The foliage is aflame, a chill’s in the air and woodstoves are belching smoke as white pines shed their long needles in blustery winds, depositing roadside mounds for mulch gatherers buttoning down their blueberry patches for winter. Yes, hunting season is upon us. Time to get my shotgun ready.

Actually, I’ve been at the chore since midday Saturday, when I returned home from the gunsmith with my favorite upland-bird-hunting gun, a petite Jean Breuil 16-gauge side-by-side made by skilled French craftsmen in Saint Etienne before World War II. Of the classic English straight-stock style, the quick-pointing double is a joy to carry, fast and effective, fits like a lambskin glove during reflexive mounts to my left shoulder. It’s that familiar raise, point, swing and fire; always ready to drop my forefinger onto the back trigger for long-range shots. Oh, how I love those double triggers, much quicker than the cumbersome modern barrel-selectors built into the safeties of single-trigger doubles. And it’ll all start Saturday, if I decide to brave the maddening opening-day crowds. But first I must focus on gun
preparation, waxing it over and over again, cleaning it, oiling it, labors of love.

I’m sure there are those who’ll argue that there are better ways to polish a sporting weapon. To heck with them. I’m locked in, a creature of habit who favors paste-wax protection. For me, it requires the application and buffing of several thin coats. It’s a tedious process that could be accomplished in a day, I suppose. But, for me, the routine takes many days.

My choice. I want to give the wax a chance to harden between applications, ultimately producing a hard protective sheen that brings luster to the wood and barrels, which glisten from afar like a diamond in dry, unruly, sun-splashed coverts, pollen dust tickling your nostrils, irritating your throat.

My choice of wax is Boston Polish, the same stuff I use on antique furniture and wooden floors. The white wax also works. Once a good base is down, a quick touch-up maintains the finish after a robust day afield, wet or dry, windy or calm, cold or warm. My waxing procedure can’t differ much from that of others. I use old, velvety cotton sheets, the softer the better, torn into 12-inch squares, folded in half, then half again. A pile of six rags rests underneath my wax can on a shelf above my interior cellar stairs. A seventh wax-saturated rag stays sealed inside the can.

Before I start polishing, I warm the can next to the woodstove for an hour or more to soften the application rag before spreading a thin coat over the entire gun. Then I stand the weapon against the wall for five or ten minutes to dry before polishing. Sometimes I leave the final coat on overnight, then buff it out in the morning and repeat the process several times during the day, increasing the shine and protection with each layer. Wax breaks down fast with hand contact or rain, but you can stay ahead of decomposition with due diligence.

Once the wax dries and the polishing begins, I start rubbing back and forth or up and down with the oldest, tackiest sheets, one in each hand, cleaning any accumulation of wax from grooves and crevices, blowing away any wax dust that may appear. Occasionally, I’ll even wrap the cloth around a straight screwdriver blade to lightly remove stubborn wax along the inner rib between the barrels. I begin step two of the three-step polishing process with the third and fourth cloths, softer and less tacky, then finish with the fifth and sixth buffing cloths, softer and cleaner still. At the end of each season, I throw out the application rag in the can and replace it with the tackiest of my six polishing cloths, replacing that cloth on the shelf with a fresh one from the pantry rag bag. It works for me, a routine perfected over the years, which are adding up fast.

Once my gun is polished to my satisfaction, I clean the inner barrels, dragging a freshly coated oil bob through on the final withdrawal. I then place tiny drops of oil here and there, working them into moving parts for protective lubrication. That final step will probably occur Friday night. Then the weapon will be ready for many joyful romps through gnarly autumn wetlands.

I’m finally supplied with appropriate shotgun shells as well. Two cases of 2½-inch No. 6’s and 7’s from RST Classic Shotshell Co. arrived at my door Tuesday night. I used to shoot Gamebores in my sweet 16 and have been searching for a suitable replacement ever since my Maine supplier went out of business several years ago. I discovered RSTs in the Ruffed Grouse Society’s quarterly magazine. I was pleased to find the Spring 2010 edition at Burlington, Vt.’s, Fletcher-Allen hospital. I figure the magazine was left there by a gentleman hunter from the cardiac-surgery team.

I do hope that unexpected discovery won’t be the only good news that comes my way out of Fletcher-Allen. Twenty-eight-year-old son Gary, father of two young boys, is still there, fighting for his life, slowly making gains in the ICU, recuperating from 17 brutal hours of complicated, Sept. 24 open-heart surgery gone bad. It was no one’s fault, just happened. They couldn’t stop the surgical bleeding, needed 40 units of blood, some arriving by emergency helicopter, a slice of horrible  luck. They say he’s now on a long road to recovery; too long and windy for me.

This medical family nightmare relegates my gun-polishing chores to minuscule indeed, a tiny pebble on the ocean floor. Call the gun work a welcome diversion, a distraction from a bleak, haunting reality. I’ve said it before and will say it again: There is no pain like reality. That, I have always believed. Now I’m living it, grappling with it, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, reduced to a pitiful, bony tramp pleading for a whiff of Nature’s mercy. Lying to yourself does no good, just compounds matters.

I don’t intend to beg and weep and wail, or tear out my hair. And I will not pray.

For what? To whom?

No, I’ll just hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and pin foreboding gloom’s throat to my woodshed wall, maybe even extract a clear dab of pure optimism.

Why succumb to despair when hope is alive?

My faith is my son, his will to live and carry on.

I have for days been watching small, bright-yellow, black-walnut leaves falling to the neighbor’s lawn across the street as orange-tinged maple leaves waltz like airborne breast feathers to my backyard. Early? Yes. At least two weeks ahead of  last fall, which I remember well.

Premature crunchy leaves underfoot should come as no surprise. Hasn’t everything else since springtime been two weeks or more early? Why should foliage be different? Likely, by the time leaf-peepers clog our highways and byways for Columbus Day Weekend’s traditional “peak,” most of the maples will be nude, the oaks turning red and bronze, more typical of November. Such is life, a higher power finessing the strings, answering to no one, beyond our control.

North of here, on the road to Burlington, Vt., Route 89, the colors were advanced, actually nearing peak, though still short of it, muted, many soft yellows, some orange, little red. At least that’s what I recall. Maybe there was some red. Can’t remember. It was tough to focus on scenery. I was distracted, in an emotional fog, cranial wheels spinning, traveling on a serious matter, no joy ride, a family emergency that’s consumed and debilitated me. Twenty-eight-year-old son Gary II, father of two young boys, is fighting for his life following open-heart-surgery complications in Burlington, Vt. I didn’t think he was going to make it at 2 a.m. Saturday, blood pouring out of his chest-drainage tubes, life-support his only hope. His will to live is strong. I am now more confident. Still, all I can do is hope, a day at a time. He’s critical but stable, a long road to recovery, longer for him than me. For sure, life can be unfair. This is a salient example, medicine and nature’s mercy his bedside allies.

Nothing is so painful as reality. The courageous face it head on. Others curl into a pathetic, clammy, fetal ball: fear paralysis. Gary took it like a man. I’m proud of him. “Don’t cry,” he told his terrified lover as nurses wheeled him toward the double operating-room doors, “I’m going to come through this. I’m meditating, am focused, know what I’m facing, what I must do to survive.”

He did know, had been through open-heart surgery at age 15 to repair an aortic aneurysm. Before he passed through those O.R. doors at 7:30 a.m. Friday, he started to sing a song he wrote, one he has sung many times in coffeehouses from Montpelier to Burlington. I don’t know its name or lyrics, but I’ve heard him sing it, have even seen his 4-year-old son sing along, so I know the gist, “I love my family, I love my life,” repeated in the refrain. This from a young man who’s known good times and bad, sober and impaired, healthy and sick, happy and sad. Recent years had been productive and happy until this sledgehammer wallop from the heavens. Or was it hell? All I know is that it came out of nowhere. A sucker shot at the supper table. Intense chest and back pain. A registered nurse, he knew it was serious, probably a heart attack. He was wrong, though not far off.

What he, in fact, experienced was an aortic dissection, excruciating pain, could have burst at any moment and quickly flushed his life. No time for medics or ambulances. Miraculously, it didn’t happen. He made it to one hospital, then another, where they hooked him up to tubes and bags and monitors, stabilized him, and ultimately tried to heal him with medicine, buy time for inevitable surgery, potentially weeks, months, even years away. But no. The day before his expected release, a CAT Scan revealed that the aortic arc exiting his heart had bulged to a frightening diameter, requiring emergency surgery to repair it with a synthetic replacement.

All I can now do is hope. I don’t pray. Refuse. To whom? But that’s just me. I view life as a sequence of choices, some crucial, others trivial, all mine. In the old days, tragedy victims believed they were being punished for immoral actions by them or someone close to them, mischief an unforgiving God did not approve of. I have never accepted that. Not for a second. I cannot believe in a vindictive, hateful creator. If revenge is what God’s about, I would rather fight him, openly defy him, slug him in the mouth, beat him with a club, sit on his chest and pummel him into the bedrock. I want no part of anyone, man or myth, who’d inflict physical pain and suffering as a control mechanism. That’s why I have always preferred to remain a flock of one, picking my way through treacherous terrain, alone, alert, resolute, perceptive and reflective whenever my world spirals toward potential disaster.

I have faith that Gary will again play his guitar and sing a happy tune, maybe about beating tall odds, being independent, playing the game his way and winning. No annoying rules and regs, no boring, self-absorbed authority figure to spew tired slogans, prod him toward deeply trodden paths a blind man could follow. Some prefer to blaze their own trails, and pay the price. They, if any, are to me worthy of praise and worship.

Perhaps it’s a fault, but I drop to my knees in prayer for no one. It has many times been said that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Here, Gary is the fruit resting in high grass warming the roots like a bear’s dense winter coat. I believe we’ll beat this challenge, move on and thumb our noses at the genuflecters, the reciters, the jeweled choir singing others’ words in perfect harmony, more than willing to offer insulting pity to those who’ve lost their way.

I say to them, followers all: follow us if you dare. You may learn a lesson that isn’t etched in stone, taught in parables, memorized in hymn or prayer or patriotic pledge. Some prefer to write their own songs, cut fresh paths to old places, grooming profound borders along the way that sprout courage, intellect and independence. Such a route can bring confidence, humility, self-esteem, dignity and, above all, wisdom, the greatest of all gifts. Without it, life is dull and meaningless. Not worth living.

Not for Gary.

I finally got the whole story from the horse’s mouth — a bear tale that comes at an opportune time, bear season less than two weeks away.

I would probably still be in the dark had not a green military helicopter disturbed my peaceful Upper Meadows neighborhood last week. Word has it that a State Police task force uprooted 400 mature marijuana plants before they were done scouring the swamp and hillside behind my neighbor’s home. I can’t confirm their take; only witnessed a couple of plants being lugged off myself; but my neighbor told me they got 400; could have been four for all I know. Quite a scene it was, a well-coordinated harvest-time sting by an eastern Massachusetts team, five or six of them, all specialists, nondescript, just T-shirts and pants, some Army fatigues, others plain jeans: a gotcha-Greenfield moment.

But back to the bear tale, one my friend and neighbor had tried to share a few weeks ago, following a backyard incident. When I started pecking at my keyboard during our telephone conversation, he hesitated, said he hadn’t seen the bear himself. He was just repeating what he’d been told by the man he hired to clean up extensive damage left by a June storm that passed through and wreaked Meadows havoc. Now I have the whole story, one illustrating the adaptability of wild creatures, however large, that have learned to hide out in thickly settled, food-rich neighborhoods. Such beasts feed when the time is right, lay back when it’s not. This demonstrates that.

The devastating summer storm that flattened large trees in my neighborhood did quite a number on my friend’s yard. Several tall pines were broken in half, some destroying ornamental plantings below, one crunching the ridge of his garage roof, another damaging his parked Chevy Blazer. What a mess! But that’s ancient history now; time for a more recent event, one that occurred last Thursday morning.

While sitting and talking to my next-door neighbor in his screened porch, you would have thought there was a manhunt under way; terrorists maybe. A low-flying helicopter was circling my immediate neighborhood, making tight loops apparently concentrated on my friend’s property three doors down. Finally, when the focus became obvious, I called my neighbor on a cell phone to see what was going on. Was he under attack? Suspicion? Did he need help? He just chuckled, said he was fine; I ought to come over a take a look; quite an operation.

I hung up the phone and took a short walk, helicopter circling above, finding my friend way out back. He was talking to a female neighbor and a few men I didn’t recognize, two of whom were there to remove trees and debris left behind by the June storm. I learned the identity of the third man when he turned to walk toward the swamp and woods line, where the helicopter was hovering, men scurrying about on a mission. The stacked writing across the back of his Navy blue T-shirt said it all: Massachusetts State Police. (Ooops, wish I hadn’t made some wisecrack about our tax dollars being put to good use. Oh, well, I guess I’m famous for gaffes like that, though rarer in recent years.).

Anyway, within seconds of the cop’s departure, a member of his party exited the cattails 100 or more yards north of us carrying a marijuana plant as tall as him. He was traveling east toward an unseen vehicle. The plant was reportedly one of many pinpointed by an infrared heat-seeking device aimed at the ground by cops from the airborne helicopter.

As we observed the sting and chatted, the leader of the tree crew approached to join the conversation, which quickly changed to bears. My friend wanted the tree man to tell me his tale. We were standing within spitting distance of the lair from which it had fled, and my friend thought it high time for me to hear the story.

Perhaps 20 feet to our right stood the massive, eight-foot-high stump of what had been a triple weeping willow blown down during the storm, leaving behind a mess that had to be professionally cleared. Three massive leaders had fallen onto the yard, the bottom ends laying in a thick clump of brush surrounding the stump, pointing straight as a preacher to the heavens. On the hot early-August afternoon of the bear siting, the laborers had already cleared most of the mess from the lawn, stacking logs for someone who had promised to take them, piling the smaller branches over to the side. That done, the foreman decided to tackle the three thick, heavy logs resting in the tangled stump clump, but first he had to develop a safe strategy.

After assessing the task at hand and deciding on his first step, he squeezed into the small oval jungle — chainsaw in hand, tall stump towering over him — and looked for enough elbow room to start the saw. That’s when he spotted something big, black, motionless and close that didn’t alarm him at first, assuming it was a stump or log or chunk of upturned turf. But when he fired-up the saw, the motionless black object sprang to its feet and bolted across the field to the woods. It was a big, black, burly bear, probably a solitary male that had lain in its lair under the fallen willows through a morning of commotion, close encounters with human beings and chainsaws, and never budged. The animal must have been feeding on the two nearby apple trees full of fragrant, succulent fruit, and it wasn’t about to leave unless absolutely necessary.

Later, the tree man, a hunter who has killed bears, went out to the apple trees along the swamp’s edge for closer inspection. Curious, he discovered another bruins’ den hollowed out beneath the fruit tree that was partially uprooted and laying semi-horizontal. Further investigation revealed plenty of bear sign: scat, claw marks and broken branches on both trees. Favorable feasting for the big bruin.

The opportunistic beast has probably been back to those apples many times over the past three weeks, will likely continue returning until all the fruit is devoured, picking its spots, people or no people.

Whether bi- or quadruped, they find a way.