To Think About

Are we facing the gathering storm?

This week I received a signed copy of "Histórias do João Grande", by Carlos Henrique Menke, MD (ISBN 978-85-7497-578-8).The book brings a collection of chronicles written over almost fifty years by Doctor Menke, a passionate hunter, fisherman, conservationist, medical doctor and professor, and the background is the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

In the 238 pages of this beautifully written book, Dr. Menke tells the sad story of how a vibrant nature friendly hunting culture was overthrown by a noise minority of Eco-radicals and how all legal hunting in a state that was once a reference in environmental stewardship, came to an end due to a court order. No discussion, no debate, just misguided emotions. But "Histórias do João Grande" is a lot mo than that. It is a vibrant book about the passion that burns deep inside of us hunters.

At its final chapter, Dr. Menke provides us with a gift in the form a quote from the renowned American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and writer Thomas Sowell: "Freedom means, in the end, the right of people to do things that we do not like."

As the year, but not the world, comes to an end, and it is already very clear that we will have  a very challenging 2013, we should ponder about freedom and the world we want to build and leave to our children.

May you all have a Christmas of renewal and rebirth and be the architects that build us all a better future.

About my book "A Wild Beast at Heart"

I always enjoyed stories, either as a listener or as a teller, particularly if I was one of the characters, but this is not reasons that I wrote this book.

Everything started with a one-page thank you note to my friend Bob Scott of Kalamazoo, MI, for helping me to take my first whitetail deer, which I tried to get publish in the form of a very short column without success. Then, I went dove hunting on a magic misty morning and knew I had to share the communion with nature and traveling in space and time with other people and show that are no limits for our dreams.

My father had been telling me and everybody else that he would one day write a book, “Contos Rurais”. I even gave him pen and paper but he passed way in 2009, some year after the publication of “A Wild Beast at Heart” and before writing down a single word, although the pen and the notebook were always on his nightstand. Although unwillingly, I may have stolen some of his stories.

The decision to finally write a book came on a sad Sunday morning in January 2006, when I was in a train from Amsterdam to Hannover, staring at the wintry fields between the Netherlands and Germany and mourning over the death of a most dear friend, Chileno, and I felt that even if my train was about to reach the “bend of the world” I would like to leave at least one story behind.

Conceived in the Netherlands, this book was lived and written in bits and pieces, in Michigan (USA), in the Winterberg range (Republic of South Africa), in several farms in Brazil – Taboa (my real birth place), Buriti do Retiro, São Jorge Preto, Ronda – and other places around this “mundo velho sem porteira”. I revised it in Shanghai (China) and wrote its final words on my home’s deck, on a most beautiful spring afternoon.

I am not sure how many copies were sold, but I am happy that I was able to reach many people with my stories, and some of them wrote back to me with positive reviews, and that was the biggest reward that I could have hoped for.

If you are interested, you can (for the time being) get my book “A Wild Beast At Heart” (ISBN-10 1424147212) at http://www.amazon.com/ or other on-line bookstores.

As you may have already realized, I love hunting and the outdoors, but even if you do not enjoy the trill of the chase and hunting of game I hope that you enjoy these stories, and urge you to hunt your dreams.