Baker's Branch

  I had only one rule when I was a kid and it got me into both a lot of trouble and into some of the most amazing experiences at the same time. My mother said she didn't care where I went all day, but I had better be home by dark. She pretty much turned me loose; a good thing because I hated staying indoors. I should've drowned two or three different times, but I didn’t. Here I am bothering you about it. I had an old fat tire Schwinn no gears bike with a wire basket on the front that held Dungeness crabs, blue crabs, crawdads, fish. or anything else I wanted to throw in there. The snakes, which I searched for constantly, I secreted into odd pockets of “stressed” blue jeans ahead their time fashion-wise. Mom loved me for that as it made her daily laundry chores a lot less mundane than they might otherwise been. A kid carousing the country daylight to dark in the same mode as me is apt to see things others don't. Once on a leave from his sea duties, my dad, the Captain, check...

  There’s not a better way I know to check the current population of cottontail rabbits than to walk about after a recent snow looking for “sign”. I did that a couple days back after our most recent light snow, about an inch, out here on Baker’s Branch. There, right in front of the carport where I park the truck, was a nice, clean set of cottontail tracks. So clear and sharp were they, they might’ve been chiseled there by a master artist working in hard, white clay, and perhaps they were; a reminder that not all things move about in daylight where we can observe and control them. There are years out here when so populous are the rabbits, and numerous their trails, that I cannot follow by separation in the snow one sinuous line of hop, hop, hopping's  from another. The tracks are everywhere, and so are the rabbits. This is not one of those years. Wildlife biologists know that rabbits, like grouse in the North Country, follow a cycle of wax and wane, that encompasses roughly eig...

  There are two types of clam chowder worth eating. One is made in New England, the other in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland and Virginia. My mother, who made both remarkably well, grew up a redneck girl way down yonder in Little Dixie, and by all rights and pretenses never should’ve had the opportunity to learn how to make either, but then the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and flip-flopped possibilities for lots of things, and the rest, as they say, is history. That war brought Mom and Dad together (so to speak), and she spent the rest of her life following dad’s naval career over half the world and absolutely every watery niche of the U.S.A. pulling me along with her. When we lived in New England, she learned how to make New England clam chowder. When we lived on the Chesapeake, she learned how to make Chesapeake chowder, a far, far greater thing than she had ever learned to cook before down yonder in Little Dixie. Of the two, I preferred Chesapeake chowder. It lacked the rich, ho...

  You can’t give away all your money to every conservation organization that comes floating down the polluted stream, but you can give away a little. Be picky, and choosy. Giving a little something to a favorite conservation charity is as sure a sign as I know that you have finally grown up. Kids don’t do it. I know some kids forty-five years old. When times were a little more flush out here on Baker’s Branch, and I was working five different salaried jobs, and sleeping four hours an evening (really), I gave yearly to the Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, and The National Rifle Association. Yes, the NRA: It works to conserve gun owners. I had organizational magazines piled ten feet high all over the house, and I read them when I wasn’t sleeping; sometimes when I was. I felt strongly by most of the issues favored by all of those organizations. I still do. As time went by, and I began to rely more and more on ...

  I found some the other day out in the Oklahoma Panhandle a little southeast of Guymon. I hauled a travel trailer out there and parked it in a RV park just west of town, set up, called Jack Test and his sons Bryon and Ben, put a pot of coffee on, and sat back to see what would happen. It was cold outside. While Pam was battling ice and trees crashing down all over the yard back home along the Arkansas, our weatherman in Amarillo was calling for blowing and drifting snow out yonder along the wild Beaver River. Kiowa country in the old days, Jedediah Smith died not far from here surrounded by Comanches back in 1836. I have always liked hunting country smoked up by the gun battles of history. I was about to the bottom of the first cup of coffee when Bryon called back with a set of plans to put some cock pheasants in the pan. Spike The Wonder Dog and I were to meet the Test boys and their dogs at Jack's upholstery shop on Fourth Street, and "caravan" outside of town to an am...

  It was noon, high noon, and Eddie Bostic of Sand Springs and Brian Johnson of Tulsa and I were fishing for sand bass in the back of a remote cove on the Arkansas River arm of Lake Keystone. Catching them, too, but slow and small. That started me fishing for Pam’s ham and cheese sandwich in my duffel. Where is it, where is it? It’s in here someplace. Ah, here it is; all zip-locked with chips and pear to boot. Good girl. Worth money, but not for sale. That first bite of sandwich directed my gaze upwards where automatically I began scanning a rock-ribbed bank with a nice six-point buck picking its way carefully, but quickly, down towards the water’s edge right in front of us maybe forty yards away from where we sat in Eddie’s boat, him working the trolling motor. “Look,” I said, mouthful of ham and cheese, “a buck. Right here at high noon. Jeeminy Christmas. I guarantee you the rut just started today. Right now, even. I have yet to see even the first bloody spot on the highway.” Tha...

  There really is an Indian Summer. It’s not on the calendar, but it exists just the same as all the other seasons. It’s a period of mild and hazy, dry, perfect weather sandwiched in between brutal summer and brutal winter. I used to know why it is called “Indian Summer,” but I couldn’t tell you now if you promised me a fistful of $20 bills. We’re in it right now, and I’ve been knocking the fish dead everywhere I go, making my hay while the Indian sun is shining. Nothing big, but lots of “pull harders”, line stretchers, that threaten to knock a rod out of your hands in spite of their size. I’ve been doing real well walking banks and wading windy points all over Keystone in the late afternoon for bass and sand bass, and fishing for “everything” when power is being generated below Keystone Dam into the Arkansas River, but the other day I talked Pam into putting the grandkids down long enough to take a four hour drive with me up I-44 to Lebanon, Missouri and Bennett Spring for the tro...