The skiff cracked skim ice as our duck-hunting party worked the oars to push through the cypress swamp of Beaver Dam Lake. Dawn infused the mysterious atmosphere with Mississippi sapphire light while a hand-held torch illuminated the murky water oozing up through the fissures. Our destination slowly materialized as an apparition in the mist. It was a blind, the weathered plywood camouflaged by scavenged, gnarled branches, perched atop stilts, medieval and mesmerizing.

While more than 100 acres of winter wheat blanketed the spring soil not ten yards forward of our position we felt strangely closed in, but it was nice, even intimate. Nothing means more to a young son sitting in the darkness than knowing he’s next to his dad; I can say the same for sitting next to him. We sat, whispered and giggled for nearly an hour before I noticed a silver hue raining down through the treetops over our shoulders. It was just enough to expose the haunting glow of layered fog as it began to roll back its stranglehold on dew-laden wheat. As minutes ticked away so did darkness. The silver hues succumbed to radiant shades of amber and gold as frigid temperatures dropped several more degrees. My son Jacob said I looked like a bull with “smoke” surging from my nostrils.