A locked gate in Missouri River country.

Montana Camouflage, June 26, 2010

I love locked gates.

Um, and I was thinking a lot about camouflage hunting clothes today after reading this great article in Bugle magazine: "Coming out of the Closet" by Chris Dahl. Odd title, but I agree: I don't think buying camo does much except support the camo industry. The big concerns in hunting are scent and movement. Camo doesn't help these. You have to use your brain to manage scent and movement. And, don't get me started on super-expensive "Scent-Lok" technology in camo clothing, nacho breath. In the future I plan on spending my money on hunting, not shopping.

Montana Meditation, June 17, 2010

So, what is "meditation?" Is it something Bhuddists discovered? Is it a mysterious, magical cave of the mind that someone stumbled into one day? Excited at this discovery, they ran out of the cave to tell the world?

I personally don't think so.

Meditation stems from hunting and gathering. If you must depend on the land, in the original economy of our ancient natural process, for all of your calories, then you must be able to concentrate for long periods of time without getting "bored," giving up for lack of entertainment, and wind up starving. Meditation is how you lose yourself in the task of feeding yourself.

Certainly Bhuddists didn't discover a lost cave. (And I'm sure they've never said they did.) The cave has always been there and we use it all of the time. Today some people use it to climb rocks... failure to concentrate for a long time can be deadly. Some people use it to pass the time as they drive... again, long uninterrupted concentration is required. Some people use it to sit on an Asian carpet for a long time (and in fairness learning to not be selfish requires a lot of dedication.)

Me? I noticed that I fall deep into meditation while I hunt. Spending a full day intently looking for shapes, colors, and movement might seem tedious to a non-hunter, but once you figure this part of hunting out, it feels like the thing to do and you find yourself really wanting to do it the next day too. My buddy Morgan can sit for hours looking through binoculars, happily intent.

And this state can be hard to turn off. Many times, once back behind the wheel of my truck and watching the land more than the road, finding myself veering off course, I must tell myself, firmly, that it is now time to stop hunting and start driving.

So, anyway, this is a photo of me "shed hunting" at the Beartooth WMA, a place I love. This is how I shed hunt: stumble around staring at beauty, as far away from other shed-hunting humans as possible, and let sheds find me. Doesn't work, but that's how I like to do it.