Friendships carry on at Christmas lunches that are bonded by time spent outdoors

The question of whether friendships can be maintained virtually seems to me not a question at all but a fact. The reference here isn't to meetings over Zoom or Teams or other digital conveyances that simulate human connections for the purpose, mostly, of doing business. The friendships I speak are of the mind, my mind in this instance, and probably that of others as well.

The issue arises because for many years, decades actually, a small group of us gathered for lunch, just now, during the holidays. In the earliest years, we circled a table at restaurants among other festive groups that were similarly gathered. We were younger then. That's what I remember most about those first years, being younger.

The bonds that held us together, one to another and collectively, were forged in experiences we shared outdoors, oftentimes while hunting or fishing. But not only those. We also shared among us stories of sons and daughters who graduated, or who made winning baskets, or, who, conversely, suffered health downturns or other misfortunes. These were our lives, our times, and every year at Christmas we threw ourselves together to look back, and, gaining assurances from one another, also to look ahead.

Some of our revelers are gone, passed away. Still, I can imagine just now confirming with them a time and place to meet this week or next, to hold our holiday lunch. Joel Bennett was one who is missing. Pancreatic cancer got him. Also Dick Hanousek, a weakened heart and, arguably, too much fishing. And Bud Grant, whose time on the clock ran out earlier this year at age 95.

Joel was a dog lover, a duck hunter and a gentle man. He enjoyed a good laugh, and it was easy to laugh with him. For some years in fall we traveled to Cumberland House in Saskatchewan to live for a week in a small cabin with a wood-burning stove and, out back, a bucket setup for a shower. The point was to hang out with our Cree friends, and to hunt ducks and catch walleyes. We did both. But mostly when together we passed the good time.

When I first met Dick, he had already given up hunting in favor, exclusively, of fly fishing. We covered a lot of water, Dick and I, from southeast Minnesota to New Zealand to the saltwater flats of the Caribbean. A serial entrepreneur when he wasn't fishing, Dick taught me a lot, including the role fishing can play in keeping a family together, and, not incidentally, how to experience joy for no reason. I also learned from Dick that if you try real hard, anywhere in the world on a Sunday you can find someone who is saying Mass, and can attend.

Bud, meanwhile, fit into our bunch not due to his public persona but because he was a good and interesting person who was a straight shooter, figured many ways. Like Joel, he loved his dogs. And he could be funny. One time he walked into a party of friends and strangers wearing an earring, the clip-on kind, though you couldn't tell it wasn't the real thing. To those who dared ask about his fashion accessory he said, unsmiling, that he "felt the time was right" and let it go at that. And if you ever beat him in gin rummy, he'd hound you for a rematch until he got even, and his money back.

Which leaves us with the other three, kind of. I say kind of because gathering them for lunch wouldn't be easy.

One, Bob Lessard, is hunkered down in International Falls, where for him it all started. In his 90s now, he's got a war wound from Korea that bothers him. A keen woodsman and, according to him, the world's best walleye fisherman, Bob was a longtime legislator who at the Capitol was smart, deceptively so, in the manner of a fox — ask anyone who crossed him. But he wasn't always on top of his game. At one of his famous walleye feasts thrown to raise money for his campaigns, he strolled across a banquet hall to greet an attractive woman who attended sans escort. "Good evening, I'm Senator Bob Lessard," Bob said, "and who might you be?"

"Bob,'' the woman replied after a long pause, "I'm your ex-wife."

Next in our bunch is Norb Berg, who like Bob is a Korean War veteran and in his 90s. Norb and I became fast friends when we first met in 1980. He was, and is, fascinated by deer and the many mysteries they inspire, particularly for those who hunt these animals. Starting with a small parcel of land in northwest Wisconsin, over decades Norb has added to his acreage, hoping, ultimately, to leave his sons and grandchildren and great-grandchildren a place to hunt, and a place for deer to roam.

Then there's Pat Smith.

After Bud's wonderful wife, Pat, died in 2009, he met "another Pat," as Bud sometimes referred to Pat Smith, and they joined up. In the years since, she attended all of our Christmas lunches, and was enthusiastically received. With her own stories to tell, sometimes at Bud's expense, Pat might have been the coach's teammate, but she had, and has, her own mind, and Bud respected that.

Hunting and fishing weren't the reasons that Joel, Dick, Bud, Bob, Norb, Pat and I were friends. They were the reasons we met. In another life, we might have been work buddies or business owners or musicians or whatever — collections of pals who I'm sure have their own gatherings, perhaps also at Christmas.

And our bunch? This Christmas?

Of course we'll meet.

This time it'll have to be virtual, and as I imagine it, we'll all be there.

And we'll be younger, too.

Younger.