Just sit out there and soak it all in
Wild connections come with the simple act of sitting still on a stand
Thanks are due for always being there to hold me up when it counted, letting me hide away when I needed it, doze off even when I probably shouldn’t have and for prodding me with just enough discomfort to get the job done.
In the lowest, stinky crags and the highest and purest air they have been there for me. Always, I have found a place when hunting, to make a stand.
Some are more rewarding than others, some are a heckuva lot more comfortable than others, but nearly all are worthy of the time spent and are memorable in one way or another. I’m thankful for that.
Hunters speak of a connection to nature their avocation brings and it is on the stand, in silence, it often comes. Be it a tree stand listening for bugling elk or calling to rutting bucks, a rocky rim watching for Dall’s sheep to appear like ghosts, in a ground blind where turkeys are gobbling or on a stump watching for a squirrels, the stand, and the patience to hold it, rejuvenates the soul.
Being still in the wilds, soaking it in, is a mutual experience of hunters, birders, wildlife photographers, climbers, really any who venture outdoors. Having done most of those things, I think it is somehow is intensified when hunting, but that’s just me. Being still is too personal and too individual an act for one to expect others to experience the same emotional or meditative response.
Some may think they haven’t the patience for such things, but I’d venture a guess they find that same peace—however fleeting—on a sandy beach, with the breeze on a balcony or with coffee and a sunrise on the back porch. Wilderness is where you find it.
Sitting quietly, waiting for white-tailed deer Tuesday evening I thought back on different stands I’ve enjoyed and recalled one afternoon that left a lasting impression.
A bald eagle repeatedly comes to me in my sleep. Why I see her so often I don’t know, but we came eye-to-eye on a high ridge on Kodiak Island on my 30th birthday.
A taste of winter lingered in the biting wind on that clear blue spring day. It drove a deep chill into my bones thanks to a sweat-soaked hat and poly under layers earned with a climb through thick alders up a steep ridge to a rocky outcropping.
A friend had drawn a tag for hunting a Kodiak brown bear and I was there to assist and to write a story. We split up that day to glass more territory.
A game trail above the alders formed a path to the top of my small mountain and there the ridge gave way to a precipice. A high gray rock outcropping formed a windbreak there and I sat, one foot dangling over a drop of 100 feet or more, out of the wind and with the warmth of the sun on my face. Hat off, coat unzipped, water bottle uncapped, and binoculars up, this would be my stand with an unfettered and unmatched view for the afternoon.
The warmth, the wind song and the comfort of that stand eventually let days of camping, glassing and hiking take hold and I dozed off. How long I slept I don’t know. I woke not with a start but with the feeling of a presence.
A pleasure of my career is that I have been around a fair number of eagles, thanks to time spent in Alaska and to falconers and rescuers I’ve known, and my immediate impression of the bald eagle I woke to find soaring near my feet was her size.
To sit an arm’s length from any bird soaring with a 7- to 8-foot wingspan on that wicked wind would leave an impression, but she large even as eagles go. I admired her nearly flawless plumage, the depth of her body, size of her neat white head, wicked curved beak and those piercing yellow eyes and narrow black pupils.
I cannot readily describe the sound of the wind passing through her wings, though it probably is what woke me. She was, simply, a presence.
Twice she soared near me, slipped away, and came closer again. The fingerlike tips of her wings moved and tickled the wind to adjust her position like a pianist playing a familiar song without a thought. She cocked her head and those eyes took in everything. Me, mostly, I suppose.
I had noticed at some point in my time on that stand a white wash on the rocks and had a passing thought that it was a good overlook for a bird of prey. As she grew almost uncomfortably close on her second approach that thought came to mind.
I have considered that she might have been that close when I first woke. What a human in camouflage looks like to an eagle of such a remote location, I can’t imagine. Could be I was lucky not to wake to the feel of talons sinking into my skull followed by a long drop and sudden stop off that precipice.
I raised my hand to her and said, “sorry girl, I’ve got your spot here, don’t I?”
And with that she lifted one wing, turned her head and shot away on the wind—until she returned in my dreams and on other stands when thoughts wander.
