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The chainsaw drowns out any turkey gobble. But the sweet smell of freshly killed ash, maple, and beech makes it worth it. The hunks of wood are bigger this year; fuck it, I want those big pieces on that 0-degree night when I’m tired of putting those smaller pieces in the stove.

Two weeks ago, I was going to buy wood, but then two things stopped me: The first was that I have an abundance of high-BTU firewood that is “easily” reached. I don’t use red maple anymore because it doesn’t meet my BTU cut-off. If I cut them, I have to haul them, split them, and stack them. If I can do that with a beech instead, then that makes more sense. Same labor, more heat.

The second reason is that I couldn’t face the prospect of “shopping” for firewood. I’m sure I could find “my guy,” but for 15 years I’ve been my own guy. In total, I‘ve harvested around 80 cords (1 cord = 4’x4’x8’) of firewood. If I didn’t do this, I would need to call around, find a good deal, and then make sure what was delivered was what I paid for. Then there’s the species… Since I’m a BTU snob, I’d become “that guy” who says to the firewood purveyor, “Which species do you have?” And if he made the mistake of saying “red maple” or “cherry”....then I’d have to argue about the merits of this species/BTU balance. Eleven percent of Vermont households heat with wood, a higher share than any other state.

There’s a third reason I overlooked. Being in the woods and putting together the puzzle of a forest is one of the greatest experiences and feelings I can imagine. The physicality of cutting, the physics of dropping. Planning where the tree will go, which trees are junk, and which are worth saving. Which saplings can be cut since they’re in my escape route, versus which are worth working around? Is this a safe tree? Is it a firewood tree? Will my winch reach? What will grow in its place? How much sunlight will now be allowed in? What trees will be released?

The tractor growls and the splitter churns. The wood will mold a little after I stack it in the shed, but that mold dies by July.

The split wood is wet because it’s green. Cool to the touch.

The opening I make in the sea of green is stark, but the life created by it will multiply many times from what it was before. Greedy crowns keep sunlight from hitting the forest floor. There are shade-tolerant and shade-intolerant trees. Beech is the villain in my story. Their horizontal branches are plentiful and level; they’re designed to grab as much sunlight as possible, clever and crafty.

The road I use now has ruts. Asking my forester about making ruts, they said, “keep your chains on and eventually you’ll hit rock. Then just repair it when you’re done.” He was right. It’s still a muddy mess, but I don’t get stuck. That advice was refreshing, a dose of vanishing New England pragmatism.

BOOKS & GEAR

Thanks for reading.

1. If AI can create or do whatever you do, why would you keep doing it?

2. What if AI can’t quite replicate what you do, but it’s good enough, so much so that your audience or superiors can’t tell the difference between your work and that of Claude or ChatGPT?

For a writer:

1. If AI can create writing that is as good as yours, making the two indistinguishable, why keep writing?

2. What if AI can’t quite replicate your words, but the writing it does create is actually preferred by readers?

If what I spend hours generating can be indecipherably replicated by ChatGPT in minutes, then I should stop writing that type of content.

Refusing to use AI out of principle, keeping blinders on, is ignorant. AI is a tool. It’s here.

Avoiding it and not using it would be tantamount to not using the internet, another powerful tool. Digitized content saves hundreds of hours of driving to/from the library and sifting through materials. Therefore, not using the internet is a waste of time when the same content is readily available on your laptop screen.

Not understanding its limitations or how to distinguish yourself from it means your writing (or whatever your work is) will become indistinguishable from slop.

Use AI and evolve accordingly.

The writing craft consumed by AI is like a table saw or pocket screw replacing a dovetail joint. Christopher Schwarz tells the story of Troy Sexton in his book, The Anarchist’s Toolchest. Sexton ran an extremely efficient woodshop that reflected ingenuity and hard work. Yet, in his decision to “compete with the machines on their own turf,” he lost.

Even “the most efficient one-man factory cannot compete with a factory driven by a hundred men.”

His business withered.

Schwartz blames us: “We have become a culture so obsessed with price more than any other attribute of the things we buy,” so for the cabinet-maker, “It’s difficult to compete against furniture that costs less than what you pay for your raw materials.”

I can’t help but feel Schwartz’s radical desire to resist the corporatization of a craft. It’s very romantic. Conversely, a laissez-faire approach to tech adoption is appealing since we can conveniently ignore self-restraint and mindfulness.

I look around my living room, and there’s a lot of plastic. It will be thrown out. It won’t last a lifetime.

Is there a parallel for the written word?

Writing on this paper takes time, and it’s inefficient. I’ve tried to dictate. I’ve tried to scan and OCR. Digital notepads almost work, but there’s nothing like this pen and paper.

The current AI moment is unique for two reasons.

1. AI capabilities are very good, almost good enough to fool most people. But it’s also good enough for people not to care if they prefer AI writing for whatever reason. My biased thinking tells me it’s because of its simplicity; it’s the laminate flooring of the writing world. No maintenance, durable, and it looks OK.

This is what, understandably, many people prefer for its convenience and functionality. The opposite is the floor my feet currently rest on: wide pine boards with gaps between edges that collect dirt. The finish is chipped away in high-traffic areas: in front of the woodstove is hardest hit, where the dog sleeps and plays. This floor is impractical in that it marks easily, needs to be refinished, traps dirt, and is soft. The scars from Maya’s paws are artifacts I don’t want to sand away; I want them preserved. They would never have appeared on a scratch-resistant modern faux-wood floor.

When I put my hand on the plastic floor, I feel the artificial wood-grain texture stamped into the wood at an Asian factory. I’m touching oil that’s been extracted and processed into this durable piece of flooring. The pine, alternatively, originated from a mill and trees within fifty miles. I touch it, and the character warms: rough undulations that feel like wood. Both plastic and wood are products of the earth; it’s just that one is less removed, closer to its end user, than the other.

While AI is getting close, like the plastic flooring, to replicating wood, I don’t believe it ever will. That doesn’t mean wooden floors will continue to exist; it just means we may choose plastic floors as being good enough.

2. The second reason this is a unique time period is that a very capable AI has a full 10,000 years’ worth of human-generated data to work with. This virgin dataset is rich with nuance, experience, authenticity, and patterning. There will be no other time when AI will have such an authentic dataset to work with. Starting now, we have an increasing amount of AI-generated content. There’s the boring stuff: listicles, reviews, bland reporting. Then there are the essays and books written by AI.

So begins a cycle in which we are at the beginning of: AI-generated content that is used to generate additional AI content. What will this eventually look like? Will it be as rich as human-generated content? My feeling is that it will not. Will people care if something is AI-generated, as long as it gets across the information and is affordable, like the written version of an Ikea sofa? I’m not sure, but artificial content seems to me to represent a watering down of our collective corpus of human-made words.

I once wrote about my greatest procrastination attempt (to date): I convinced myself that I needed to build my own desk before I could begin a paid writing gig. And to do that, I needed to not only buy wood for the project, but harvest, mill, and season my own wood before building said desk.

What if I actually did that and produced an heirloom-quality desk instead of this crappy pressboard I’m slouching over?

What’s the point of creating human-generated writing or craft furniture?

I’ve racked my brain for days answering this question.

The point is that the value lies in the purpose and the form itself, almost like the concept of religion. Illogical as it is, religion serves a purpose, despite its tenets defying the objectivity that underpins our modern technological prowess.

Non-AI creation requires faith in the form we choose. And consumers of this art will know what’s genuine as long as they are committed to form. Posts from X and Notes lead to essays shrinking, an attempt to better satisfy an appetite for brevity. The conniving smoothness and cadence of an AI-generated sentence doesn’t flex my brain, but that may be OK with (or even preferred by) some people.

My inclination is to resist the complacency that comes with letting all writing eventually be authored by AI. I don’t see this necessarily as anarchy, but it does overlap with Schwarz’s description of anarchy in the context of craft: “a tendency to question the institutions that make craftsmanship and well-made furniture impossible in this modern age.”

I’d add to this the desire to keep sharing human thoughts and experience, not just that of a bot. It’s convenient to buy a chair from Ikea without maxing out my credit card, but I also like using the turned bowl my friend made from a piece of mountain ash.

Perhaps it’s futile if audiences end up preferring the too-good-to-be-true cleanliness of LLMs.

Figure out AI’s capabilities and limitations. In the end, whether by choice or necessity, all that will be left is for us to do and make what AI can’t.

BOOKS & GEAR | ABOUT

Blood-streaked snow formed a halfpipe that trailed down the side of the mountain, now crimson-patterned. Suddenly, all I could think of was the waterpark in northern Vermont I brought my kids to when they were younger.

Arterial blood. A quick, clean kill; the neck shot relieved a pressure, an unpluggable leak that rendered failure across the deer’s circulatory system.

New areas never seem old. What makes them new is either geography or time. I shot this deer in a tract of wilderness in New York’s Adirondack Park; this particular area was one I’d never set foot in before.

Two weeks before, I ventured into a “new” area of the Green Mountain National Forest, only to realize I’d been there 20 years earlier. I saw the exact location but through a completely different lens, a form of twisted time travel: my mind knows the place, but that memory is all that remains, no hard evidence I’d actually been there before. Every cell in my body has regenerated since then– it was “newness” all around.

A day earlier in New York, I committed to a buck that I saw only once, exactly at last light. By “committed,” I mean I said to myself, “ I’m going to follow this deer until last light, no matter what.” Often when I do this, a deer will make a circle back to some form of civilization, like a trail, road, or even my own truck. Shooting hours end, and voila! I’m five minutes away from heated seats. In this area of the Adirondack wilderness, that wasn’t the case. The buck kept going deeper, further from anything resembling a trail.

Leaning into freelance, consulting, and stay-at-home parenting, I continue to take advantage of the opportunities it affords. It’s a path I chose to go down, not knowing where it would lead, a known-unknown. Professional and household structures and systems were created and entrenched, with the primary purpose of cocooning and protecting for 18 years.

On the second day of committing to a buck track, I made the same conscious decision to follow it no matter where we went. The night before, I spent about two hours getting out of the woods, hitching a ride back to my truck via state highway. It was colder the next day– about 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool enough to have numb toes but not overheat.

Steady marching, no standing around.

Again, I was on the scent of a wild buck, unlike the homebody buck who likes to stay near the roads and houses. After three hours, his tracks were as crisp & clean as if he just stepped there. Freshly bitten maple shoots and wafty brown hairs settled on the snow. He was feeding. He was close.

While cobbled-together freelance work and parenting often mix in a beneficial, harmonious way, the trajectory isn’t certain. I’ve been okay with that, yet instead of the usual nebulous future uncertainty, it is now. A parent must be there day after day for 18 years, until, abruptly, that requirement ends. I followed the path, and it led here.

When something sublimates, it changes directly from a solid to a gas, skipping the liquid stage. That’s what parenting an 18-year-old feels like: we skip an in-between stage that we otherwise expect based on the natural order of how parenting worked before that point: gradual, slow, and dillusionally prepared.

Gazing at the handsome buck, I made my peace, holding my open palm against his chest, feeling his earthy-brown coat, thinking of the dislodged hairs I had followed all morning. I couldn’t pause long because I was wet from sweat. I put my stiff gloves back on after getting him ready to leave his wooded home. Hands warmed from his insides, I trusted the drag would thaw things out.

Later that night, out of the woods, I recalled how hopeless it seemed to chase a wild animal straight into an unfamiliar wilderness. Thankful for the success, to be alive, and for the friendship of a buddy who met me halfway to help drag.

When the day-to-day logistical responsibilities of parenting shift, the purpose remains, but a chasm opens between what’s needed now and what was needed then. Hunting came into my life because it matched my passion for the outdoors and wilderness, but, logistically, like freelance work, I built it around my parenting responsibilities and the unpredictability and inconsistency that parenting entails.

That changed last June, so I asked myself, “How will I fill this chasm of time and logistics?” Write more? I don’t like to write just to write; I must do to write. And I hate sitting in an office for long stretches. This almost-empty nest coincides with a new era for writers. AI handily generates gear reviews and how-to articles that are nearly as good as any. I recently received a rejection letter from a magazine where I pitched such a piece. Mostly out of curiosity, I finally gave in and asked the latest GPT to generate an article from my rejected outline. I can’t blame the editor for the rejection. For $20/month, an editor can generate plenty of readable (or scrollable) pieces on countless outdoor themes without managing the niceties, administration, and editing obligations of hiring someone like me.

The article ChatGPT produced was excellent in terms of providing useful and readable information. Of course, there was no voice, no sincerity, no story. Yet I imagined myself sitting at the airport, delayed for a flight, scrolling on my phone out of boredom. If I encountered the GPT article, I probably would read it. Perhaps it would save me additional scrolling of search results if I were trying to figure out a new piece of gear to buy.

Four days later, the splendor of the Adirondack Park had faded slightly into my memory when I grabbed the 80 lb dummy out of the smoke-filled window and walked it down the extension ladder. Placing it a safe distance away, I charged back up the ladder, bailing through the window, onto the hallway floor of the training building. Despite the smoke, our four-person company cleared the second floor for other “victims.” I inconsistently desire the certainty of a trail, and my gaze now rests on the body of knowledge I feel the need to learn to do the job of a volunteer firefighter proficiently: part trail, part path, uncertain outcome.

Hunting for both purpose and deer is uncertain. Each is an inward hunt, full of choices about commitment, fear, and hope. There are paths we follow, laid out before us, perhaps by need, evolution, or the divine. These differ from a trail, and my favorite distinction between trail and path was written in 1840.

“...one is a matter for the eye, while the other is little more than scent.”

- The Pathfinder, James Fenimore Cooper

Well-worn trails are ubiquitous, but infinite paths lie ahead with only a scent to show us the way.

A deer roams the woods. A five-year-old lets go of their dad’s hand to go down the waterslide for the first time. I accidentally put out four plates for dinner, but I only need three.

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BOOKS & GEAR | ABOUT

3:30 PM. He’s standing behind a hemlock, leaving a narrow window for the shot.

Two days earlier: At 5:40 AM, the headlamps’ red light shows the snow, and by six, I’m sweaty and smelly, near the ridge top. I’m hunting Vermont’s November rifle season on a ridge I’ve climbed so many times I could almost do it blind, but every year feels like starting over.

Merino stinks, and I’m not sure how every outdoor clothing company can claim otherwise. Tracks here and there, but nothing exciting. No more wisps of woodsmoke from my smoldering woodstove; a west wind ensures it.

I start in the dark, so I’ll be where the deer are when there’s enough light to see and subsequently, shoot them.

Shooting hours arrive like a welcome, yet slightly irritating relative: before they arrive, it’s peaceful and predictable; then they show up, and there’s drama. But the drama is what we remember. They are the thunderstorm that brings much-needed rain.

Today I won’t wait. I’ll patrol this ridge and the next ridge this ridge runs into, all day, looking for a buck track.

Waiting in a tree during archery is fun if there are deer around. But if it’s a dead zone, it’s helpless, since there’s no corner to peek around or a hill to summit. In gun season, I can delude myself into thinking the prize is just ahead. Impatience is a frenemy of mine, and we spend some quality time together every fall.

The fiddling of archery season and the intricacies of gear melt away with mid-November. A small (or sometimes no) bag on my back and a gun in my hand liberate both mind and body.

By 1 PM, I find a fresh set of buck prints. He’s with a doe and they’re going up, up, up. Fourteen inches of snow make it harder for all of us, but they have it easier with four legs. Few worries for them in this area. He’s leaving rubs as we walk, and the bark shavings sprinkled on the snow remind me of sprinkles on my kids’ ice cream cones. This one is smelly, and I can smell the tarsal musk he leaves behind.

November and December. Sometimes I’ll walk forest roads or trails, but most often I’ll walk through the woods, looking for a track to follow. This year, the snow’s been good. Some years, I have to travel further to find it.

By late afternoon, this pair has slowed, so I slow. When I see them, I get a look at the buck, then the happy couple bolts. At 2,650’, I need to begin my descent, message my ride, and try to get to a recognizable place (e.g., a trail or forest road) so my nighttime walk out is doable. I’ve stumbled out of the woods in the dark plenty of times, but in snowy, steep, and cold conditions, the risks are too high unless I think I’m about to catch a deer.

This passion is multifaceted, weaving together culture, environment, health, and survival into a single tapestry. And there’s a perpetual struggle because there’s constant refinement, learning, and development. This maddening struggle is what keeps me coming back for more, running myself ragged, nearing the edge of hypothermia, only to often return home with nothing other than snow- and ice-encrusted boots and stinking, wet clothing.

This pursuit consumes like no other, save for addiction. It doesn’t make any sense to wake up in the dark to wander the woods. It’s illogical and arguably insane.

It consumes me physically because it breaks down my body; ligaments, quads, shoulders—they creak, they weaken. Yet the magic happens when the opening weekend ends and hope fades for the weekend warrior: day 3. You’re recovering, and your body is ready to climb. “Let’s go,” it says. “Get up there.” Midday Advil helps.

It consumes me mentally, greedily demanding all my thoughts. “Where to go?” is persistently the question. What about the weather? What mistakes to improve upon? There’s always luck, but I hate relying on that. I drink the Kool-Aid I mix for myself that says it’s more than luck. And I don’t think that this must consume a person, but for me, it does.

My word retrieval fades. My commitment to commitments wavers. And I know it. I witness it happening, helpless.

As the season goes on and I watch the hope in other hunters’ eyes fade, mine grows. Their disillusion energizes me. Big, slow trucks creep down the road, then park at the diner for lunch. “Get lost, give up. That’s right, there’s no hope. Move on. Leave the woods to me.” I don’t say it out loud.

It’s a particularly selfish, aggressive shift in mindset. Vermont has a black powder season, and it’s one of my favorites; worse conditions and fewer deer, which means fewer hunters.

After that first day on the ridge, I moved on to new territory. Late in the day, a buck track made that morning leads me to a fresh one, which I follow. A long shot and specks of blood, this time like the cherry-red county fair Sno-Kone. I sprint, the buck bounds, and night approaches. “Push it,” I say out loud to myself. “There’s no other way.” In a half mile, he pauses behind that hemlock. Thunder unleashed, and we’re both at peace.

It’s dark now, and as we pass by a stepped series of beaver dams, the kerplunk of beaver tails startles and then comforts me. When we cross the icy river, I pause to rinse him out; magically clear water briefly turns a cloudy red.

What about the difficulty of watching a creature die? At face value, I feel like I should feel this, but I don’t. When I shoot a deer, I’ve already made the decision, overcome the difficulty, and accepted it the moment I pick up my rifle. To waver beyond that will only cause suffering. Suffering is difficult to watch, but we can minimize it as the predator.

Shoot to kill, and you’ll likely have to watch it die, which is your obligation, your duty, what you owe to the animal. You should be willing, even thrilled, to watch it die a noble death; embrace the fact that you killed it. That thought is worth listening to. Looking away or hoping you don’t have to see it die means you probably shouldn’t be hunting (at least not in North America, where the hunter is expected to handle the hard parts of the process).

When I’m unsuccessful, the thrill doesn’t dissipate; I keep going to whatever season is next, but I go dark and defiant. There’s no radical acceptance for boredom. No curiosity or patience for anything. It’s a storm within, and like thunder, it shakes us, and is impossible to ignore or control. Your own storm may look different, but the weather feels the same.

Storms pass, antlers fall, the thunder inside quiets, and December bleeds into a new year.

BOOKS & GEAR | ABOUT

Perhaps the most iconic of American architects is Frank Lloyd Wright, and this is due primarily to his landmark project, Fallingwater. As legend has it, Wright procrastinated for months until his client, the department store magnate E.J. Kaufman, was on the way to visit Wright to check on his progress. With a few hours to spare, Wright quickly drafted the plans for Fallingwater, and this first draft was the final draft; Kaufman approved the plan.1

This tale is spun as a showcase of procrastination’s benefits; subconscious incubation of ideas yielded a miraculous jolt of genius in the form of Wright’s “Lightning Sketch.” Is the delay of real work like an idea composting underground, or is it justifying inefficiency?

My greatest procrastination to date occurred before writing a gear review article. Starting it alluded me. I decided that before I could begin, I needed a new desk. Buying the desk I really wanted would have cost a couple of thousand dollars, which I wasn’t willing to pay. The cheaper ones seemed just that: cheap. So I would build my own desk.

But before that, I needed to decide on the species of wood I would use. I reasoned that making my own lumber for the desk project made sense. Find the tree, cut it down, season the lumber. And voilà, once the three coats of polyurethane had dried on my new desk, I could start writing the article I had agreed to write!

I was sharpening the spear forever, avoiding the task.

Procrastination in the self-help space is traditionally viewed as an affliction to overcome. Books like The Procrastination Equation and Solving the Procrastination Puzzle promise solutions to dealing with it. In general, psychologists do not couch procrastination as serving a hidden purpose, but rather as a problem. “Procrastination is the act of intentionally delaying task progress or completion with the understanding that doing so may come at a cost” (Shin & Grant). Professionals cite self-control, self-deception, and perfectionism as typical, interrelated causes: “Procrastinators are often perfectionists, for whom it may be psychologically more acceptable never to tackle a job than to face the possibility of not doing it well.”

But what if the process of procrastinating hides something beneficial? What if, like Wright, we could delay our work until the last minute, yet still complete the job? Santella’s history of procrastination reveals variations that highlight some of the virtues of procrastination, making those who do it feel good about themselves. In a meta-analysis, Kooren et al. distinguish between passive (indecision to act) and active (deliberate decision to work under pressure) procrastination, with the latter showing moderate positive outcomes. If procrastinators like Newton, Darwin, and Wright procrastinated, why can’t I?

Maybe their genius lay in allowing their ideas to incubate? It’s an attractive proposition.

We should be skeptical of this trend of turning negatives into positives in the self-help space, however. Taking a behavior, such as procrastination, and spinning it to be positive is problematic because it leads to “there is no right answer” thinking. On this path, procrastination is a benefit and not a habit that needs reform. In this world, we waste the day, sharpen the spear forever, and only daydream about one day sinking it into the broadside of our prey.

Pen to paper, blade through flesh.

For those who can afford it (in both time and money), procrastination becomes a luxury and a justification for inaction, the adult equivalent of placing a chemistry textbook under our pillow at night in hopes that we absorb the page’s content before tomorrow’s exam.

Pre-castination, on the other hand, is defined “as the tendency to complete, or at least begin, tasks as soon as possible, even at the expense of extra physical effort.” If procrastination is delaying the chase, then precrastination is its mirror mistake: rushing to the task in an automaton-like fashion to feel busy.

In cases where procrastination yields measurable benefits in terms of creativity, the question arises whether the activity in question is, in fact, procrastination or something else entirely, such as thinking or research, both of which are necessary activities for complex tasks.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s hurried design of Fallingwater resulted in an iconic building, but also introduced unsustainable design elements that required constant repair. A consequence of procrastination? Had he not rushed at the last minute but instead considered the longevity of the structure, what would Fallingwater look like today? If his delay had been an incubation of ideas, would it have culminated in a sound design?

I still haven’t built that desk, but I did finish the article.

BOOKS & GEAR | ABOUT

At sunset, swallows dive bomb the water’s surface, creating ripples. Thinking the ripples are fish, I can’t help but feel both avian and aquatic companions are coming alive in this golden hour. A Black Fury Mepps lure splashes into the middle of the chaos, and I simultaneously consider the impact of this splash on the birds, but also the journey of this lure. Call it distraction or inattention, I notice the “Made in France” marking on the lure, which I bought at Walmart last year. Now it’s in this pond, causing excitement amongst the birds, and I hope, the fish. Close to home, this particular pond is generally good fishing because it doesn’t allow any combustion motors; to fish it, you need to paddle. Despite being in the middle of Vermont’s most crowded county, this requirement precludes over-eager anglers who rely on engines from dwindling the resident pike population.

Before long, a pike struggles on the end of my line. Its spitting and thrashes grow, a chaotic whirl of pops and sputters. I scoop him into the boat. Soon enough, the hook’s out, and he’s back to the depths.

This summer’s been particularly dry, and it’s evident from the leaves covering the ridge above the pond. Some are already that furious orange reserved for fall.

Run-hiking up to the ridge the next day, I notice a dry game trail at about 2,500 feet. The soil there is superficial, black, and typically muddy, but on this day it is desert-like. The predominantly southern wind topples spruce trees; their criss-crossing looks like an all-grey set of pick-up sticks.

Each day, the VT Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation publishes a Wildfire Situation Update. Right now, the Fire Danger Forecast is “High.”

Fire’s mostly been our friend, not foe. Cooking is likely the winner in the contest of our most valued use. Passing through a campground full of car campers and RVs, their sardine-like layout was distinguishable by a single attribute: an individual fire pit. “Damn, that’s a persistent habit we have,” I thought.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ field work in the Kalahari Desert calls out fire as our means of extracting more nutrients from meat. It’s a process we’ve refined for 1.5 million years. At the same time as Thomas’ anthropological sojourn to southern Africa, Robert Ruark was on an incomprehensively polar opposite of exploits in eastern Africa, slaying all sorts of creatures, many considered sacrosanct today. He typically ended the day with a fire (and gin).1

I burn five cords of wood in a woodstove each winter, starting in October and ending in April. Wood heat is great, but it’s a pain in the ass. It’s dirty, requires constant attention, and is labor-intensive. I harvest and process the wood I burn, which means I’ve touched the wood half a dozen times between chainsawing the tree and tossing it in the stove. The entire process makes little sense when a thermostat is sitting there on the wall. Yet I’m drawn to the physicality and productiveness of firewood; the work product is readily observable and utilitarian. When the screen’s nebularity becomes too much, I split logs.

It’s a functional exercise, but it’s not really worth it. The work is hard and genuine, but the hourly rate is horrible. Buying a cord of wood or simply burning natural gas makes more sense. One of my knacks is finding activities that require hard work and I enjoy, but generally pay poorly; firewood epitomizes this.

Vermont has the highest percentage of wood burners: 14%.2 Stubburness, passion, conservatism, or frugality, it’s unclear to me why so many people are still willing to deal with wood. My best guess is that, like those cramped campers, fire resonates with us. Whether in a campfire or a wood stove, we get to be part of a ritual. Which sounds better to you?: Turning the thermostat and doomscrolling? Or, collecting newspaper, kindling, and a match to light a flame that will heat your home for the next twenty-four hours? The former is practical, while the latter isn’t. But I’m stubborn, and for as long as I can, I’ll start the fire.

When I choose not to light that match, it means I’ve given up. Which means I should buy a minivan, move to the suburbs, get a 9-5 job, and lose the chip on my shoulder. Sure, all those scions of the good life have attributes I appreciate, like convenience. But the constant striving for convenience and efficiency yields what? More time. For what? More time on a screen for work, pleasure, or some netherworld between the two, like reading Fox News in a cubicle; glorious in that you’re getting paid to read more things to be afraid of, but depressing in that it’s the most synthetic jail cell I can imagine.

For better or worse, I refuse despite familial and societal pressure.

Small campfires are emblematic of our choice. Find the firestarting material and a spot for a fire, and cook some meat on it. And keep it simple. “Come over for a campfire,” a friend said. I chuckled darkly to myself when I stepped onto the bluestone patio that held a pedestal campfire holder, an elevated shrine to tidiness and control; a prison fitted for flame.

A fire with hardwood coals that glows is a glorious sight, even if it’s just the size of a pie plate. On a canoe camping trip, I squat on my haunches next to such a fire, entranced, with a death stare, dilated pupils, and a blank mind. I reach for the pan, hesitate, and instead grab the venison from the cooler. Without much thought at all, I toss the meat on the hot coals.3 The early-season venison is fatty. Contracting, smoking, bleeding, I don’t see a dead deer; I see the moments before I pulled the trigger, and the view from the top of the mountain the buck grazed. On the coals, the meat sizzles and sputters, making a sound not unlike the pike’s thrashing tail as it struggled to break free from my fishing line.

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Snapping to attention when I hear a twig break, I watch the indifferent swagger of a brown bear as it gorges on spawning pink salmon. He’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

His paw print could encompass an 8.5” by 11” sheet of paper.

The owner of the off-grid cabin warned me, “These aren’t park bears.” Kodiak City’s 100 miles of roads allow a visitor to see a bear from the comfort of their vehicle. These bears are accustomed to being watched, reaching a level of docility that one could call “park-like.”

A bear living in the remote sections of the island behaves differently since it’s unlikely they’ve ever encountered a human.

A human isn’t something to fear, but a curiosity or annoyance. Guides describe bears, after detecting a follower, sitting and waiting for the tracker creeping behind them. Other times, they’ll circle behind the follower, stealing the role of hunter from the human.

The bears here are still in charge.

In the Northeast, we have black bears. Powerful, yes, but likely to slip away before you see them.

From a predator standpoint, there’s nothing to fear. There’s a hubris etched into the psyche of people habituated to the woods of the Northeastern US. Getting lost, trying to find a trailhead or parked vehicle; I’m familiar with these follies, and every time I think to myself, “This may suck, but at least I don’t need to worry about a grizzly bear or mountain lion sneaking up on me.”

Hunters shot the last Catamount in Vermont in 1881 and wiped out wolves soon after.

There isn't a trail network on most of Kodiak, so I used game trails when convenient to get through the dense thicket of brambles and alders. Each potentially hid a bear. To a brown bear, swatting me to the side is an afterthought. Bat me around like a ragdoll and throw me into the salmonberry bushes? A 1,500-pound boar would think nothing of making me fodder for fox and raven.

Still, it’s difficult to un-see a wild place; knowing such a place exists tends to have one of two effects on a person: they’re either comforted not to be living in such a place or maddened by not existing within it.

By eliminating all predators capable of hunting humans in the Northeast, we’ve successfully made it our domain, a form of ecological tyranny. In places like Kodiak, we observe a role reversal: humans as prey.

Vigilance, attention to detail, is not a choice. Call it prey-mind: a nervous attention that sharpens the senses for survival.

On Kodiak, bears became everything, all-consuming gluttons of my decision-making. Success didn’t mean getting a deer; it meant not being got by a bear.

There’s a contemporary romanticism for bears, big cats, and wolves. Yet, in most of the lower 48, we’re also used to ruling the roost of our woods. I can only imagine the reaction to a modern-day Catamount attack in Vermont. The day a mountain lion snatches a child as prey is the day a mountain lion bounty is created (sanctioned or not); rewilding efforts be damned.

Human control over nature started with fire, farming, and exploration, but since the 1950s industrialization turning point, whether or not a place remains wild or cultivated, is predominantly a matter of human choice, no longer restricted by cognitive, natural, or capital resources.

Knowing a predator could be anywhere, you’re no longer in command. The nervous, paranoid movements of a prey animal no longer seem so strange, so unrelatable. High-definition lines pop and borders stand out, like a snowshoe hare in its winter coat on a snowless landscape.

Fear hones peripheral vision, and with each delicate step, I remind myself of a deer.

It would be a lie to say I don’t miss that feeling when I walk in the woods of the Northeast. I can be a slob in these woods, missing countless details, ignoring cues; maybe the consequence is that I get lost or miss a shot.

Paul Rezendes described the biodiversity balance of Isle Royale between moose and wolf as two animals forming a single organism.1 In this totality, each requires the other for a healthy existence.

Does the absence of a predator, one that can bat us around like a cat does a mouse, distort our sense of the woods? On our greater sense of purpose?

Would it not do us good to have a sense of fear or helplessness when we walk in the forest? As a result of this sensory jolt, what new species would we see, smell, and hear if we felt the constant threat of a mountain lion clinging to our back? Would traffic, flight delays, and internet outages be as maddening? Would I still loathe the desk, chair, and screen if I began my day, not with a walk in the park-like woods of New England, but instead with a hike where paying attention wasn’t a choice?

Is there a dormant part of our brain that, once engaged, could serve as a counterforce to unchecked domination?

I can’t help but think that without a predator, we’re missing the other half of the single organism, not unlike that described by Rezendes’ wolf-moose dynamic. Instead of an overpopulation of moose, it’s a free-for-all of human thought, complete control, unchecked by the primal threat of being hunted.

Nature has become a plaything, without consequence, there only for our entertainment, designed by us, left wild only if we deem it so.

Observing a deer utilize its sixth sense is illustrative. Abruptly stopping to change directions, they don’t smell, hear, or see the hunter, but know something is askew because they sense it. The result of this adherence to instinct is survival.

Sitting on a rock ridge that overlooks the Champlain Valley, I lean back, arms folded behind my head. Dozing, I hear cars below and planes above—nothing to fear on this hazy August day.

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