Greetings from Capt. Dave & Baymen Charters!

I hope everyone survived the nor’easter. We are still shoveling out and have the snow plow coming back later today for round two of clean-up. The Baymen Camp is high on a hill with a long driveway and large parking and turnaround area. When we get a lot of snow, like the two foot of snow we just had, it is a lengthy process to get it all cleaned up.

At heart, I love snow and I love winter. I love the cold temps and the beauty of a winter snow storm. It tests the mettle of man to see how well we can deal with short-term adversity and to look for the silver lining. For sure, there are serious concerns and difficulties: frozen and broken water pipes, furnaces break down, trees fall, power goes out, etc.  And the old folks who were once young and youthful themselves, may need medical services and help with their daily needs. They are always the top priority. For those of us still able to get out and shovel snow, fire up the chainsaw and cut up fallen trees, split and haul firewood, sand and salt icy walkways and driveways, and offer a helping hand where it is needed, we go and do it.

My mother and father were the picture of perfect health their entire lives and lived into their nineties. At 93, my mother stacked a cord of firewood in the garage. At 91, my father shoveled the snow off the deck, shoveled his driveway, and then went around to the neighbors and shoveled anyone’s driveway or walkway that needed it. And he cleaned the snow of their cars. Dad passed away a little over a year later and Mom just passed in July, one day short of her 95th birthday.

I often take walks in the cemetery where my family is laid to rest. My grandparents, my mother and father, my sister, my aunt. It is sobering. While walking, praying and mediating, I often come across the graves of others I have known, and far too often, the graves of little children. When my own children were small and we visited the graves of our family, we would then visit the graves of some of these little children and wonder out loud why and how and felt sympathy and sadness for them and their own families. These were very fragile moments wrapped in love and never taken lightly. My lesson to my children was all life is precious to God and that the song that they learned in Sunday School, still deep in their hearts today, is a life truth: Jesus loves the little children of the world and Jesus loves each and every one of us.

So, as I shovel snow and marvel at the beauty, and dream of striped bass fishing that is still months away, I give thanks to God for the snow storms of winter. They rekindle warm memories and remind me that all things are held together by God for his purposes. Even those things far too deep for a finite man longing to understand an infinite God. 

Capt. David Bitters, BAYMEN, www.baymenlife.com 29 Years Guiding The Bay