Sumrall, Miss. — Venture deep into the bayou, 1,027 miles south of Green Bay, and a cursive "F" is waiting, calling, daring you to enter Brett Favre's world. Right off Highway 98 awaits his 465-acre paradise.

Four rows of freshly planted trees sprout three feet high, about 50 deep to preserve long-term seclusion.

At the "F" on the iron gate, punch "001" into an intercom for the house or "000" for the barn. The gate opens, take a left at the Y and drive a mile through timber and sprinklers directly to an immaculate home.

Leaning into a Silverado pickup, mud sprayed on the back panel, the gunslinger is found.

The forearms strike you first, the road maps of bursting veins. Those 10 3/8-inch hands are vise-firm at the handshake. No, Brett Favre is not flexing. His guns are in their stagnant state. Still imposing, still fit, this grandfather of two leads you to the back patio through a corridor and past the pool.

The hitch in Favre's gait is more strut than limp. He turns, grins and tells the first of a hundred stories. Yeah, it's true, he sneaked away to Shawano for an eight-day hunting trip. With his buddy "Row-snow," the first November out of football, Favre stalked deer a mere 30 miles from Green Bay. It was a covert operation.

He hunted with his pal in the "middle of nowhere," relied on delivery pizza at night and entered the public domain only once.

For laundry.

"I put my hood up," said Favre, smiling, "ran into the laundromat, threw my clothes in and got out of there. There were two older guys in there who looked like they haven't watched much football."

This is what life came to for Brett Favre and the state of Wisconsin.

Favre crosses silver-, gold- and brown-colored stone flooring and peers off past one of two lakes on his property. First, you talk about football today. The changing rules? "It pays to throw." The tackling? "Horrible." The modern-day NFL practices, where pads are carried to the facility for players? "Embarrassing."

He caught only the second half of Green Bay's 44-23 loss at New Orleans the night before, the collapse. Favre admits he would've dreaded that redeye flight back. No, he wasn't at the Superdome.

The reason? A mean Adults vs. Kids volleyball game broke out on the sand court below.

And the reason you haven't heard much from Brett Favre? Life is pretty damn perfect down here. Of the 465 acres, 405 are high-fenced. Favre has deer and turkey (desirable!), wild hogs (undesirable!) and every type of snake imaginable.

"Usually," he says, "they're poisonous. Rattlesnake. Water moccasin. Copperhead."

Here, rattlers grow to seven feet long "with fangs," says Favre extending his fingers two inches, "that long."

So he kills 'em. When he can. However he can.

"Preferably with a gun or a machete."

This is Brett Favre at 45 years old, 47 months removed from his final snap. Cutting the grass. Spraying the weeds. Fixing that broken irrigation system. Keeping the deer population, he smirks, "in check." Favre is living exactly how you'd expect him to live after football. He is, as the cliché goes, on the tractor.

He is, finally, at peace.

Or so he says. Naturally, you are skeptical.

The NFL's axis once tilted on each Favre whim, right here on these 465 acres. It's where the "itch" heard 'round the world was ground into a scab three straight off-seasons in Green Bay. It's where Vikings teammates lured him back. It's where Favre swears he felt like a kid dying to go back to school each year just months after thinking he had played his final down.

Tears were shed. Hearts were torn. Bells, rung. Favre was a gladiator and gladiators do not, simply, turn it off. Yet Favre — sunburned, unshaven, grays turning white — promises he is not going stir crazy.

The "what-ifs" are flushed out of his system, he says, the ones that pulled him back north time ... after time ... after time ... after ... time?

Your eyes are drawn to those biceps again.

"Do I think I could still throw?" Favre asks. "Given time, I could probably get my arm in shape."

You poke, you prod. Quarterback play is awful in a few cities, he's reminded.

"If they promise they wouldn't hit me," he says, chuckling.

But, c'mon, defenses aren't allowed to hit the quarterback in 2014.

"They'd hit me. They would hit me."

Back to reality, Favre talks of the return he does see in his future. His voice skips imagining the day he'll return to Green Bay. Anxiety will run high. Like a game, he says. One final game at Lambeau Field.

His conscience is clear. He is ready to reconnect.

"It means everything," Favre says. "Make no mistake about it, I want to be remembered as a Packer. My 16 years in Green Bay are ... so important to me. As it is for the Packer fans. That's why going to play somewhere else meant so much. If I didn't leave an impact, who would have cared?"

Indeed, for three hours, Brett Favre sounds like a man at peace. With his future.

With his past.

Still...

Stage 1: Acceptance

It was time to compete again. Finally. The first May after the final retirement, Brett Favre made a last-second decision.

His wife, Deanna, asked him to drop her off at a 5K race in town. He didn't even know what a 5K was. Hell, bring it on. Favre knew he couldn't keep pace with Deanna but surely he could break a sweat, cruise along, shed a few pounds.

He took off and lasted all of 70 yards. Yes, 70. Favre thought he was "going to die." The calves were first to go. Then, his wind.

That's because Favre had ballooned to 250 pounds. "248," he clarifies.

"I don't even want to say I 'ran' it in 48 minutes," Favre said. "It was run, walk, run, walk. But it was 48 minutes. I had little kids passing me saying, 'Mr. Brett, you're doing so good!' They were all blowing past me.

"That was sort of the wake-up call."

Many professional athletes stagger through life after the final whistle. Then there are the Michael Jordans, the John Elways, the Kobe Bryants — savage, fourth-quarter assassins who thrive on down-six, two-minutes left, all-eyes-on-me pressure. Removing this is equivalent to shutting off their oxygen supply. The alpha competitor must then find a way to breathe.

Jordan owns a basketball team. Elway runs a football team. Bryant is hanging on for a 19th season.

And here's Brett Favre, getting toasted by 12-year-olds.

He had no clue what to expect in Year 1 of retirement, so this was one place to start. He started jogging through this Mississippi brush two, three, four times a week. He timed himself in the mile and pumped iron in his home gym — suddenly training more than he ever did as a player because it wasn't a job anymore.

Still, as that 2011 training camp neared, the first year without football, the urge was bound to return.

How many times can a guy run a humdrum mile and be satisfied? Let alone someone with 30 fourth-quarter comebacks.

It's not like Favre could "tight-rope the Grand Canyon." Nothing here would ever emulate the high of the NFL.

"Don't get me wrong," Favre says, "about nine-tenths of a mile into it, I'm thinking ... 'What in the hell am I doing?' And it's tough being third-and-20 and you can't hear anything and it's do or die, I don't know if there's much that compares to that. If I'm running a mile, and I can't, I just quit. If no one's looking, I just quit. You can't just quit in the game."

So this is the question Favre still hears all the time: Do you miss it? Do you miss it? Do you miss it? Inside, Favre was nervous. Was this doable? Could retirement truly be acceptable? The regular season began and ... he felt nothing. No yearning. No itch. That wasn't the case in previous years. Not with memories of his last pass as a Packer getting picked off in the NFC title game (2007), of playing lights-out before a torn biceps sidelined him in New York (2008), of taking Minnesota to within one play of the Super Bowl (2009).

"You don't want to just leave that on the table."

This was different. Favre watched next-to-no football that first Sunday. He woke up on Monday morning and remembers saying aloud, "Wow, I feel good." He started making more pancakes in the morning. He walked to the bathroom without pain. Apparently, this was what normal felt like.

Good buddy Frank Winters, his center of 11 years, has made the trip to Mississippi, has seen this transition to normality. "Sooner or later," Winters says, "you have to move on and do different things in your life. That's what he's trying. He's moving away from the game. ... Being from down south and being a country boy, he's going to enjoy that. It puts his mind at peace."

And there's the key: his mind.

For 20 seasons, Favre was convinced an injury, a steep drop-off in ability, something physical would drive him away from the game. That never happened.

Instead, the mental drain made him retire for good.

"The stress to be good week in and week out," Favre says. "The expectations I had placed upon myself, not to mention the expectations everyone else had, were just too great. There was no way I could surpass it. And no matter how good I played, the next week I had to be better. And that's the mentality that drives you. But also, it drove me bananas.

"When you lost, it stuck with you and still sticks with me — forever. I'll think about a loss rather than 15 great wins."

And he now realizes — on the other side of 297 straight starts — that he wasn't invincible physically after all.

Stage 2: Realization

He flaps his right thumb to demonstrate. There's no bend, no mobility. And that's not all.

"Here's the reason they wanted to do surgery," he says.

Favre presses his palms together and stares at his thumbs. By a full centimeter, at least, his right thumb is shorter than his left. It "shrunk." That knuckle, he explains, broke off.

He flashes back to Oct. 19, 2003. Favre's hand smacked the shoulder pad of guard Mike Wahle at St. Louis on a release and he felt a pop. Thinking he only jammed it, Favre pulled on his thumb all game. Tests later revealed a break. Favre convinced team physician Pat McKenzie to let him play and then, splint and all, won at Minnesota the next week.

Threw for 32 touchdowns that season. Led the Packers to within a fourth and 26 of the NFC Championship. Played on.

All season the thumb "hurt like hell." Yet the velocity of his passes didn't dim one RPM. The sensation that overcame Favre that three-touchdown day inside the Metrodome was the same sensation that masked all injuries.

"It was just like, 'Damn, you can do this.'"

Broken thumbs, severely sprained ankles/knees, torn biceps, dislocated shoulders, blackout hits to the head, he channeled it all into adrenaline. Now he wonders aloud if it was all worth it. Favre sees his own mortality.

He points to a black trash bag near an outdoor fireplace, where his dog is licking up some liquid. After Minnesota lost the NFC Championship to New Orleans, his ankle and thigh turned that color, he says.

How many concussions? No clue. Seeing stars was common. So was "ringing," he says, twirling a finger around his ear.

The result, 297.

He expects someone to eclipse the record some day, but it does mean a lot to him.

"You have to be hardheaded," Favre says, "and you have to be a little bit insane."

Two concussions come to mind for Favre, the last two.

Near the goal line in New England, Week 8 of 2010, a hit underneath Favre's chin took 10 stitches to close. Sprawled on the turf, he looked up into the sky. One thought crossed his mind: It's a weird time to have fireworks going off.

Still, if the Vikings hadn't sent him to the locker room for stitches, he would've played on.

Then, there was the blackout on the final snap of his career.

He doesn't want to call it a hit; rather, Favre says, Chicago's Corey Wootton "pushed" him onto this sheet of ice at the University of Minnesota. When trainer Eric Sugarman arrived, Favre was snoring. Sugarman shook him awake and told the quarterback he had suffered a concussion. He was out cold for 15 seconds.

Favre was confused. Why were Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs clapping? Why were the Chicago Bears here?

"But I could've kept playing," he says. "And in previous years I probably did that — I don't know how many times. What's the long-term effects? I don't know.

"I don't know."

He hopes he can help the next generation. Favre recently invested in Prevacus, a company developing a product that it says would limit the effects of a concussion when immediately sprayed into the nose. It won't help him.

Concern pales his face. For a moment, Favre is not at peace.

"It's scary. It is scary. But for me, the damage is done. And the long-term effects remain to be seen. That is scary.

"I'm hoping that I'm going to be the exception and don't have residual effects. And then I think, 'Well, you played 20 years. You played for 20 years.'"

Eyebrows slanted, Favre looks away for a second toward nothing, then turns back to you.

Exactly as everything ended in Green Bay, he tries not to look back.

Only forward.

Stage 3: Reconciliation

The storytelling is put on hold. It's time to work.

Today, Favre must tape promotional reads for his sports social media network, Sqor.com, that'll loop at Lambeau Field. And clutching a sheet of paper, this coldblooded comeback artist who made throat-slashing gestures at defensive backs, who knocked heads with Warren Sapp appears ... nervous?

At the table, Favre shifts in his seat. Sits up straight. Cracks a joke.

"Y'all have to tell me — there's four of us here and 80,000 there — if I have a big booger on my face."

Use the hashtag Live at Lambeau, Favre reads.

"Honestly," says Favre. "I hear it, but I have no idea what that means. It's a number sign."

Use the hashtag — Pound! — Live at Lambeau.

"They're going to think I'm a dinosaur."

A deep breath.

That streak of 297 matters to him. And so does this.

He's speaking to the fans he's trying to win back.

Favre's voice ranges from folksy to direct. He experiments with intonation. He coasts through 90% of many reads, only to hit the brakes with a buzzing of his lips. His mother-in-law is vacuuming inside; Favre texts her to give it a rest. His chocolate Lab, Sam, from Madison, who he's had for 10 years and feasts on leftover pancakes, plops a few feet away, groaning and staring at Favre as if to offer support.

This reconciliation, he explains, is "of the utmost importance."

Originally, the plan was for Favre to return Sunday against the Chicago Bears, with Bart Starr at his side, plans nixed after Starr suffered two strokes and a heart attack. Maybe, Favre offers — "I just thought of this now" — maybe he needed Starr by his side so he wouldn't be alone there at Lambeau Field.

"I'm not worried about the negative implications," Favre assures. "I think we're well beyond that, I really do. There's always some yahoo that's going to voice his opinion. But I want to be remembered as a Packer — will be remembered as a Packer."

A far cry from Nov. 1, 2009, when he returned to Lambeau as a Viking. That day had a horror-movie feel to it, the camera panning across an angry mob of Packers fans straight to Favre, flashing a demonic half grin.

He heard you all. He considers your vehement roar flattering.

"The loudest booing and ranting and raving in all the years I was in Green Bay — and it just so happened I was the opponent," Favre says. "I consider that an honor."

Since then, the Packers won a Super Bowl. Aaron Rodgers won an MVP. Favre claims he never "went into hiding" and there was no one moment when he realized it was OK to reconnect.

Rather, time heals. He brings up his third-grade book report on Paul Hornung with pride. He loved researching those '60s teams as a kid.

At the core of the comebacks, he has no regrets. Logistically, sure.

"Hindsight's 20/20," he says. "Would you have done anything different? Maybe what you would have done different on any occasion is how you would've said things or how you would've approached things. One thing I tell our youngest daughter all the time is, 'You can't go back.' ... I don't even want to go down that road because you can't go back. So why even play that scenario out? You can't. All you can do is, from this moment forward, change. Change the path.

"You can't change the past, you can change the future. So for me, how I played, how things played out in Green Bay, it is what it is. And there's nothing you can do about it."

Favre reached out to Rodgers when his replacement signed a $110 million contract extension, sent him a "hang in there" text after the fractured collarbone and a few more texts in between. Otherwise, they haven't spoken.

Quarterback to quarterback, Favre isn't surprised by Rodgers' ascension. They're similar, he says, in that it doesn't matter how much quakes around him. Rodgers can carry a team.

Still, watching football today, Favre doesn't see any quarterbacks relying on his brand of spontaneous, shoot-from-the-hip football. Passers today are so schooled, so developed, so prepackaged, that nobody at the position will play Favre's way again — they wouldn't make it to Sunday.

And this is the spirit Favre hopes Packers fans still appreciate.

The guy who heaved a cross-body touchdown to Sterling Sharpe in the 1993 wild card. The one who asked Ty Detmer, "What are limitations?" one moment, and what "nickel" and "dime" meant in the film room the next.

"Who cares if there's a 'backer or safety?" Favre would tell Detmer. "I'll throw it right through him."

Today was supposed to be a record high for Hattiesburg. Instead, a cool breeze sweeps off the backyard lake.

Favre stares into the forest. He contemplates his legacy.

"It wasn't necessarily a conscious effort. But every time I played, I wanted to do something that other guys couldn't do," he says, turning back to you. "Sometimes that was good, sometimes that was bad. But maybe that's why people enjoyed watching me play, whether you liked me or not. This guy is worth watching."

No regrets. No what-ifs.

Only that nagging itch.

Stage 4: Scratch the itch

Now enter the Favre estate and take a right at the Y. Drive past the other lake, past the 30 geese congregating nearby, right to the oversize barn. This is where Brett Favre convinced Kirk McCarty to stick with football.

Favre's first summer out of the NFL, he heard whispers of an Oak Grove High School sophomore who had a future in baseball and dabbled in quarterbacking.

McCarty wasn't exactly a young Favre. He had a perfect ACT score, for one. He tended to overanalyze, whereas Favre hardly analyzed. But Favre saw parts of himself in the kid, thus swung that front gate open.

"He was the reason I even stuck with football," McCarty says. "And after my junior year, he was the reason I fell in love with it."

There's still a beast within Favre, growling. So he finds outlets. For two years, Favre was Oak Grove's offensive coordinator. Favre helped McCarty, McCarty helped Favre.

Midway through the final game of Favre's first season, the head coach benched McCarty after a pick-six. Oak Grove was out of playoff contention — and Favre saw a coaching staff ready to ditch the junior. Then, he flashed back to 1993 when the Packers were one laser into triple coverage away from benching Favre for Mark Brunell.

He remembered Mike Holmgren pulling him aside and saying they'd live or die together in the NFL.

Now, one "Green 19!" audible away from Lambeau Field, Brett Favre Pass juts off Holmgren Way.

During halftime of that Oak Grove game, Favre calmed down the other coaches and said he'd chat with McCarty.

The kid was "kind of whiny." Mistakes were never "his fault." He drove everyone "crazy" — Favre included. But Holmgren's words replayed in his head.

"They're ready to hang your butt," Favre told McCarty. "They want to play the other guy. I told them 'no.' You better play this second half like you want to play, and if you don't want to play, Kirk, that's fine. ... So what do you want to do?"

McCarty responded that night and then threw for 4,000-plus yards with 44 touchdowns as a senior. Oak Grove won the state title.

Once that season, McCarty scrambled on third down and took a hard shot that dislocated his shoulder. Pain throbbing, begging him to tap out, he remembered "297."

McCarty finished the drive and won the game.

"Brett asked, 'You all right?' I'm like 'I'm good, I'm good, I'm great!'" McCarty says. "Is there anything broken? Is there a bone sticking out? Are you bleeding profusely? Those are the three questions, if you're coming out. With Brett, 'Oh, you sprained your ankle. OK, let's put some tape on it and roll with it.'"

Adds Favre, "I just wouldn't let him be a baby. He'd say, 'Oh, my shoulder!' And I'd say, 'I don't want to hear it. There's no sissies over here.'"

One game, McCarty burned a cornerback playing 10 yards off a receiver hitch after hitch after hitch, then, inexplicably, changed the play and fumbled. Favre called him over.

"You got bored, didn't you," he told him. "Don't do that! I did that my whole career!"

All along, McCarty sensed a future Hall of Famer getting his fix. Favre challenged quarterbacks to the hardest throw, the furthest throw, the tightest spiral. In blitz pickup drills, he'd get red in the face — nearly taking over himself. And one practice, after not throwing a pass all day, Favre wanted to show McCarty how to execute an all-go.

Favre took three steps and gunned the ball 60 yards downfield on a rope.

McCarty never saw a quarterback longing for NFL Sundays. But with each throw, he was certain Favre could make another comeback if he desired.

"I'll tell you, I thought he could make a run back at it," McCarty says. "He could still throw the ball that well. He was still competitive enough to do it. But I think his family to him meant a lot."

Today, McCarty is a pitcher at Southern Miss, Favre's alma mater.

He's tough, too. No more whining.

Stage 5: Balancing act

Each car ride home, Dad knows he can't pull a Big Irv, a Holmgren. He can't talk the way his father or head coach talked to him. Not with his 15-year-old daughter.

Tender, Favre tells himself. Be tender.

This is why he quit coaching after two years — to be there for his sophomore daughter, Breleigh. To help. After one miserable volleyball game, Favre took the wheel and let the silence set in.

"Well, that sucked," his daughter finally blurted.

"It wasn't very good. You didn't play very well," Favre responded.

"Gee! Thanks, Dad, for building me up!"

This is where Favre finds his oxygen today.

For two decades, through injuries, through personal tragedy, he willed teammates to dig deeper. Now? He only wants a 15-year-old kid to listen to him.

"You would think...," Favre says, "that I'd have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to hard work and preparation."

They'll work on serves until 8:30, 9 o'clock at night. Dedication. Drive. He's trying to pass on core principles. Above all, Favre wants to see emotion. So on Saturday — before a 4 p.m. playoff game — he re-creates scenarios for Breleigh.

Down by one, 24-23. Miss this serve and it's over.

Starting the match, 0-0. Set the tone with the first serve. (She is a Favre. Like father, like daughter, first serves tend to airmail into the fifth row.)

Favre vows he's at peace. But his competitiveness revs up breaking down his daughter's game. How Breleigh windmills a point home and — as Favre imitates in his chair — flashes an aloof gaze.

"Totally unlike me," he says. "Or Deanna, really."

The game arrived and, Favre puts it nicely, Breleigh "went into the tank." Oak Grove lost the first set. As Set No. 2 began, an anxious Favre sat on his hands.

"She started firing them in there," says Favre, now making a gun sound. "Up to this point, this season, I had just been waiting for her to show some emotion. Especially, at this point. It's all or nothing. And we've been working. I had her out one night at 8:30, had the lights on and was like 'Come on! Come on!' and she says, 'Oh Dad, come on, can we quit?' I'm like, 'Not yet, not yet, give me five in a row.' So I was just waiting for this to come out and finally it came out."

The moment Breleigh celebrated one spike, so did Dad. Favre jumped out of his seat with a fist pump that startled the other parents.

Another spike won the game. And afterward, teammates all raved over Breleigh's energy.

"You're thinking there has to be a defining moment that kind of gets you," Favre says. "I'm hoping that's it."

The next day, Breleigh's team faces Favre's alma mater, Hancock. And Hancock, he assures, plays with spunk.

Growing up, Favre's own dad could be ruthless. "Water" was a bad word. Favre wants to strike a better balance with Breleigh. The reason they're practicing into the dark is the reason Favre unretired.

He doesn't want Breleigh to live with regret.

"She'll say, 'Why didn't you push me harder? I could have been really good. Why didn't you all make me eat better?'" Favre says. "So I'm thinking to myself daily, do I push her too far and make her turn away or do I tell her the truth over and over again even though she doesn't want to hear it?"

Favre throws his hands in the air.

"I don't want to sound like Dr. Phil here."

Stage 6: Moving on

Holding a photo of his 1994 dive into the end zone at County Stadium — the final Packers game in Milwaukee — the exact play call hits Brett Favre in 4.5 seconds.

72 X Shallow Cross.

The Packers had called their final timeout right before the play. Holmgren made it clear.

"He said, 'Billy Bob, if it's not there, you're going to throw it away, right?' I said, 'Yeah,'" Favre recalls. "And I took off running, so I could have gotten tackled right there and it would've been over. I had no intentions of running it. It was either a post or a shallow cross. But I ran it."

The image embodies the man. An enlarged scoreboard reads, 17-14 Falcons, third and 1 at the 9-yard line, 15 seconds left. Defensive end Chuck Smith is helpless, turned over like a dying fish. Favre is airborne, diving across the goal line for the victory.

Today, he grins.

"I don't know why he was worried."

With that, Favre saunters back toward the house to heat up lunch, this interview winding down. The conversation shifts to the future of a sport that provided him an infinite reel of thrills. If he had a son, Favre probably wouldn't let him play "because of what I know."

Favre is concerned his memory may begin to flicker 10, 20 years from now.

He tries to live in the now.

Today, the plan is to finish cutting the grass. The forecast calls for rain on Wednesday, and it hasn't rained for two solid weeks, so he'll get these two food plots tilled and planted by tomorrow.

Bow season is underway and gun season starts the second week of November. Favre will probably kill a buck. Maybe stab a snake — it's prime time for those rattlers.

No, teams haven't called to see if Favre is up for coaching.

"They know better," he says.

TV? He walks across the putting green adjacent to his home and lifts an index finger to his lips. No thanks. Too much travel.

"Plus," he adds, "I don't want to sit around the set all day and hear Warren Sapp tell stories."

After 20 years of highs, lows, emotional skydives, Brett Favre's world has slowed down. Pro football's ironman has found peace, his way.

When that pilgrimage to Lambeau Field closes in, Favre knows it'll feel real. Next year, No. 4 will be retired. Closing this chapter — in a good way, he punctuates — "needed to be done."

Favre checks for materials in his truck, then shuts the door. He doesn't have many miles on it.

"I never have to go too far."

He waves and heads inside. He'll be back in Green Bay soon.

This time, without a hood over his head.

Tyler Dunne  wrote: