I find myself in this same unsettling place just now. I didn’t know Buck, only of him, but we’re from the same Missouri county and I happen to be here now “just up the road” from Pevely. I suppose Buck’s death is affecting me because I’m in the midst of difficult decisions relative to an elderly aunt in a nursing home. She and her late husband were like second parents to me and whenever I pick up one of his guns I have emotions beyond what I would have expected. I’ve attributed them to what retired psychology professor Susan Whitbourne calls “meaning.” “There’s a lot of meaning that gets attached to objects,”. To hold his deer rifle is to be flooded with memories of past times along these Ozark hillsides.
And that brings me to the other piece of this experience: places. Canadian writer Molly Parker said, “The landscape you grow up in speaks to you in a way that nowhere else does.”
It sure does. The guns of our family and friends are a large part of our personal hunting heritage and when they’re coupled with the places we hunted together they are powerful. I confess, physically and emotionally, I’m in a place just now where eternity has drawn uncomfortably close and my first reaction is, I don’t like it. But then truthfully I have to say, I actually do.
Last edited by FallCreekFan; 11/08/23 07:41 PM.
