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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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This is definitely my favorite piece. So much to unpack and I realized I was stopping and wandering along my way.
Sometimes, Jesse, reading your essays feels like a glimpse into the future. Great stuff.
And beautiful deer! Congrats.