by Damon Brewer

Created on: August 30, 2007

The Path of Curiosity

The cold north wind blew the snow into the house when it blew the door open that cold winter night a couple of years ago. I got up to close the door and saw that the ground was covered with snow except for a narrow winding path leading away from the door-leading toward who knew what. Shawn and Tuane, my two boys, and I each have a bit of a curious nature; therefore, we knew immediately that we would have to find out where that path led and if it held a little excitement for us. I would have checked out that path even if the boys hadn't brought their families home for a visit. As luck would have it, they were home at just the right time.

Excitedly we grabbed flashlights and were off to see what we could find. First one of us would lead the way and then another. We were looking for fun and excitement. We thought surely there would be excitement of some sort along that path as it led us into the woods and out of sight of the house. We were right; it held much excitement, but we did not yet know that.

We saw some fresh coon tracks and a couple of deer tracks as well. We had not planned to do any hunting, so we had brought neither gun nor dog with us. We each carried a pocketknife-not that we expected to need them this night, but we always carried them with us because in the country a man never knows when he might need a knife. All three of us had been raised to carry knives with us at all times.

We decided to try and get a closer look at the deer. We could tell by the size of the tracks that it was a big one, and we wanted to know if it was a buck that we could hunt when the season opened in a couple of weeks. We quit talking and walked on in compete silence hoping to catch it still grazing in the meadow just ahead.

As we walked along, we suddenly heard what sounded like a woman screaming-we stopped and listened closely. The deer had been forgotten now. There were no houses in the direction that the screams came from, so we had an idea that it might be a panther. We were not too worried about it, because we had not heard of anyone seeing a mountain lion in that area in years. Naturally, we thought that they had all been killed or driven away.

I reached into my pocket and pulled my knife out, and as I did, I noticed the boys reaching into their pockets as well. The blade on my knife was only about two-and-one-half inches long which is about the length of the boy's knives too. Really, they were not long enough to do any real damage if it was a mountain

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