Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two. The Teacher, Kids
Speaker 1: and Outdoors Part two, I'm passing the platter with a
Speaker 1: second helping of kids and outdoors. It doesn't take a
Speaker 1: lot to get them interested, and you can be a
Speaker 1: minimalist or go all in with what your activities are.
Speaker 1: The key is to just find something that they'll enjoy
Speaker 1: and benefit from and get gone doing it. I've got
Speaker 1: some good information to share, so y'all get easy and
Speaker 1: listen up. But first, I'm going to tell you a story.
Speaker 1: Since we're talking about kids and outdoors, I figured i'd
Speaker 1: share this one. Tams boys, my nephews, were fourteen and eleven,
Speaker 1: and wanted to go coon hunt with me. One night
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. I was hunting with a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: David Boudra, the same friend that I was hunting with
Speaker 1: a few months later when we saw a mountain lion
Speaker 1: less than two miles from where this incident took place. Now,
Speaker 1: that was the second sighting of my existence and David's first,
Speaker 1: but that's another story. David and I had driven down
Speaker 1: to Thames to hunt the bottoms behind his house. David
Speaker 1: lived an hour away and our work schedules only allowed
Speaker 1: us to hunt a few times a month, so we
Speaker 1: tried to take advantage of every opportunity. I didn't have
Speaker 1: a dog then, and as long as it wasn't you
Speaker 1: could just about bet we were going to go. Had
Speaker 1: we been able to hunt more, I'm sure we wouldn't
Speaker 1: have gone that night because the wind was howling like crazy,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't raining, so we were going. We stopped
Speaker 1: at Thams to visit before we cut loose, and to
Speaker 1: get Matthew and Will. Nothing could have made me happier.
Speaker 1: These two hooligans were and are just like my own sons,
Speaker 1: and taking them with me was going to be just
Speaker 1: as much fun for me as it was going to
Speaker 1: be fun for them, or so I thought. The boys
Speaker 1: each had a couple of decailed flashlights, and it didn't
Speaker 1: really matter. David and I had good lights and they
Speaker 1: were going to be walking with us anyway, So we
Speaker 1: left the house on foot, walked across the gravel road
Speaker 1: next to the creek. David cut his old hound Spot loose.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before he struck in trailing a coon. Now,
Speaker 1: normally we would have just stood our ground and listened
Speaker 1: for him to tree, and then casually walked to him,
Speaker 1: picking our way through the easiest route through the woods,
Speaker 1: but the wind was blowing so hard that we basically
Speaker 1: had to go with the dog to hear him. Some
Speaker 1: of the walking was good, but some of it was
Speaker 1: pretty rough. Briars and old tree tops from where some
Speaker 1: timber had been cut a year or so before made
Speaker 1: it challenging for me and David, much more so for
Speaker 1: Matthew and Will. Add the fact that we were having
Speaker 1: to move at a pretty good pace to keep up
Speaker 1: with Spot greatly enhanced the degree of difficulty. We followed
Speaker 1: that hound for the better part of an hour, back
Speaker 1: and forth and in circles, trying to keep up with him.
Speaker 1: We'd walked close to a mile by then, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: but we hadn't moved off the same twenty acres that
Speaker 1: we started out on. Spot eventually made a tree in there,
Speaker 1: and when we got to it we saw a big
Speaker 1: old hole in it. We looked and looked for that coon,
Speaker 1: but never found it, figuring that he was in a den,
Speaker 1: which is where we all should have been. The wind
Speaker 1: hadn't let up an inch. David pulled Spot off that tree.
Speaker 1: He recast him, and he didn't go far before opening
Speaker 1: up on a track and took off like he was
Speaker 1: late for work. We were fixing up to get the
Speaker 1: wagon hitch to keep up with him, and there was
Speaker 1: no way those boys were gonna be able to go.
Speaker 1: So I made a decision, a decision at the time
Speaker 1: I thought was right and best for all involved. To
Speaker 1: this day I regretted. I walked to a little gap
Speaker 1: in the trees and pointed to the night light that
Speaker 1: was visible and what I thought would be an easy
Speaker 1: five minute walk, and I said something to the fact that, boys,
Speaker 1: there's your house. Me and David are going to have
Speaker 1: to chase this dog, and y'all ain't gonna be able
Speaker 1: to keep up. You can get home from here, can't you.
Speaker 1: I wished a million times over the years that I
Speaker 1: had that opportunity again. They were my responsibility. My brother
Speaker 1: had allowed me to take his only two children into
Speaker 1: the dark of night, feeling confident I would take care
Speaker 1: of him, and I didn't believe me when I say
Speaker 1: I almost didn't tell this story because I'm ashamed of it,
Speaker 1: what little forethought I put into it. I've trained my
Speaker 1: whole professional career for the worst case scenario, evaluating and
Speaker 1: considering every possible negative circumstance that could occur, and to
Speaker 1: recognize and worked through the problem for the best solution.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter if it was a simple traffic stop
Speaker 1: on the highway or a high risk entry into a
Speaker 1: nest of bad folks. I was supposed to be thinking
Speaker 1: two moves ahead, but this was just a coonhut. What
Speaker 1: could go wrong? If I had that opportunity again, I'd say, boys,
Speaker 1: there's your house, y'all come with me, and David's gonna
Speaker 1: go with spot, and that's where this story would have ended.
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. They looked at me and said, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: we can make it. There, we can go, and off
Speaker 1: they went, in a beeline straight for that night light.
Speaker 1: That was burning in their front yard, their flashlights leading
Speaker 1: the way until they got out of sight, And when
Speaker 1: they did, I turned my back to them and took
Speaker 1: off to catch up with David and that dog. Now
Speaker 1: it wasn't like walking in a park. They had to
Speaker 1: cross a shallow creek and weave their way back to
Speaker 1: the gravel road. Will got hung up in some sawbriers
Speaker 1: and waded water over the top of his boots, and
Speaker 1: then the batteries and the flashlights started fading out. Then
Speaker 1: they lost sight of the night light, and they got
Speaker 1: turned around, and then they got scared, and I would
Speaker 1: have been to. The night was black as four foot
Speaker 1: up of bulls behind, and the wind was relentless. Their
Speaker 1: daddy had always told them if they ever got lost
Speaker 1: in the woods around their house that all they had
Speaker 1: to do was walk till they hit the road or
Speaker 1: found the creek. If they hit the creek, all they
Speaker 1: had to do was follow it downstream and it would
Speaker 1: pass right in front of their house. Now that was
Speaker 1: one hundred percent truth. But they weren't in the woods
Speaker 1: where they normally played. They were across the road from
Speaker 1: their house, and on this side of the road, the
Speaker 1: creek forked and one went to the road and one
Speaker 1: fork went deeper in the woods toward a big beaver
Speaker 1: pond nearly a mile away. Well guess which one they took.
Speaker 1: And they didn't make a choice and take the wrong fork.
Speaker 1: They were walking down the creek in the dark, and
Speaker 1: that's just where they ended up going. Forty five minutes later,
Speaker 1: Dave and I had spot by the collar and we
Speaker 1: were walking back toward the road when I thought I
Speaker 1: heard someone holler. We stopped and listened, and every now
Speaker 1: and then we could hear through the wind, we could
Speaker 1: hear a man hollering. I thought it sounded like Tim.
Speaker 1: Then I got scared. I hollered back, and I took
Speaker 1: off toward where he was. When I got to the
Speaker 1: road and saw the boys weren't with him, my heart
Speaker 1: sank out of my chain and I felt sick to
Speaker 1: my stomach. David and I headed back toward where we'd
Speaker 1: last seen them, and Tim took off around the other
Speaker 1: side of the block of woods we were hunting, and
Speaker 1: on the road that went on the other side of
Speaker 1: the beaver pond. I've been scared a few times in
Speaker 1: my life as a direct result of my profession. Sometimes
Speaker 1: with no warning I'll think about one of those times,
Speaker 1: and when I do, they give me the chills, and
Speaker 1: for a moment, I'm right back in that place again.
Speaker 1: That night is one of them. David and I didn't
Speaker 1: find them, but Tim did. They heard him yelling, and
Speaker 1: they walked out to him on the road, nearly a
Speaker 1: mile from where they'd gotten turned around. Other than being scared,
Speaker 1: they were okay, but I wasn't, and I'm still not.
Speaker 1: The lesson hears this. We should prepare our kids for
Speaker 1: these scenarios, and had they been prepared, it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been a problem. Sending them off without proper equipment was
Speaker 1: my fault. The least thing I should have done was
Speaker 1: give them my light, but I didn't think their lights
Speaker 1: would start going out, but they did. I also didn't
Speaker 1: think they'd lose sight of that night light and get
Speaker 1: turned around, but they did. Adding to the confusion was
Speaker 1: the wind that made it nearly impossible to communicate from
Speaker 1: very far away. Now, the biggest thing was I didn't
Speaker 1: hold up my end of being the adult. I had
Speaker 1: checked those two rascals out of my brother's inventory, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't up to them to check themselves back in
Speaker 1: that was all on me. In spite of everything I
Speaker 1: failed to do that night. They lived. Now they've got
Speaker 1: a house full of youngins too, and believe it or not,
Speaker 1: none of them have ever asked to go coon hunting
Speaker 1: with me. It was a wonderful act of inclusion to
Speaker 1: want those boys to go with me, and a terrible
Speaker 1: lapse in judgment that could have gotten them hurt. I
Speaker 1: learned a valuable lesson that night, and that's just how
Speaker 1: it happened. In Part one of Kids Outdoors, I gave
Speaker 1: a few basic ways to pry those grocery goblins off
Speaker 1: the couch and out of the house. If you're just
Speaker 1: tuning in, it's a simple recipe. Find something that they
Speaker 1: can do with you, and go do it. Remember it
Speaker 1: don't have to be technical or labor intensive. Nature walks
Speaker 1: are just sitting on the porch watching the world go
Speaker 1: by beach just about anything on TV, except, of course,
Speaker 1: for that one show that's based out of Montana. It's
Speaker 1: about a group of folks going outside in places all
Speaker 1: over the world, getting close enough to nature to literally
Speaker 1: take a bite out of it. It's my favorite. Oh
Speaker 1: and the guy that started it all published a book
Speaker 1: about getting kids outside. It's called catch it crayfish, count
Speaker 1: the stars. It's pretty sporty. And he'd be the first
Speaker 1: to tell you get outside first and watch us second.
Speaker 1: So I learned something this week. Y'all remember my friend
Speaker 1: Terry Garner. He was the guy who met trout fishing
Speaker 1: that I talked about in my podcast entitled The Power
Speaker 1: of Hello. If you haven't already, I suggest you listen
Speaker 1: to it. It's one of my favorites. But until you do,
Speaker 1: let me give you a quick review. I went fly
Speaker 1: fishing one day after suddenly deciding I was a fly fisherman,
Speaker 1: and I quickly found out I wasn't after seeing a
Speaker 1: guy fishing near me gracefully catch fish like orchestrated ballet. Well,
Speaker 1: I caught nothing and looked like I was sword fighting
Speaker 1: with the invisible man. We met on the bank and
Speaker 1: made friends, good friends. Terry married up. He out kicked
Speaker 1: his coverage. As they say, his wife, Terry spelled taor
Speaker 1: I is a Jedi princess of the fly ride herself
Speaker 1: and a dynamo educator who retired after forty years. Her
Speaker 1: retirement lasted about as long as my patience. The possum
Speaker 1: tree and dog and she went to work for a
Speaker 1: nonprofit called Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation. Man, I have been doing
Speaker 1: some digging and talking to Miss Terry about it, and
Speaker 1: this program is fantastic. It's a whole curriculum geared for
Speaker 1: all students K through twelve. Okay, Brent, it's a good program.
Speaker 1: How will it help my kids at home when they're
Speaker 1: doing these activities at school? Well, I'll tell you simply,
Speaker 1: by stirring their interest and getting them involved in projects
Speaker 1: that creates motion in their bodies and exercises their brain
Speaker 1: beyond cartoons and an app on a tablet, all while
Speaker 1: teaching them a skill. Getting them interested in school will
Speaker 1: keep them interested at home. It's a fact that kids
Speaker 1: who spend more time outside away from electronics, have fewer
Speaker 1: sleep issues, feel better about themselves, and have better academic scores.
Speaker 1: Now that last one reques as a disclaimer from yours. Truly,
Speaker 1: if you spend all your time outside and none inside studying,
Speaker 1: it may negatively affect your academic scores. My problem in
Speaker 1: school was I was more interested in what was going
Speaker 1: on outside than inside, and that's true today for me.
Speaker 1: But you can have a healthy balance of both. Apparently,
Speaker 1: I've seen it from my kids, but children whose first
Speaker 1: exposure to the outdoors is at school go home and
Speaker 1: get their parents and siblings interested, and the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, we got a whole new group of folks
Speaker 1: participating and supporting all the things that we like to do.
Speaker 1: It's like being in the major leagues and having an
Speaker 1: endless supply of minor leaguers working their way up through
Speaker 1: the system. Reva Hanson, the wizard behind the Curtain, who
Speaker 1: edits this podcast, is going to put a link for
Speaker 1: the Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation website and the show description, and
Speaker 1: for y'all that are too lazy to look it up
Speaker 1: or too technically challenged like yours, truly, get your pencil ready.
Speaker 1: It's www dot g t F dot com. They've got
Speaker 1: nearly forty activities that they teach kids. I'm positive there's
Speaker 1: something in there for everyone. Show it to your kids, teachers,
Speaker 1: your school board, the PTO, and get these folks to
Speaker 1: look at it. It's really good. You know, my son Hunter,
Speaker 1: who I talked about in part one, when the deer
Speaker 1: ran out and jumped between him and me, Dad and
Speaker 1: my brother Tim, he told me once that he felt
Speaker 1: cheated not getting to grow up like I did, which
Speaker 1: was basically fair, showing up at the trough at feeding
Speaker 1: times and when I was finished, only to wander back
Speaker 1: out into the wilderness. Unfortunately for him, I couldn't make
Speaker 1: a living on a small farm like I grew up on.
Speaker 1: With the job I had, we had to move occasionally.
Speaker 1: He didn't have the opportunity to organically acquire the skills
Speaker 1: when he wasn't with me the way I did when
Speaker 1: I was out on my own roam in the countryside.
Speaker 1: He was solely dependent on my schedule and when I
Speaker 1: could take him. We didn't live on the old home
Speaker 1: place or near any of any of my family that
Speaker 1: could have substituted for me when I was off playing
Speaker 1: cops and robbers. This program would have been tailor made
Speaker 1: for him and others like him. I really encourage you
Speaker 1: to get your schools involved to check this out. Miss
Speaker 1: Terry will be glad to talk to any of you
Speaker 1: and all of you and the school administrators. You can
Speaker 1: reach her at Terry at goo TF dot com. That's
Speaker 1: t A. R. I at go oo TF dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, I've been rambling on and we've done gone
Speaker 1: a long time without telling the stories. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you one. Hunter was badgering me one Sunday afternoon after
Speaker 1: church to go fishing, and I eventually caved under the
Speaker 1: pressure and loaded all our fishing gear, including his, and
Speaker 1: we headed to the river. We stopped to visit it
Speaker 1: with our friends at the bait shop and bought some crickets.
Speaker 1: It was the middle of the afternoon, so instead of
Speaker 1: taking a boat, we decided we'd just fished from the
Speaker 1: new dock just down from the boat ramp. Hunter was
Speaker 1: six years old and all boy. We got to the
Speaker 1: fishing dock, we got our fishing poles ready and our
Speaker 1: hooks baited and started fishing. And Hunter hadn't had his
Speaker 1: fishing pole in his hand long enough to catch fish
Speaker 1: when he decided he's got to pee. And being a
Speaker 1: boy of six who was famous for waiting until the
Speaker 1: last minute, he needed to pee right now. Daddy, I
Speaker 1: got a pee. He threw his fishing pole at me.
Speaker 1: I told him just pee off the dock. There wasn't
Speaker 1: anyone around, and judging by the way he announced his
Speaker 1: current condition, I don't think he would have cared or
Speaker 1: had enough time to relocate. He let it rip red.
Speaker 1: Adare could have put him to work putting out oil
Speaker 1: well fires with what he had generating over there. I
Speaker 1: went back to fishing, hypnotized by my cork that was
Speaker 1: starting to get a little action. Then he hollered owl
Speaker 1: some bit me. I looked over where he was standing
Speaker 1: and I saw a red wash about the size of
Speaker 1: a humming bird flying away. Oh no, the little man
Speaker 1: has gotten stung. That turned out to be the understatement
Speaker 1: of the decade. Where to get you, bud was the
Speaker 1: blue jeans still around his knees. He turned towards me
Speaker 1: and to look on his face told me exactly where
Speaker 1: he'd been stung. Whammo, right in the wrong place to
Speaker 1: get stung. I remember thinking this is not good. Hunter
Speaker 1: started squalling and I wanted to After looking at that sting,
Speaker 1: it looked bad, and I figured we're probably going to
Speaker 1: have to get this looked at. So we loaded up
Speaker 1: and we headed to the bait shop and a first
Speaker 1: aid kid. Our friend at the bait shop gave me
Speaker 1: some of those antiseptic ampules that you bring can apply
Speaker 1: to this thing. They would hopefully relieve some of the pain.
Speaker 1: I called ahead to the doctor's office to tell him
Speaker 1: what had happened, and then we were on the way.
Speaker 1: The male nurse that answered the phone asked me what
Speaker 1: the problem was, and I said, well, my son got
Speaker 1: stung by wash. He said, is he allergic? And I
Speaker 1: said no? And he said is he getting nauseated or
Speaker 1: having any trouble breathing? I said nope, and it was
Speaker 1: just a wasp thing. I said, yep. And I could
Speaker 1: sense his disbelief and why I was bringing a boy
Speaker 1: to the doctor for a simple wasp thing when he
Speaker 1: wasn't allergic showing any signs of being allergic. He said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: where'd he gets stung? And I told him and he went, ooh, man,
Speaker 1: got you y'all come on on the way to the
Speaker 1: doctor's office. Hunter says that it's more comfortable for him
Speaker 1: to take off his breeches. The blue jeans apparently were
Speaker 1: applying pressure to his wound. Freedom he now enjoyed sporting
Speaker 1: a wife beat her T shirt and SpongeBob boxers afforded
Speaker 1: him the luxury of being mostly pain free. After driving
Speaker 1: at the doctor's office, he settled in the chair in
Speaker 1: the waiting room while I filled out the catalog of
Speaker 1: questions that go with seeing the doctor. Finishing the history
Speaker 1: of the world as I knew it for the insurance company.
Speaker 1: I turned around to check on my little buddy, to
Speaker 1: see him sitting in a seat with each leg spread
Speaker 1: apart and resting on the arms of the chair, reading
Speaker 1: a newspaper. Make yourself at home son. In relatively short order,
Speaker 1: they called us back to one of the exam rooms.
Speaker 1: Hunter's doctor walks in reading his chart, and as he's
Speaker 1: sitting down on his stool with a slight grin, he says,
Speaker 1: ooh man, what happened to you? Hunter never cracked a smile.
Speaker 1: The little guy stood up, dropped his boxers to his ankles,
Speaker 1: points and says, take a look at this, exposing his
Speaker 1: offended appendage that now resembled an airport windsock on the
Speaker 1: wind swept planes of Oklahoma. Then he starts telling the
Speaker 1: good doctor of the story, beginning about his first birthday
Speaker 1: and hitting most of the highlights and finally getting to
Speaker 1: the park where the was stung him in the nether regions.
Speaker 1: After about five minutes, the doctor's eyes were starting to
Speaker 1: glaze over. When Hunter finally finished the story and seizing
Speaker 1: the break, the doctor said, well, you're gonna be all right.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you some medicine so you won't get
Speaker 1: sick from the sting. It was just a waltz. The
Speaker 1: doctor spun his stool around from Hunter and he was
Speaker 1: reaching for his chart when Hunter tapped him on the shoulder,
Speaker 1: and he said, actually, I thought a sniper got me
Speaker 1: with a twenty two. I thought that doctor was gonna
Speaker 1: have a stroke. Laughing, he fell off his stool and
Speaker 1: was banging his fist on the floor of the exam room,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't catch my bread. I looked over at
Speaker 1: my son standing there with his drawers down to his ankles,
Speaker 1: hands propped up on his hips, and grinning like his
Speaker 1: next line was going to be thanks. I'll be here
Speaker 1: all week. Be sure to tip your waitresses, kids, and outdoors.
Speaker 1: It's a magical elixir for memories, and the good ones
Speaker 1: will always outnumber the not so good ones. My wounded
Speaker 1: warrior is a registered nurse now. He graduated nursing school
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the pandemic and was thrown into
Speaker 1: the fire work and ICEEU for a year and a half.
Speaker 1: He'll be married in a few months, and one day
Speaker 1: he may have some grocery goblins of his own. If
Speaker 1: he does. I hope he looks back on those times
Speaker 1: with me as much reverence as I do with him.
Speaker 1: I texted him a few minutes ago and ask him
Speaker 1: that now, since he's been a nurse, has he's seen
Speaker 1: any similar injuries to people like the one he received
Speaker 1: the day we went fishing. His ForWord response summed up
Speaker 1: to severity of that wilderness trauma so many years ago,
Speaker 1: perfectly none that lived. Dad. I thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1: Get some kids and get outside. You'll both be glad
Speaker 1: you did. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be
Speaker 1: careful