I guess you can teach old dogs new tricks. Again, I learned the hard way.

The latest caper began with a lazy, unfortunate fact-checking mistake in a cutline I wrote three weeks ago. Or perhaps it wasn’t laziness at all, but rather just an innocent, misguided assumption about an old, far-too-familiar topic. The problem is that above the misidentification in bold black print was a gruesome photo for all to see in living, gory color, the type of shot that pulls you in.

The good news is that as a result, I now know the difference between painted and wood turtles, shelled creatures native to our valley that look similar from above. However, when you flip a wood turtle over and examine the yellow-orange under-shell, you’ll discover unmistakable, black, D-shaped tabs spaced evenly around the outer rim.

The first hint that I had erred in identifying the mangled female turtle that had been crushed by a tractor mowing a Christmas-tree farm came from an old buddy I call “Killer,” not because he’s assaultive, but rather a dear bird-hunting pal who has consistently gotten the job done on many gun-toting adventures through various wet and tangled habitats. Plus, many years before getting to know him as a friend, I had seen him in action at a few smoky poker tables and, in those settings, he is indeed a ruthless assassin who ain’t bashful about it. If you don’t believe me, play with him sometime, or ask the real poker players from the old days at the Fireside or Carney’s or K-Street or you name it, where the fellas played for real money in back rooms, and dire consequences could destroy a man’s finances, quite unlike the benign $25 buy-in tourneys of the current pokerheroes.com era. But why ruffle feathers? Back to that unfortunate turtle that never got to bury her eggs at that favorite haunt of mine dubbed Sunken Meadow, which, incidentally, judging from the green, 1.5-liter, rooster-labeled wine bottle and fresh campfire ashes my dogs and I discovered on a rainy Monday morning, was the site of a little weekend mischief with which I am from distant memories quite familiar. Distant, yes, but I confess without shame or hesitation that they weren’t rare, some were better than others, and I have no regrets or guilt for sins of youth.

Anyway, my buddy wasn’t trying to bust my chops when he called to correct me the day that unfortunate turtle’s photo hit the street. He was, as a friend, just trying to set me straight.

“Has anyone called you yet about that turtle?” he asked in baritone. “It’s no painted turtle. That’s a wood turtle. I can tell from the bottom shell. Google it. You’ll see.”

When I searched “Massachusetts turtles,” I found two sites that showed photos of the various species native to our state but, because they showed the reptiles standing head-on with a side shot of their head and neck extended, I was unable to make the call and said so in last week’s column, describing the photos I had viewed as “inconclusive.” Given that conclusion resulting from what I admit was cursory “research,” I wrote that I’d trust my mother’s teachings and still thought I had seen a dead painted turtle. Well, all I can say now is that it wasn’t my mother’s fault at all. No, I’m sure the turtles she identified to me as a boy were indeed the more common painted turtles you’re apt to find along sluggish brooks and muddy ponds. It was me, and me alone, who misidentified what I had found dead and seen alive many times in my travels through Sunken Meadow. Yes, I am familiar with turtles — snappers, too — but had never studied them enough to know all species.

Well, the little mystery was finally solved by another reader and veritable turtle expert who wanted to put my little public dilemma to rest. A Greenfield woman by the name of Patricia Serrentino emailed me with a National Heritage attachment showing several shots of wood turtles. The final line of her email signature was the title “Wildlife Ecologist,” which was more than enough to authenticate her ruling for me.

On consecutive mornings, Tuesday and Wednesday, I passed two more wood turtles in that same field I circle daily, it now filled with the most pleasant sweet wild-rose aroma. I picked up both critters, one a little bigger than the other, turned them over and was immediately able to identify them by the black Ds along the outer rim of their lower shell. I also informed the hired hand still mowing to their locations. That way, he could keep his eyes open. Wood turtles are not endangered but are classified as a “species of special concern.” I know the man will avoid hitting them if he can.

Now I, soon to be 61, will forevermore know the difference between painted and wood turtles. Credit my buddy “Killer,” the poker assassin, woodsman and old trapper who’s always done it his way but is no fool. A straight shooter, the man’s a precious dying breed. Precisely why I call him friend.

I suppose it would have represented unavoidable carnage to most observers. Yes, just another pathetic victim of the modern, mechanized world. But to me, the mangled painted turtle said much more, some of it unprintable in old-fashioned news.

It’s spooky in a sense. I had been on the lookout recently for turtles I annually pass down by the river, the shelled creatures seeking sandy plateaus on which to bury their spring eggs. I discover the critters by watching the dogs, recognizing their cautious demeanor upon detecting a turtle in their rambunctious rambles. It seems to me that, for the most part over the past three or four springs, we’ve been dealing with the same four turtles — a medium-sized snapper down by the beaver pond on the south end, two painted turtles, one on the north end, the other along the east-side woods, and a big box turtle with its distinctive humped shell. I have over the years seen far fewer of the latter than its two aforementioned cousins. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps that other creature is just an oversized painted turtle. But I don’t think so.

Something interesting about the place where I annually intercept the spring turtle pilgrimage is the fertility of the floodplain. I have only once in 15 years witnessed the maybe 10-acre field underwater, the tips of only the tallest Christmas trees exposed in what appeared to be a small lake during Tropical Storm Irene a few years back. Afterwards, you would have thought from looking at the fine sandy silt left behind that it was barren but, believe me, it was anything but. The hayfield above, sitting on a plain some 15 feet higher and out of harm’s way during floods, is manured a couple of times a year yet always behind the fertile riverside meadow in clover and rye growth, proving once again that there is no substitute for natural fertilizer deposited by Mother Nature.

Because of the height and density of the grasses on that bottomland plain I walk, wet after rain and sticky humidity, I was reluctant to walk the dogs Monday morning and get my fresh jeans sopped to the knee. But I knew the dogs were rarin’ to go after breakfast, so I rolled up my pant legs to the knees, threw on a pair of Keen Keeks (my grandsons call theirs “water shoes”), and decided to pick my may through the seedy tangles. Then, to my delight, friend Mark Blanchard was down there mowing behind a smallish John Deere tractor that in some 30 years has been swamped only twice by Sunken Meadow floods. So it’s not like the place is often underwater, just enough to keep it more fertile than the plain above, which natives claim is composed of deep, rich “Hadley Loam.” At least I think Greenfield Meadows is blessed with Hadley Loam. Yes, I’m almost certain I’ve heard it referred to as such. But I’m not from Greenfield, just a temporary transplant from nearby South Deerfield, where I know Hadley Loam exists on both sides of the Connecticut. I also know there is no soil in god’s kingdom that grows better asparagus, which I go out of my way to purchase when the time is right. Ah, yes, then the native strawberries, no comparison in my mind to those sad Driscolls we’re forced to eat in the offseason. I wouldn’t be surprised if Isaac and Penny prefer those store-bought berries. That’s OK. To each their own. They can have them.

But, back to Sunken Meadow on Monday, my pal mowing as I kept the dogs distant, we took a quick buzz all the way around the piece, plowing through mostly high, wet, unmowed fields, flushing a pair of ducks back by the beaver pond before circling back, ascending the short ramp to the hayfields above, and heading for the waiting truck.

It was on the next morning, Tuesday, when I came across the mangled painted turtle, broken eggs strewn about, scavenging flies swarming and buzzing. I had walked mowed grass all the way around that first leg of my daily route and stopped at the back to talk with Mark about the fertility difference between the upper and lower levels. He was in agreement, said he wouldn’t have to mow the upper tree-farm rows for many weeks, and could actually let the job go till fall because the grass grows that much slower there. It didn’t surprise me. I see it with my own eyes, and happen to pay attention to that kind of stuff.

I wouldn’t have noticed the dead turtle had I walked my customary route but, instead, I cut the daily walk short, staying on mowed ground and circling back rather than swinging wide toward the beaver pond, through high, wet, uncut cover. Just before I reached a tall, handsome smooth-bark or pignut hickory, I noticed Lily sniffing at something, then saw the crushed turtle. When I yelled back to Mark that he’d killed it, he yelled back, “Yeah, I know. That was yesterday,” and my wheels started spinning, my mind jumping from one place to another, mimicking the flight of that green hummingbird I recently watched feeding on the red front-yard quince blossoms.

I thought about that turtle’s demise under the aggressive tire of a John Deere and thought that perhaps it was a better world when farmers cut hay with a scythe, maybe even later by horse-drawn contraptions. It got me thinking about “progress” and its many victims. When I got home and went to the mailbox, my newest Orion magazine awaited, in it a short, insightful Wendell Berry essay on his kind of simple farming, a literary gem accompanied by old-style sepia-toned photos showing stewards of small organic Hudson Valley farms who reject mechanized farming and pesticides and mass-production.

I read on and found an essay by a 20-year-veteran journalist who became an activist, bravely fled conventional routine and went off on his own to start a nonprofit focused on saving the earth from global warming. He wrote about camping in a parched Southwestern desert with his teenage son and lamenting what will soon become of this once viable arid land lived on by proud, respectful Indian tribes. From there, I found in a section of essays titled “Voyages” a gripping piece about ancient western-Kentucky Mound Builders, written by a descendant of that prehistoric Mississippian Culture that eventually became the displaced Chickasaw Tribe, driven west during “Old Hickory’s” vengeful reign to Oklahoma wastelands and tumbleweed.

Inspired by my reading, I grabbed the phone, dialed a young lady photographer I work with and asked if she was in the mood to take a ride and get a quick shot of my mangled turtle. The timing was right. She was just getting started, and thinking about potential photo opportunities. “Do me a favor,” I promised, “and I’ll take you for a little ride through the hills behind my house.” She came. We went.

The impetus was that pathetic smashed turtle, an image I just couldn’t shake. I wish that painted pregnant lady could have escaped the tractor wheel. Who knows? Had it done so, it may well have outlived me. I’m not sure how long turtles like that live but suspect they can survive for decades.

Yeah, yeah, I know what Isaac and Penny would probably say. They’d tell me to get over it. Sunken Meadow will do just fine without that turtle. Others will soon appear to replace her. Maybe so. But I still think that peaceful meadow was a better place with her presence.

I must be a little weird, I guess.

Another week, new impetus, birds still at the fore. That time of year, I guess: nesting season.

What crossed my daily path this time, on a bright, sunny, Wednesday morning, a cool, gentle, westerly breeze keeping my brow dry, was a pair of Canada geese and eight or 10 tiny, day-or-two-old, golden fuzzy goslings paddling up the Green River, the little ones — which I didn’t bother to count — vulnerable indeed. For all I know, they could have been eggs earlier that morning. That small.

I was first alerted to their presence from afar by distinctive, intermittent adult goose honks that to me suggested distress or warning as Chubby stood statuesque, straight and rigid, ears perked, head and nose high and alert. He barked. Not crazy, threatening barking. More like, “I see you over there t’other side the river, and if you don’t quit teasing me by honking and nervously swimming away, then I may just take chase.”

I was perhaps 80 yards away, just passing the beaver dam along the southern perimeter of the field, heading for the tall riverside apple tree in blossom that may someday slide into the river along with the escarpment lip on which it stands. That undercut bank where trout are known to lurk is slowly eroding during annual violent high-water acts and will in my lifetime likely topple into a raging river.

When Chubby’s barking began, I picked up the pace as Lily trotted out of the swamp below the beaver dam to join me. She stood momentarily in the lane along the woods and trotted enthusiastically toward her unruly son, joining him under the apple tree before circling left and threatening to drop down over the bank to further investigate the mouthy geese, still honking to keep the little ones on high alert and ready to kick it into high gear. On the scene looking down at the situation, I figured that the little ones weren’t yet nimble enough to escape, and I didn’t want to test my theory.

It’s during precarious situations precisely like that, when things can happen fast, that my Tri-Tronics collars are most useful. When I can see the dogs are ready to make a move I’m not comfortable with, I give them a soft, friendly, vocal “No,” then an audible buzz on their collars. That sound is a warning that can, when necessary, be backed up by a mild electric tickle, the strength of which is controlled by the remote dangling from a lanyard around my neck. The remote-control collars are invisible half-mile leashes, for my money, much better than any leash on the market, including those popular extendable/retractable contraptions with the sporty handles. My collars give the dogs far more freedom to roam, promoting free-wheeling exercise minus emergency trips to the vet for traumas of the road, porcupine dens or other misfortunes capable of striking suddenly and costing dearly during active daily rambles off the beaten path.

Anyway, we got through the situation without a glitch, I’ve described it the best I can and now, here I sit, pondering where to go next. Better still, where do I dare go because, regarding a familiar old subject that drew more response from an interested readership than any subject I have ever tackled over parts of four decades of filling this space, the damning evidence just keeps coming at me like the dam-break that unleashed Lake Hitchcock some 14,000 years ago. It’s incredible. No wonder there are those out there who want to silence me.

All I can say is that that kind of control usually only works temporarily. I’ll find a way to get the news out. So, to those of you out there supplying info, inquiring how things are going or where I’m headed next, I ask you to please be patient. I’m searching for a weakness in the paddock fence and am confident I’ll soon again be liberated to run unrestrained and uninhibited as we all should be allowed to ramble.



 Fish finder: On that same morning walk with the dogs that spawned my above segue about geese and beyond and now brings us to tired old nuts-and-bolt outdoor-column fodder, a river image leading down into Sunken Meadow sent my imagination awhirl with thoughts of years passed. Yes, it harkened back to the days of early awakenings, double-hauls and roll-casts, tight loops into difficult crosswinds and mending line on the water to create a proper dead-drift capable of attracting large, wary Deerfield River browns feeding in riffles before the birds sang.

The Green River was running freely but had receded some and cleared, a lot like my backyard brook that feeds it, and I must say it looked ripe for fishing where a long section of flat water dropped into a riffle and swung around a gentle bend to a deeper run where I knew trout were lurking. I can’t say it was impetus for going home, digging out one of my bamboo fly rods and catching a few sky pilots, just that when I look at a river this time of the year, or anytime for that matter, I still think like an angler, reading water and understanding how to catch fish that are surely there after several Valley District stockings that’ll end this week.

Anyway, no matter where you go, you’re going to find trout from the local hatcheries. So, if that’s what turns you on and proves your manhood, get out there and have a ball. The trucks are making their final “official” spring runs this week.

Meanwhile, the shad are running strong with Connecticut River temperatures at 60 degrees and climbing. By Wednesday morning, 161,000 shad had passed Holyoke and are now swimming somewhere between here and there. Those, too, I understand how to catch on fly tackle, and I even know how to make the willow-leaf lures that’ll out-produce any shad dart money can buy. Not only that, but I have hundreds of them piled on shelves in a big old Plano tackle box in the attic. The attraction is for me dull at this time in my life. Been there, done that. More pressing are two books that arrived in the same load of mail this morning — one a scholarly report on the Nipmuck Indians that was costly, the other a biography of French novelist Jean Giono, an artist first published in this country by the late, irascible Jimmy Cooney of Poplar Hill.

Lastly, three lonely Atlantic salmon have thus far been counted in the Connecticut River system. State and federal authorities warn that these fish are being tagged and monitored, and demand that any shad anglers who by accident catch them must promptly release them. So, even though salmon-restoration is over, salmon protection is not. Don’t worry fellas, it won’t be long before all salmon temptations in our rivers are gone forever.

Off I go … undaunted, still reading and hiking and talking and meeting new people, not hesitant to poke my nose into topics some officials think strongly should be hidden from public attention. Forget it, fellas. You’re barking up the wrong tree. In my soul, I’m still the same incorrigible teen that many remember from decades back. Yes, in fact I’m just warming up, and ain’t going away anytime soon; just observing, listening, learning and storing up mountains of material for a fair and furious crescendo that will spare no one.

That, friends, is a promise.

Birds are in my brain today as I sit down to hammer out this weekly chore. So, yes, it’s birds I plan to discuss while, of course, fighting off Satanic urges to meander off into the perilous terrain of sensitive topics, which it seems to me readers prefer.

As for birds, well, no, I honestly can’t blame this thought train on the mated pair of mallards Chubby flushed out of a cold, slim channel slithering between tall, verdant cattails painting the beaver-bog edge this morning. No, that fleeting, flying, whistling encounter, which happens often, was just a brief reminder of the many bird tales that have for some reason crossed my path this week, starting with a wood duck hen and her brood of perhaps 10 tiny ducklings I stopped to literally let cross the road in front of my truck on the way to work Monday evening. I was surprised to witness such a sight, thinking it a bit early for hatchlings during this cold, late spring as I watched their nervous, disoriented waddle across the road’s center stripes, over the gravel shoulder and into an old, overgrown Christmas Tree farm planted t’other side of the guardrails by a radiologist who some years ago split Down East.

Then, in rapid fashion came a phone call from an old hunting buddy curious about a turkey vanishing act that had endured for more than a week, and, from the same source, especially his surreal tale of a peculiar partridge that befriended and frankly bemused him during a mid-morning turkey hunt behind his friend’s barnyard on the way to Leyden. Accustomed to being startled by flushing partridge fleeing for cover in a burst of energy from the forest floor as he’s tiptoed through his haunts for better than 60 years, this bird, to his utter disbelief, walked right up to him as he sat concealed in a turkey stand. Then it lingered like a pet and proceeded to follow him around like a dunghill hen, flying across brooks to join him t’other side. When he finally decided to call it a day and backtrack to his truck, the bird followed him all the way back to within sight of the barnyard before spotting a fat barn feline in the double-rutted road and flying off with that familiar whooshing flash.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day that a partridge would follow me around in the woods like a pet,” my friend marveled. “I really believe I could have reached out and picked it up a few times when it got real close.”

Suspecting the bird had been raised, fed and tamed by his farmer friend or a neighbor, my friend asked his old National Guard pal if he was familiar with the partridge. He received a wry grin and quick response. Yes, he knew the bird well, said it had been around for some time and was remarkably tame, but no one to his knowledge had raised it. No, he figured it was just a freak of nature — one of those things that happens from time to time. And when I think of it, hasn’t Thoreau or Muir or some naturalist of that ilk written about unusual relationships with odd wild creatures? It seems to me I’ve read such accounts, though please don’t ask me to cite verse and line.

Regarding my buddy’s turkey dilemma, well, not being out there as an observer, it’s difficult to ascertain the reason for this reported disappearing act, though I can say from experience that there’s always a stage of the spring mating season when the action slows noticeably for hunters. My buddy’s initial question to me was, “Hey, when’s the last time you saw turkeys out in the fields you monitor?” And he was indeed onto something because, although I hadn’t really given it much thought, I realized that, yes, I had not seen in a week or more the turkeys I had been watching all spring. Such a phenomenon usually occurs when toms are content with the harems they’ve assembled while their loyal mates are busy tending and building nests full of eggs.

My buddy claims to have spoken to many experienced hunters and farmers, all of whom concur that they’re not seeing turkeys, either, and that they were seeing them regularly not long ago. So it appears that we’re experiencing that familiar part of the season when things slow down, which doesn’t mean no one is scoring. Trust me, there are random daily successes here and there in the Hampshire/Franklin hills, where hunters situated in the right place at the right time are bagging trophy longbeards that charge in with a vociferous fatal passion.

Then again, this time of year one must always beware of silent approaches by wise, wary gobblers that creep within range without a peep.

—

Fish finder: MassWildlife crews are working toward their Memorial Day trout-stocking crescendo, after which will likely come one surplus June stocking followed by a fall stocking that’ll signal the end. By now, there are trout everywhere they’re typically found, so don’t hesitate to dig that old rod out of the shed. … Meanwhile, things are picking up on the Connecticut River anadromous-fish-migration scene, with 51,634 American shad having been counted in the river system through Tuesday. With the river temperature in Holyoke at 55.4 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday, more than 36,000 shad were lifted at Holyoke, representing the best day so far, and it should only get better as the river temps rise to 60. … No Atlantic salmon to report yet. Who knows? We may get a few stragglers. Maybe not. Only time will tell. By now, with the once-aggressive restoration project defunct, does it really matter? The time was not and is not right for salmon restoration on New England’s largest river. Sad but true. Had the authorities done their homework or listened to the doctoral-level naysayers who warned them from the start that the project was not viable, they could have saved taxpayers tens, if not hundreds of millions. Too late now. Chalk it up as water over the dam.

—

Outgoing: Affable Elna Castonguay — a cheerful, humble, friendly, committed and loyal public servant with whom I’ve dealt for many years in her post as MassWildlife’s Western District administrative assistant — retires today, the lucky dog. With an old-fashioned enthusiasm for her job, Elna is a dying breed, the likes of whom are most often replaced by those who think they’re overqualified or just plain “too good” for their job, making life difficult for people like me seeking information in a timely fashion. All I can say is that in more than 35 years covering this beat, there were none better than Elna, thus the praise. Elna will be missed. Trust me.

Observations. They jolt me, jostle me, spin my wheels awhirl, often propelling me off to the most unusual and unlikely places, real and imagined.

With devilish spring air tickling my lungs, there has been much visual impetus this past week as the sympathy cards, emails and phone calls keep pouring in after the tragic passing of son Ryan, 28, too young to die. I’m in touch with the boy daily — be it applying the Old Spice deodorant stick he scoffed from me weeks back but now is back on the bathroom shelf from which he lifted it; storing away his music and movie collections; or finding a place for a random pole lamp or bedside night stand we found for his apartment along the way. Yes, now Rynie has been sadly relegated to the status of fifth-great-grandfather Deacon Thomas Sanderson of Whately, an 18th and 19th century tanner/cordwainer whose ghostly pine, six-drawer cobbler’s chestful of handmade tools graces the west wall of my kitchen, often stirring thoughts of who the man was and what he stood for while carving out a rich Pioneer Valley legacy.

But, returning to observations, let me begin with one that maybe I should ignore out of fear that some state wildlife Ph.D will take exception and threaten me for leaving the reservation and reporting something he or she would rather keep the lid on. Because, you see, what I saw noontime Friday with my own eyes during a sunny Connecticut River-side ride with a friend and neighbor was something you’re not supposed to see anymore. What we saw that day in a verdant, shin-high rye field fronting a field overtaken by wild roses were two adult pheasants, cock and hen, out for a midday courtship stroll through the bottomland meadow. By now the hen has likely built or is putting the finishing touches on her nest, which will soon be full of eggs that’ll hopefully escape nighttime thieves and hatch a brood of five or eight or maybe even a dozen chicks that neighbors will be pleased to monitor in their travels.

Imagine that! Just like the old days when, as a boy growing up in South Deerfield, two or three hens and their chicks would pass through our yard daily in June, picking at bugs and fresh clover near the peony beds and under the scabby cherry fruit tree that ultimately succumbed to those ugly, black, bulbous scabs. Those were the days when the state owned and operated pheasant farms in Wilbraham, Ayer, Sandwich and perhaps another location I don’t recall, raising the birds it stocked for an annual fall cocks-only hunting season that lasted into the early 1980s, at which time the powers that be decided it would be cheaper to close the farms, lift the ban on shooting hens and buy its birds outright from private vendors. They said the new system was incorporated because, due to development, the habitat could no longer support self-sustaining pockets of native-pheasant covert, which I doubted then and still doubt, though I must admit those two pheasants I saw Friday were a rare sight indeed. I do not recall the last time I saw a mated pair of spring pheasants. But that’s not because there isn’t enough Connecticut Valley habitat to support scattered wild reproduction. It’s because few today survive the put-and-take season, plus, with trapping outlawed and birds of prey protected, pheasants have more predators to deal with than they did when I was a boy.

When state-owned game farms raised their own birds for stocking, they would release surplus brood-stock hens in the summer and fall, and it didn’t take many survivors from the cocks-only fall season to find springtime mates and produce a significant population of supplemental “wild” birds contributing to the overall numbers available for hunting season. You can’t convince me that this is not still possible today in deep, dense coverts like Fuller’s Swamp or Hopewell Swamp or the old Hatfield Oxbow. But I won’t belabor the idea because it ain’t happening. The old days of hunting random, wild trophy birds with stunning adult plumage and long tail feathers has sadly become a put-and-take hunt of young birds that seldom last long when pitted against expert gun dogs and wing-shooters.

Enough of that. It’s a dead issue. But how about fiddleheads, which, distracted by the death of Rynie, I just couldn’t motivate myself to pick last week. Not that it’s news to devoted harvesters of the tender seasonal morsels, but my oh my how those ostrich ferns shoot up once the warm weather and rains arrive. A couple of weeks ago I checked a couple of patches I pass daily and they were still clinging tight to the ground and invisible from afar. Last week I knew they were ready, and now those same tight little clumps you look for are light-green, shin-high ferns sticking out like monuments among random fresh growth coloring the marshy floor. Oh well, I have savored fresh local asparagus and will soon be cutting my rhubarb, so not all’s lost.

Other than that, not much happening worth mentioning, other than spring turkey season, trout stocking and anadromous fish migrating slowly up a cold, turbulent Connecticut River. If you haven’t bagged your spring gobbler yet, don’t fret, there’s still plenty of time. As for shad, well, yes, they’re trickling through Holyoke now, but the run should start accelerating with warm days and night predicted. Most of all, what is needed is bright, sunny days and warm nights. That’ll raise river temps into the 60s in no time and ignite a shad surge. Finally, regarding annual spring trout-stocking, there is nowhere that’s traditionally stocked that hasn’t by now received more than one stocking from Valley or Western District crews. So get out there if that’s what plugs you in.

As for me, well, fishing doesn’t cut it anymore. Been there, done that. So it’s back to hunting — not for turkeys, no, but rather rock shelters, ancient ceremonial waterfalls, Indian villages, indigenous paths; that and new “revisionist” twists published to wipe away tired old misconceptions forcefully perpetrated and protected by a legion of lame “historians” fueled by patriotism, racism and biased closed-mindedness, not fact and open, honest scholarship.

Enough said.

Off I go.

Small table-top urns, two of them, showed up recently on my cluttered library’s desk — one blue, the other gold, matching my late sons’ eyes.

My wife placed the decorative little canisters there, probably as a shrine. I don’t know, haven’t asked and won’t. In fact, I never even mentioned the eye-color coordination. A coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.

Who knows? Maybe someday my ashes will wind up in a similar setting. Though I can’t say it matters much to me. I live for the present, which in my world ends with death. When it comes, they can do with my ashes as they wish. Throw them to the wind, if they will, snort them through a silver straw or stir them into a cup of coffee or tuna casserole. Their choice, totally irrelevant to me.

I do feel compelled to express how deeply I’ve been touched by the outpouring of support following the recent death of Ryan, the son who died a day short of his 29th birthday, three-plus years after his older brother. Frankly, the community response has been stunning, exceeding anything I could have imagined, with literally hundreds of cards, emails, phone calls and impromptu conversations in the public square, all of it heartfelt and genuine.

Never comfortable as an object of sympathy, I’ve graciously accepted it from friends and family, old teammates and sporting pals, and those I’ve met in my 35-year travels compiling information for this space. Also chiming in were those who’ve ridden the roads and walked by my side along wooded trails far off the beaten path, old lovers and classmates, even a man who once popped up from behind my parked car on the street late at night outside a seedy bar and knocked me cold with one well-placed shot in the dark to my left cheek. We got over it, became friends, a dimple’s still there as a reminder, and here I sit, still going strong, building strength for my final flurry.

Although all the sympathetic support is appreciated, I must admit that what’s touched me deepest is the response from many people I’ve never met and probably never will — all of them readers. These folks have read me for four decades, watched me grow, and feel like friends. Nothing could be more rewarding for a man in my line of work, taught long ago by a late journalistic visionary that: “If all you make in this business is friends, you’re not doing your job!” That and, “If you write it well, even people who strongly disagree will read you.” Well, I have not made only friends, but believe I’ve made more of them than enemies, for which I am grateful.

As for departed son Rynie, well, what can I say? When his aorta split in September and he heard terrifying late-night gurgling deep in his chest, he finally gave in and called the ambulance that lugged him to Franklin Medical Center. There, after his grave condition was diagnosed, doctors gave him a slim chance of surviving the trip to Baystate/Springfield for emergency open-heart surgery. As they wheeled him out of the emergency room off Sanderson Street, he issued only one request. It was, “Please don’t call my parents.” I guess he wanted to spare us the pain after witnessing with us his dear brother’s final breath in a Burlington, Vt., hospital, following 76 horrid days in ICU, the result of errors and complications from the same surgery he himself was facing.

Rynie was strong enough to survive the long, delicate wee-hour surgery and, remarkably, returned home in less than two weeks. Then he appeared headed back to his previous existence before it all came unraveled. Though privately tormented by looming mortality he could never ignore, he didn’t talk much about it. But when I left an opening during intimate private conversation, he did reiterate many times that he didn’t want to die in a hospital like Gary. Then, with the end near, he almost pulled it off by passing to another place seated in his favorite green La-Z-Boy recliner. He knew he was sick and in rapid decline but told nary a soul.

Not even the visiting nurse detected anything during her final visit, likely less than 24 hours before Rynie slipped into the unresponsive state my wife found him in on the morning of April 6. Nine days later, after briefly rebounding with the help of powerhouse medicine I think he should have been spared, Rynie expired from an insidious, systemic staph infection that had fouled his prosthetic valve and heart, rendering him “terminal.” He seemed to be recovering, but we were told that neither surgery nor antibiotics could cure him.

Reviewing his Facebook site last week, I stumbled upon a short, profound muse he posted on March 15, a month to the day before his death. He must have sensed something running amuck internally and during a quiet, pensive moment wrote: “Everybody dies, but not everybody lives!!!”

That was the Rynie I knew and loved — a brave, defiant and sensitive young man his harshest critics never knew because he refused to let them in. Most of those folks will probably never understand what he meant by that philosophical Facebook muse or, for that matter, ascend to within a faint whiff of the wildflowers in bloom along the lip of the lofty spiritual plane from which he pulled it.

Take it from his dad: There was much more than met the eye with Rynie. That’s why, as parents, we supported him through good times and bad. Life wasn’t fair to my tall, handsome, hazel-eyed boy, who lived and died with a tender heart and the unbridled spirit of a wild stallion.

He did it his way, and in the end died with dignity where he didn’t want to be.