Thinking of Mom this Mother's Day

My mother didn’t hunt or fish, but she encouraged me in my outdoor pursuits nonetheless.

When I bought a canoe with money from my paper route she helped me put a roof rack on our Chevy Nova so we could get it home. She also helped me buy my first pistol, a Ruger .22-caliber semiautomatic, when I was still too young to make the transaction on my own.

Before I was old enough to drive, she would shuttle me and my friends out to a little lake in the country, drop us off, and we’d camp and carouse unsupervised for a couple of days.

A former schoolteacher, Mom always stressed school first. Co...