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They are a curious crew, as mismatched as three lost socks. Three duck decoys from three different eras from three different friends. Mismatched, maybe, but I carry at least one of them with me on most of my duck hunts. A couple of them are old and beat-up and might not be the best choices for trying to fool the real thing. But then I think of what a bride is compelled to carry down the aisle: Something borrowed, something blue, something old, something new.

My little collection is along those lines, except that duck hunting is a lot more serious than any ol’ wedding. I toss these decoys out in the predawn dark because they meant so much to people I’ve loved. And lost, in various ways.

This is the time of year I store all the toys from three months of duck season, and it’s a bittersweet task. By now, the basement looks like a landfill for anything camouflage — coats, waders, hats, bags, blinds, dog vests, and more. I pull out the wet stuff and pile it by the door, a way station before draping it all over the deck railings and backyard fence. (Sorry, neighbors.) I clean what’s muddy and oil what’s rusty. And I won’t lie: I occasionally wipe away a tear or two. I bid those three old ducks farewell for now, just as I’ve bid some of their owners farewell for the moment, or forever.

One of the beautiful things about moving through the seasons outdoors, syncing your life with the ancient rhythms of an entire planet, is the unfolding promise of new beginnings. Duck season is over, but spring beckons. The shad run will peter out, but the redfish move to the beach. Summer sizzles to fall, but the birds are on the wing. New beginnings, of course, require endings. Alone in the basement, I celebrate both.

• • •

Of the three decoys, the Herter’s bird may be the oldest. It’s a black duck, stout and elegant. It was David Williams’s decoy, and it might have been owned by his father. The fleetest passing thought of David still brings a lump to my throat. A prolific artist and illustrator, he was, for years, the art director of Wildlife in North Carolina. He was a decade older than I, just coming out of those parenting years with young kids when you don’t have two minutes to rub against each other, so he was busting out with a bit of newfound freedom.

He loved to paddle a canoe, and I loved to paddle a canoe. He routinely sinned in ways I would never have forgiven anyone else: late in the morning, gear a mess, mismatched everything. But he could make me laugh like few others. We looked forward to a lot of years together on the water, once my own kids were grown. Then, on one of the last days of the 2006 duck season, he pulled on his duck-hunting gear in the predawn dark and felt a bit ill. He lay back on his bed and died, his hunting boots just out of reach.

The old Herter’s bird is the decoy of unfulfilled promise. I usually put it out first, thrown farthest in the water, so that David is out there on the edge, getting the first rays of dawn.

Come February, sportsmen close the book on another season of duck hunting, recalling fond memories of early mornings in the blinds at South Core Banks. photograph by Baxter Miller

The big cork mallard is another gem, from another North Carolina icon. Tom Valone just recently handed it down to me. The founder of Great Outdoor Provision Company, he was moving to Montana to be close to kids and grandkids, and was doling out a few of his own treasures. That decoy had seen many a sunrise with Tom and our mutual friend Kirk McInnis. The pair had grown up in Raleigh and had taken me under their wing, to varying degrees.

Whenever Kirk’s last cigarette went out in the duck blind, he’d give it a minute, then ask: “Anybody want a biscuit?” That was his sign that he’d had enough. Kirk was gruff and a little rough, but he was soft as nougat on the inside. When he learned Julie was pregnant, he made a wooden diaper-changing table that cradled both Markie and Jack from birth to Pull-Ups. He painted it bright yellow. I keep it on my workbench, nearly 30 years later.

Kirk is gone, too, and another friend and I adorned his casket with cattails from a favorite swamp. As we snapped off the cattails, a few of the tiny seeds whisked over the swamp on an unseen breeze. Endings and beginnings. Everywhere.

The decoys carry a peculiar kind of weight: The kind that lifts my spirits.

And then there’s a Tom Boozer hand-carved wood duck. That’s my totem for the present — and the future. Tom is a beloved decoy maker from the South Carolina Low Country, and a friend. That’s actually how he signs his notes to me: Your friend, Tom. I smile every time I see that, grateful. I own six of his decoys, and I often hunt over all six and nothing else. Hand-carved and hand-painted, they’re bright and cheery. A Tom Boozer wood duck drake dresses up a beaver swamp like nothing else on God’s green earth.

I place Tom’s decoys on the water one at a time, arranging them carefully. Some might think it’s nuts to haul these decoys deep into the swamp, carry them on my back to the canoe, and paddle them across the water, babying them all the way. Each is five times heavier than a modern plastic decoy and requires a bit more care, and possibly an extra 200 milligrams of ibuprofen on the drive back home. But theirs is a peculiar kind of weight: The kind that lifts my spirits.

Generally speaking, these decoys are not worth a lot of money. If I were to list them on Etsy or Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, the hand-carved Tom Boozer price tag might raise one of Julie’s eyebrows — just one, Julie, I promise — but I promise you this, too: If you wanted one, you could not afford it.