Column Chronicles: Playing in the great outdoors

Playing in the great outdoors

Frank Cotolo
October 8, 2015

I am an outdoors person, which means I like to leave my home and go to places that are not surrounded by walls and the only ceiling is the big blue sky. I don't even care about the weather. I take my chances with the elements and love the dangers of sport in the great outdoors. It's exhilarating, even when the dangers begin to become obvious.

For instance, I always knew jumping from airplanes without a parachute had its risks but I never worried about it. However, when Kirk Kankaband broke both of his legs, the sixteen of us in the weekly jump team began to second-guess the sport. No one had ever gotten hurt before but Kirk landed awkwardly on his feet and cracked some bones. We imagined how horribly Kirk would have been hurt if the plane we jumped from was flying at the time.

Climbing trees, big ones like the Redwoods in California, is a test of strength, will and foot pressure. You shimmy up the giant trunk and once you get twenty feet up it is too late to change your mind and come back down. In fact, no one has ever tried to come back down the same way they go up. When we get to a certain height we stay there until someone brings a ladder.

A bunch of us love to go walking in the woods. We don't hunt because to kill animals is cruel. If you kill too many of certain kinds of animals you can make that kind extinct. We are so sensitive about animal lives that we would not even kill an animal in self-defense.

Fishing is great, especially in a body of water where you can bring a boat. We learned the hard way that a canoe cannot fit seven people, nor can four people all sit in the front. We stopped fishing from canoes and used rowboats. It was much more comfortable. A boat that sits two is fun for fishing. The first time I took a rowboat to fish, I took turns rowing with Burt Kittenstump. Burt and I rowed far out from shore and then settled in deep water. Fishing would have been productive at the point where we settled if we had brought the traditional rods, hooks and bait.

Archery takes skill, especially at aiming. I once started an archery club and thirty people joined. In two weeks we had five members. Not all of the twenty-five that left the club died, some were just permanently disabled and others simply frightened to continue when they saw what happened to those who became permanently disabled.

Bird watching is a quiet and somber sport. The birds do most of the moving around. Our bird watching group is large. Luckily, not all of them carry hand grenades. We usually have an orientation before anyone new joins the group because many of the birds we watch come from the Orient.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.