the loneliness of Alaska’s darkest woods; I love dogs, especially the warm affectionate muzzle on one’s knee and the crazy antics of an ordinary mutt when kids get off the town school bus; cold roast chicken at midnight; tulips blooming around anybody’s home or summer cottage; cheddar cheese and crackers; but, I confess, I greatly miss someone waiting for me at the end of a long trip. That’s just a few of the many things I’ve enjoyed this year. All in all, it was a good year for the outdoorsman – and 1991 can be a better year if everyone works to help the conservation officials enforce the laws, rather than working against them.

So here’s a toast to 1990. It was good, but 1991 can be better if we will wipe away every vestige of insincerity and hypocrisy and steer a course on the good ship Confidence, with faith in the compass.

The happiest and healthiest to you and yours!