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The Hunt

FROM
Break Out: Finding Freedom
When You Don't Quite Fit The Mold
James R. Hasse

"My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill."

William Sharp

I pushed my bike up the steep driveway. It was heavier than usual. I felt sluggish.

The warm sunshine was already beginning to overpower the nippy fall air. It was the start of pheasant season, and my dad and two younger brothers, Paul and Bill, dashed here and there, getting ready for their first drive through the golden corn fields across the valley from our farmstead.

I knew I couldn't go with them, but I wasn't even asked to be a part of this annual ritual – one of the few bonding activities the men of our family enjoyed outside of the long hours of every-day chores on the farm.

I was lonely – a heavy burden that I found myself carrying on an off-and-on basis as a 17-year-old who had many acquaintances in school and church but no close friends.

It especially hurt when the other "guys" in my own family discounted me in what were the "manly" things to do during the late 1950s in rural Wisconsin.

I stopped pushing my bike, even though I was near the top of the driveway, and leaned over the seat. Big pools of tears clouded up in my eyes. I couldn't see, and I didn't care.