Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/617925
L ife is life, and even in the theater of our greatest passion the difference between a laugh and a tear is as capricious as the impetuous drama of the morrow. In the sporting life, as in life everywhere, we encounter the same impulsive episodes of exalted happiness and depleting seizures of unfathomable sadness. Except that perhaps they are the more intense, I believe. For always there is the humbling grandeur of the physical and emotional landscape they are part of: the poignant beauty of wildness, woods, and water, quest and conquest, life and death and all the honest and undomesticated, water- colored sentiments they paint upon the tender canvas of yesterday's memories. One day is born and there is the enchanting "hunting time" call of the francolin in the fore of an East African sunrise; another dawns with the loss of a gun dog that has served with utter fidelity for the too-short gift of his life- time, that has thrilled us with his courage and grace upon a hundred incomparable mornings. One year brings again the solitude and serenity of an Appalachian hollow, steeped in the finery of autumn, and the quiet smile behind the small dimple of hope that breaks gently upon a placid pool; only that the next bears the silent and somber passing of an era, a hurtful remembrance of the things and places that so endeared it, the soul-spent realization of how deeply it was a part of you, the piece of you that is forever gone. One moment soars with the elation of triumph, that at last some wild and regal creature you have wanted so badly is your own; the next falls painfully to regret, that tomorrow he will no longer be there to return your challenge, that the tragedy of his absence lies uneasily upon your hands. And with each moment, day and year, we are changed, to something better than we were before. The sum of all becomes the touchstone of our existence, and it is there we unerringly return in our times of greatest need. It is there we most often dwell. In the times we were happiest, the ones by which we were most affected. Or in times yet to be, which can be pleasantly imagined on the premise of grand times past. In this way we are able to advantage the balance. To perpetuate the joy of a treasured memory, to envision a dream. Thus was born in antiquity the rich and completing design of our great sporting art heritage. Which will continue as long as any one of us is left to carry a gun afield, to unlimber a wand over water. From the grandest painting to the most minute gesture of embellishment upon some small and valued item of the chase, the mood, matter, and magic of the quest are rendered the more unquestionably dear. There is written the story of our being, in fond and poignant remembrance, in wistful muse. To sustain us in the times we are Fine and decorative sporting art can gather up your soul, bringing happiness to you or whoever else might come to own and cherish it. S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 2 3 Mike Gaddis i r s t L i g h t F orking in pyrography, a specialized wood- burning technique, talented South Carolina artist Kelly Puckett created the images for this beautiful box call, built by Jeff McKamey for the author. W