I went to college at a sleepy wildlife school in Central New York. There, I learned how to identify, count, and even capture all manner of animals both aquatic and terrestrial. That training led to a rewarding, though not profitable, career in natural resources. While I was in school, I had the pleasure of meeting some of the best people I know.
It can be said that your friends from childhood are your friends by geography, but those that you make later in life are friends by choice, united by common interests. The people I met there have remained strong friends despite the distances between us growing over the years. One of those friends was a man named Jake that couldn’t stand to be indoors.
Jake had a wild streak a mile wide, and an infectious laugh he couldn’t contain. Whenever he tried to stifle his smile in an effort to be serious, that laugh snuck out, and everyone in the vicinity broke out in laughter. It interrupted many a lab and lecture.
Our classmates mostly disappeared over the weekend, but Jake’s and I’s drive was too far to go home for a couple of days. We spent many weekends together, fishing, hiking or camping on the thousands of acres of state land that surrounded the campus.
“We gotta go. I have to talk to the trees,” Jake would joke. We’d load my Jeep and head out to the wilds. We’d drink beer, camp, and talk to trees. We’d fish, catching smallmouth in some of the deep pools on the river.
Jake and I went our separate ways after college. He headed out West with $20 in his pocket and a dream; I took a job with the USDA here in New York. He eventually settled down and had a pair of kids; I did the same and ended up with a lovely wife and a young son that loves the outdoors as much as I do.
My wife and I aren’t religious, at least not in the traditional sense. We had put off questions about the afterlife until my wife’s bad ticker forced the issue. Despite being in her early 40s, she’s had a series of heart surgeries. We thought everything was under control after the ablation, but I got a call in the middle of the day with her frantic voice on the other end.
“Jay,” she said. “My heart beat is really bad right now. I’m on the way to the hospital, but I’ll be alright.”
“What if you’re not?” I asked.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you in the trees,” she said with a sudden calm.
Fortunately, she made it through that tough spot with the aid of a pacemaker that was installed later that day. Since then, we’ve had more than a few discussions about what happens when one of us passes, some practical and others more philosophical.
We’ve both always felt deeply connected to nature. Together, we decided that we should go back to the Earth when we passed — dust to dust right? She even asked for her remains to be placed in a root ball and buried when the time comes. I’ve always been drawn to the water, so I hope to be chained to a cinder block and sent down to feed the fish. We both hoped that we would be present for each other in the woods and waters we loved.
Jake passed recently in an ATV accident. I always thought he’d go out with his boots on, but I figured it would be battling wildfires, his chosen profession. News of his passing struck me harder than I expected, and I needed to go talk to trees.
I went up to the river we used to fish. I parked and prepared for the hike to one of Jake’s favorite holes; the one where he’d caught that big walleye. There were two ways to get there; a meandering path that offered an easy approach at the expense of length and a more direct route that involved thickets of buckthorn, multiflora rose, beggar’s tick and other thorny plants.
“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line,” Jake always said when faced with a hellacious bushwhack. I decided to take the direct route in Jake’s honor, my exposed legs absorbing the thorns in a cloak of blood.
Once I reached the pool, a kingfisher performed multiple flybys as if to greet me. Belted kingfishers were one of Jake’s favorite birds.
“I’ll belt you right in the kingfisher,” he exclaimed during one of our ornithology labs, with the whole class erupting in laughter.
As I stood there casting at that cliff face, I felt the blood from the tough hike drip down my legs. I watched the kingfisher perform its aerial ballet. I watched the turkey vultures soaring on the thermal above. I felt the tug of a healthy smallmouth.
I decided in that moment my wife and I were right. Here, in this place, I felt the memory of a man I hadn’t seen in years. He lived on in the flow of water slowly heading downstream, in the rocks that framed its path, and even in the thorny plants that tore my flesh. His legacy is carved into the landscape by the memories of those that knew him. And in the rustling of the falling leaves, I could almost hear his laughter.
