It was just like we talked yesterday

About a hundred yards from where we parked the Subaru we jumped across a waterway that was narrow and shallow, slow running water reduced in volume, because of the approaching autumn. About a quarter mile away from the first stream Dan starts to gain some distance on me. Dan and I, with Teddie darting through the scrub, have bushwhacked through undergrowth coming up to our arm pits, through clumps of hardwood saplings, and weaved among the sporadic spruce and the thick bushes blocking our path to cross another small creek. After losing sight of him, he calls out to me, paused on the other side of this more substantial creek to say to me, “take the bridge.” I reach out to grab a small branch to support myself, step out onto a foul weather felled log straddling the stream and suddenly “snap”. The next thing I know I'm slipping off the log, the euphemistic bridge. I'm falling into the water. I know it. Try as I might to cling to the green branches from the surrounding scrub, my fingers slip off the thin smooth barked brushwood; it is slow motion into the water. As I go down, I twist my body in an effort to keep my camera dry and so I don't ruin my Stetson hat. The result: I’m well soaked from the waist down. The good news is, my camera is fine, my hat’s fine, and my wallet is just a little wet and my pride is only a slightly damaged.

In 1989 Dan Woodcock was working on a pipeline job in upstate Michigan. During a lull, he asked his supervisor if he could go look at a piece of land. Dan was searching for a place to build a deer blind. So, he bushwhacked in about a half a mile crossing two or three creeks and found this perfect place. A place that had two lanes of fire; he could easily see the signs of deer all around. Dan says the first year all he saw were female deer. He stuck it out, based on the recommendation of a friend, who said that where the doe are the bucks will follow. Apparently, that was the case, because Dan has been going back to that deer blind with his five sons ever since. Subsequently, he built another blind close by. He can only take two people at a time, one of which doesn't get to hunt, because there are only two blinds. Dan used to call me from the deer blind during November. Every year he made some small improvements to it and I joked that soon he would have the Four Seasons edition of a high-end deer blind. I always wanted to see that blind. Today, after all this time, I saw it. I sat in it. I looked down the shooting lanes and imagined the hunt. Very cool beans.

The stream that I fell in was about a quarter of a mile from where we parked my car. After I pulled myself out of the water we walked another quarter of a mile, much of it along a deer trail, beautifully narrow and well-traveled by small groups of deer. We paused in a deer yard where deer will winter, seeking protection from the north country Michigan cold winds and the snow. Finally, we ended up bushwhacking again until we came upon his deer blind. The blind had taken some damage from animals and from the year’s severe weather, but he’ll be back soon to fix it up for rifle season. All in all, we are about half a mile from the car.

Earlier in the day, Dan put several dozen chicken wings in his industrial size and super capacity smoker. He told me he can put twenty-four whole chickens in there at one time. In the morning, before we went to go check on his deer blind, he put a prime rib and all those chicken wings in and closed the door, then he affixed a makeshift chimney to exhaust the smoke. After he put the meat in the smoker we hopped in my car and went to erect his bow stand at an entirely different location from the place where his deer blind is situated. He uses his bow in one forest and his rifle in another. He hauled the bow stand about a quarter of a mile back into the woods. He's been using this spot to bow hunt for about five years. Just as we were getting ready to forge into the woods, a gentleman in a pickup truck stopped to talk to us. He knew Dan, but he didn't know his name. Dan’s sons know this man’s sons, and Dan knows his boys, too. The fellow was concerned that Dan would be hunting and his boys, both adults, might accidently come across Dan’s path. Dan told him that he's been hunting there for five seasons and that he had not seen the man's sons in the woods during those past years. That seemed to put the man’s mind at ease and he apologized for bothering us and Dan grabbed his bow stand and we walked back into the woods. Once the bow stand was hung we went back to Dan's house to check on those chicken wings. We barely made it out of his outbuilding, because we couldn’t stop eating those wings fresh from the smoker. Once we finished lunch we went back out into the woods to find the deer blind and to keep my appointment with the bridge that threw me into the water.

I have known Dan Woodcock since 4th grade. He is a lifelong friend. One of my dearest and certainly my oldest friends. Our friendship really cemented in high school. Unfortunately, we both spent more time out of the school then we did in the school. Our grades reflected our disinterest in high school.

Dan can build our fix anything. He built the smoker from scratch. Using parts from all kinds of equipment and appliances that had ceased to be of any other use. He had a vision, then he started collecting parts. He designed it, built it, and has been using it for several years to great effect. There was a time when Dan’s home building company that he founded in Manton, a firm that employed several local men, working side-by-side with Dan, built twenty homes each year. He was known for being able to build a home in eight weeks from start to finish, breaking ground on a new home every two weeks during the building season. Then the cold economic winds of 2009 cleared the board of many small construction firms and the banks squeezed all the money out of the system. Things were hardscrabble for builders everywhere. Dan was no exception.

Dan and Vicki have been married for 37 years. Their boys are grown, created careers for themselves, and have moved on. We stayed up late that first night looking at photos, retelling our stories for Vickie, and getting to know each other once more. We partied in one of Dan’s outbuilding for hours, playing with Teddie as she tugged on a soft rubber frisbee, pulling Vickie across the concrete in an old office chair, spinning her around and around while she laughed with delight. I have always held that no matter how much time elapses between our contact, usually once each year right after New Year’s Day; as soon as we start to talk to each other it’s almost as though we pick up right where we left off.

Although we speak to each other on the phone annually, until Friday, the last time I saw Dan was in Colorado twenty-four years ago. Dan, our friend Neil, who is married to my sister Michele, and I hiked up into the Rocky Mountains. We camped at 9,000 feet on a peninsula that had water running along both sides of it. Dan packed in steak, baking potatoes, and corn up the trail to the site, a several mile hike on a path that made a series switchback turns through the mountains. Because, by order of the forest service, we were not allowed to make a fire due to the dry conditions, Dan used a tiny little grill he packed with him to bank the small fire between some rocks. He placed the corn and the potatoes into the embers to cook and made each of us a steak, one at a time. Now that's high living.

In my early twenties, Dan invited me up to his home in Kalkaska, Michigan. He had a use for me in mind; although, he didn't tell me about it beforehand. He put me in a pair of overalls and we spent two days driving around in his black pickup truck, in the dead of winter, spotting dead timber out in the forest. When he saw the right tree, we got out of that truck and we waded through thigh high snow to haul a chain saw to that piece of timber. Dan wielded the saw and quickly cut the wood into sections and we schlepped it on our shoulders back to the truck. Once the bed was full we returned to his house and unloaded the logs that would soon become cord wood. Times were hard for him and he was selling fire wood. He certainly got his money’s worth out of me that weekend those many years ago.

After Dawn's mother, Kathleen, and I split up Dan moved in with me into our little house in Detroit. One night a couple of drunks, with a mind to do some house robbery, broke into the back of the house. Dan yelled, I'm getting my gun, what he was really grabbing were his num-chuks, but before he could get there, those two knuckleheads ran out the back of the house. They'd already broken into my van, parked on the street out front, and one of them, for whatever reason, took his leather jacket off while they were rifling through my things and he left it on my front seat. I ended up getting a nice Honda leather out of the deal.

It was tough saying goodbye to Dan. I love him like a brother and I fear that I may never see him again. Sure, we will talk on the phone every year, but I don’t think I have another twenty-four years left to me. What I do know is that I’m likely to get some more smoked venison jerky mailed to Vermont before I see Dan and Vickie Woodcock again. Hint. Hint.