It has been several months since I have felt the cool morning breeze on my face. Felt the inevitable first rays of the sun on my face after a mostly comfortable night sleeping under my oilskin tarp. or, even let the sounds of nature settle me to sleep after a marginally prepared dinner over the fire. Lord knows I am no chef, I make do, but nothing that most people would consider fine cuisine.
Honestly peak meals may be the best that I can do. Yes, I have trapped, hunted and eaten just about everything in north America. And sometimes that was delicious. Sometimes I was just really hungry. The hunger that comes from covering long distances through the bush, over hills and streams. Sometimes that feeds you better than any meal.
I notice, the minute I throw my pack on, things change... I change, the world around me changes. Peace, subliminal, yet there. Seems to me that I notice the birds a little more. Where they are going and why. How they change their chirps and songs, almost as if they were on this journey with me. Maybe they are. Maybe they are just as excited to see me as i am to see them. Like an old friend you haven't seen in years. I know sometimes they sit and watch me, their heads turning in amazement as I do what to them seems silly and frivolous. Like eating my own cooking. Yet they stay for a while, watching and observing, probably much the same as what millions of people do every night when they stare at their phones watching YouTube and TikTok. They are satisfied. I am not.
Why? Why I am not satisfied to sit in meaningless drivel, staring at a tv or phone for hours at a time? Watching others do what I desperately wish to be doing, to see what they are seeing. it is not the same. It surely is a disconnect from Nature what we have become. Everything is easy, at your fingertips, convenient. And nowhere near as satisfying to the mind and body as experiencing it for yourself, firsthand, in the flesh. Feeling the sting of a cold breeze on your back as you struggle to make a primitive bow drill fire, miles from home and the comfort of your chair. Knowing that you may have to relinquish your ability to do so and praying to the fire gods to give that one smoldering ember. Or God forbid pull out your Bic lighter and fatwood stash and get the damn thing going so you can boil water for coffee...
Why? Why do I load a pack on my crippled back and shoulders, knowing that I will be in pain? Much the same reason I go to work, or fix things around the house or help family. Every task, every meaningful thing in life costs us something. Our time, effort or knowledge. But when I step into the woods that all seems to disappear, gone like a northerly wind on a brutal winter's day. I FEEL again, everything. I am no longer consumed by tasks, jobs, or anything other than my own mind. my own skill. my own desires... and it opens my mind and body. It gives me a chance, no matter how big or small. To reflect and ponder everything in my life. It is a chance to reset. To become one with nature again and maybe distance us from this insanely competitive world we live in. It is balance. It is life in its simplest form. " I will go here and live tonight or maybe for several days". With what god has given me and what I have on my back, I will exist with nature.
I will feel the heat of the summer sun, the sweat down my back. The warm comforting flames of a fire I created. Taste the savory (or at best in my case) semi savory dinner that I made. Know that my comfort and existence is based on my skill, ability and motivation. And all the while the birds will be flitting around my camp, mocking my attempts. Or maybe they aren't, maybe for just that single moment in time, they are rejoicing in seeing a human interact with all that Nature provides.
This is why I go into the woods.
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