A Hunt for Moments that Matter

As Septembers rolls into it’s back half here south of the Great Lakes, the feeling that the change of season is near is coming on heavy, even though it has only hinted around about cooler weather, the feel is in the air, the smell, the taste, and it is my favorite season. There is so much interesting stuff, from the reds and yellows in the fall foliage, the smell of smoke rolling off backyard fires, refreshingly cool mornings, sweatshirt weather, those brisk but sunny blue bird days of late fall, followed by cold wet days that bring down the leaves in what seems to be infinite number, and of course hunting which elicits a response in my spirit like nothing else. One might say it awakens my spiritual being. The Universe has been giving me so much the entire year, so much abundance and growth, on several occasions I have stopped to question it even, the validity of it all, how do these things keep happening, then I remember that it’s actually me doing it, with some required assistance from the universe of course. Some might say I am an unusual creature, a bit strange, I suppose I am, felt that way my entire life, sort of straddling multiple lives, a fact I can not dispute and a truth I have learned to accept and let go of, there is no doubt I have experienced some interesting looks and conversations when people pick up on what I am all about, my life view, and my brand of spirituality which includes hunting wild beasts.  What can I say… My typical response to the concerned looks I get from both hunters and spiritual folks alike is as follows, spiritualty and hunting can’t exist without each other, hunting is spiritual, and vice versa, it’s a spiritual connection to the Earth, one that goes back to the first hominids that walked this planet, the earliest men and women. The wild beasts along with the plants and other materials we forage from this Earth are the gift of this creation, the connection to our origin, the source, nothing could be more spiritual.  So yes, I kill and eat wild beasts of all sorts when the opportunity presents itself, nourishing my body and my spirit, and furthering the cycle of connection to the Earth.

I suppose in order to tell you all about the current happening, the next adventure the universe has put in my path, I need to rewind several months and tell you the story about how two childhood best friends ended up with a couple of Missouri River Breaks elk tags, creating an opportunity go chase elk in Montana, something that didn’t seem possible as the year began, and certainly something I had not planned upon, then out of the blue, on a beautiful sunny day in April, in an Airbnb overlooking the sand and the Pacific ocean in Mexico, resting and recovering from my three night journey with Mama Aya, I shit you not, you can’t make this stuff up, I get a phone call, its Wyatt from Epic Outdoors, “hey Josh you drew that Montana Breaks tag you wanted.”  My draw odds were 12% or so, I was dumbfounded in my post ayahuasca condition, I couldn’t believe it, never had such luck found its way to me, at least in regards to drawing hunting tags. So, I text my friend to see if he drew, didn’t seem so, he had received no phone call, now I am thinking “going at it alone again I suppose”, and then one day out of know where, weeks later, the same longtime friend messages me and says, “hey there was a problem with the notification on my application, but I drew the tag too.”  So now both of us have a tag burning a hole in our pocket, the odds of which were around 2%. I don’t even know what to say to that, the improbable happened, I can’t help but consider that the Universe and Mama Aya wanted us to do this together, for some reason we are yet to understand, but here we are, readying our gear to go on a unique adventure of a lifetime together. Two friends who grew up just a couple blocks apart, who as children snuck and schemed our way into any fishing hole we could get access too, the opportunity to make the haul all the way out to Montana on long road trip and chase after elk. Then there is the possibility of a reunion with my good friend Stan, those of you who have been here awhile and read my Woodpecker Lips series know Stan well, you know the guy, he is as hard as woodpecker lips, it’s been more than a year since we saw each other, so the thought of catching up over a couple of cold beers and some meat on the grill after a long day hunting sounds just about right, and there could be no better place really, because without Stan I wouldn’t even know this place existed.

The last time I visited this place we are heading, there was this moment that happened, you know, one of those moments, this one in particular has been sticky for me, over the past two years, it just flows through my mind occasionally, it’s an occasionality, each time bringing with it an overflowing abundance of high vibrational energy and a big cheesy smile on my face, it happened early one morning on a long hike in the darkness, working my way up to a glassing knob I had marked on my GPS a couple miles into the broken high desert country, the thought that triggered the whole scenario, “I got rock in my boot on that last hill I climbed”, so I set down to alleviate what I considered to be a problem, and bam, a wave a pain hits my butt checks, and I popped up like a jack-in-the-box, “damn, I sat my boney ass right down on some sort of cactus”, no less than twenty stickers remained in my posterior, which I coaxed out over the coming weeks, let me tell you what, picking cactus stickers out of your own ass is a tricky proposition, even with a good mirror and tweezers, not a pretty sight I assure you, these were the small elusive little suckers, they break off just under the skin, every time I thought I had them all, I would feel another one, at some point a man just wants to give up, weeks this went on, there seemed no end in sight, as I said, it was sticky, but there was an end as there always is. But you know what, that is the kind of shit I remember most often, and in vivid detail, and while I can have no way of knowing when that sort of moment will happen on this trip, I know that it will.

There are very few things in this world that excite me more than the thought of chasing wild beasts with a bow and arrow in this stunning country for which we are about to embark, spent the better part of a month there when I was living out of The Van, who by the way gets to make a glorious return trip, feeling confident we will find elk to which we can test our wits and skill against as hunters, but the success of this trip will not be defined by filling my freezer with some delicious elk meat, even though that would be a beautiful outcome, it has already been defined by more than that, this fate of the chance, this happenstance, what sort of outcome could be any better than what has already transpired, spending eleven days with a childhood best friend, the possibly of reconnecting with my friend Stan, and us all finding our adventurous spirit together.

The way it feels to connect with that wild side of my spirit, to just let go of whatever it is you are holding onto, I gave into that three years ago now, which set me on this journey I find myself on here and now, a spiritual path, one that led me to Montana, The Bahamas, back home again to Indiana, Mexico, and now to Montana again, which seems to call me back with regularity, there is something special for me there within its uninhabited wilderness, something about the smell of the mountain breeze or the crispness of the night, which illuminates something deep inside me, to sleep in complete isolation, away from all the hustle and bustle of daily life, to witness the sun rise and fall over this land of abundance, a feeling too which I can only account for as some sort of genetic imprinting, memories stored in my DNA, passed down from my ancient descendants. It’s that essence of the hunt, whatever quarry is involved, in the search, whether it’s the hunt for spiritual enlightenment, a bedded bull elk through the spotting scope, a smokin’ good vintage find at a rummage sale, or some majestic view for that perfect photo, that truth about the search sticks for me, the hunt itself is where the magic happens, the space in between the finding and not finding, the having and not having, because without that, the having or finding means nothing.  So as I ready to embark on this next adventure, with the presence to appreciate all which happens in between, as just as important as the moment we might obtain the object of our hunt, and that by remembering that, and not looking so hard for what we seek, not reaching for it, we open up the space for the happening to find us, this stuff that seems to flow out of the Universe, where these moment that matter originate, these moments that I muse about here on occasion. 

So here we find ourselves as autumn sets in, two life long friends, readying our gear for an adventure of a lifetime, spiritual woo along for the ride, living a dream so big, those young boys riding bikes down Railroad St., on their way to sneak into Hanley’s pond for some evening fishing action, never could have dreamt it up, but it’s more than that, its now with a grown man’s awareness and understanding, that in the end, all that any one of us are really hunting for in this life are those moments, a hunt for those moments that matter, those memories stored in vivid image detail for our minds eye, ones which flow back into your thoughts in a random pattern of occasionality, those memories that last forever, long after the object of the hunt has vanished into the energetic oblivion of this universe.

Joshua