Last night was our final one in Georgia, and the contrast with our life in Europe was particularly stark.  Imagine my whole family bush whacking their way through the pitch-black woods at ten o’clock at night, following the short barks of a blue tick hound who had treed a coon. Yes. That would be us raccoon hunting.

Fortunately for all involved, I begged off bringing Caroline, and my mom volunteered to stay at the house while she slept. She missed the excitement, but it didn’t start ’til after eight.

First, I guess I should say where we are. Not in Atlanta anymore. My dad likes to go somewhere rather than just have all eight grandkids tear their house apart and hurt each other when we all come into town for more than three days.

Last Christmas we rented houses at Calloway Gardens, which has a hundred acre Christmas light display and an animal safari nearby. This year, we came to Burge Plantation, a hunting estate owned by some family friends. I have, without a doubt, stepped back a hundred and fifty years, minus the laptop on the long dining room table where I sit by a fire this morning. The house where we are staying was “the big house” on a cotton plantation with about thirty slaves before the civil war. The diary of one of the mistresses of the house, Dolly Lunt Burge (1848-1879), has been edited and published. If I had the time, I could experience the civil war and Sherman’s march to the sea first hand through her words while sitting in her dining room. A Burge Plantation employee is in the kitchen, on the other side of the swinging door, preparing a breakfast for the fourteen of us. Biscuits, grits, bacon, and orange juice in a silver pitcher will undoubtedly be on the menu. Linen napkins have been laid around me while I type.

So, not only did my Dad want to drive down here, where we could have lots of property for long walks down to look at the horses and hunting dogs bawling in their kennels, but he also thought it would be fun to request a guided coon hunt–nocturnal of course.

“Wouldn’t the kids have fun hiking around in the woods after dark?” he asked. Yes indeed. Memorable. My dad is still sixteen at heart, and I love that.

So we met our guide and his dog after dark. Rocket, the blue tick hound, was big and strong. He was eight years old and larger than I imagined either Old Dan or Little Ann ever to have been. Our guide said that he’d been inspired to get a blue tick and hunt raccoons by Where the Red Fern Grows, so he could not only read, but make text to self and text to world connections too. (Sorry, bad teacher joke)

We drove into the woods, and he put a GPS collar on Rocket, walked him down a path along a stream for a bit, then let him off leash. We all waited silently to hear his “I found a scent” bawl. Silence. We chatted. We waited. As we talked, I heard a howl very faintly. Sure enough, a quarter of a mile away already, we heard intermittent bawling. We waited for the howling to get closer together, then for the barks that signaled that the racoon was treed. We waited some more. I got in the minivan to stay warm, with some little cousins and the Havanese dog that belongs to my sister and had to stay in the car. Long story short, we eventually followed the GPS by truck and minivan close to where Rocket had treed a coon. We hiked through woods thick with privet and thorny vines (whishing I were wearing full on Carharts rather than my new down coat from Zara) to the creek.

As you might imagine, Rocket was a sight to behold, barking up the tree. “Sometimes he’s so excited, he tries to bite the tree bark,” his guide said. The raccoon had run through the woods, Rocket on his tail, to his favorite hollow tree and climbed deep inside. We took turns peering up with flashlights into the hollow darkness, searching for eyes staring back at us.

Then we turned around and went home.

In Where the Red Fern Grows, someone takes an ax to the tree and stays up ’til dawn until the racoon becomes a hat. I was pleased that we let the Raccoon win this round, though Rocket was none too pleased to be pulled away from his find.

As we went to bed, Margaret said, “I felt sorry for Rocket. He worked so hard, and then we took his hard work away from him.”

“That’s what he lives for” I mused, “I think it’s more like playing IPad for two hours and then having your parent tell you it’s time to put it down and go to bed.”

Maybe she’s right, though. I can’t say I’m an expert on coon dogs anymore.