Old Guns and Good Dogs

There’s a sea of sage before us- beckoning with waves of green and unforeseen coveys of chukar. In the distance, a pheasant cackles. The guns are loaded and the dogs are too, so with that, we head for open water.

The guns are old, maybe as sage as the brush underfoot. Every grain in their stocks tells a story, every layer of steel a memory. I hope to see as many as they have, to tell as many stories someday. But the guns are wiser than I, and I can only hope that in their time of teaching me afield in the following hours that I, too, hold some prose by it’s end.

The dogs rise and fall with the birds, and those lost by my lead return to their paths beneath the brush.

I ponder the path of these: are they actually “lost”? Or am I simply yearning to be found where they disappear to?

The gun broken over my shoulder smells of powder and the look in my spaniel’s eyes says “why don’t we do this everyday?” He bounds ahead of me, following his predecessor through the brush without really understanding what it is they’re looking for. The boyish skip in his step and steady beat of his metronome tail keep time with my heartbeat.

I feel this time is fleeting, disappearing with the birds.

Someday, the guns will be older, and the dogs will be too.

Good dogs will be peppered with silver; it will blanket their face like a snow that has fallen overnight while no one was looking. Old guns are aged another lifetime, recounting chronicles of the uplands, marshes, and plains.

Someday, the old guns will be telling stories long after the good dogs are gone.

Good dogs will get old, and old guns will always be good. But the beauty of it all, is that they will live for endless autumns; chasing those lost coveys beyond the horizon, where we hope to meet them again. Someday.