Fathers Day Hunting And Fishing Book

A Sportsman's Library: 100 Essential, Engaging, Offbeat, and Occasionally Odd Fishing and Hunting Books for the Adventurous Reader 

Stephen J. Bodio

If you just found this post from its title and you need a book for dad, for a dad who likes Hunting, or Fishing, or Dogs or Birds of Prey you're done, Steve B's book will remind the old man of a few favorites, and leave him wanting to order a few of Steve's favorites. It's a witty book, and as the recommendations of each of the 100 books have amusing and insightful anecdotes about the authors,  he's bound to like it. I did.

For the rest of you.

I've never met Steve Bodio but I avidly read the blog posts he writes from his Querencia in the high country of New Mexico. Hunter and naturalist, a-firearms aficionado, and the author of some very very well written books. He's the kind of guy you would ask for a book recommendation, he's read most of the cannon of outdoor literature and knew quite a few of its writers too. So the idea of asking him to put together a list of favorites was a good one.   

I imagine visiting him in his study, seeking a book recommendation with the background reading to put the recommendation into context, Steve's eyes light up and he turns to his groaning book shelves levers out a couple of volumes and wittily invokes their authors and environments. Done. His 'A Sportsman's Library' is that in a box.

But enough of books, I'm off to flick some lures at the Pike in the canal. 

more soon

SBW

Steve Bodio's Eternity Of Eagles: Background

Sometimes we must make concessions to modernity 

For anyone who's already interested in Steve Bodio's An Eternity Of Eagles. Living On Earth has an interview which you can listen to HERE or read HERE

I've been way busy: so not much to report, lots of new blog stuff on the horizon, and some neat new kit to review. In sad news for kit-Tarts everywhere: horror of horrors, due to a strict one-in-one-out policy, I have to chop-in one of my packs in the 80l class to make way for a new arrival. Dreading it.
SBW

Book Review: Steve Bodio's An Eternity of Eagles

A while back I reviewed Stephen Bodio's haunting eulogy to Betsy Huntingdon and pion to New Mexico 'Querencia'. HERE. So I was delighted when a very nice lady wrote to me to say that I was on the review list for Steve's latest work 'An Eternity of Eagles' .

I first came across SB a few years ago when he started to comment on some other blogs, I started to read his blog, and in conversation another blogger (who I had just complemented on his writing) said
"but we all wish we could write like Steve B". As Steve's blog was largely notes to friends and in-jokes I searched for some more of his writing, found this piece about a trip to the Steppes to hunt with Egales and Kazakh tribesmen, and was hooked. Steve's other works have included highly rated studies of fine shotguns, Pigeons and Long Dogs.

The 'An Eternity of Eagles' is quite different to the works I've read so far, it could be thought of as a tour not of some far-flung lands but of a library collected during many many years as a student of Falconry.  It lands pretty squarely between scholarly tome and coffe table book, and is none the worse for doing so. For the casual reader there is a touch more detail than they might be expecting and for the budding Raptor obsessive a tantalising glimpse of where future reading could take you.

“There is so much brute wisdom, sophisticated science, blood magic, and flat out terrific prose in Stephen Bodio’s writing that he makes me think of Merlin, educating Arthur by turning him into other animals for a while. An Eternity of Eagles is worthy of its great subject, which is not only eagles but the earthbound mortals who marvel at them.”
—Jonathan Rosen, author of The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature

I was going to type up a few choice examples from the book; or try to give you a compressed version of the chronology of our ancient relationship with these fascinating birds, the evolution of the practices of training and hunting with them, and their roles as totems in so many disparate cultures. But instead I'll make you this offer. Buy the book, if you've read it and dont like it, I'll buy your copy off you and give it to someone who will appreciate it.

More Soon
SBW

Stephen Bodio's Querencia: A Book review

I know an amazing carpenter, he has the relaxed air of a man who has it just right for him. Secure in his own skill, comfortable in his life. He has the good fortune to be married to a financial genius, not for him the stresses and stains of billing and tax payments. They have a porsche, and about five houses. If you want to hire him he just tells you his day rate and after that you deal with her, email only, she bills you for his time, gives him pocket money and ensures they live well. Very very well. The rest of us live like street dogs. He works for me and I live like a dog. As MCP said "I wish someone loved me that much"

'Querencia' describes a place where we feel safe, the well from which our strength of character is drawn, that little bit of real estate (in our heads or our environment) where we are truly at home. I'm told It comes from the verb 'quere', to desire, to want. Great name for a book. Or a home.

Back in the days before the rise of the bleached shivering whippet, back when smart was still cool and you could earn living writing long-form journalism Steve finds himself at something of a loose end

I had expensive tastes in belongings , adventure, and alcohol.... I had two fifty year old LC. Smith shotguns, one engraved, 500 books, a master-falconers licence and a captive bred Lanner [falcon]
with ancestors from South Africa and Ethiopia. I liked my life but I had nobody to talk to

Steve hooks up with Betsy Huntington and after a while they pack their worldly goods into a yellow Datsun and trade new england for new mexico. There begins a tale of seven years exploring a remarkable landscape with a remarkable woman.

'If there was a breeze you could inhale the incense of burning Pinon and Juniper from the town a mile up wind, strong and sweet, evocative and nostalgic. My sister from back east thought it was "the scent of Mexican cooking spices" Kit Carson said that if you ever smelled it you would return to the high villages of New Mexico as long as you lived.'

' "sounds good to me" this from Chubby firmly. His hand was extended. I took it, and although I could not know it, started living in Magdalena'.

As naturalists of the old school - red of tooth and claw - Steve and Betsy are the perennial students of their own interest. This is a story of an absorption into the landscape, where every rock and fold in the land is a track, a story left behind in a very very slowly evolving landscape. Giant skys, arroyos that flash from dust to full before your eyes, all in the clear harsh light of altitude.

The area is not short on local colour; Steve paints a backdrop so vivid that the found-words jump off the page into that space of the remembered imagination where all the great books make their home.

The middle of route 60 which just seconds before had contained only a few wandering bodies now held a brawl as thick as a snarl of ants on a summer sidewalk. Above the thwhack of fists against bodies rose a cry I will never forget "That horse never fucked nobody!"

Betsy too leaps from the page; a woman who has seen such a variety of different lives that she must have been an amazing co-conspirator, able to explore without judgement, and to summon up both the wisdom of the well travelled and the childlike enthusiasm Ursula Le Guin summed up as "The creative adult is the child who has survived."

Now Betsy would join us, in her own way. She had always been a leisurely climber, and claimed her smoke breaks revealed more wildlife than I ever saw. Now with her bad leg, she might drop and hour or more behind me. If I waited at all obviously she would be furious. She'd walk up slowly, taking pains to stroll rather than labour, only her reddening face betraying her effort. She's stop and eye me angrily from under her bangs as she lit a camel. "Do not wait for me. I am not an invalid. If you insist on seeing me as a burden I shall not come". I was reminded of the time she had told me about some boyfriend who said he "needed" her . "I told him I didn't want to be a necessity or a responsibility. I'd prefer to be an indispensable luxury"

After my first reading of Querencia I lent the book to MOB (my mum) she loved it too

MOB: 'wonderful writing and an amazing eulogy to Betsy"

SBW: I wish someone loved me that much

More soon
Your pal
SBW

Here's the Link to Steve's page on Amazon
His blog of the same name 
And a link to some of his journalism 

Steve's Kazakh Teleportation Device

Steve Bodio at the controls

Through reading a post Steve Bodio wrote about the commissioning agenda over at Atlantic magazine I found this piece he wrote for them years ago. I've always wanted to visit the Stepps and see the rugged beauty of a landscape that remains as it would have been in Gengis' time. Now I want to go more than ever.


Sovereigns of the Sky

In 1995 an old friend, the photographer David Edwards, went trekking in western Mongolia and returned with tales of people "from history, from legend, from myth." He spoke of Mongol sheep feasts, Tsataan who rode reindeer and lived in tepees, Kazakhs who wintered in adobe houses and hunted with eagles. Edwards said that the Kazakhs were hospitable and had eagles in every village. He knew a young Kazakh entrepreneur, Canat, who had learned English in the Soviet army and was willing to guide me. I was ready to go.

Some weeks later I stood blinking in a Mongolian courtyard in the blazing sun of a February morning. The night before, Canat and I had rattled into the village of Bayaan Nuur, in the northwestern province of Bayaan Olgii Aimag, in a Russian jeep. The village was near the home of Canat's mother-in-law, where we were staying, and Canat knew of a master eagler there. The eagler was a shepherd and potato farmer named Suleiman. His eagle, a two-year-old, dozed atop a tractor tire. She was nearly three feet from head to tail, thick and broad-shouldered, black-bodied and touched with gold on her neck. She wore a black-leather hood like those I had seen in the photos (eaglers generally keep their birds hooded except when they are flying, so that the birds will stay calm). Her bill was charcoal-colored and gracefully curved; her feet shone like yellow stone. Pale fluff fanned out over the white bases of her tail feathers. Braided leashes connected heavy sheepskin anklets on her legs to the hub of the wheel. In the bright desert light she glowed like a dark sun, as elegant as a living thing can be.

Suleiman ushered us inside to a brilliant-blue room. In it was another eagle, on a roughly carved tripod. A slender young man entered, carrying the first eagle on his right arm and a similar perch under his left. Canat explained that this was Suleiman's apprentice, Bakyt, who owned the second eagle, and that they were going to give the birds a drink. A child brought in a teapot and some lump sugar, decanting the tea into a drinking bowl and sweetening it while Canat translated. "Suleiman says that it is end of season. He has not flown eagles for two weeks. But tea and sugar give them energy, so they will be hungry and fly." Suleiman put one end of a length of rubber tubing into his mouth, like the end of a hookah, and made a joke ("He says it is the exhaust pipe"). He put the other end into the drinking bowl, sucked up some tea, and then emptied it into the first eagle's mouth. He repeated the process. The bird shook her head but otherwise remained still. "Now he will take the eagle's hood off," Canat said. "She will vomit fat if she has any." Indeed, after a moment the eagle gagged, brought up a little tea, shook her head again, and wiped her beak on the perch. She then "roused," shaking down all her feathers, and looked alertly about, as though a morning caffeine dose and purge were the most normal thing in the world. The other bird got a similar dosing, and we were ready to go.

Back out in the courtyard we found a bustling scene of organized chaos, with elements that spanned many centuries. A camel was signaled to kneel so that its rider could mount. Horses stood waiting as Suleiman gave brisk orders. Hunters slung rifles and shotguns over their shoulders, single-shot twelve-gauge Baikals. Siassi, our driver, fired up our jeep and popped in a cassette; wild Kazakh music with the rhythm of a galloping horse rang out loudly from the speakers. Suleiman motioned toward a ridge about a mile away: we would climb the rocks and sit on top while Suleiman's younger brothers beat the plain below for game. He, Bakyt, and the other riders set off. READ MORE

There's just time for a trip this year before the cold arrives.
Anyone need a bathroom building? A Kidney? Shine yer shoes guvner?
SBW