Every year around this time, when hunting season is over, I find myself at major loose ends. I get used to going up to the mountains every other weekend, and my world revolves around that for at least three months. If I’m not actually there, I’m getting ready to go, or dealing with the aftermath, or scrambling to get my household chores done in half the time that I usually have. (I may become a little messier than normal during Fall. Shhhh, don’t tell.)

This year was different. On this weekend, the first non-hunting free weekend since September, I didn’t feel lost at all. I was way too busy to miss it.

Junior and I went out to Todd and Fran’s house on Saturday morning to pick up a bear hide he’d given us for a friend of mine. We admired their beautiful new house, and I particularly drooled over Fran’s acre-sized garden. Fran feeds a lot of people during the summer. It’s a little odd to see people that you know from one setting in another. They’re just as nice there as they are in the mountains, of course. I think an awful lot of them and I’d like to spend more time together during the year.

Then one of Junior’s buddies dropped a last-minute invite on us to go to a BBQ/birthday party/wagon ride, and would I like to do that instead of what we’d been planning? Hell yes, I would! His friend’s grandfather has a tradition of hitching up his draft mule team and giving wagon rides on the local Christmas Tree Lane, and Junior’s helped him out in previous years. That’s something that I’ve always been interested in, in the abstract, and I jumped at the chance to get to see it up close and personal.

Not to mention getting to meet some of his friends. I’m afraid I might have been a little too overwhelmed, walking into a party where everyone knew everyone else. I’m not yet so outgoing that I’m very good at that, and I think I was too quiet and may have made some of them nervous. I really liked his friends though, and I look forward to seeing more of them. They’re my sort of people and I’ll get to know them better if we all go camping together. Since we were on a friend-meeting roll, we also went out to see some more friends he’s talked about. I liked them too, and found them really easy to get along with.

Junior had a trapshooting event to go to on Sunday morning, and I’ve been wanting to see how that’s done. It sounded interesting on its own, but it’s even more since it’s so important to him. His folks do it too, so we all went to breakfast and spent the day out there, and I really liked it.

This particular event wasn’t a regular league shoot, with the teams all competing as a unit like they usually do. It was more of a fundraiser/fun event. You paid your money and signed up to shoot . Eight people shot per event. The winner got to pick out a frozen turkey or a ham. I was pretty surprised to be hauling home meat that night, but my Christmas turkey is taken care of. I could see trying this myself one of these days, as if I needed another expensive new hobby. As it is, I have something new to photograph, and men doing what they love has always been my favorite subject.

I liked the trapshooting community too. They reminded me very much of ropers; everyone more or less getting along, helping each other out, and with all sorts of skill levels having fun together. I met what had to be forty-leven more of his friends, and was privileged to meet his Grandma too, when she came out to see him. She used to shoot trap herself, and generally appears to be the sort of kick-ass woman that I’d like to be when I grow up. I see that I’ve got a high standard to aim for there. Or to point at; I guess they don’t so much aim with a shotgun as point it.

I feel so comfortable around him, but it’s not just him. His family makes me feel like I fit in too, and so do his friends. I know some of them would have been glad to see him happy with any old whoever that made him smile once in a while, and I feel lucky that it’s me. I sure must have done something right.