You know those weekends when you leave home early on Saturday morning, hike back into the wilderness so you’ll be in the perfect spot long before the sun comes up, and spend all that day and the next trekking up and down mountains, carrying half your own weight on your back? You work so hard, even your hair hurts? Yet after two full days of that, you wish you could do it every day? Last weekend was not one of those weekends.
I was hoping it would be, and I had plans to take my boys with me for a weekend bowhunt. I knew we wouldn’t be likely to bring anything home, because most of our trip would consist of me explaining to the kids that they need to be quiet if they have any hope of coming across any deer. It would take many miles of walking to wear them out enough to get them to quit bickering with each other or talking about the memes they’d seen on their phones during the drive out to the Snowy Range. But even with all that work and the constant reminders to be quiet, it would have made for one of those weekends that left us all wishing we could just stay out there in the woods forever.
But instead, my wife signed the boys up to set barrels at a barrel race. The kids have been asking us to help them find ways to make some money, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. But then Amy remembered she had to go to her sister’s baby shower, so I had to take the boys to the barrel race instead of going hunting.
And to make matters worse, they didn’t find a third barrel setter, so I had to work third barrel. It turned out to be as much work as hiking miles in the woods, and since I actually got paid to do it, I ended up bringing home more than I usually do from a hunting trip. But I didn’t wish the weekend would never end. In fact, I’ve never been so happy to see a Monday.
Maybe next weekend will be better.
