James watched me from his perch, three stories above me as I trudged through the thorny underbrush. He was starting to tire. We had been hunting for a little over an hour and he was still rebuilding his stamina. We both were.
The sky was gray, and the wind was unpredictable. Sometimes the wind would kick up and send swirls of leaves and mist. I looked up into the bare branches of the oaks and ash, like scaffolding. James is up there, jumping from branch to branch and watching me hit bushes with a heavy stick. The point of that whacking is to scare a rabbit he can see from his high vantage and then…death from above.
Which means us falconers spend months trapping and training wild animals so we can pretend to be their hunting dogs. Sport of Kings? Maybe at one time, across oceans and landscapes to a time when royalty hired falconers to train soaring longwings to chase grouse. But here? In Jackson, NY? There are beagles doing what I do with more dignity.
I had come to the mountain both underdressed and overdressed. Overdressed in the sense my favorite black wool sweater was making my base layer stick to my skin as I hiked in the balmy fog. And underdressed because my legs felt clammy every time the wind blew my kilt. I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes a woman wants to wear a skirt alone in the woods.
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