A Prairie Thanksgiving

For people who enjoy the out-of-doors, the weeks before Thanksgiving are crucial. I have a brother in Ohio who suffers great anxiety about November weather. He is a golfer and a warm autumn insures that he gets another couple of weeks to play. In the years when that happens he is thankful indeed.

I am not a golfer. I’ve never owned a set of clubs, never belonged to a country club, never paid a greens fee, or waited in line to tee off. In November, I hope for frosty mornings and a smart northwest wind. I want sandhill cranes and Canada geese riding that wind high above my head. I want cold fingertips and long stretches of prairie surrounding me to the horizons. I need a horse and a pair of English setters casting back and forth a hundred yards ahead.

My brother plays golf seven months a year and, when the weather allows, he plays on Thanksgiving morning and treats himself to the afternoon feast as a sort of reward for a good round or a particularly excellent shot. He claims to enjoy it greatly, though he grumbles incessantly about his slice, or hook, or the way the greens are manicured. My field of play has no grounds keepers except a few hundred buffalo. They graze in a mosaic pattern that encourages different grasses to grow in patches. That way of moving over the land massages the soil and their grazing creates infinite edges between the grass types. The last remnants of green plants linger there in those edges, along with a few of the toughest insects. Those edges create a paradise for sharp tailed grouse. They can easily step from one micro-ecosystem to another. Where buffalo roam free, grouse are a near-certainty.

That is where the older of the two setters knows to run. Where as the younger bumbling puppy is over joyed to stumble upon a covey. The dogs are supposed to stop and point the instant they smell grouse, but the joyful puppy has a tough time doing anything but accelerate, and chases the grouse until they are out of sight. The older dog huffs in disgust. He wants me to shout my displeasure and fumble for the button on the training collar, but I can do nothing but throw my head back and laugh. I pull the horse up gently and wait for the puppy to figure out that he can’t catch them and he returns.         

I think about my brother in his golf cart and laugh again. He once told me that golf would be much more satisfying if it was played in an endless rough with dogs trained to find your ball and point it. The puppy is looping back to me with his tong flopping from left to right, nearly touching his shoulders. I wonder how interested he would be in hunting for golf balls. I imagine my brother stepping from his golf cart and selecting the perfect club to make the green and set himself up for the putt that will cinch his par and make his Thanksgiving dinner a roaring success. 

I send the old dog on and lean from the saddle to give the puppy a squirt of water from a plastic bottle. By the time I look up the old dog has found another covey and is standing, silhouetted against the powder blue horizon as if had been turned to stone. We lope to within twenty yards of him and I dismount and get the puppy stopped. I want him to watch this. I stroke his back and tell him that he’s a good dog, then slip the shotgun from the scabbard and pause before I walk forward. In front of me, invisible in the grass, is the accompaniment to our Buffalo roast for Thanksgiving dinner. I am in a dream and move forward. An all-encompassing thankfulness washes over me.

Happy Thanksgiving.