Romine Camp at Old Belfast Hunting Club is like a nature diorama for the Arkansas Gulf Coastal Plain. The camp is about 1 acre. It's a mere opening in the pines where Mike Romine has held deer camp for much longer than the 19 years that I've known him.
Romine brought me into Old Belfast Hunting Club in 2009. He welcomed me into his camp at the same time. The skull and antlers of a big 4-point mule deer that I found in Colorado on the banks of the South Fork of the Gunnison River welcomes visitors under a sign that bears the Romine name.
We jokingly use it as a recruiting tool. "If you think our 4-points are big, our 8s and 10s will blow your mind!" I've taken it upon myself the last two years to maintain the camp. Part of that entails mowing the grounds with a push mower.
It is tedious, but a push mower cuts a lot cleaner than Romine's tractor mower. More than that, push mowing keeps me grounded to a place that has given me so much joy over the last two decades. According to my iPhone, the number of steps it takes to mow half of the camp is equivalent to 5 miles.
It takes two sessions to mow the whole thing. I need the exercise. Sometimes I mess up and leave my phone in the truck for half a session.
This makes me angry. For reasons I can't explain, I crave Apple's approval for my effort. When I'm done, I treat myself to a long four-wheeler ride about the property.
These jaunts show me which areas are being clearcut, and it's a great way to see a lot of animals. A four-wheeler.
