Cycles

Being a teacher and coach I live through cycles all the time. We are at a time in the year when most teachers are taking a break, but not me. I had the weight room last week, and I have it this week as well, that takes away a half a day every day I have it. Top that with the fact that I got chosen to participate in curriculum updates this summer, and I have been working all week this week, and you may understand why I have had trouble finding a topic to write on.

You would think that a teacher would have plenty of time to write in the summer, but as a football coach it seems that the cycle continuously flows, and there is never a break. I will go with the team to a seven on seven passing tournament Saturday. I am going on vacation next week, but when I come back there will be a passing league every Tuesday. I will surely be called on to fill in for another coach who can’t make it to the weight room for one reason or another. This will continue until we go to camp at the end of July. When we return from camp practice will start. Then there will be the Friday night games. Hopefully we will have a good season and play deep into the playoffs, maybe I will have to miss duck hunting a couple mornings the first week, the State Championship will be played the Friday after Thanksgiving. After our last game we will take off until after the first of the year, but when we return to school we will start back in the weight room, the cycle will start again.

So here I am in the middle of this seemingly endless cycle, wondering about what to write for this week’s blog, and I realize something. Over the past few months I have seen nature’s cycle of life ebbing and flowing all around me.

There was a time in my life when I had a pair of honest to goodness cracker jack rabbit dogs who loved to run rabbits. I let them get old and give them away without training any puppies with them. That was a mistake. A few years back a buddy and I try to build a pack of rabbit beagles from the ground up. We tried for a couple of years to train rabbit dogs, but there weren’t any rabbits. Places where I once run rabbits on top of rabbits, there weren’t any to be found. Instead we spent all our time trying to keep them from running deer, and that just wasn’t any fun. So two years ago we called it quits. We give up.

This spring I noticed the rabbits are back. That cycle that had bottomed out when I was trying to train rabbit dogs had flipped over, now there are rabbits everywhere. It seems that all local small game is on the increase. I see more squirrels than I have seen in years, and wild quail. I don’t believe I have ever seen as many wild quail as I have this summer. They are in my parent’s yard. They are in my brother’s driveway. It seems they are beside the road almost everywhere I go. When I go in my backyard to feed the dogs I hear them call all around.

As I get caught up working day in and day out in this world of turmoil I find myself in, it is a great relief to be able to look out of the truck window as I am on my way to work and see wildlife. It is a great joy to know that the cycle of life continues on, even if I am caught in the seemingly unending cycle of football. When I finally find the time to step out of the truck and into nature, the cycle of nature will have continued on as though I had been there all along.

Working through life as it comes, the Briary River Way.

Buckman