I was reading the opinion of one of our leading economists the other day and he said that his feelings about the future ranged back and forth between misery and despair.
Well, since I've never heard a cheerful economist--I doubt if there is one--I wasn't too troubled. My personal savings run to shotguns, fly rods, duck boats, outdoor books, and some good prints. I figure if you can shoot it, fish with it, or float around in it, you're solvent. I want my bank account to read about the same when I leave this world as it did when I came into it: $00.00. My wife thinks I may hit that figure prematurely, or even quicker than that, if I don't learn a little better pace. Well, she's part economist by nature, so I tend to avoid pessimistic discussions with her.
The way I like to look at it is simpler, obvious, and provable. Take fly rods. They've about doubled in price while I was waiting for things to level off a little. My mistake. Shotguns? If I had followed my instincts I'd be well set--but I couldn't convince the Chairman. Now and then I remind her about the Model 21 Winchesters I could have (and should have, and would have, except for being broke) picked up for $300 or so, the Westley Richards Best Grade for $700, or the $1,200 Purdey. All, alas, have gone to more solvent fellows--and I wish them all well.
Other folks I know are in the shuffle between misery and despair about time, or lack of it. They never seem to get away--they're too busy making a lot of money for stuff they can't afford anyway. And if you don't have the time to use it, what good is it? A man has to stop every so often and say to himself: "Wait just a minute--where are you running off to, and why?" And if he's got any sense, he ought to be honest a few times before his relatives wheel him off out of the way.
It's smart of you to keep your outgo a little less than what's coming in, I agree to that. But I've decided I've passed too many rising trout simply by being too busy. I've driven by too many birdy covers on the way to work and have seen Saturday turn up pouring rain--all my life; up until now.
I don't really regret not ever having a best-grade gun or the ultimate trout rod, but I do talk to myself now and then about the times when I should have gone out and used what I have--but didn't. As I look back, I don't think it would have made too much difference in the long run if I had--it wouldn't with most of us, except that it might have diminished our silly attitude of self-importance, small loss that, at best. We ought to stop a minute and take a long look ahead--as far as we're able. Are we waiting too long to do the things we work so hard for? Will they all be there when the day comes that we can say, "I'm ready now!"?
Well, no one has given us a written guarantee, that I know for sure. I'm pretty strong on the theory that the future is tomorrow--and if I can, I'll go fishing, or fool with my dog, or do something else that pleasures me and offers me something sweet to remember.
There's another side to each one of us--a part of our being that we know well enough but keep more or less secret from everyone else. The one I live with is still a kid, barefoot and straw-hatted in summer; a kid who always knew where the best perch holes were, when the bass were off the nests, where the owls had their roost, and which brush piles were most likely to hold rabbits. He was a kid who found wonder and excitement almost beyond comprehension in the trying-out of a new plug, or getting fitted for a new pair of hip boots.
He's basically a good and simple boy--a tendency to daydream notwithstanding. And I think the time has come to really try and keep the promises I made to him too many years ago; to give the farm-boy wishes some chance of coming true. There were dreams of serpentining northern rivers to be covered by canoe, and of high-country pack trips for rocking-chair muleys and park-statue elk. And there were visions of blue-water marlin, Florida bass, and Texas quail; flights of pintails and an anxious Lab; flocks of honkers sliding down blindward on the notes of a goose call.
Although the boy is ageless, the man he lives inside of feels the winter coming on; he believes that, in a certain way, a hope worked for is a debt that should be paid. Some of them already have been--but by no means all. It's a long list, and I only wish we'd started at it somewhat sooner.
Dreams have a way of begetting dreams, however, and the promises kept lead to promises to come. The rivers turn out to be endless, and the singing of the evening coveys from somewhere we have yet to go will keep us coming back--and will stay the touch of time from the other side of us that keeps us company when an outsider, wrongly, thinks we are alone.
Time is not really money, as the more industrious of our world would have us follow as a creed. You can't put it away, not a single hour, and come back and use it when the situation seems more right. My most important savings have been memories of the things I did, sometimes with tortured conscience, when there were more "worthwhile" occupations that more dutiful men than I would have tended. But somehow the regrets have faded while the pleasure stays with me even now.
I'm learning not to feel guilty, and it isn't all that easy, about going fishing on Tuesday or spending a Thursday in a duck blind. But it helps a lot to know that both I and the kid that travels with me prefer our savings to be the silver of a summer brook and the gold of a late-autumn bird cover.
This story originally appeared in Hill Country by Gene Hill. Copyright 1974-78 Gene A. Hill. All rights reserved.