The Winter Wood and What Could Be

 

On the first day of the New Year I loaded the car with an assortment of warm clothes, my old pump shotgun and my .22 Marlin. I headed out to a favorite spot to hunt rabbits and squirrels, needing a break from the recent monotony of goose hunting almost every weekend. I left the dog at home, he being a bird dog and of no use on small game. With the temperature hovering around 20 degrees and windy as hell he seemed to almost look thankful as I left without him. 

I spent a fruitless 20 minutes stomping through foxtail, briar and fence rows hoping to jump a rabbit and with my cheeks frozen I switched to the rifle and retreated to the safety of the woods. I say safety because in the woods the wind holds less power and I only have to contend with the cold. I also made a curious choice while back at the car, leaving my warm fleece and my heavy boots in favor of a thin sweater and uninsulated hikers. I’m not sure where that impulse came from but I persuaded myself that I would appreciate the lack of bulk and could cover more ground. 

As I slipped into the woods, their total size not more than 10 acres, I tried my best to keep the noise down but found it impossible with a thick bed of leaves on the path. So crunch, crunch I would move 10 yards, then stop and listen. It’s always interesting this time of year to hear how the woods have changed. In the early fall you can count on damp ground and green leaves to cover the noise, sneaking within shooting range of unsuspecting grey and fox squirrels cutting on acorns. In the winter you have no choice but to make an unholy racket and when you stop there is perfect silence for a minute or two. Then almost as if someone put a needle back on a record, noise returns all at once. I never get tired of that moment. It’s as though the woods have agreed to accept your presence and gone about their business. 

As I moved through the woods, my breath forming a fog in front of me, I began to feel the cold creeping into my body. My ears were first, the tip of my nose, then my toes. The cold feet were the most startling because it was a sensation I haven’t felt in quite some time. Years ago, when my hunting gear was cobbled together and woefully inadequate, cold feet were a regular feature of my hunting trips. This was often coupled with cold hands or other unmentionables. It was something I dreaded but gladly accepted as the price for another day afield. As time passed I learned to dress better, bought better gear and learned to protect myself from nature as much as possible. This was good in that it extended my time in the outdoors and overall made the experience more enjoyable. As I began to realize yesterday though, there is also a negative because it made me feel just a little less alive when I ventured into the Winter Woods. 

Many outdoorsmen spend a lot of time pondering why we do what we do. We speculate on the ancient forces that pull us towards Nature and what separates us from those who are happy to remain in Civilization. As a hunter there is a secondary layer of introspection as we wonder what makes us kill when others are content to let someone else kill for them. I have often thought that we Takers of Life, are somehow missing a step or two in the evolutionary ladder. In our DNA we are a bit closer to the time when hunting was not for sport but for survival. As I walked through the Winter Wood I thought of another possibility. 

The experience of hunting, often in adverse conditions, is an experience of finding our humanity, strange as that may sound. It is about going into places where we are the Invader, and yet still so Small, and conquering a part of it. We remind ourselves that we are not slaves to modernity completely. We tell ourselves, perhaps naively, that we could make it if we had to. We could survive the cold because we know what it feels like and we know how to protect ourselves against it. We tell ourselves we could find food because the Woods have already accepted us once and they will accept us again. In the Winter Woods I found that moment of humanity that has been missing from my hunts as of late. Will I forsake my warm coat and thick boots on all my winter hunts now? A thousand times no. But I think occasionally I will choose to be a bit colder for no other reason than we need sometimes need a reminder of What Could Be.