The reason for the feeling that comes over me this time of year perhaps can be explained either by cosmic forces or psychic conditioning.
I am younger in autumn; I move more quickly, perhaps even show an extra burst of brain activity, although there may be no instrument to measure such small transfers. I am given to the sort of excited jabbering that brings quizzical stares from onlookers. I suffer a shortage of patience. My attention often wanders from work.
Some more attuned to physics than psychology might lay it off to the seasonal chilling of temperature, the sort of analysis-by-thermometer that social anthropologists use to explain the underachievement of tropical cultures and why folks from Georgia talk funny.
Cooler weather, the theory goes, is the archenemy of lethargy. It makes us more lively, more inclined to scurry about, if for no other reason than to keep warm. But there is more to it than that, at least where it pertains to those of us who lean passionately toward the out of doors.
Obviously, none of these learned people know the least little thing about outdoor pursuits, certainly not all the multiple facets involved with hunting and fishing in Colorado. Putting it more simply, there are more things going on than there is time to do them.
Which is why I must hurry.
Part of it has to do with natural beauty, always a moving target linked to season and circumstance. These events arrive more suddenly in the fall, and retreat just as rapidly – ephemeral happenings such as leaves turning or the continental movement of songbirds. Blink and we miss it for another 12 months.
Mostly it’s about action. Chasing after things. Planning all those once-a-year activities so we can squeeze as much from the calendar as time, and obligation, allows.
The list sometimes takes my breath away: several varieties of waterfowl, upland game birds large and small, high and low. Then there are the more fleeting hunt periods for antelope, deer, elk, moose, sheep. All gone too soon.
Some claim it is the calendar, an artificial concoction, that triggers this affinity for the chase. But I find it in every visit to the changing forest – the pungent scent signals from decaying vegetation that for me is as distinctly tied to the pursuit of elk as a certain floral fragrance suggests my mother’s perfume.
Since fishing never goes away, there is that autumnal tug between rod and gun. Trout embark on a feeding frenzy to lay on fat for the winter. Scaly creatures such as walleye, bass, pike and wiper now are free from the torpor of summer’s heat, eager to come out and play.
Then there is the matter of time itself, a quicksilver gauge that under these circumstances has more to do with the lengthening of opportunities than the shortening of days.
Caught up in it all, we often forget where we are or, more to the point, where convention tells us we should be. We daydream at work, overlook appointments, neglect loved ones.
Autocratic timepieces are stripped of their command. We now march to the orders of game and fish.
As Paul Quinnett put it in his book “Darwin’s Bass,” time, space and fishing run together like braids in a river.
“Having become one, time no longer fits into the neat little package in which we keep it for civilization’s sake,” Quinnett wrote.
And those of us who hunt and fish are the better off for it.
