The voice on the other end of the line rasped low and weak.
          “Tim, you okay?”
          I’d called my friend to check on his recovery from the flu.
          “I’m whisperin’ because I’m in my deer stand.”
          I smiled, relieved. No surer sign of good health than being outdoors on a winter day.
          “My boy, Luke, is perched a few trees away. If I scare off the buck we spotted, it won’t be a merry Christmas.”
          “Good luck, pal. We’ll talk later.”
          Most of my friends are hunters of some sort or another. They hone their eyes to spot deer, quail, coyotes and wild hogs in the brush. But bagging game isn’t the real reason they hunt. “Just getting away,” as they put it, provides the main motivation for maintaining ammo and shelling out money for a license each year. Their casual explanation, however, belies a deeper instinct, one that pastors like me would call contemplation.
          Lacking good aim as a kid, I never developed an interest in hunting. For me, the call of the wild involved breaking colts. Riding horses continues to be my preferred mode of “just getting away,” aka “spiritual discipline.” In fact, I had just finished reciting the Magnificat on horseback before placing that call to Tim.
          I’m not sure why some fellows are drawn to the outdoors more than others. I suspect one’s upbringing plays a role. My own farm-raised brothers, for instance, insist on doing field work well into their 70’s.
          And I wonder why I live a barn?
          Regardless of what form it takes, communing with nature provides communion with God. It’s something every man knows but rarely puts into words.
          Sometimes, Thanks whispered from a deer stand is the deepest prayer of all.