Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

We have one fixed seasonal dividing line. While spring and summer and fall merge silently one into the other, we announce winter with the crackling of gun shot. On November 20 our hunting season opens. The day comes close to being a state holiday. Men who hunt at no other time go out "the first day of season." Even Little Will begs off from his morning's work and goes to the hammock for squirrels or to the Creek edge for ducks or coots. We are excited and hilarious, and I think that a part of this is because we are unconsciously returning to the pioneer aspect of the state, when all men took a portion of their living from the hunt. It is the marked end of one thing, too, and the beginning of another, and something in men's minds likes a simple demarcation. Our crops are harvested or reaching their maturity. Ahead of us is the good season, when growth is slowed and a very little hoeing keeps clean the farm fields, the groves and the gardens. It is the tidy time. The lush exuberance of summer is forgotten and the hurricanes of the fall. All is neat and ordered.

My own flower and vegetable gardens are thriving, if they will thrive at all, and my citrus crop will not be ready for picking before Christmas. I do most of my writing in the summer, when there are no interruptions, and I have hurried to finish such work. I have a space of freedom and I am ready to go into the woods and the fields with my friends. Fred Tompkins and I open the hunting season together. He has long been my favorite hunting and fishing companion. He brings to the sport a great gaiety of spirit and an eye for all the beauty of the open. The hunt with him is a comfortable affair and I love him for his frequent stops to sit on a pine log and smoke a cigarette.