Have you ever

[skeets]

Just sat and listened to things around you? I don't mean like in your deer stand, or working 10,20 40 or 80 meters. Just sat and listened, for no other reason than just to hear. This morning I was out on the back porch, coffee in hand, watching the sun coming up. It was about 60, no breeze, no movement, not even a car out on the hard road, just stillness. And then a sound, that yanks you back a life time ago. Way off in the distance, the sound almost every gray beard knows. That thump thump thump of rotor blades beating the morning air. For a split second, you become that strong young man again, being some place you didn't want to be, wondering what was going on back home.
Then it is gone, and you are just an old man standing on your porch with a cup of coffee and memories.
OK Im done, I was just wondering sometime ya just gota share

 

[arml]

I know what you mean....my mind drifts back to '66, gives me pause.

 

[Steve67]

I can relate, the helicopter war 1970 for me. These days I always hear the thump thump before anyone around me does

 

[Botamon]

Just sat and listened to things around you?

All the time. Pretty much every day. I live pretty remotely so it is very quiet (and I don't have a TV or radio running all day long!) Most of the sound around my place is the birds - I have several bird feeders set up and the birds can make quite a racket.

To me the "whop whop whop" of a Huey's rotor blades coming in over the jungle canopy was just about the sweetest sound in the whole world, 50+ years ago.

 

[skeets]

Well from what I hear , I want to say if no one else has,,, Welcome home !

 

[Henro]

" That thump thump thump" at moments like you mentioned for me relates more to my heart when I saw an attractive girl...LOL

It is a bit depressing returning to reality, isn't it?

Yes I guess I do share you experience..kinda...

 

[PHPaul]

I grew up on a small farm in central Michigan. Cash crops and a handful of beef critters every year. Of course, that involved all the usual chores, delivering food to the critters, hauling off used food, plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, etc.

I joined the Navy at 18 and never looked back. Not intentionally so much as that's just the way it worked out. Other than keeping a small flock of sheep I never returned to anything resembling farming. Living on the coast it's all lobstering and forestry. No farms.

Some years ago, while on one of my frequent random trips through the inland backroads on my motorcycle, I rode past a decent-sized dairy operation on a day they were chopping corn sileage. It hit me hard, I pulled off the road and just luxuriated in the smells and the sounds. Cow manure, freshly chopped corn, diesel exhaust, tractors leaning into a load, the moan of the chopper. I was instantly 16 again.

At the time, I even fantasized about working as a hired man. I'd have done it for room and board just to be around it again.

For a while. In the Summer. Until reality kicked in.

 

[cliffboyer]

A few years ago was out riding in my SXS and stopped, shut it off to do something. Mid morning. Just quite. Then I felt something reverberate thru me, just the slightest vibration. It was constant. Continued that way for 3 or 4 minutes, then I could hear it....whump...whump...whump....and getting closer. Off in the distance was formation of 5 Chinook helicopters, low and slow.

Now I know how Radar was tuned into that feeling.

Was quite the sight. But to feel them before hearing or seeing them was awesome. Makes you wonder what the opposition thinks when they experience that.

 

[Toyboy]

I've done that a bunch of time. The only difference is the thump thump I hear in the north woods are grouse drumming in the spring.

 

[skeets]

I have not heard a grouse drumming here in the Laurel highlands for a very long time

 

[Botamon]

A few years ago was out riding in my SXS and stopped, shut it off to do something. Mid morning. Just quite. Then I felt something reverberate thru me, just the slightest vibration. It was constant. Continued that way for 3 or 4 minutes, then I could hear it....whump...whump...whump....and getting closer. Off in the distance was formation of 5 Chinook helicopters, low and slow.

Now I know how Radar was tuned into that feeling.

Was quite the sight. But to feel them before hearing or seeing them was awesome. Makes you wonder what the opposition thinks when they experience that.

Those bad boys were how we got all our supplies in the jungle: