This is from opening week of the GA turkey season this year.

For some reason I got to thinking about a good friend of mine who is now

gone. James Kilgo. Some of you may have read his writings and some may

have even had the fortunate adventure of meeting Jim in real life.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-493

Jim was a great man and an inspiration to me thru my high school and early

work years. He was a throwback to southern gentlemen of times past.

Someone our great grandparents would have known.

Southern writers like him are few and far between these days. Shoot south-

erners like him are few and far between these days. Jeff Foxworthy has sto-

len our heritage and made us into rednecks and people to be pitied and

laughed at (sorry this is a soap box of mine!!!). Kilgo makes us proud to be

of the rural south. The glorious unreconstructed south of our childhood and

our dreams. The south seen only in glimpses today while floating a river,

turkey hunting in a river bottom, or visiting a small country dinner in the

middle of nowhere on a road that no longer is traveled by much of anyone.

In my imagination while sitting in a turkey blind this week I have relived the

conversations Jim and I had while playing with turkey calls and fly fishing at

a Christian retreat he attended and I was working. I was referred to by him

as Cohutta Jim. At the time I was taking people trout fishing up there all the

time. We'd smoke cigars and talk about the intimacy of turkey hunting or the

beauty of fly fishing. He once described someone walking up on you while

working a bird as almost as dire an intrusion as someone walking in on you

with your wife in an intimate embrace... And if this has ever happened to

you while hunting you know what he means.

He had a way to say things like that. One I wish daily I could capture and

cultivate. At once so clear and concise yet so completely poetic.

I guess I may have spent too much time in the woods alone this week. Qui-

etly waiting, watching and listening to well.... Not much this week.

Instead my constant companions this week have been my friends since passed on.

Jim is one of many that I miss while sitting in the woods in the morning.