Best Day Ever

Making and Remembering

It happened first in Africa in 2019, after my son, our friend and professional hunter Geoffrey Wayland, and I, had experienced an unusually successful and enjoyable evening afield.

We were headed back to Geoffrey’s house and I asked, “Bat, best day ever?

To which he replied, “Best day ever, Dad.”

Ever since then, when any of the three of us are together and have an exceptional hunting day, one will ask the other/s, the same question, and will receive the same response. It has, as they say, become a thing.

In reality, it was most likely not the best day ever — of all time — but at that moment and given the company at that time, with all the emotion, tiredness and elation involved, it was — compared to it never having happened — the best day ever.

Last year I said that to my wife and Geoffrey as we were sitting around a table with three other safari couples down in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, and someone remarked, “You said the same thing last night around the fire ring, was this day better than that one?”

I told them, no, and that they were very different days, but the same, and that both were the best day ever. They could not grasp the marked singularity but difference of the days, nor the concept of the remark that essentially means, today I had a great day doing great things with great people, and it was the best.

I’ve had a lot of best days ever. Two days ago Geoffrey and I shot a very nice free range kudu. It was a wonderful and exciting stalk that still produced the tactical hunting collaboration we both so enjoy, along with the adrenaline rush — and dump — that makes free-range kudu hunting on Geoffrey’s farm the addictive-like drug that it is to me. It was another best day ever two years ago when I got to watch my oldest daughter shoot a zebra on another hunt with Geoffrey. Several years before that, I went turkey hunting with my son — unbelievable, right — on a father and son hunt with friends of ours. Bat shot a nice gobbler and it was, yet another, best day ever.

Part of the thing about a best day ever is that it can only happen within your special circle of family — or friends that are the equivalent of family — who can understand the weight and gravity of that remark as it relates to the day in question. You might have a magical-like occurrence with a near stranger, but for a best day ever there must be a long and established and important connection between all involved. And too, a lot of things beyond interaction with other people can play into its creation, like a brilliant sunset, the smell of sage on the prairie, the crackle of a brook in the background, or maybe the animal that outsmarted you all.

“Best day ever” is just the best way to describe a damned good day with people you care about, where something or several emotional and memorable things happen.

You see, a best day ever is an emotional thing, and a man should strive to have as many best days ever as often as he can. It is the fabric that keeps you driving forward, sometimes giving you the strength to put unimaginable effort toward a mutually appreciated goal, involving struggle, hope, and dreams. Best days ever are the stories you tell, laugh, and cry about. However, the retelling of a best day ever can only be truly appreciated by its original participants. It is the ultimate example of —you had to be there.

To live a full and proud life you should collect every best day ever you can, like a mother who collects the tidbits and trinkets — like ribbons, pressed flowers, sports medals, and the lost teeth — of her children’s lives. The thing is, even if you’re a professional photographer or a celebrated writer, best days ever cannot be captured in the material world. They only live, shared in the minds of those who made them, and they are often found in the campfire.

Campfires reanimate best days ever, where they can momentarily live again in the blaze and smoke between you and those who shared that day with you, and with others who most likely will not grasp their magnitude. Ultimately, a recalled best day ever will fall invisibly back into the ash hoping to be ignited with a blaze and brought to memory once again.

May you go forward with calm seas and fair winds, and may your mind remain sharp enough to store and recall every best day ever, as you also dream of others to come. Because someday, the horns and antlers on your wall, and hides covering your floor, will mean nothing without the remembrance of the circumstances and the people who helped you put them there.

Today was yet another best day ever that I seem to so often find in Africa. Someday I’ll tell you about it.