This passage, along with a handful more (posting soon), introduces the other ‘Sota Boys in my life that I share most of the moments I photograph and write about. Each of the ‘Sota Boys have key characteristics and strengths that I admire, learn, and implement. You’ve learned about the importance of confidence with Jake and being opportunistic with Matt. Now it’s time to move the spotlight to another. I raise my glass to a larger giant in my life, my hero. Here’s my story of our beginnings and what he brings to the table:
Faster than a speeding bullet…
More powerful than a locomotive…
Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…
Look up in the sky. It’s not a bird. It’s not a plane. It is, however, SUPERMAN!!!
As a kid, he held his ground while an F-4 tornado annihilated his house – marked as the greatest weather disaster in Twin Cities history. A few years later, he endured a house fire. Not longer after that, his parents divorced.
Despite overwhelming catastrophes trying to crush him in his early childhood, he went on to be on the Minnesota High School All-State teams in both basketball and baseball. He then made the leap to college and became enshrined in their basketball hall of fame. It was there, in college, where he met a woman.
A woman stunning in all facets. A woman he romanced. A woman he made his wife.
They settled down in the suburbs, had two kids (a daughter and a son), great jobs, and volunteered in their local church. Every Friday night he maintained a special family tradition: in one hand grasped a box of pizza with a movie rental balancing on top reserved for the kids and in the other hand held the largest bouquet of flowers he could find reserved for her. The rest of the nights he cooked. She baked.
Truly a cookie cutter American life.
That was until a tragic event in the middle of a frigid, winter night. She was hospitalized. Doctors performed multiple surgeries and then induced her in a coma. For months, he remained in the dark sitting at her bedside while in the ICU. When she finally awoke from the coma, she saw her man in shining armor holding her hand. He looked exhausted. She then saw the calendar posted on the wall in her room. A family tradition was coming due: the annual father-son fishing trip at the headwaters of the Mississippi. She implored him to take their son up – it was a custom and a great means to get out of the sterile, hospital air and show their son the ways of an outdoorsman.
See, the outdoors was where he came alive. He didn’t need the Audubon Bird Guide – he already knew every bird song. He knew every moth and butterfly by the fluttering of their wings. He knew every tree just by how they stood. He also knew a thing or two about fishing. It was this weekend where he could get away and apprentice his son along.
All was well. They caught a mess of fish, had great weather, and even saw a bald eagle scoop up a northern out of the pristine, northern Minnesota lake they were on. The last morning they elected to get one last run at fishing before heading home. While they were landing their third “gator” (northern pike) of the morning, a boat approached them. It was the guy that ran the bait shop and boat rental at the lake access who just received a phone call that needed his immediate attention. They packed up their fishing gear and drove back in. While his son was catching crayfish on the shore, he took the call that would change everything.
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The sound of footsteps crunched and crackled on the gravel off in the distance. It wasn’t a normal person’s stride; it was different – there were longer pauses between each crunching and crackling step. Clearly, this was the gait from someone much taller than your average Joe – clearly from a giant. I distinctly knew that pace – certainly, it was my father’s. “Dad! Dad! Dad! Look how big this crayfish is that I caught!” I spouted in pride while turning around, with a grin that spanned from ear to ear, to show him my big trophy. I’ll never forget what happened next.
Expecting a smile of pride from him, I was startled by my Paul Bunyan statured father’s complexion. He was flushed and looked demoralized. His clenched lips stammered to pry,
“She’s gone.”
The sensation is as if all the blood in your body was in the top of your head and, in the blink of an eye, the life that holds you together drains out of you through your feet like a ton of bricks. To provide some semblance of equilibrium, your stomach balloons up through your throat. Like a standard right cross-left hook combo thrown from a boxer that pommels someones side to side, this feeling goes vertical like if the Sears tower fell on you only to get an immediate upper cut from an Apollo Rocket.
Before I crumbled, he grabbed me in one fell swoop. Time stood still when he held me. In that moment, I came to the realization that the momma’s boy I was needed to step up and be like him who, much like the tornado that destroyed the house in his childhood, held his ground when his own house just got completely annihilated.
To be heroic.
Who wouldn’t, though? Many aspire, few follow through, for with great power comes great responsibility. As originally penned in Spiderman, my hero, despite giving all his effort, was powerless when trying to save the one he loved the most. Yet he carried on, for a hero cares more about others than their own well-being. They’re selfless to a fault.
Add a thoughtful romantic to this mix and what’s concocted is my father. The flowers and selfless gestures never ceased as he wooed and married another. To this day he still romances her and puts her first in everything he does.
This is my dad. The selfless quality grew more and more tangible to me once I came of age to hunt. I knew my dad could fish, but, MAN, the guy can hunt. I’ve hunted with a lengthy list of people – young and old. It makes no difference how thick the grouse woods are, nor tumultuous the conditions are on a lake for divers; no one shoots as well as him.
Yet despite near guaranteed success with his dead eye, he’d always let me shoot first at the incoming flock of ducks and pheasants taking flight. I will say, though, you better not miss or he’ll clean up.
To that end, I’ll never forget my setter’s first point over me. It was pheasant opener six years ago. My dad had his two goldens tromping around in front of him. Meanwhile, my one year old setter was well out ahead of us bounding with the speed and finesse of a gazelle. In an instant, she hit the brakes and froze like she had dry ice running through her veins. She held the same pose until I approached her pointing near a small scruff of briars. With the brush of my foot, a brash, bronze feathered rooster took to the air. It was the perfect wing and shot opportunity; I couldn’t blow this one. In excitement, I rushed my trusty 870 Wingmaster to my shoulder and cracked off a shot. The rooster kept flying; I miffed a chip shot.
My reaction was to expect a round getting fired off from my left (where my dad was). On the contrary, I quickly glanced over to see him patiently peering down the barrel of his gun. He knew I rushed it. More importantly he knew how significant it is for a man to bag the first bird that his new pup just worked so hard for. I turned my gaze back at the rooster that was ever increasing in flight speed and distance. In one steady motion I righted my mind (“chill, you’ve got this”), exhaled, and gave the boldly bronzed brute a volley of lead. In an instant, he folded and came falling to the ground up a bit from where my dad stood.
“Bout time! Mannn, you’re quicker than Wyatt Earp but you’d be sure to have a tombstone over yaa with that kind of accuracy on your first shot” he said as he bent down to pick up the pheasant. “He’s a beaut though! You got a bag we can stick him in?”
A bag you may ask? Well, yeah, my dad is also a taxidermist by hobby and a damn good one considering his small involvement with it. Regardless, he’s taken best of show in state competition.
It just so turns out to be that his favorite subject to work with are birds. This makes complete sense when you open up his storage cabinet. Inside you’ll see boxes of pictures. Guess how many boxes of pictures there are of my sister and me?
If you answered less than one, well then by golly you’re correct! The others that max out the remaining room in the cabinet are of birds – mostly of songbirds from his backyard feeder and ducks from ponds nearby. He admires the feathered, which is why he goes to great lengths to artistically make them look as good as they were in the wild when he gets his taxidermist hands on them – to romanticize their beauty.
There are no cutting corners with him. He’ll hand paint the bills/beaks, delicately make eyelids, and labor for hours with a tweezers to put each feather back in its proper place. He’s an artist.
Spend any time with him and just observe the man. A guy that towers over the rest of us has an eye for seeing beauty in even the smallest of things. On that note, I’ll never forget a late season duck hunt I had with him, Jake, and Ben five years ago.
A flock of four mallards in their handsome grey and green plumage were working our spread chuckling and chattering their way down to shooting range. In less than two seconds, all four folded and plopped on the fresh layer of ice in front of our blind that just began to form from the prior night. This late in the season every hunter’s eyes are drawn to the drake’s dapper, forest green heads hued with purple iridescence that marks these as royalty in the game bag. Oh and let’s not forget the unique black-green curled feathers that marks their “studship” on their tails.
My dad is always the one to retrieve downed birds; he needs to see them for himself – to admire them if you will. While Jake, Ben, and I were nearly foaming at the mouth waiting to view the brace of mallards in striking plumage, my dad remained out in the decoys looking at each in awe.
“YO pops! You coming in the blind or do you just want to keep looking like a tree in the dekes?”
Shaken out of the trance he was in, he plodded back in – still his eyes beaming. As he made his way into our blind, he voiced out of his smile that could span the Grand Canyon, “Maaaannn, loooook at the feet on these!!!!!”
….
Jake, Ben, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Let’s be honest, a duck’s feet may be their ugliest feature. Yet, to my dad, the bright red-orange ones that each of the drakes dawned were the most impressive. This is my dad, though.
He’s a legend on the hardwood and in the woods. He’s a hero for enduring the greatest storms that nature and life have thrown at him. He’s a romantic that kindles beauty in the biggest of hearts and in the most minuscule of things. These are reasons I admire him above all others.
Unshaken, he’ll always stand tall and demonstrate gallantry.
