I wish I could take my little grandson back to the wondrous outdoor world I saw as a boy, but much of it is gone. He will learn about what is left of it from me, as I learned from my grandfather and father. I don’t want him to be like those college professors and most of the new breed of outdoor writers who get it all from a book.

There is so much to see, and marvel at, that the books can’t touch. It might be that his grandfather is the only one who will teach him about life the way it is, rather than how we want it to be. He has to know that when a bobcat pulls down a fawn, or a hawk begins to eat a quail before he kills it, there is nothing wrong about it, any more than there is anything wrong with a man taking a squirrel with a gun, or skinning and eating a catfish which fell for a baited hook. He may not hear about creation when he gets on the computer or in college, but he will hear it from his grandpa, and it will be something I show him more than tell him.

It is a strange world we are about to see, I hope he can learn how to escape the absurdity of it, and grasp the solid down-to-earth, unchanging, common sense principals that are the same today as ever. Sometimes you can’t find those in a concrete and pavement, anything-goes world where men are changing the definitions of what is “good” and what is “normal.”

“Yes Ryan,” I told him on the way home this morning, “If you spend time outdoors, you will see that things change constantly, and yet forever remain the same.”

Not wanting to get him too confused, I changed the subject. “Now this thing about the channel catfish being the state fish of New Hampshire, are you sure about that?”

“Positively, Grandpa!” was his reply.

“I have to be sure about stuff like that if I am going to put it in my column,” I told him. “Nothing goes in there without some solid research behind it!”

It is hard to cover all I would like to talk about in one column per week. But next week, I will be writing about the eagle nesting nearby, the rain-crows that have just moved in, soft-shelled turtles and green sunfish and other amazing things I see outdoors each week.

There are black raspberries all over up here on Lightnin Ridge, and I would be willing to share them with anyone not afraid of ticks and copperheads.

Address correspondence to Larry Dablemont, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo., 65613. Send e-mail to lightninridge@windstrea.net, check the Web site www.larrydablemont.com, or call (417) 777-5227.