Last week offered a stark change from New York City. I spent a few days in east Tennessee surrounded by open space and very few people. There was still plenty of noise at times but noise of very different sorts than car horns and ambulance sirens.

The trip started with a multiday quail shoot on a preserve located on a bend in the Tennessee River. The hunts themselves involved walking through fields behind two dogs, a pointer and a flusher. To watch a bird dog in action is to see an animal in a state of absolute joy and it is a show just to watch it work the fields. The dogs worked in tandem. The pointer would run back and forth until it picked up a scent and pointed towards a covey of birds. Then the group would catch up to the pointer and the flusher would be released to flush the quail up into the air. The addition of the flushing dog made this hunt much less tiring than last year’s iteration where I was the one who had to kick about in the grass to get the birds to fly. The flushing dogs were also great retrievers and we didn’t lose a single bird during any of the three sessions. Dad did, however, shoot a few at such close range that there wasn’t much left to retrieve.

I then spent a couple of days with cousins and an aunt and uncle. Or more specifically, I stayed a few days with the three youngest members of the family and everyone else who happened to be with them while I was there. I hadn’t seen the kids in six months or more and they just keep growing, especially the youngest who was only a few weeks old when I saw him last. I don’t get to be around the children as much as I’d like, but I do enjoy how small their worlds are and how their worries are over toys and books and puzzles and combing their hair. I doubt I’ll ever be able to get that back. The oldest is now in first grade and has so many questions about so many things, especially Spanish translations this time, and her younger sister soaks in what information she can from listening.  It is refreshing to just sit and answer their little questions.