My Uncle's Rifle

It was an old rifle, really not worth alot of money but worth alot to me. A Remington sportmaster, a bolt action 22 with one of those tubes under the barrel that holds the shells. My aunt had basically given me my choice of my uncle's guns, some very nice, some guns I would love to own, several expensive guns. But this rifle I knew my uncle had used hard. The gun was certainly old enough to have been Rogers first gun or at least one of the very first possibly given to him by my grandfather. The kind of rifle he would have carried along the railroad as a kid plinking at old cans or groundhogs in the garden. Or carried thru the wet grass of early morning to the big old beech trees that sat at the back of my papaw's pasture hunting squirrels. The very trees I'd done some of my first hunting under.
I've always felt a special kinship with Roger. After all if it wasn't for Roger,we would have never started bowhunting, the one constant in my father's, Roger's, and my life for decades.
The problem with being the youngest in a long line of hunters is that you end up with alot of cool stuff that brings as much sorrow as happiness. A trophy room full of antlers that also holds my grandfather's knife, my uncle's bow, my father's and grandfather's 22 and now some of Roger's stuff. Ghosts of some of the happiest times of my life but also ghosts of men I'd respected, admired, and would never share a campfire again.
People tell me I shouldn't hunt alone now, that it's dangerous to out in the woods alone, "what if something happens?". But I married too late, my stepsons were never hunters and now I share a campfire with ghosts and memories. I hold out genuine hope for my grandchildren though. The old men in my familly have always connected best with their grandchildren and I find I'm a favorite of mine. I'd like to think there will be at least a couple of old men looking down smiling when I hand the old 22 over to one of my grandchildren.
I know this fall I'll take Roger's old 22 out at least once and sit under some hickories at dawn and think about these old men. The very best men I have ever known.
The connection with the past had always been important to uncle Roger and old stories of hunting with his brother Virgil or fishing along the river as a kid were a constant theme of his stories around the campfire. A newer rifle or shotgun would have been nice, certainly more practical. But it wouldn't have held those stories, that history of my familly that connects me to the woods.