Country Living

I tried to rub the ache out of my shoulder wondering its source, messing with the kids, that one lap across the swimming pool?  Later in the morning my daughter emerged at breakfast asking if I had gun bruises as well.  It wasn’t the breast stroke, but the recoil from the previous day’s shoot that gave me an upper body Charlie horse.

I always admired the people who lived by the natural calendar.  Who understood it was Springtime by the way the birds acted or the trees bloomed.  Following a day of shooting it was a fly fishing guide who told me the song of the swallows overhead suggested Spring was here.  The way the toads jumped or the goose trying to mate with the swan, all suggested, much more than the mild temperatures, what was happening in the world around us.

Our cab driver called Hampshire the 45-minute community because it’s 45 minutes to London, 45 minutes to Heathrow, 45 minutes to Stansted.  It’s part commuter and part pure country.   One of the hotel workers told us he had only been to London 3 times in his 76 years.  Once was to see Phantom of the Opera.

While the ability to tell the time of year by the mating calls of the swallows was impressive, and the ability to shoot two clay pigeons as they zig zagged across the sky was skillful, it was the ability to tame the Falcons in a feat of patience and bravery that outpaced them both.

The world of Falconry seems pre-historic.  These birds of prey have no loyalty, no love or companionship.  The women are bigger than the men and mating occurs when the women accept the male’s advances, rejection is met with death.  There is a purity to the relationship.  You cannot cajole these animals, you cannot buy their affection and if you cross them they will never trust you or anybody else again. You cannot impose your will on them and these characteristics made them popular among the Kings in the Middle Ages.  Living in a world of sycophants they appreciated the obstinacies and rules of nature by which the falcons lived.  According to our Falconer, “God has not created a faster or more perfect creature for flight” as they are clocked at 210 miles per hour, making them the fastest creature alive.

(As an aside, at the Hampshire Estate I did feel like an extra on Downton Abbey)

The Falcons soared, the fish bit on everybody’s line, but daddy’s, and the pigeons tried to out-run our gunshots.  I hoped part of the impression on the children would be a realization of life and death in the country and how these activities were once survival, not sport.  If you couldn’t fish or shoot, you wouldn't eat.  But as with most things, education came from an unlikely source. It was the side pocket of the Falconer that drew in the children.

We were asked to hold a piece of yellow fluff to feed the Falcon after she approached on call.  But soon one of the children noticed how the Falconer would pull the yellow from his satchel before handing it to us.  When they realized his pockets were full of dead baby chicks that he picked apart, the kids were grossed out, the parents closed their eyes, and my wife was happy to be a vegetarian.

After shooting pigeons and catching trout, after lectures about the risks of life in the country, it was the cracking baby chicken legs that finally led to the lesson of the weekend: “Dad, I am NEVER eating chicken nuggets again.”