It’s that time of year again. For some, it’s the best of all celebrations and anticipated with great joy. I hope Christmas is that way for all you folks gathered around my campfire. Stay close; there’s frost on the turnips and ice in the rain barrel.

The harvest’s remnants have been tilled under for the winter; cords of firewood are stacked high and dry; the fruits of summer’s labor are housed in the pantry; and it’s time to make meat for the larder.

Christmas, for those of us who follow the primitive avocation, announces the opening of flintlock season.Genuine mountain men begin champing at the bit on Christmas morning in anticipation of the day after, when they can take to the woods and test their skill and stamina, and the reliability of their “smokepoles.”

Most crusty, old men of the mountains know their rifles exceptionally well; some firelocks are finicky, cranky in old age and tend to balk in rude weather, like old men whose joints have lost the grease of youth. These weapons of yesteryear, quite commonly, are given names by their owners; furthermore, it’s not uncommon to hear a mountain man holding a conversation with his iron companion. Around many solitary campfires, I’ve had words with my own fifty-caliber flintlock rifle, “Simon.” It’s an inclination that’s hard to break. Furthermore, it’s just a mite more sane to talk to something, rather than chattering to oneself.

The upside to this proclivity is the certainty there’ll be no back talk. Unlike children tossing and turning in their beds on Christmas Eve, wishfully anticipating dawn, I sleep quite well. Nevertheless, on Christmas night, I find myself twitching with an uncontrollable anxiety brought on by the opening of flintlock season in the morning. I find that being in the woods Christmas night eases my anticipation remarkably well. Therefore, for the past several years, I find myself spending the hallowed night at Dancing Ferns, my hovel nestled among the hemlocks and pines some distance northeast of my domicile. Commonly, it is a solo endeavor; my only companions being Moses, my chocolate Lab, and Simon. After a scrumptious, massive dinner with my goodwife, and the opening of gifts, I make my journey to the woods. Once in camp, I acclimate to my woodland setting almost immediately; I am once again in my element.

My Franklin-like woodstove, “Iron Mary,” cracks and tings with heat as I put up my grub and goods for a sojourn that may last a week or more; the deer, along with the kindness of Providence, will establish the length of my stay in the woods.

With Mary’s iron doors swung open, I revel in the fireplace atmosphere and become bewitched by the dancing blue-and-orange flames reaching finger-like for the chimney. The cabin is snug and warm, not quite a Courier & Ives scene, but cozy all the same. As I sip hot coffee, my feelings go to seed and I dream with my eyes wide open, of nothing in particular. But past hunts ease their way from my memory to surface on the here and now: visions of candy canes and sugar plums are pushed aside, trampled by ten-point bucks and fat does.

A cold, rainy morning, a decade or more never to return, while nestled in a stand of hemlocks with pellets of ice crashing down on my broad-brimmed hat, I would have bet the farm no deer would leave its bed. Fate is never late; a doe topped the ridge, probably seeking shelter in the hemlocks as I was. I remember that doe—a whitetail cow if there ever was one, fat and heavy and coming toward me. My longrifle was balanced on a limb and glazed in ice, its lock and priming powder covered with a “cow’s knee,” a well-greased piece of leather. Snugging the stock to my shoulder, I whispered to Simon, “Don’t let me down.” I may have even touched my lips to the ice-coated walnut. With the cow’s knee slipped off, I gazed down the four-foot iron barrel and aligned the sights on the massive beauty; the rifle bucked as a foot-long flame exited the muzzle. The glossy, gray-brown matron of the wood folded where she stood and piled up in an inanimate bundle. Providence had been kind to me.

I won’t even attempt to fathom what destiny has in store for me this year. Nevertheless, the day after Christmas will find me in the deer woods, longrifle cradled in my arms, and content in simply being there, as fate permits, to stalk those denizens of the forest that fed and clothed  my posthumous mentors: the longhunters.

Bank the snow around the cabin and clean the chimney, Santa Claus is coming. And remember, there’s no cure for birth or death but to enjoy the interval; do your utmost to have a Merry Christmas. Talk to you pilgrims after the holidays. Thanks for showing up.

You can contact Roy at mountainman@mountainhomemag.com. Someone will walk up into the hills and make sure he gets the message.