The Wilderness Within...

     Yesterday was my first deer hunt in thirty-seven years. For reasons I’ve outlined here previously, I just couldn’t get back out in the woods since getting my last (and so far, only) buck in 1981. I hunted for birds, and rabbits a few times after that, but since 1989, haven’t been out until yesterday.

     In the years that passed, I married, became a dad, divorced, grew a business, bought a house, sold it, bought another one, lost it in 2008 when the economy collapsed, graduated from college, wrote six books, moved to Virginia, found the Upper James River, and finally, took the steps necessary to get back out in the woods again.

     I knew I missed it. I knew there were memories that called me back to the woods. Conversations over bad coffee around a warm fire that helped me grow up. Friends who smiled at the same things I smiled at. Who spoke the same language out there. Out where words like “rut” and “bleat” and “scrape” and “rub” meant something. And where a good hunter knew the difference between them.

     I missed those guys and those days. I missed the goose pit I shared one winter with my best friend Mark, and the two birds we took one snowy, cold December afternoon. The miles and miles we walked along the canal at St. Georges, Delaware with my beloved Spaniel, Jesse, walking and talking and occasionally finding something to shoot at. Hunting can occasionally be secondary to the deeper joys of two friends talking their way into adulthood, even if the two young men don’t realize it at the time.

     But there was something more to my time away from the hunt. Something that hid beneath the surface and I didn’t recognize it until this morning. When I did spot it, I realized it had been there all along, but it took someone else pointing it out to me to make it stand out from the brush. Today it was the late Gene Hill.

     I’ve been working my way through Gene’s classic “Hill Country.” It’s a compilation of his articles for Field and Stream and Sports Afield. Gene was known for short stories that capture the “why” of outdoorsmen, far more than the “how.” He didn’t write much about which lure to throw for a bass, or which shot pattern would bring down a pheasant. He wrote about how it felt to be throwing that lure with your grandad on a farm pond on a late summer afternoon. He wrote about the joys of a good bird dog, a sweet-smelling pipe, and a warm fire at the end of a day out amongst them.

     I started reading his work when I was about nine and used my lawn mowing money to subscribe to Field and Stream. I subscribed to learn how to become a better fisherman. I was too young to hunt on my own and my stepfather had no interest in the outdoors. I stumbled upon Mr. Hill’s monthly column because I love to read, and I would faithfully read every line of that magazine as if it were Holy Writ.

     What I found, when I began reading his work, was a picture of the outdoors, and the outdoor life, that I longed for. A place where men were men. Where friendships were forged in the deep quiet of the woods and around an applewood-and-oak campfire, where average food tasted like manna, warmth was appreciated and seen in a whole new light, and there was no such thing as bad coffee.

     I found the thing I was missing at such a young age. It was primal. It is stronger in some than in others and in today’s society it is being stifled and replaced. But it is there nonetheless. I found the secret to real lifelong friendships and memories that you can still feel, forty-plus years later. And I discovered that this gene of ours -once activated in a young boy—never goes fully dormant. It’s pull may be muffled by life and circumstance, but it never stops tugging.

     This morning I read Hill’s story; What is Wilderness? I had an epiphany of sorts. I found it to be almost like looking into a mirror, or maybe as if Gene Hill had known where I was going to be at fifty-five and wrote this story, so I’d understand. I was so moved that I considered painstakingly copying it verbatim and posting it on this page before writing this article. It was that good.  I won’t try paraphrasing it here. I wouldn’t desecrate Mr. Hill’s words like that. But bear in mind as you read, that this story grew from the fertile soil he turned over in the space of the ten or fifteen minutes it took me to read his work this morning.

     I got to my hunting land at 4pm on Friday night. I live about thirty-five minutes away, so I certainly could have slept at home, in my warm bed, and driven to the hunt early the next morning. Like any sane person would have done. But something in me needed to camp there the night before. I hunt this land alone. I’ve only lived here four years and don’t know anyone well enough to ask them to hunt with me. Sharing hunting land is sacred for guys like me and you don’t just wander into that inner circle uninvited.

     I got to the site and immediately made a mental note that I’d forgotten the two gallon-jugs of water I’d set aside for washing my hands after I scored my inevitable state-record buck the next day. “Oh well,” I thought, “I brought the latex gloves, so I probably won’t be too bloody anyway.” I checked my gear, made sure my backpack was loaded with the right stuff for the day, laid everything out in order so it was readily available in the dark the next morning. I texted my daughter to make sure the texts would go through and assured her that she could reach me if she needed me. I reminded her to lock the doors. She’ll be twenty-one soon and it’s not like she needs me to worry about her, but I still do, and I suppose, I always will, a little.

     I sat outside and watched the stars begin to reveal themselves as the sunlight faded. By 6pm it was dark. I figured I might as well get into the truck for the night, so I laid the passenger seat back as far as it would go and piled my sleeping bag around me, stuffed the pillow beneath my head and lay there, waiting to sleep.

     I’m not a twelve-year-old novice hunter anymore, so, excited as I was about the hunt, I drifted off around 7:30. I knew I’d be awake early but why fight it. As I laid there, waiting for sleep, I stared out at the stars. There is something about the canopy of stars over a deer camp. Something that reminds you that this is the real world…not the suburbs where you live, or the city where you ply your trade. There is something wondrous and massive about the Milky Way. Something that never gets old and never loses its magic.

     As I lay there, I listened for the rustle of wildlife. The hoot of an owl, the plaintive cry of a coyote, or the local deer or bears on the move beneath a brilliant half-moon. It was quiet, and I heard little, but I listened intently nonetheless. Because this, too, is part of why I come here. I come to take a deer, or a pheasant or a goose. But I also come here because deep inside I long for the wild. I need to remember how to depend on a compass, the stars, my skill with a grunt call, and the accuracy of my shot. I am only a half-hour from home. I can here the occasional car on the road about a half mile from my camp, but I am alone out there in the wild, and it could just as easily be in the middle of the Rockies.

     I was freezing by the time I woke at 4:15. I hadn’t packed a heavy enough sleeping bag and assumed that I had enough layers to compensate. I was wrong. I felt like Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson, when he first arrived in the mountains and almost froze to death, before meeting “Bearclaw” Chris Lapp, (played wonderfully by the lovable Will Geer). The elements are a part of it. A part of this need of ours to get back to the wild and put our real survival skills to the test. Yes, I had my truck. Yes, I could have just gone home if I thought I was in real danger of freezing. (I did compromise and at 1:30 started the truck and ran the heater for twenty minutes) But pushing through the cold, and the briars, and the wind, and the rain and the sore feet, is part of the why. I have a lot of friends here who hunt and who would donate a roast or some jerky. It’s not the taste of venison I need…it’s the pursuit. The endurance. The return to the one thing that links all us men, on a genetic level. The Wilderness.

     I marched out to my stand, a little hesitant since there are bears in these woods and I’ve never been around bears before. As has always been my nature, I placed my stand deep in the thicket and briar. I had to chop my way in the day I set my stand. I like it like that. I try to think the way my prey thinks. They aren’t going to come up to me with a bullseye-shaped birthmark over their shoulder, waiting to be shot. The big ones, the old ones, the wily ones live a little deeper in the woods, where it’s harder to get in and out and where they have cover. That’s why they lived to be older and bigger.

     I climbed up in my stand and waited. I was cold. I shivered. I certainly had enough layers on for the day, but the cold of the overnight chilled me to my core and I couldn’t get warm again. I listened. I watched a spectacular Venus as it hung right above me, more visible than any planet I’ve ever seen. As I sat in silence, I thought about all the times I’ve sat in deer stands, and why I was in this one. I thought about being a young boy in Delaware, where just seeing a deer was a victory. I thought of the men I used to hunt with and how I’d love to have them along right now.

     At times, I was so cold I thought about just going back to the truck. I almost convinced myself that I wasn’t going to see anything anyway. That maybe this was a mistake. That I picked the wrong area for my stand. But I resisted those thoughts and as I sat there a little longer, I realized why it was I was there, and why I needed it. “It had been so long,” I thought to myself, “So long since I’ve been up in a tree on a cold November morning. Now, here I am again. At last.”

     I thought about the area of the country I am hunting. I’m near Appomattox Virginia. Where the only civil war we’ve ever fought was ended. I wondered if any young Confederate soldier had taken a deer from this land, a hundred and fifty years ago, while marching toward what might have been his final battle. Or what Powhatans or Appomatoc, or Monacans might have harvested here.

     I realized, freezing and doubtful as I was, that this is also why I’m here. I’m here to shiver. To test myself. To see how much I can handle and still achieve what I am out here for. Throughout this fall, in preparation for the hunt, I had tried to locate tracks, but the floor of this forest was full of pine needles and briar and leaves. It was so thick that the deer simply weren’t sinking in and leaving discernable prints. I had to go by my knowledge of scrapes and rubs and set my stand as best I could. I questioned my placement. I wondered if I was right about any of this…until I heard a grunt off to my right. It was still too dark to see, but he was out there, and he’d answered my one, lone bleat from my “can” and I felt a swell of pride just knowing I got an answer from some wily buck, down in the hollow to the right of my stand.

     The sun crept into the forest slowly. I got another grunt of two from my neighbor, but I never did coax him out. If I needed him in order to survive, I could have tried stalking. But as it was, I figured I’d just leave him be and try getting him out in the open before January fifth, when the season ends.

     I walked out to my truck around eleven a.m. Here I found the first prints I have seen since September, when I first got permission to hunt this land and took some walks in the area to find signs. They were walking right down the path the landowner had cut with a bush hog. I really didn’t expect them to be using this area, but then I realized that he’d cut this wide swath several years ago. They’d grown accustomed to it by now. I laughed mildly when I realized that had I stayed in my truck, I would have seen them walk right by. (I figured they walked by around sun up, maybe a little later)

     The decision was made to relocate my stand and wait a week. In the meantime, I put together a ground blind in the corner where the path turns ninety degrees to the left and heads toward the woods. I’ll see them coming and I have room to wait for a good clear shot. There was a satisfaction to finding those tracks. To walking them backwards to see where they are crossing the woods and where they’re heading. Something wonderful about reconnecting with a skill I learned at age twelve, when Carl Ramsey, a coworker of my stepfather’s, who was half Cherokee, taught me to track. It came right to me, as if I’ve never been away from the woods.

     I didn’t want to leave but something told me it was best to let the land be at peace for a few days. I have some bearings now, I’ve found some signs. Thursday I’ll be back there, this time with a little bit of a “map” as it were. A means of placing myself where I have the best chance.

     I drove off, realizing that even without a deer, I’d accomplished much of what I’d wanted. I was alone out there. In silence, with only my thoughts and my heartbeat. I’d tested myself and come out okay. I was only thirty minutes from home and a shower and dinner…but for me it was the wilderness. Finding it again is like finding my own soul. Touching it was touching the core of who I am and how I was created.

     This is why I hunt. It’s why I walk three miles upstream to fish parts of the James where I seldom, if ever, see another human being. Where I can feel as if I’m fishing with Lewis and Clark, on a river no white man had seen before my fly hit the water, even as a freight train rolls by, not fifty yards from the rocks I cast from, reminding me that the only wilderness here is in my soul. It’s what I felt yesterday as I shivered in a tree stand, feeling, for all I am, that I was alone and far from humanity…ignoring the farmer’s tractor that started on the other side of the woods, reminding me that this wilderness of mine was a result of my perspective, not reality.

     Wilderness is where you find it. Isolation is a precious commodity and testing one’s mettle against the elements is more difficult with the advent of each new hunting jacket. But we do it anyway, because we need to. We need the feeling of a pocketknife on our hip, a grunt call in our vest, and our pulse racing as we see those antlers, slowly, cautiously edging out of a tree line. We long for the smell of decayed leaves, autumn air, and the wisp of gunpowder after we take a shot. We long for tangled lines and spent shells because they remind us, after all, that we are still made of the same stuff our forefathers were. And if we can reconnect to it -and to them—once in a while out here…we’ll be okay.