HNT - Hunting Through Memories

My cousin Vicki is the inspiration behind this week's HNT post. She recently posted some old pictures of our fathers on a hunting trip many years ago on Facebook (possibly when our fathers where about the same age we are now -- how frightening is that?)

Uncle Leslie, Mr. Armstrong, Gerry Mallow, Uncle Pete, Dad

Seeing pictures of my Dad out hunting reminds me of one of the last hunting trips I went on with him.

He and my cousin Rodney were in a cabin on Manitoulin Island for deer hunting one November. I joined them for several days as I wanted to get away and focus on working on the latest draft of my novel. Yes, while they went out during the day with their guns hunting deer, I stayed in the cabin and hunted for the right words to finish work on my book.

It was a great time, and one of the last good times I had with my Dad before he died.

One of the things that was particularly special was the one morning where I shared part of the novel MORNING SON, that I'd been working on, with my dad. It was a scene I'd written based on his own experience of having almost died in his early twenties in a pretty frightening motorcycle accident. When I read the scene to him, (because I wanted some feedback on whether or not I had properly captured the essence of that moment -- I'd read the old court transcripts in which the accident and details were described rather clearly), he had tears in his eyes and told me he was very proud of me.

Even if my novel MORNING SON never gets published, I have this great moment of sharing part of it with my Dad that I'll always cherish.

So for HNT this week, here's a picture my Dad took of me that morning when we'd shared "his story" together.

Then, as you can likely see from this picture, we shared a beer.

God, what I wouldn't give to be able to have just one more beer with my Dad.