Fall is just a wonderful time to be alive

Fall is the polishing time. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. For some reason, the spirit that guides us made our experiences in fall the peak of the year’s efforts.

For animals, both wild and domestic, it is the rut, the breeding time. The bulls and bucks have never looked better. Their antlers and horns are hardened into weapons and sharpened against trees. Their bodies are lean and aggressive and they tend to lose all good sense.

I don’t think for a minute that it is just a calendar coincidence that fall is when most festivals, fairs and exhibitions occur. Because by the time fall rolls around, we have jars of jelly ready for competition. The hunters have been practicing out at the range for weeks now and are ready to take the rifle or the bow into the woods to see how their skills measure up to those who they’d love to subdivide and put in the freezer.

The kids are all back in school now, where they can try out all the new crazy stunts on their friends that they learned from their uncles last summer. It is a holy, blessed time for that. Family tradition, you know.

The uncles have been polishing these stunts for decades now and have them down to a science. And the older folks may not be building cabins or climbing mountains after elk as much these days, but there is a lot to be said for just passing along stories to the youngsters. And it works out fairly well when we realize that ‘most everyone who could challenge the truth of one of those stories has already graciously died on us.

Fall is just a wonderful time to be alive.

Brought to you by the new paperback edition of ‘Ol’ Max Evans: the First Thousand Years.’ From UNMPress. com.