Fishing the Outer Banks of North Carolina is one outdoor activity I aspire to do but will not likely get to in my lifetime.

   We who savor the outdoor experiences stop one day at some point in our lives, perhaps after turkey season closes or deer season or the bass go deep for winter, and come to the realization that it is not going to go on for ever. The outdoor pursuits available to sustain us outnumber the days we have in this life to pursue. These thoughts come more frequently to those of us long in the tooth.

    Even though we know this diminishing block of time to be true, most of us go about enjoying the outdoors as if it is not, and we don’t think about missing out on some of our plans and dreams because of time limitations. We decide we want to crappie fish on the river next weekend and we go. We decide to hunt mule deer in Montana year after next and we save up and make the trip. We dream of surf fishing the Outer Banks of North Carolina and one summer we up and go to the Outer Banks.

 

Listing dreams

 

    Something like once or twice a year I stop and write down the outdoor places that it appears I’m not going to get around to and adventures I won’t get to experience. My musings are not prompted by regret or anguish. Rather they are born of a sense of awe at how abundant are the outdoor blessings that are at least somewhat available to me and how acute is the magnetism that draws me to so many of them. Writing them down seems to enhance their status as cherished aspirations. It sets me to dreaming about them all the more, though dreaming is all I’ll likely get to do. There are worse things in this life than good dreams.

    I probably won’t ever get to spend a month in a cabin on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in winter. I like cold, snowy winters with lots of tall trees around me. I like to know that meat for next week is out there in the frozen woods and that I won’t have any unless I suit up and go get it.

    I will not likely snorkel above the colorful fishes of the Great Barrier Reef off the eastern coast of Australia, though that underwater world is something I envision as a preview of paradise.

    My footsteps probably will never scuff the varied soils of Africa. How I would like to go there and just see things. I would skip quickly over the big and beautiful cities, favoring instead the bush and the desert and the jungles and the mountains. It would be almost too much to visit with people in the bush who make do with a lot less than we do in America, and learn the things that make them happy. I could hardly ask to hunt Cape buffalo or lion or leopard.

 

Forbidden adventures

 

    Unless some unforeseen financial windfall comes my way, I will never hunt the game-rich Indian reservation lands of northern New Mexico. So I won’t see half a dozen royal bull elk every day for a week. I will not need an expensive spotting scope to look over their majestic antlers and check their body condition to select just the right one for the freezer and the taxidermist.

    I am not planning a hunt for polar bears or mountain lions or desert bighorn sheep, though I hunt them in my dreams. The waters that hold the Dolly Vardens and the muskellunges and the peacock bass may never be stirred by my canoe paddle. But my spirit is not dampened. For a single trek into the wilds holds enough in store to bless me for a long time. And the hundreds of outdoor adventures that have enriched me so far are enough to sustain me for an unusually blessed lifetime.