Winter Clearance

It's the last half of February and I hear the click of the seasonal odometer rolling over once again. It's time to back the truck into the garage and sweep away the accumulated detritus of the past hunting season.

Dog hair. Candy wrappers. Spent hulls. Feathers. Mismatched gloves. Mud. Pens and notebooks to record sudden thoughts which seem profound at the moment but become markedly less so when leavened with a little time and reflection. Dog-eared copies of the hunting regs. Chewed-up bumpers. A chewed-up road atlas. Chewed-up water bottles. A bird-hunting vest with not nearly enough dried blood in the game bag. A forgotten duck call stuffed between the seats.

Just random garbage, but if you could somehow divine a measure of truth out of it all, some revelation about the owner of that garbage, it might say this: He's obviously neither rich nor very successful. He can't shoot very well and his dogs are dirty, misbehaved, slobber too much and apparently one of them yacked on the passenger seat. He eats too much junk food and his son isn't very good at putting the cap back on the BB container. It's obvious he didn't quite make it to where he wanted and sometimes struggles with where he did.

But sometimes, he's happy.  Because all those spent hulls and BBs rolling around the mud-caked floorboard say so. All those chewed-up bumpers and dog hair and candy wrappers shared with goofy dogs and young boys say so. This isn't garbage I'm sweeping out of the truck: it's six months of self-actualization.