Guest Blog: Building Family Connection Through Time Spent Outdoors

By Roy Bermudez, Police Chief, Nogales, Arizona  

I live on four-acres of land next to the Coronado National Forest. I love living in the boondocks. When I’m home, I sit outside and have a 360-degree view of nature. I listen to the birds and it clears my mind.  It gives me solace to be out here by myself.  It’s relaxing, but most of all, it’s inspirational. 

We moved here because of my love for hunting and fishing. I want to pass that onto my kids like it was passed on to me by my parents. Just being out in nature is a daily reminder of how much I appreciate having the public lands that are accessible to us. 

Growing up, my dad used to take us fishing but not as much as we would’ve wanted because he was always working. He also used to take us hunting during hunting season. I would look forward to going to Patagonia Lake in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, and spending the night with my dad. We would fish at night and exchange stories of him growing up. Just being out there in the middle of nowhere is how I got to know a lot about my dad. I go fishing with my sons now, just like I went fishing with my dad. I take advantage of the time I can take to spend with them and go out with them often. These are precious and priceless moments. 

My 12 year-old twin sons and I go on hunting and fishing expeditions that are second to none. It creates such a bond and creates memories for the future. My kids love hunting and fishing. If it was up to them, we’d be at the lake every weekend. However, they play baseball during the summer so we’re spending 4 – 5 days at the park. But since we live right next to the national forest and we have horses, we ride back there a lot. Even when it’s not hunting season we just enjoy going out to the forest and taking advantage of the freedom you feel when you’re breathing clean air and only hearing birds.  We also have three older daughters who enjoy the outdoors as well.   

When my boys were nine we got drawn for elk. We went to Mormon Lake in Flagstaff over Thanksgiving week. It was snowing when we went out for our afternoon hunt. Mormon Lake in Flagstaff is huge, but the water is all dried up. There is only tall grass. We saw a herd of about 50 elk in there. The majority were cows but there were about 10 bulls. The only thing that helped us cover was the tall grass. We got close enough to take a shot at the elk, but didn’t because the bulls were in between the cows and I didn’t want to risk shooting something I wasn’t supposed to. But the boys were so excited, the look on their faces was amazing. We were just leapfrogging from one site to another. It was 18 degrees but they felt no cold.  

We didn’t harvest anything, but the adrenaline of getting so close and gaining the knowledge of how to get that close was amazing. Over the years they’ve watched me do this and they’ve learned when to be quiet and use hand signs, and when they can talk. Even though we didn’t harvest anything, that moment was priceless and will be in my mind forever. That’s the beauty of hunting – harvesting a deer makes it that much better, and yet there’s so much more to it than that. Every year is successful even if I don’t harvest anything because it’s time that I spend with my kids and my family that can’t be put into words. I have such great memories of that hunting expedition. 

I have a friend who has a pond on his property and he lets us go fishing there. The closest lake is Pena Blanca which is a couple of miles from my house. There aren’t too many people there and you can have a moment with yourself to reflect on your day or on your week and on your life. That’s what I’m teaching my kids to do. We catch trout and put some butter and salt and pepper on it and throw it on the grill. That’s the best way to eat it. You taste the fish and you’re tasting nature. Sometimes we also do catch and release. We just bring chips and sodas with us and have some family time and get our fix of being out in nature. 

Everybody should be appreciative of public lands and the great outdoors because if we don’t take care of them we’re going to lose them. Social media corrupts the minds and consumes the time of our youth and there’s very limited family time nowadays. It’s pretty sad when you go out to dinner and you see a family of four and everybody is on their phones. There’s no social interaction, there’s no communication.  

When you’re outdoors fishing and hunting there’s no room for technology. It’s just you and nature. When I go out there with my kids it’s just us and nothing to get in between the stories we share. There are no interruptions. It’s just us and the great outdoors. That’s what makes it so priceless. I love this life and I want to pass this tradition of hunting, fishing and being in the outdoors onto my kids and hopefully they’ll pass it along to generations to come.