"Napping"

There is no better, no more peaceful sleep than the sleep I get eighteen feet up a tree. Enveloped by the music of the woods, a twenty minute nap in my tree stand can be more refreshing and invigorating than any a bed has given me. I have often wondered why this is; after all, when I am sleeping in my bed I am but no more than four feet off the ground and in relative safety (my safety at home is only really in jeopardy when I do something that lands me on the couch). If somehow I were to roll out of bed, the worst that would happen would be landing embarrassingly on the floor. The quality of your choice of partners notwithstanding, it should be accepted that as a general rule, there are places far more dangerous in which to sleep than a bed - like halfway up a pine tree.

I am conscious of the fact that dozing off and falling out of a tree would be much more detrimental to my health than falling out of bed. In fact, falling asleep in a tree would probably void the warranty on my climber altogether. Apparently, napping in a tree stand is not sanctioned by the Treestand Manufacturer’s Association. I have scoured TMA’s Treestand Safety Rules and while, admittedly, sleeping in a tree stand is not listed as a recommended safe practice, it isn’t specifically prohibited by them either. So in the face of such ambiguity, I choose to exercise my discretion and snore away, snoozing peacefully and entirely unaffected by the precariousness of my perch, hunt after hunt. Perhaps this explains the barren walls in my study which I have designated for trophy mounts.

Napping in the woods is not just restful and inspiring. It affords also that unforgettable Christmas morning possibility when absolutely anything in the world can be waiting for you under the tree. One of the most wonderful things about napping in the woods is the excitement that my mind conjures up between the time I awake and open my eyes. After I snap awake from a woods nap with an adrenaline inducing jolt and risk wrenching myself right out of my stand, my mind races with the possibilities of what will be awaiting me when I look up to begin opening the presents Mother Nature may have left me. Somehow I just know that in my slumbering absence a parade of fat, healthy does will have filed into the field below me. When I peak out from under the bill of my cap, I am convinced that I will witness a pair of young bucks trying out their horns, sparring with one another and chasing does. If a yawn doesn’t force my eyes shut, I might catch the whites of the young bucks’ tails as they are run off by that granddaddy bruiser buck who has had enough of their adolescent shenanigans and glided silently into the field after having surveyed the scene from the fringe of the woods like a teacher watching his students at play.

Every time I wake up after a good climber nap, it feels like much more time should have passed than what actually elapsed. A twenty minute snooze leaves me feeling like a couple hours surely went by. It just seems impossible that in that time, half the woodland creatures in the county would not have quietly stepped out into the open for me to take my pick. Yet more often than not, when I open my eyes and look back up at the woods I’m hunting, they are as empty as they were before I succumbed to the tranquility of my surroundings, save a few busy sparrows and longer strands of shadows.

Still, even with an empty field and an empty freezer, it is moments like napping high up off the ground as the wind gently sways the tree and rocks me to sleep that make just being there just enough. The exhilarating crack and echo of a snapping twig or a tom turkey’s explosive gobble shattering the anxious silence of the foggy morning woods are much more pleasant alarm clocks than the screeching nag that sits on the nightstand back in the real world.

Sometimes I am hesitant to look up at all after awaking in my stand because as long as I do not look up, that wall-hanger could still be standing there beneath his twelve-pronged scaffolding. There is always a subtle sense of disappointment and defeat, however, when I do look up to survey the woods only to find that the parade has been canceled due to inclement hunter. On the flip side, I don’t suppose hunting would be much of a challenge if I saw a petting zoo beneath me every time I woke up from my tree naps. At the end of it all, I’d be hard-pressed to name many things about hunting that are more rewarding than the endless possibility of what might be on the other side of closed eyelids, behind which is a place where the fields are always teeming with wildlife, and the season never ends.



(c) Roger Guilian 2005