I grip my necklace in a fist against my chest as I hear the slow crunching of leaves. The pendant is the size of a quarter, and it has a picture of my grandpa in it. I run my finger over the rough, swirly pattern engraved on the back as the crunching grows closer. The front of it is a smooth shiny glass surface that allows me to see the photo inside of it. In the picture, my grandpa is wearing his camouflage hat that he always wore hunting. I smile when I look at it, as it reminds me of coming in from the cold, dark woods to share what we had seen that day. The best days were when I would get a call, telling me to walk to his hunting spot to help him track a deer. I let go of the necklace and pull my bow back as the deer comes into view. I take a deep breath and release the string.

  A few years before… I step out of the trailer and take a deep breath. The air is crisp and icy as it fills my lungs. It is still dark outside and stars scatter the sky. I’m standing in the tall, brown grass looking at the trees that surround me. They are jagged and range in height, some seeming to touch the sky, and others seeming to be mere shrubs. I start walking to the truck to get my coat as an owl screeches, giving a disruptive wake-up call. As I’m zipping up my coat, my grandpa emerges from the trailer and puts his camouflage cap on his nearly bald head. We climb into the truck with my dad and start down the road. My grandpa looks back at me and smiles, his hazel eyes meeting my identical ones. “Today’s gonna be a good day, I can feel it!”, he says. I tell him that I hope so, and he laughs. “When I was your age there were so many deer around here, that I’d see 50 every night,” he said. 

Back to present time… “I’ll be right over”, my dad says. I tap the end button and pull my rope up. There is a stick tied to the end of the rope, and while it is questionable, it works. I loop the rope around my bow, pull the stick through, and lower it to the ground. I start down the cold metal ladder as a gust of wind blows, making the tree I’m in sway. I find my arrow and immediately see the blood trail a couple of feet away. My dad arrives, and after following the trail for about 150 yards, I spot him. I think about what my grandpa used to tell me, “You have to be in the right place at the right time”. Whenever he got a deer, he would say that exact phrase. One of the last deer he got was an 8-point buck. We were trudging through the powdery snow as we followed a messy, kicked-up trail. Eventually, we saw him a couple of yards away, and it was like my grandpa was my age again. He was laughing, all giddy and excited that we found the deer. 

Hunting with my grandpa were some of my favorite moments in life. My grandpa was the kind of person that you had to love, and while he’s not here anymore, I still carry him in my necklace. As long as I have my necklace, he is with me during all the important moments in life. It reminds me of how kind he was, and how he appreciated the little things in life. He always put others before himself, and he treated everyone with respect. So no, I don’t just carry a necklace. I carry love, memories, laughter, smiles, and him.