Getting My Hoot Owl Call Back

Getting my Hoot Owl Call Back.

DRAFT: TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2025

 

I step out of my truck onto our family land in Dry Creek.

It’s so quiet.

No artificial noise.

Until I make my hoot-owl call.

I cup my hands to my mouth,

“Hoot-hoo-hoot-hoot-hoot-hoot-hoot-alllll.’

It echoes back from the surrounding woods.

I smile.

I know I’m coming out of my deep, dark tunnel of depression.

I’ve got my hoot-owl call back.

I’m on the journey to returned health.

 

My Specialty-Hoot-Owl call is the Barred Owl and its distinctive eight (or nine) note call.

The old timers said it was calling, “Who cooks for you?  Who cooks for you-alllll.

He’s a Southern bird, so it’s appropriate that he gets that y’all at the end.

Another adage was that two owls were on a limb peering down at two plump mice.

“I’ll take the first. You take the seconddddd.”

 

Just for good measure, I repeat my call. There’s no answer. It’s the middle of the day.

When darkness falls, I can call one up to a nearby tree.

That doesn’t matter today.

What matters is the deep gratitude I feel.

I’ve got my hoot-owl back.

Walking,

Curt Iles

 

DRAFT COPY FROM A BROKEN CUP: A JOURNEY THROUGH DEPRESSION     SCHEDULED RELEASE: SEPTEMBER 25

The book, A Broken Cup, will have three parts:

  1. A Broken Cup
  2. Under the Broom Tree
  3. Coming Out of the Dark Woods

“Hoot-Owl” will be a chapter in Parr 3.

Pray for this project as God stirs my soul (and pen) to write it,

 

Here is our scheduled 2025 Writing Calendar:

January 2025   Promote and share about Where I Come From.

May 2025   Release of Field Notes: Journals From A Full Life. 

Field Notes was written for my four teen grandsons, but it is applicable to every age, gender, background, and culture.  It contains short chapters dealing with civility and common sense,

Fall 2025  A Love of the Land      A collection of sixty new short stories. Book Two in “The Pineywoods” collection. Where I Come From (2024)  is the first in this series.

To Add later

I look around

 

SPECIES

Rebel Yell   replicated

2 comments

  1. Can’t wait to read your next writings! Your method of prose is easy to read and has a calming effect. God has blessed you with that ability and I thank you for sharing parts of your life with us.

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