Quality Time in the Outdoors Can’t be Measured

I don’t keep a log of time spent together, of course. “Quality time” can’t be measured in minutes or hours. Matters of the heart are like that, y’know.

And yet, we all try to make things fun when planning fishing trips to bluegill holes or hunting trips to turkey woods. Neither place is great for impulsive, last-minute decisions. Forgetting a tackle box or box of shotgun shells can ruin everything.

It’s better to plan, pack, and practice regularly. Just ask Vince Lombardi, who once said: “Perfection is unattainable because we’re human. But in striving for perfection we’ll achieve excellence.”

If nothing else, our loved ones come to recognize good efforts, even if it’s long after we’re gone. These days, I’m also trying to recognize emerging talents and interests in my grandkids.

One grandson is already skilled with a spinning rod, and another seems destined for competitive fishing, given how intently he keeps score. And the third grandson? He’s an intense fish-cleaner who won’t surrender his homemade fish-scaling tool until it’s pried from his stinky, slimy, scale-coated fingers. Shout-out to Steve Rinella’s book “Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars” for helping the grandkids build fish-scalers with bottle caps.

Eddie Morse, age 6, scrapes away the small scales of a yellow perch while helping his grandfather, Patrick Durkin, clean their catch after a morning of fishing in 2023.

And my granddaughters? They all show delight in fishing, but mostly when fish bite consistently. Patience puzzles them, and they doubt waiting brings much good.

Meanwhile, I’m vigilant about time and attention. Maybe I’m still healing the parenting scars from when my young daughters’ interests didn’t always match mine.

Such things can get complicated and go places you never expect. For instance, a quarter-century ago, I learned to show tolerance, not shock, when casual acquaintances asked, “Are you a single parent?” Or “Is Leah your only child?”

The first question, of course, was a polite way of asking if I was divorced. Nope. That never happened. True, my wife often glances sidelong at me, as if asking herself, “What was I thinking?” But nearly 44 years into our marriage, she still stands behind her lapse in youthful judgment.

And no, Leah, then a young teen, isn’t an only child. She has two sisters who were two and three grades behind her in school.

So, why did folks ask such questions? It’s a hazard of inserting family into my writing. Depending on which articles get posted or published and which ones get read or ignored, readers form partial pictures. Some then use intuition, imagination, and assumption to fill holes—real or imagined—in my stories.

Decades ago, for example, a magazine printed a fictional article about a divorced man who took his daughter, “Katie,” deer hunting. The writer didn’t send a photo to illustrate the article, so the editor looked through his files and chose a “mood” photo of mine that showed Leah and me approaching a doe I shot.

Some folks recognized us. In fact, several readers who knew me casually assumed I was divorced. They further assumed I wrote the article under a pen name. One by one, they quietly told me how much they liked the article and expressed how nice it was that I still spent “quality time” with my daughter, presumably an “only child” from a broken home.

When hearing sundry sympathies in their voice, I tried not to embarrass them while correcting their creativity.

Other folks expressed worse worries, which I took more seriously. They wondered if I “favored” Leah at the expense of Elle and Karsyn. My reflex was to wonder about their own parenting priorities, but if they weren’t sounding rude, I explained that Leah simply shared many of my interests. I doubted Elle and Karsyn felt neglected. They just didn’t crave pre-dawn trips to lakes and woods, especially in cold weather. In fact, Leah’s sisters seemed to appreciate her taking one for the team.

Still, no matter what I said, some folks will forever assume I favored Leah. We can’t do much about false assumptions, given their origins are more about others than us.

Besides, no one outside your home or mine truly knows how families parcel their affection. I just remind myself how I used to explain the intricacies of mixing flour, butter, milk, and dried venison to make a “chipped-beef” breakfast dish, aka SOS. Yes, such cooking lessons are minor, but you never know which snapshots will become lifelong memories.

You also can’t reliably predict when shared moments outdoors will end, pause or restart. Leah seldom got home to hunt or fish during her 14 years in the Navy, but now we hunt deer, chase turkeys, and go fishing whenever her work schedule and family obligations mesh with mine.

Elle, meanwhile, passed Wisconsin’s gun safety/hunter education course decades ago as a teenager, but never took up hunting. She now fishes and baits hooks—both her own and her kids’—but I doubt she’ll take up hunting. If her interests change, she has my number.

Likewise, Karsyn and I eventually found outdoor activities to share, but she also inherited my love of books, spelling, and story-telling. In fact, when fishing as a child, her hands held books 90% of the time and a rod-and-reel the rest. Even when fish were flopping on the boat’s deck while everyone else jabbered excitedly, Karsyn often studied her watch and asked when we’d head in. She fishes more seriously now, and not just to impress her kids.

Meanwhile, I feel fortunate. All three daughters like venison, crave elk meat, and never pass up summer fish fries. They also encourage their kids to shoot archery and help with backyard and neighborhood cleanups in spring.

Some people think shared big events best secure a warm spot in children’s hearts. I believe a routine of small, possibly trivial, shared moments do the job more reliably. Either way, such gifts never lose their value.

Feature image via the author: Connor Switzer, left, and his cousin, Eddie Morse, react after teaming up to catch a smallmouth bass with their grandfather, Patrick Durkin, while fishing together in 2021.