Retirement sparks second chance at outdoor adventure

I have always been fascinated by wildlife of every kind.

That includes snakes and bugs and lizards and toads, creatures that make a lot of people go “EEEK!” I examine and handle them like precious jewelry.

Seeing a deer or a turkey, or even a gopher or a mouse, are important moments in my day.

That is not to say I particularly like gophers and mice, but I must admit I admire anything that survives and thrives in the wild despite the encroaching civilization.

As a kid, the thrill of catching nightcrawlers or grasshoppers was greater for me than getting my first bike . The first time I went fishing, I was hooked for life.

I always felt my childhood got cut short when my father farmed me out for the summer to a friend with a ranch along an isolated section of the Snake River.

Miles from the closest town, I had a lot of time-consuming responsibilities for a 15-year-old.

Despite the plethora of wild things and the area’s potential for outdoor recreation, I spent the lion’s share of each day changing sprinklers, mending fences, thinning apricots and peaches and feeding cattle.

At dark, I fell exhausted into bed so I could be somewhat restored by my wake-up call at 4:30 the next morning.

Occasionally I was thrilled by the sight of a rattlesnake or a brood of pheasant chicks, but the summer passed me by without any significant interaction with the wildlife along the river.

After the infusion of girls into my life, weekends as well as summer vacations from school – both high school and in college – seemed to last only minutes. The girls, I didn’t count.

I spent a lot of time watching bad movies and in expensive coffee shops – time that would have been much better spent looking for fresh-water mussels or snatching crawdads from the river.

While still in college, I got married. And, once again the “let’s do something” request was often heard.

But she wasn’t particularly interested in hunting or fishing, didn’t care for most bugs and didn’t think much of mice and snakes.

There were some other important relation-sustaining things she didn’t like, either, and just about the time our kids were old enough to appreciate creepy crawlers and such, we decided that while we both had been searching for the perfect mate, neither of us had been successful.

Fast forward 30 years. My son had retired from the U.S. Coast Guard and he and his wife and their four children were living on the acreage next to mine.

Retired myself, I suddenly had lots of time on my hands. And and to my delight, I discovered my grandkids were not just about obnoxious cartoons, messy faces and loud shrieks.

My grandkids, it seemed, liked wild creatures-and-creepy crawlers as much as I did.

It had been over 45 years since I had built a cricket trap or turned over logs looking for salamanders, but I spent enjoyable hours doing just that.

I hadn’t snatched nightcrawlers at midnight with a flashlight and a coffee can for ages, but the kids and I went out often. And, once we used a spading fork to turn over a manure pile because they wanted to start a worm farm.

It had been a long time since I spent an afternoon feeding grasshoppers to garden spiders in their intricate webs.

I had almost forgotten what a marvel of engineering a web is.

With grandchildren looking over my shoulder, however, I rediscovered these exquisite, fragile spinnings. And to be honest, I relished the suspense as a spider approached its struggling prey.

In the evening, we watched the deer invade the meadow, and the turkeys, too – seven adults and about a gazillion little ones.

There seemed to be an abundance of garter and bull snakes one summer, and we captured, studied and then released over a dozen.

Some kids will cringe or even cry at the sight of a snake; my grandkids argued over who got to hold it first.

It made me proud.

Frogs were a never-ending source of amusement. We handled a lot of them, from large leopard frogs to the diminutive tree frogs that took sanctuary under the vinyl cover along the rim of my hot tub.

Once in a while, there was a tragic death necessitating an impromptu funeral – the baby robin that fell from the nest, the gopher the dogs brought in, or one of the aforementioned tree frogs that fell into the 104 degree hot tub.

But funerals are part of the cycle of life, and the kids seemed to have a healthy if short-lived reverence for the deceased.

Yes, my grandkids were observers of all things creepy, crawly, furry, feathered, slimy and scaly. And, I was thrilled that they would leave the television and video games to explore the Big Outside.

Their interest and enthusiasm and respect allowed me to pick up right where I left off many decades before – a second childhood. You you might want to try it yourself.

Contact Alan Liere at spokesmanliere@yahoo.com