I feel warm, and a good bit smug, too.
Cold weather has arrived, and I feel fine.
It's all about the clothes, brothers and sisters.
We of a certain age learned to hunt in the era of inadequate attire. We overcame adversity. We stared hypothermia square in the eye, and hypothermia did not flinch. Hypothermia put us on the canvas with one haymaker after another, but the strongest kept getting up for another round.
Those of the millennial age cannot comprehend this. They've never known a life without Gore-Tex, Thinsulate, Qualofil, Hollofil and neoprene. That's good. Bone-rasping cold challenges your commitment. The energy we used to expend battling cold is better spent nowadays being more proficient at hunting and fishing.
We're better at it these days, not because of digital and electronic technology, but because we have better clothes.
My first hunting coat was a tan monstrosity made primarily of cotton twill. Duxback was the brand, a Christmas gift from my Uncle Demp. Wearing it dry during a long walk through the flooded timber was an aerobic workout. If it got wet, which it frequently did when hunting at Bayou Meto, it was like wearing a bag of four dozen goose decoys.
The Duxback was uninsulated. Warmth required multiple layers, which I compiled by wearing multiple T-shirts. Long underwear made of a cotton/nylon blend was available in the 1970s, but not in kids sizes.
Leg warmth required two pair of bluejeans, along with several pair of whitey tighties.
When I was rigged for a day in the scatters, I looked like the son of Michelin Man.
That brings to mind a seminal experience of that era. It started the day before Christmas break at Sherwood Elementary, 1974. I was in the fourth grade, and our teacher, Cindy Landrum, read the class a poignant Christmas story. She wept, and I made made fun of her.
I shouldn't have.
Mrs. Landrum was a prodigious paddler, and she dealt justice with a thing that looked like a cricket bat with holes drilled in it to reduce drag and ventilate air pockets when it found its mark.
In a blink, her mood went from maudlin to menacing. She told me icily that I would dance with her paddle when we returned from Christmas break.
Christmas break was not fun that year. All I could think about was my date with the executioner.
A holiday duck hunt with my dad at Bayou Meto gave me a self-preservatory revelation. On that first day back to school, I wore 11 pairs of whitey-tighties under my Levis.
The day came and went peacefully. Mrs. Landrum had forgotten the slight, but still I suffered.
Eleven pair of Hanes with snug elastic waistbands nearly sawed me in half.
Naturally, when my mother saw the raw, red welt encircling my waist, she was curious. She laughed with unsettling sincerity and said I got what I deserved.
In the woods, this kind of layering was not warm. It was merely uncomfortable.
Add to that effect the voluminous canvas waders that duck hunters in the 1970s and 80s. Waders were only available in adult sizes, though. I was a small kid, a small teenager and a small adult, so I had to wear hip boots. That gave me about 25-26 inches of freeboard to the inside cut of the thigh, which meant my boots contained water as often as not.
I got my first pair of neoprene waders in 1992. They reached all the way to the shoulders, and they were as snug as a second skin.
I showed them to my dad with the zeal of a new believer sharing the gospel. He scoffed. One morning in the scatters would rip those delicate little things to shreds, he said haughtily.
By the middle of the 1992-93 duck season, he converted.
Then came Thinsulate and Gore-Tex. Finally, garments that were truly warm, and waterproof, too, especially gloves.
They started cramming Thinsulate into waders, up to 1,600 grams. With a thick pair of thigh-high wader socks, you can stand comfortably all day in freezing water.
The crowning touch was Under Armour and its variants. With an Under Armour base layer topped by a long-sleeve T-shirt, fleece top and a Thinsulate-lined parka, you are impervious to cold, but you can move freely.
I was especially thankful for these advances in the last days of modern gun deer season, when the wind and cold were bitter. I sat for hours awaiting deer that never showed, but I was warm and content.
It was not always so. I am grateful to be of an age that remembers.
Sports on 12/22/2016