Hunting for Patience

"Patience is the companion of wisdom." ~ Saint Augustine

I am becoming more and more frustrated with the pace of the world every day. Everybody is in such a damn hurry, and it isn’t because they are short on time, running late, overworked, or any number of excuses that they will roll off their tongues. We definitely live in a faster world than ever before, but it is one that we created ourselves and we can just as easily choose not to follow it.

More than anything it is a perception. An attitude. A state of mind. As things become faster and easier we become ever more demanding. Waiting for any reason at all is barely tolerated, whether on the phone, in a line, or merging into traffic. Dinners are rarely planned; they are typically produced and consumed on demand. We watch news around the world as it happens, and we instantly decide its historical significance when we barely understand the significance of events long since passed.

I swear, if we perfected the "transporter" technology from Star Trek tomorrow, and people were able to instantly beam themselves to wherever they wanted to go, they would still bitch about having to wait in a line for a minute or two to use it. This "hurry up" mentality is a disease of our modern society, and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.

I consider myself fortunate to be a patient person. There are many reasons that I am this way, and there are many benefits to be had from it. A few of them are a calmer state of mind, a tendency to take time and notice the little things in life, and an understanding that sometimes things just happen beyond our control and nobody is to blame for it. I find that it helps me to accomplish my goals because I am willing to take the time to learn to do things the right way, and to keep trying until I succeed. It also comes in handy with my part-time job, which is working with my cousin who is developmentally disabled.

"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent." ~ Sir Isaac Newton

I would like to talk about one particular way that I learned patience, and that is through hunting. But before I go on, let me say that I realize some of you may not appreciate hunting - or those who do it. I’m fine with that, and I respect your opinion. In fact, I may even agree with you on some points.

I haven't hunted for years now, and I'm not sure if I ever will again. But for me, hunting allowed me to partake in what I see as the natural order of things, and to learn a deeper appreciation for the planet and its resources. It made me take direct responsibility for my actions, and it brought me closer to nature than I ever would have come otherwise. But I completely respect differing opinions, as long as they are sincere and reasoned. What I can’t respect are hypocrites who criticize hunters for killing their own food, but think nothing of going to the store and buying meat, produce, or any other natural product with no thought as to what it took to get it there.

But I’m not here to talk about hunting. I’m here to talk about learning patience.

You probably think that patience in hunting comes from having to wait for game to come along, and your reward is getting it. Technically that is true, but that isn’t the main reason that I learned patience from hunting, nor is it the main reward.

My dad first took me hunting when I was 12 years old. His father had taken him, and his grandfather had taken his father, on and on as far back as anybody can remember. My grandfather grew up next to an Ojibway tribe, and they taught him everything they knew about hunting, tracking, and living off the land. I only wish I had been able to learn from him directly.

I heard many stories about my dad, his brothers, and his father hunting in an area of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that is now the Porcupine Mountains State Park. These were some of the happiest times of my dad’s life, and his deep respect and love for nature was plain to hear in his stories. So in that great tradition my dad had me take gun safety class when I was 11, so I could begin hunting as early as possible.

"Patience is a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue." ~ Ambrose Bierce

In many ways my introduction to hunting was one of the most difficult things I have gone through. If you want to know the epitome of testing a 12 year-old boy’s patience, put him on a board in a tree at 5 a.m., tell him not to move or even twitch on pain of death (except to briefly eat lunch), and then leave him there until nightfall. Looking back, I still don’t know how I did it. In later years the schedule wasn’t so rigorous, but my dad wanted to "initiate" me into the experience when I started and he certainly did.

As that flashlight fades away into the woods you suddenly realize how completely alone you are. The sounds that you hear when you are there in the darkness take on amazing proportions in your imagination, especially when you are not used to hearing them. It is surprising to discover the thoughts that go through your head when you sit alone in the dark, and later the sights that you see when the sun slowly brings the woods into clarity around you.

Staring at the same scenery for an entire day, day after day, your mind ends up wandering to areas of your psyche that you rarely visit. Thoughts that seem confusing or complicated become simple and clear, or things that you never considered before present themselves for contemplation. At times it becomes a kind of meditation.

In spite of this, you still sit there for hours upon hours doing anything you can to keep yourself from screaming out of boredom. I remember feeling certain that my dad would be coming to get me soon, when in reality I still had hours to go. It takes a little while to learn how to judge how much time is left until it will be too dark to see in the woods.

You learn that it is the wind, and not the temperature, that really makes you feel cold. You come to appreciate just how much warmth the sun can bring when it isn’t behind the clouds. You get so cold that you don’t even feel cold anymore. You receive the most amazing relief from merely shifting your weight a few inches, returning circulation to parts of your body that you didn’t know could lose it. And when there is no wind, you find out that a mouse can make as much noise in the leaves as any deer or human. And at times the silence can be deafening.

"If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees." ~ Hal Borland

Unless you have sat in the forest motionless and quiet, day after day, year after year, you can’t really get an understanding of daily life in the woods. And even then you only scratch the surface. You see the forest in a way that you will never see it just walking through it, or even sitting quietly for an hour or two. You begin to see its natural rhythm.

Squirrels come out of their trees at the same time each morning, make their rounds in the same general pattern, and then return home in the evening. Flocks of chickadees pick their way through the forest in waves off and on throughout the day, inspecting every bush and tree for food. Woodpeckers return each day to the same dying tree, methodically probing it for grubs. Animals hunt and hide from each other, staking out their territory and engaging in contests for mating.

There are many memories – rewards – that I have from my years in the woods.

I have sat in a birch tree motionless as the snow covered the forest and myself under 2 inches of transformative magic. I was rewarded for my patience on that day by being able to watch a Great Horned Owl glide silently through the trees, land on a branch near me, and survey its domain before flying off again.

I have heard the scream of a field mouse, followed by a snow-white mink running along a log with it’s freshly-caught prey in his mouth, pausing to be sure things were safe before moving on into the woods.

I have watched a broken tree branch, hanging on by a thread, twist and turn in the wind and rain without falling for weeks, only to drop silently to the ground on a clear, windless day.

I have had to refrain from laughing out loud as I watched two yearling fawns, directly below my feet, become bored with their mother’s steadfast vigilance and wander off to explore. They failed to notice that she had moved on without them, and had to quickly run to catch up with her. They then repeated the process over again and again.

I have seen a red squirrel and a gray squirrel fight ferociously over their territory, day after day, only to have the red squirrel finally prove that size doesn’t always matter in a fight.

I have heard the incredible drone of the snow melting off the trees on a sunny winter day, followed by complete and instantaneous silence as the sun went behind the clouds, only to hear it start again the moment the sun came back out.

I have had chickadees land on my legs and arms, and had squirrels stare me down for minutes at a time as they tried to figure out exactly what I was before moving on up the tree cautiously around me.

I have sat in amusement as branches and pine needles rained down on me off and on for hours, the victim of a porcupine feeding in the tree above me.

I have watched a flock of crows bring a flying hawk to the ground in front of me, tempting me to scare them off but instead just watching the spectacle unfold.

And there are countless sunrises, sunsets, snowstorms, rainfalls, and sunny days in the woods etched into my memory. The sounds of the forest still make me smile when I hear them on TV, or when walking through a park in town.

All of these things, small though they may be, have been rewards for my patience, and they are memories that I cherish. But in addition to these memories I have learned a lot about the timing of nature. I have learned how everything has its purpose, its place, and its time. I have learned how life can be fleeting, unforgiving, and also rewarding beyond belief.

But most of all I learned that my limits for physical discomfort and boredom were far beyond anything I ever dreamed they could be. And this knowledge penetrates every aspect of my life to this day.

After spending all day in a tree, too cold to move and too numb to feel the cold anyway, you find that waiting in line in a grocery store for a few minutes while an old lady fumbles with her checkbook is not that big of a deal.

"He that can have patience can have what he will." ~ Benjamin Franklin