Ilike people who need no excuse to go fishing. You simply broach the subject, and the conversation quickly turns to matters of when and where—logistics—not why it can’t be done. That’s Mark Emory for you. The 44-year-old Richmonder recently shut down his audio-visual consulting business of 14 years because of the sour economy. He’s making ends meet with savings until he finds another job, for which he spends most of every day looking. But Emory is a fisherman, a fly angler usually, and he doesn’t have to be reminded of the value of a day spent on a mountain stream.

The Marlboro Man rode a horse; Oscar Mayer wiener men (and women) drive Wienermobiles; Red Bull dudes drive Mini Coopers. Chuck Carlisle is the Remington Man, and he drives a custom truck that could swallow any of the above modes of transportation whole. Carlisle is also a Chesterfield County native, a Trinity Episcopal grad, a former forester and a lifelong outdoorsman. His job is to travel the Mid-Atlantic, park the Remington truck in front of outdoors stores, answer questions and show off Remington products.

On the side of a mountain, tired and underfed, strange things can creep into a man’s mind. In that very situation this past Sunday, I found myself thinking: “Man, I could really use a pair of those 3D movie glasses.“ Bizarre, I know. I was standing in a pine thicket holding a topographic map when this thought shot up from my burning quads, through my empty stomach and into my head. “It sure would be nice to look at this two-dimensional map and have it come to life in 3D, to have the valleys, ridgelines, spurs and hollows rise off the page.“

On Dec. 19, the Central Virginia branch of the Quality Deer Management Association will hold its annual youth hunt at the Doodlum Hunt Club in Purdy. Hunters 15 and younger are encouraged to submit a letter of no more than 100 words explaining why they should be chosen to participate. The letter also should include the hunter’s name and birth date, address, daytime and evening telephone numbers, and an e-mail address of the parent or legal guardian who will attend.

For the record, I considered taking this column off. I figured I’d get the editors to hang a sign in the spot where they normally put me: “Andy Thompson is out of the office. His column will resume when he comes down from a tree stand in Fluvanna or Prince Edward or Caroline counties or wherever he is. Don’t hold your breath.“ Instead, I’ve emerged from the woods to bring you this dispatch. I do so reluctantly because, frankly, I’d much prefer to be out there still.

This past spring, the game department announced that it had found white nose syndrome in bats at two different caves in western and southwestern Virginia. The news was alarming on many fronts, not least of which is that so little is known for certain about the condition - how it is contracted, how it operates, how it kills. What is obvious are its outward signs: Infected bats exhibit a white fungal growth around their noses as well as on their wings, legs or tail membranes.

Is it a curse or a blessing to know the sunlight is fading, that you can count your last moments on Earth on one hand? Your body is failing, wracked by a cancer that invaded your liver and spread quickly. You don’t know how long you have, but it doesn’t feel like much. It’s a double-edged sword to know: You can count the precious few moments on one hand, but you also hold them in that hand. They’re yours.

Like it or not, every deer hunter worth his fox urine cover scent must also be a scholar of chemical attraction. Of course, I aspire to be worth my fox urine cover scent, every last ounce of the bottle currently sitting in my garage next to the red oak acorn wafers and natural cedar incense sticks. To bag a big buck, you must think like one. And this time of year, with the rut almost upon us, that means thinking about sex.

A little less than a year ago I wrote about the possible reintroduction of a substantial elk herd in Virginia. The eastern elk, of course, was native to Virginia and much of the eastern United States, but, due to hunting and habitat loss, the subspecies was extirpated from the region before the turn of the 20th century.

When I introduced the Urban Oasis series at the beginning of this year, the goal was to find patches of overlooked wilderness in the Richmond area. There are a surprising number of them - green spaces such as Williams Island, Powhite Park and Tuckahoe Creek that are often missed, even by outdoors lovers. But as I’ve searched the area for these places, what’s surprised me most are not the places that, through quirks of geography, are hidden away or off the beaten path. More surprising has been the number of places hidden in plain sight.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts doesn’t reopen until May of next year. The November First Fridays isn’t for three weeks. What’s an art lover to do? Usually the answer to that question would not be, “Go to Orvis.“ But tomorrow it is, especially if you’re into art with an outdoors theme. The fly-fishing store in the Short Pump Mall wraps up its Fall Orvis Days tomorrow with seminars on everything from duck and goose calling to targeting game fish around the Outer Banks. But for my money, the real draw is the art.

Throughout the summer and into the early fall, the biggest celebrities in northwestern Powhatan County were a bruin and a buck. In still-rural communities like Pine Tree and Trenholm, the pair was as well known as any Hollywood A-List couple. “A few people had set up cameras in the woods up there to see the bear, and they had,“ said Amy Potter, a lifelong Powhatan resident.

Imagine with me a day in the not so distant future. The ballpark debate has been settled. A gleaming stadium sits overlooking the floodwall and the river in Manchester. It’s April. Opening day. A day of pure promise. Your young son and daughter are ready, have been for hours. “Daddy, can we go now?“ they plead in unison.

As societal ills go, littering might not be up there with violent crime, political corruption or purse snatching, but there is something particularly galling about it. Really, how hard is it not to litter? Don’t flick your cigarette butt out the car window. Is that too much to ask? At least actuarial tables suggest smokers won’t be around as long to cover the streets with their refuse.

Funny the images that stay with you from childhood. Any time someone mentions the Civil War, there’s this snapshot that flits across my brain of being in my parents’ TV room watching the Ken Burns documentary on the subject. It’s nothing more specific than that, but I remember my whole family being glued to the TV for days. I was 12 when “The Civil War” came out. Four years later, Burns had us fixated again with his nine-part series on the history of baseball. He’s done much since then, including an acclaimed history of jazz, but nothing that really pushed the Thompson family buttons. That is, until this past week when “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” came to PBS.