Prayin’ Knees & Cedar Trees
| We were 291 miles from Wall Drug |
The early morning alarm clock jarred me from my sleep into an unfamiliar setting. The last tendrils of grogginess slowly faded, and I smiled as I peered through the darkness. It had been my wife and I’s first night in our new home in Yankton, South Dakota, after officially signing the closing documents the day before. Despite the unpacked boxes and hours of work yet to be done, my spirits were high.
I’ve always held the belief that prayer comes easiest during the early hours of the morning when fewer people are awake to bend God’s ear, and I offered up a prayer of gratitude. I silently slipped out of bed, thankful that our mattress was stationed on the floor of the living room rather than on the squeaky box spring that had yet to be set up. Despite the obvious advantages it would provide during hunting season, I doubted my wife would be too keen on keeping the makeshift bedroom arrangement. Headboards and duvets were far too trendy.
The sound of an F-150 creeping up the driveway notified me that my good friend Landon Withrow had arrived to pick me up. It was late April, and I had drawn a shotgun turkey tag for Yankton County. Landon had graciously offered to act as a turkey hunting guide, helping to initiate me to the community he had called home for many years.
A 15-minute drive through the river bottom was all it took to reach our turkey hunting destination. We gathered our gear and slowly moved through the woods, stopping to listen for the distant sounds of birds still on the roost. As Landon put it, Yankton County has a turkey problem, and we were welcomed to the woods with the sounds of multiple birds gobbling in the distance. The large cedar tree we stationed ourselves under acted as the perfect blind, and we sipped coffee and shared smiles as the woods came alive around us.
Like early morning prayer, conversation with good friends comes easy in the turkey hunting woods. Landon and I both share the gift of gab, and rarely struggle to fill the silence when we’re together. As roommates in college, we would often spend hours talking about girls and God, and the mysteries surrounding both. As we reminisced on college days gone by, we couldn’t help but wonder, is 26 too young to begin talking about the good old days?
Caught in conversation, we had hardly noticed the three birds that had glided down from the roost, landing in the field 150 yards away. The iridescent shades of their fans caught the morning light perfectly, and their red heads moved in unison as they strutted and gobbled in the field. I softly purred on a diaphragm call, and in a matter of minutes, the three birds had crossed the field to the base of our cedar tree backdrop.
I patiently waited for the back bird to break free of the group, leveling my bead and slowly squeezing the trigger on my old youth 20 gauge. The bark of the 3’’ turkey load echoed through the woods, and distant turkeys gobbled in response as if to mock the misfortune of one of their competitors. The stage had been set, the script read, and a picture-perfect morning culminated with a beautiful turkey on the river bottom.
If only every morning could begin with good friends, prayin’ knees and cedar trees.
