I am back from deer camp for another workweek. But come Friday, I will be back up north again. What is the allure? It is the fresh perspective a man gets from deer camp. The typical scenerio for most fellows who head to deer camp is as follows:

1. Get up early and drive to an isolated, rather desolate, run-down shack of some sort... the deer camp.

2. Meet up with other like-minded friends and relatives and friend's and relative's older sons at the deer camp.

3. Leave behind the typical day-to-day responsibilities, grumblings, and tasks.

4. Focus on camaraderie, and memorable times.

5. Play poker, eat massive amounts of unhealthy but delicious food, smoke without the "evil eye" of others being focused upon you, drink till you feel just right.... then drink a little more.

6. Talk until wee hours of the morning, being careful to not tip over the empty fifths of scotch and whisky when you finally get up from sitting at the kitchen table with the others.

7. Sleep on a rickety cot for an hour or two before suiting up in hunter orange and taking to the field with a thermos of coffee and your tobacco of choice (pipe for me of course)..... and don't forget your rifle and deer hunting liscense.

8. Sit out in the brisk 25 degree air, waiting for the sun to peak over the horizon, drink coffee, smoke your pipe, see the sunrise. Take a brief snooze.

9. Unless you REALLY, REALLY like venison, pretend like you don't see the spikehorn buck a few hundred yards away in your peripherial vision.

10. Enjoy the next few hours until you feel too cold. Then return to deer camp and repeat starting with step 2.

It is a beautiful experience. It helps me to find my philosophical center, and feel a part of a much larger and more profound world than I am typically.