Growing up I was always a pretty diligent planner. Uncertainty was not something I welcomed into my life often. I can remember sitting with my friends talking out our entire day before it unfolded. Where we were going to eat and what time. Who’s house we would end up at and when. What video games we would play when we got there. It brought me comfort knowing what I was going to do. I was never a “go with the flow” type of person. Not knowing what laid in front of me made me feel like a chicken running around without a head. No direction for me was no bueno. The same approach would be taken with hunting. Little did I know, hunting would be the very thing that would make me start to relax more and “go with the flow.”
I will admit, in the beginning of my time in the field, I indeed struggled with my habitual planning. It was to the point that I could see deer in one spot, but I wouldn’t go there, because that’s not where I was intending on hunting. Makes a ton of sense right? Sticking to the plan and all? Looking back on stuff like that makes me scratch my head nowadays. The feeling of being out of my element or uncomfortable just brought me back to that chicken. That is a place I wanted to avoid at all costs. As I spent more time out there though, I slowly gained comfort in the uncertainty of this whole thing. There was no way to know what would unfold over the course of a day. As far as certainty went, the only thing that would fall into that category would be my presence.
Since then, things are a bit different for me, especially since I started backpack hunting. More times than not, I am playing a situation by year. Doing this allows me to have more freedom mentally than I did before. It doesn’t tie me to one spot or one method of hunting. Of course I will have a loose plan in place, but it is loose. For instance, I will have a go to spot that I can camp in. If I need to move camp though to be more efficient, I am going to move camp. My brother gets frustrated with me when I tell him that my plan for the day is to just “ride the wave.” He too is a planner. Shocker there.
So, where am I going with all of this talk about riding waves and going with the flow? I think we all have a habit sometimes of getting too wrapped up in ourselves and the busy lives we lead. By doing this, we fail to recognize where we are in the present. This can make it hard to soak up the experience and really hold on to the moment. Which in my opinion is healthy. In the end, all we will be left with are our memories and the tales we tell about them. We hold the pen that will write our stories and the world is our parchment. Now, that is something I am fairly certain about.
Copyright 2019 Dialed In Hunter
Design by NXNW.
