In some coincidence, by one, I’ve found myself reading a lot about the Arctic lately. I’d always known it was up there, waiting. Well, not really. It never needed me. But I’d always felt a little guilty somehow. Ignorance. Maybe that accounts for why.
Anyway, first was Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, which took a while because it’s a big book. I could go on about it, but I’ll just suggest you read it. It’s really good. Better, for me, is the next one: Hugh Brody’s The Other Side of Eden: Hunter-Gatherers, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World.
Both books deal with Eskimos. Among many of the things that have stuck with me, language comes up highest. You need to read it; I can’t explain it justly. But the crux of it is that what we try to say about our experiences in and with the wild — those of us who don’t come from a hunter-gatherer background — is defined almost totally by an absolute inability to convey that experience. Okay, so let’s move on. We try. We fail. We want to share. Some seem to get it. Some let you know. It feels shared somehow. But there’s still a lack, something’s missing. And that’s the piece, the lack. The land itself isn’t coverable by what we want to say about our moment in it. It, the land, is almost inconsequential while being essential. The arrogance. The assumption. It’s the farmer in us, and it’s what will end it all, in the end, for everyone.
Brody has a chapter on Creation that focuses on the first book of The Bible. This chapter, ironically, while limning the distinction between hunter-gatherers and farmers, and thus the basic tension in the shape of the world as anyone knows it, did more for this atheist in suggesting God as a reality than anything I know yet. This is how: farmers live in the easiest places, while the only remaining hunter-gatherers live where they’ve been pushed, areas not amenable to farming (either too cold or too hot). If anyone should relate to the land as another being, it should be the farmer. But it’s the other way around. God, then, makes this almost like a joke: in the places it’s basically impossible to live precisely because the land is so vicious and inhuman, those who live there (hunter-gatherers) relate to it as though it’s another person. It’s too perfect an irony not to come from God. (And, believe me, I get the irony of this idea.)
So all this comes to me as an accident right around the time we got the last chukar hunt of the season. The cap on the second of what I hope are the two mainly missed seasons. The hunt was epic. I’ve never seen more chukar on any single hunt. The spread of bird guano was uniform across the entire ground we covered: everywhere, and I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere. It was a place that had been hunted a lot, and it was easy to see why: lots of chukar. But, as often happens in January, they busted pretty wild. They could hear us coming a mile away, with the crunchy snow. Still, lots of points, lots of long chances, and one stealthy, solid, long hold from Peat that got me a good enough shot for my rusty brain to connect. And Bloom, who honored Peat, found it and brought it right to my hand. The whole thing was a blessing, and it was hard not to see it as a kind of thank-you from the place and those in it.
Somehow — I really don’t know how — I’ve ended up with a sense of the places I walk looking for chukar as other people. And not just those places: all land. I feel lucky to have come to this, and it’s an assumption I think I came to naturally from watching dogs and trying to find birds, paying attention; the similarity to the shape of the world in the eyes of hunter-gatherers strikes me as a rich coincidence, one I came to but one they’re born into. Land: there’s a rich relationship, richer in reciprocity: we want to pay attention to one another. I remember, as a teenager, looking at the boardwalk in my hometown destroyed by massive waves one winter and thinking joyous thoughts not because of the destruction but because nature still had a fighting chance, some kind of power. Without anthropomorphizing too much (a naughty word for those of us from the farmer culture while a central feature of the language systems for hunter-gatherers), it seemed like the waves were sending us a message about abuse. I think this is why it bothers me so much to see medusahead and cattle damage of many other kinds all across the range; it seems felonious and matricidal, especially coming from agriculturalists.
Oh well. We carry on. Next year there will be more medusahead, more star thistle, more over-grazed, abused public land. But we’ll be out walking on it with dogs looking for birds, never giving up hope, learning from dogs in this, and paying attention, listening to things the land might want to tell us. And none of it can be captured in our words. But that doesn’t mean we won’t try.
check this out – for another nicely written piece on the Arctic.
https://48north.com/cruising/cruising-stories/alone-on-a-sup-in-the-arctic/
Great piece. Thanks for the reference. I loved the line about remembering a woman freaking out that her latte was made wrong. I’ve been her. Shame.
Very nice, thank you. Being in chukar country has a way of allowing you to think and see things that cannot be found elsewhere, at least it is for me.
Yes, Cliff: that’s the allure for sure, at least for us (and lots of others, so far as I can tell).
I have moved to Southeast Arizona so chukar hunting has been delayed for me and my Brittany Cooper. We have substituted Mearns quail hunting and have been very successful. This quail species dwells in semi steep, rocky, oak infested regions near the border. A very worthy opponent for Cooper and I.
If you’re not familiar with this bird, it is worth your time to check it out.
Craig, thanks for your comment. I have a good friend who’s told me about Mearns for years. I’ve never made the trip, but am sure I will before too long. Thanks for the suggestion.
Nice looks like where my wife and I hunted last week. Lots of snow.
Derya: shhhhh! 🙂
Great post. You find a way to touch on subjects that I think about and have a hard time relaying to others. I was asked recently why I Chukar hunt. The connection to places, dogs, and space is hard to explain on the primal level that I feel it. Also, I wonder if scarcity (hunter gatherer) vs abundance (farmer) plays a role in the reverence that is felt by those that feel so bound to the land’s unforgiving nature in harsh places, like Chukar Country can be. Three weekends left in NV if you want to come down. I’ll buy the Picons.
Good to hear from you, Jeff, and thanks for the kind words. For sure – I think the concepts of scarcity and abundance are really significant in all this. If we didn’t have so much going on in the next month, we’d be down to NV before the end of the season. Next year for sure. Our maiden Picon at the Martin is still on my mind.
Glad to see your writing again, a lot of things go unsaid between the dogs and me, it’s that feeling felt
Definitely, Mike. All day long, and often during the night when I can’t sleep: we talk.
Bob, I really like your writing. I hope to see more of it now that you’re back in chukar country. I particularly liked this article. Here are a couple thoughts it provoked in me:
I think nature as being ineffable in the same way that many have written about God and other deities. Laozi’s quote comes to mind: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.”
Ruffed grouse (and woodcock) hunters in the East and Northwoods of the Midwest have named grouse coverts for many, many decades. Part of the reason for naming them is to discuss it without giving away the location; however, there is more to naming them than secrecy and game birds; they are also about the sensual experience of walking in and through them. Naming them gives them a life that they otherwise would not have.
Glad to see you back in the hills chasing these wonderful little birds!
Mark
Thank you so much, Mark. Not being acquainted with anywhere but the west (in terms of bird hunting), I was not aware of the naming practices related to coverts.That is fascinating, and seems to be more evidence of the residual hunter-gatherer cultural influence on those farmers who’ve tried to focus on something other than exploiting the land. I’ll think about this, and thank you for it.
I’ll read that Brody book but still finishing the crying song book. Personally I’m not a fan of cows, but I doubt chukar would do as well here if it weren’t for the invasive cheatgrass the livestock brought in. More irony.
This past hunt I got a massive bird, just a behemoth. Searching the bird afterwards, I couldn’t find any entry points. I half jokingly told my mates the bird had a heart attack.
When I opened it up the meat was completely untouched, a giant pink mother of pearl breast. I found myself talking to the dressed bird in tender tones. Still processing that feeling. I doubt I’d talk to an ear of corn like that.
Glad you’re still hunting!
I love your comment, and cheatgrass was on the back of my mind the whole time I wrote that; the nag! I could picture the conversation with the big bird, and feel the non-responsive corn. It reminded me of a moment recently when I went to look for steelhead in a local stream. As I got closer to the water, I heard women talking softly to one another on the bank. I could have gone to sleep listening to them. It was the fish.
The siren song, eh? I’ve often thought I heard voices when fishing a stream. Something about that frequency.
Bob, you might try “My Life with the Eskimo” by Stefansson. Not so much for the literary quality, but it is an amazing account of just how brutal the conditions were.
Thanks for the reference, Robert. Lopez and Brody both refer to Stafansson. I’ll check it out.
Your writing style is captivating. Kudos… I enjoy reading your work and appreciate your appreciation of the dogs, the birds and the existence of it all. Amazing writing. Happy trails.
Thanks for your kind words.
Gdam Bob you can write. What’s more, about things I really care about. AND you give me good book recommendations. Trifecta. I have already read Barry Lopez but I’ll try Brody’s.
So glad you all are back in chukar country.
Thanks again for the kind words. I’d say the same to you. Looking forward to this season.