I was on the river last week the day before the storm, all by myself. I fished for a couple of hours without seeing a fish. For this late in the spring’s beginning, the water was very cold, as clear as I ever saw it in March 

But it was a wonderful day, alone and unaware of the awfulness in our country, which is constantly flashed across a television screen.  But I knew what was coming… you could sense it, feel it in the air.  The question was, where would it be? It did come that night, farther south in Mississippi.  It will be worse yet, in months to come, and who knows where.  I keep thinking that it could be us next, or anyone next.  Some awful tornados are yet to come, worse than we have seen in a long time. 

Indeed there is a ‘climate change’ problem, but it is not the CO2 that plagues our cities.  Our leaders never mention the increased heating of our country due to more and more concrete and pavement and cleared land.  At the end of the summer, there will be more of those man-made heat creators than ever before, and more next year and the next. In even small towns when it is 100 degrees in some paved parking lot, why is it 85 degrees on a shaded rock in the woods? But that discrepancy is never mentioned, and never will be. 

It will be hotter than ever in twenty years where people dwell, because of concrete, pavement and cleared land, but there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

If you never watch television, as I am prone to not do, unless there is a nature film or an old western to see when I get in at night, you can avoid the depression that the bad news brings.  I stay away from it by finding remote, wild places to explore with my boat, my camera, and a fishing rod in the spring, before the copperheads and ticks get more numerous than wild turkeys and migrating ducks.

My heart soars in wild places where there is no one else but me, and God shows me that He is still here and still creating. There remains, where I go, life and beauty man hasn’t yet altered.  In such places my prayers do not embarrass me, because God doesn’t look down on simple hillbillies! I ask for little, and in short spurts during the day, I give thanks.  Each day there is something new to see, more to write about than I can get done.

On Bull Shoals Lake yesterday, another oddity; about 8 or 10 beautifully plumaged loons, stopping to rest on their way back to Canada.  I have seen them on Ozark lakes often, but almost never hear them, as I do in Canada.  Their cry is a haunting, wavering sound that is spooky when you first hear it, camped on some rocky point on a wilderness lake, but it becomes something of serene reassurance that puts you asleep in your tent or cabin. The name ‘loon’ means clumsy or awkward coming from a long ago term they say originates in Scotland, where many are found.  They can swim or dive like no other bird, but they cannot walk very well.  They don’t have to, the seldom get out of the water, except to mate and nest along the shore.

Anyway, I got close to several along a 5-mile stretch of the lake, and never took any photos, because I have taken so many of them in Canada. 

I will soon write about the miracle I was a part of on the banks of Bull Shoals Lake, 50 years ago this month, although I am hesitant to do so.  You can read that on my website, given below.

I wrote last week about beavers and I have a great photo of a baby beaver I rescued on Truman Lake while I was camped there several years ago.  I was turkey hunting in April, staying in my camp-boat as I often do, back up in a deep cove.  I was only a few feet from a beaver lodge where a mother beaver had her litter of four or five ‘kits’.

Early in the morning, I could hear them inside the lodge, nursing and whining much like puppies. 

The lake began to rise with heavy rains and days later she started moving them into a big hole high in the bank, thirty yards away.  The last one was dropped in the water as she swam, and the little guy clung to a branch sticking up out of the water.  I rescued him and took him up the bank to the hole and watched her come out and retrieve him.  You can see that photo of me with that little gnawer on my website.  There is also a photo of a bright white, pink-nosed albino beaver, a one in a thousand photo taken in the wild of Canada.

Beavers are a problem in the Ozarks now, and while there isn’t enough room here to tell you why and talk about them in more depth, see that info with those photos on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com To see it, I am told you have to type in the whole name on your computer.  There has been an active effort on the part of some folks I have criticized to shut it down completely.  Soon it will be corrected and much of what I write and the photos I take will be on that site for all to read.  That is necessary because some very important information about the MDC cannot be carried in the newspapers that use my column.

My spring magazine will be out soon.  To get a copy just call my office and talk with Gloria Jean, 417-777-5227.

My address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613. Email lightninridge47@gmail.com