Zachary Craig Hanson's Blog, page 5

The Falkland Islands - A War to Remember

Day 56 - One of my favorite stories from Turning Feral had nothing to do with a near-death experience in the woods, or about an animal I was targeting to hunt or trap. No, my favorite story was one that was told second hand through a visiting preacher at our little church in the woods. 

It was a true tale about a family living in Canada in the early 80’s who were overwhelmed by the continued global threat of nuclear war. They were so consumed by media narratives that they truly believed the world would collapse at any moment and their family would be obliterated at worst, or at best would have to live out their days in a drab nuclear winter. They began to prepare foodstuff, dig bomb shelters, and follow other a-typical preparation protocols, but eventually they felt it wasn’t enough. So through well-meaning research they discovered that a little set off islands off the coast of Argentina was “the most safe place to live in the event of nuclear war.”

Without much fanfare, the family uprooted from Canada and made the long journey to the desolate Falkland Islands to live on a farm, far from the threat of war. Yet, as anyone with a penchant for military history knows, those islands would be the location of one of the larger military conflicts in modern history. In April 1982, Argentinian forces would invade those British-owned islands and kickoff a 72+ day war that saw many lives taken and the eventual burning of this families farm. 

The moral(s) of this story? First, none of us can ever fully prepare for the worst case scenario. And second, rabid consumption of doom-media can lead to rash decision making that is often not rooted in proper threat assessment. 

This family prepared from a place of fear and moved across the world in hopes to avoid war, only to have war show right up on their doorstep. Bad luck or predestination may have been at play here, but the moral of this story still remains – we don’t know what’s coming for us and operating from a place of existential fear is not great grounds for solid decision making. So, if you are stuck in suburbia like I was and are fearing the state of the world, don’t make rash decisions based on that fear. Take time to logically think through what that fear is based on and make the appropriate preparations to mitigate for that eventuality. 

Photo from the Falkland war.

Daily Prompt: How has today’s instantaneous media consumption affected your thoughts on self-sustainability? Has it fueled your desire to be prepared? If so, has some of that media caused you to make rash decisions that ended poorly?:

Motivational Passage:

“We have sailed to close to shore; having fallen in love with life, we have lost our thirst for the waters of life.”

-Sir Francis Drake (English Explorer)

Rewilding Action: Speaking of worst case scenarios, one of the best tools to have in the event of a cataclysmic event are radios. I think of these across three different types. The first and most basic are line-of-sight radios. Ya know, the kind that you can pick up at Walmart or bass pro shop? These usually run off of AA batteries and are great for short distance communication and only work up to a mile or so away, and are easily blocked by terrain features. The other two options are UHF and VHF radios which work off of nearby towers. These are the radios you would hear local emergency services use to communicate across counties and are way more robust. You can buy these types of radios through Amazon, etc., but in order to use them (legally) you need to obtain your HAM radio license.

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The Anxiety Drip...

Day 55 – Anxiety and fear are two emotions that intertwine themselves deeply when the chips look like they are down. Each one feeding the other and collectively fanning oxygen toward the flame of self doubt. If not careful, the flames can overwhelm you and leave you as a heap of ashes, unable to take action against the force that let in the fear and anxiety – a place I have been too many times before.

But, why am I saying this today? Because it’s something I regularly struggle with. Those two emotions have haunted me like a ghost in almost every pursuit I’ve undertaken. They usually manifest as imposter syndrome when I find myself in a situation where I just don’t know the answer to something important. The fear always kicks off the party by allowing my mind to run rampant with worst case scenario outcomes. Then the anxiety comes in like a relieving ketamine drip to pull me back from the ledge, but purposefully gets me addicted to the shallow burial of the issue to never allow me an overall release from the problem. These two work together artfully to sink their talons in just enough to bring the right amount of misery — making it hard to shake their grip.

From youth to adulthood, they’ve been an omnipresent lingerer that pop in at the most infrequent of times. In sports, school, writing, my off-grid learning, and of course they have been visitors in my most recent bout of unemployment. It’s happened so much in my life that I can see it coming. And though I haven’t found a way to bar them from entry into my consciousness, I have come up with ways to mitigate the impact of the fear and to refuse the long term effects of the anxiety.

The answer? Prayer and meditation. Simple I know, but taking time to be alone with those two emotions and to unmask them for what they are, false feelings, has been an important growth step for me. Though overwhelming in their force for obstruction, fear and anxiety are usually cowardly in their own right. With some pushback they tend to crumble away once you put the control and autonomy of your emotions into something bigger than yourself. For me, that has been through faith and inward focus. Recognizing that my path is largely predetermined and that I can’t allow thin veneers of negative emotion derail me from that course. One of the beautiful sayings that I have adopted to help with this comes from a close friend who is on a journey through alcohol recovery… The opening of the serenity prayer, which reads:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Daily Prompt: What are you struggling with? Is it a recurrent theme in your life? What mechanism have you built to cope with them? Do they work? If not, what can you do to change up your mitigation plan?:

Motivational Passage:

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” 

—Epictetus

“How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.”

—Thomas Jefferson

Rewilding Action: Vegetable Glycerin. This is something you may not have on hand, but is great to keep around if you ever plan to turn reptilian skin into leather. When I turn snake skin or beaver tail into leather, I soak them in a 50/50 solution of Vegetable Glycerin and 93% rubbing alcohol solution for a few days. The result is a pliable leather that you could use for any number of critical things like bow handle covers, shoes, or hat bands! Glycerin is cheap and definitely one “food item” you should have en masse that is multi-use and has a long shelf life.

Rattlesnake hide soaking in a glycerin/alcohol solution.

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From Nero to Gaddafi

Day 54: History repeats itself – a saying that has been a common denominator through all centuries. People rise to power, they abuse it, they fall. From Nero to Gaddafi, it’s been proven that absolute power corrupts absolutely and with that corruption comes violence, innocent death, and the eventual downfall of society.

But, what about those people who live on the fringes? What happened to the people on the outskirts of ancient Rome or modern Libya? People who were not involved in large politics and lived simply in a rural setting — the feral folks? Frankly, I don’t know the answer to that question, but I have to imagine that they were insulated (to a degree) from the fallout of their countries larger political party(s). 

Now, being physically distanced from large cities fueled by partisan politics is not why I escaped to a remote town in the mountains. However, year after year it turns out to be an unexpected perk. With the information access we all have today, I don’t have to wait for weeks or months to hear about the burning of a department store, or the riot that took several lives in some densely populated corner of our empire… I see it immediately in a 7 second clip and then have the privilege to walk out my back door and hear nothing — no cars, sirens, or other noise pollution. This level of insulation brings peace. The ability to disconnect from the circus and recognize what all empires are built on, terra forma, is a perspective I hope to never lose.

Now, I am not saying that if you are in a large city you can’t achieve this peace. In fact, I believe that even in a big city with it’s daily chaos that if you take a moment to find a patch of bare earth and reflect on that, you will come away with a renewed view of what everything around you was built on… and as history has proven, it will all go back to that one day… maybe not in our lifetime, but it will all inevitably return to dirt. The more we access that natural world, the more in tune we will be with what the earth has always been and will once again be. So, take your time, embrace nature, and ride the wave wherever you are at!

Daily Prompt: As you mull over your self-sustainability journey, what other unexpected benefits may you gain along the way? Is there anything specific you are seeking?:

Motivational Passage: 

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”

-Seneca

Rewilding Action: If you are going to be in Nashville, TN in early February the Safari Club International is holding their annual convention. I will be attending to host a seminar on adult-onset hunting and to do a Turning Feral book signing. There are other great seminars being hosted by great industry leaders that focus on many elements of self sustainability, too. If you get the chance swing by and say hello!

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Exercise the Mind

If you haven’t already, there is still time to pick up a copy of Turning Feral on Amazon before the holidays. Grab one for you or a family member who is sustainability-curious!

Day 53: Rote memorization was never my thing. In fact I struggled on any test where I had to commit phrases or specific pieces of information to memory. All of the notecards and mnemonic devices I tried would help, but shortly after the exam the factoids would disappear into the ether never to be recalled again. It wasn’t until I started to learn a second language that I realized rote memorization can only take a person so far in acquiring new information, and to truly learn something you need two things, immersion and routine.

How did I find this out? Well, after two years of studying Russian with the ol’ rote memorization method I finally had the chance to live in Russia. Once I landed and was out in the city I found myself trying my best memorized Russian lines on passersby. Imagine my surprise when my questions and statements were greeted by someone replying in a thick accent, “Brother, I speak English… let’s just use that, OK?” My static memorization had failed me and bruised my ego, but I was now immersed and chose to try and speak the language regardless of a local’s resistance.

I then augmented the immersion experience with religious routine. Everyday I would wake up, do some writing in the language, and then leave the house well before I needed to. My goal everyday was to have interactions with people in areas where my language skills lacked. It could be ordering breakfast, buying flowers I was going to throw away, or even trying to talk to a homeless person. What mattered to me was that I was exposing myself to the weakest parts of my skillset in a daily attempt to sharpen a dull tool. Then, after two years of living in Russian-speaking countries, the immersion and routine paid off and I was able to bring myself up to passable levels of conversation.

This approach has stuck with me ten plus years later and is one I feel is applicable to any situation. When you gain an interest in something, like sustainable living for instance, you can start by getting a base understanding through rote learning methodologies, but to really learn you must seek opportunities for immersion and routine.

I was lucky to have an immersion opportunity crop up that allowed me to live out my Turning Feral journey everyday, but you can find shorter term opportunities, too. Ones you could tackle once or twice a year for a week or more at a time – think something like a multi-day guided hunting trip or a wilderness survival seminar. In addition to my self-sustainability immersion, I made it a daily routine to write and reflect on my learnings… This has had a two-fold effect of helping solidify my own understanding, as well as being an outlet to help others navigate similar paths.

So, if you are struggling to find your way on your self-sustainability journey take solace in knowing it’s a long road, and wherever you can upgrade from rote practice to immersion and routine, do it.

Daily Prompt: What opportunities for immersion could you participate in 2024 to help you toward whatever goal you are trying to achieve? Is there a daily routine you could implement to help get you there?:

Motivational Passage: 

“We are what we repeatedly do.”

-Aristotle

Rewilding Action: Reading in nature. One thing I have always tried to do is take a book with me when I go into the back country. I am usually selective on the size of the book because I have failed to make the jump to an e-reader, but nothing hits quite like reading a book out in the woods. I think it’s the ability to fully concentrate with no other distractions that make the experience more immersive. I also feel like my retention of information and critical thought increases ten-fold. So if you haven’t tried it, grab a book and head somewhere outside… it could be a garden, the beach, or the deep woods. Turn your phone off and try to sink into the words and note the difference between that and your normal reading spot.

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Open Your Aperture

Day 52: When we think about things that we want and pray for, it is easy to believe that those desires are being ignored when it doesn’t magically come to fruition. If it’s patience we pray for, or the desire to lose weight, to gain wealth, or to be more compassionate, those are all things that take time to develop. Because of the time and personal investment, we often write off that the big man upstairs isn’t listening to us. Yet, he so often is giving us the opportunity to develop those wants and needs we desperately pray for, we just refuse to see it.

Want to be more patient? Well, maybe God put little children in your life to help you develop that skill. Want to lose weight? Maybe the broken down car you have is actually a blessing to help get you get out and walk. Did you pray for the success of your side business? Maybe that corporate layoff you went through recently is actually the mechanism to help you achieve that. You see, it turns out that so many blessings are shrouded in difficult circumstances and we have to keep our eyes and hearts open to see them. We also have to be ready for the gifts we ask to receive to come packaged in a way that takes work and potential discomfort to fully unwrap.

How quickly and easily we recognize these masked blessings is dependent on the individual, though. My friend recently spoke to me about the idea of Emotional Relativism and I believe it relates here. The idea is that if you took two individuals, one who has experienced a traumatic event in their life and one who hasn’t, when a new traumatic event occurs to both of them the individual who has experienced trauma in the past will be less impacted and is more likely to learn from it more quickly than the individual who hasn’t experienced any past trauma. This may seem like common sense, but when applied to the idea of blessings I believe those that have prayed for guidance in the past and missed an opportunity are more primed to see new blessings for growth… so long as they learned from the historical missed opportunity and have critically reflected on why they missed it.

With the emotional maturity of middle age, I can think about times in the past where I desperately prayed or wanted for something and clearly missed the opportunity that was provided because it was masked as something else – and was likely as prickly as a cactus. But, through my own emotional relativism I am now able to better see opportunities that arise through personal desire and prayer and take action!

Your prayers are being answered, you just have to make sure your don’t miss the opportunity that is being provided!

Daily Prompt: Have you missed opportunities in the past because of the blinders you were wearing? How can you begin to open up your aperture to make sure that the things you desire and pray for aren’t being missed in your field of view?:

Motivational Passage:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

-T.S. Eliot

Rewilding Action: Fasting. I am currently on my fourth fast of the year and this is the longest one yet. There are tons of reasons why I have done these, but at the forefront is the desire to see the forrest through the trees on my prayers and to ensure that I do not miss any opportunity – no matter how it is packaged. However, fasting is also a great exercise in crisis management and planning, too. If we think about self-sustainability and living off grid there could be times when food runs out for days, or there could be a situation where you get stuck in the backcountry and run out of supplies. As with anything, if you go into a situation without experiencing it before, it can be overwhelming… extreme hunger included. So, if you don’t want to fast for the spiritual or health benefits, consider a short fast just to train your body for what it feels like to be hungry… then if the unfortunate time ever comes where you have to skip a few meals, you will be ready for the feeling and be able to better make critical decisions in that moment!

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Have You Killed Desire?

Day 51: Someone recently asked me about my pursuit of trying to live in such an isolated town. Why pursue such an off-the-beaten-path lifestyle when you had everything you could have asked for in the city you were living in, they asked? The answer to this question was simple. My suburban life before was devoid of passion and only consumed by duty.

My duty to pay the bills, acquire more things, cut the grass so the HOA didn’t hound me, and to check boxes for things my heart didn’t desire – and I was done with it. I was not passionate about any of those things, and I had convinced myself for so long that my heart wasn’t hungry for more… If someone asked if I was in need of anything, my answer would always be, “No, I don’t need anything I am covered.” Yet, if someone had followed that up with, “Are you fulfilled?” I would have been a liar with any answer other than a resounding, “No.”

That lack of passion and desire is at the root of so much hurt and pain for young men and women today. People have given up what their heart is calling them to, often at the advice of people they admire. Folks tell you that your dreams aren’t realistic… Don’t follow you dream to be an actor, don’t pursue that startup idea, or don’t decide to move to the middle of nowhere… don’t, don’t, don’t is what we are confronted with day in and day out by people who love, care, and want the best for us. Yet, these well-intended pleadings to take the safe path in life are also the same pleadings that lead us down a path of fruitlessness and depression – living a sterile version of the bountiful life that we could have led. John Eldridge, in his book “The Journey of Desire” sums it up well in this line:

“You cannot help someone who doesn’t want a thing. All his life [insert your name] was a good boy. A gelding. And geldings, though they are nicer and much more well behaved than stallions, do not bring life. They are sterile.”

So, why did I move to the most isolated town in the U.S. to pursue trapping and hunting, something I had no experience doing? I did it because I had a flicker in my heart and a desire to try a different path – one fraught with risk and uncertainty. Because I knew that if I continued to live the same dutiful and predictable life that I had before, I was relenting myself to being a gelding… Open and willingly walking into the sterilization chamber to forever be “nicer and well behaved.” 

Don’t turn your back on desire.

Daily Prompt: What do you desire? What’s holding you back from pursuing it? Fear? Duty? Something else? Write your thoughts down here:

Motivational Passage:

“The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.”

-Simone Weil

Rewilding Action: One of the keys to living affectively in a remote place is your own health. We have covered medical kits and the benefits of eating wild game, but we have not touched on supplements. Often times when providing or growing your own food, there are times of the year where you will lack the variety you may be able to access in a big city year round. So, it becomes important to supplement your bodies needs with vitamins. I have no medical advice or brand-specific suggestions here, but I do try to stick to a course of taking vitamins year round. It would take too long to list them all out, but understanding what your self-sustained diet provides and were it is lacking is an important exercise to consider as you start your Turning Feral journey.

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Spirit of the Law

Day 50 -  I have always been a ‘letter of the law’ type of guy. If there were a rule to follow, I was following it - I blame my suburban southern baptist upbringing. But, as I have aged I realized that in life there exists a massive gray area between following the ‘law’ and criminality.

Now, to preface, I am not talking solely about Laws with a capital L (things like murder, poaching, etc.), but also the mundane rules we are encouraged to follow in our society. An example? A little while after I got married to my wife I watched her eat sour cream that was a few days past its expiration date… I was shocked. I had always been maniacal about throwing out foodstuff past its prime and considered printed expiration dates as law. However, it turns out that she was absolutely fine after consuming it. She had opened up the container, smelled it, did a quick taste it and made a judgement call based on her knowledge, intuition, and moral compass. 

Now you may be asking, “Ok, Zach. What a hero. You and your family now safely eat expired food. What does this have to do with Turning Feral?” The reason this topic is important is that if you are a rule-following suburbanite like I was, someone who relies on a system to lawfully help you conduct your day, you are in for a rude awakening when you start your self-sustainability journey. When you step out of the system everything starts to become gray and ‘open to interpretation,’ which if you aren’t used to can be jarring.

Where I moved to, there was so much gray it made my head spin and there wasn’t even Law enforcement with a capital L within a four drive. This meant that the rules I had built my identity around were now loosened and it made me question a lot of the things I was doing. Real examples included the proper dispatching of trapped animals, home defense, medical emergency preparation, etc. But, what helped us navigate this gray area was a belief that morality and compassion win out over all things, and that our intuition plays a large part in making judgement calls in gray areas. So, if you plan to strike out on your own in the coming years you need to start getting comfortable living in the gray zone of life, even if it starts by eating some expired sour cream hiding in the back of your refrigerator.

Daily Prompt: How can you embrace making decisions that fall in the gray area? Is there a moral framework you can build to make those decisions easier?:

Motivational Passage:

A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.

-John F. Kennedy

Rewilding Action: Part of a sustainable life is dealing with the death of animals… whether that is wild game or domestic animals you raise. With that death comes blood, which will inevitably makes its way into your home by hitching a ride on your boots or clothes. That vital life source has a knack for making it’s way into every nook and cranny of a floor board or tile grout. Left unattended it can start to smell and leave your significant other in a bad mood. The best solution I have found for getting blood out of hard to reach spaces? Borax. Borax is essentially a drying agent (one I use to help speed dry pelts sometimes), but it does wonders for wicking away liquids – blood included. It is a must-have chemical and you can pick up a box at any store in the cleaning aisle.

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It Ain't all Rainbows & Butterflies

Day 49 - For many of those reading this, you have aspirations of learning to be more self-sustained. Part of that journey will inevitably include the need to take the life of another living being for food or fur, something suburnanites have been insulated from for quite sometimes. In fact, for many urban dwellers the idea of killing a wild animal for food has been demonized in spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands of dead animals line the grocery store shelves in every big city, but why am I stating the obvious?

Because taking a life is hard. Whether you’ve been hunting and farming since you were a kid or are adult-onset like myself, no one fully prepares you for the first time that you take an animals life – or any of the millions of permutations of death that can occur once you release an arrow or pull a trigger. Yes, we should all train to make a perfect shot and pray that when our lethal projectiles make impact that death comes swift and the animal topples over in peace without taking a step… but, reality is often far different than our best-case-scenario fantasy.

The reality? It can be ugly. Whether it’s a bad shot placement, a jumped string, or just plane bad luck, often times you find yourself in a situation where you have a wounded, but still very much alive, animal on your hands. These experiences are heart breaking. No sane person who wants to provide healthy table fare for their family desires to bring about suffering and the emotions felt in a moment of wounding an animal can be overwhelming. Regret, dread, sadness, and self-hatred are all at the table in those moments and if you don’t mentally prepare for that potentiality, they can be debilitating – which could lead to more suffering of the wounded animal.

If you are on your own journey to Turning Feral, take time to practice getting the most ethical and rewarding outcome as possible on your hunts or butchering of personal livestock. But, also take time to recognize that death is not always linear and the path over the rainbow road can be quickly affected by variables outside of your control. Find ways to calm your mind in hyper-stressful situations because when the moment an unclean death presents itself you need to have your wits about you in order to make an ethical follow up strike, or be prepared to let the animal expire on it’s own – which can often be heart wrenching to watch.

Daily Prompt: What mental tools do you have at your disposal to deal with traumatic events? Do you box breathe? Pray? What other tools could you incorporate into your daily practice to help prepare for some of the less glamorous aspects of being self-sustained?:

Motivational Passage:

"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."

-Golda Meir

Rewilding Action: The mental training aspects of turning feral are often overlooked as people step out into the woods. Though I don’t know of any companies that focus solely on the mental toughness aspect of outdoor adventuring, I do know many who incorporate aspects of it into their programming, which include MTNTOUGH, Sheepdog Response, Fieldcraft Survival, etc. In the past my practice stemmed from reading books on mental strength and then applying it through sport for repetition. I will compile a list of my top-10 books for mental toughness and post them in the coming weeks.

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On Death & Dying

Day 48 - My dad was right… my liberal arts degree was pretty much useless. Money spent on classes I don’t remember and years spent with teachers who left little to no impression on me. However, in reflecting on the academic experience of college there was one class that stuck out. It was a class titled “On Death & Dying.”

Yup – you read that right. On my journey toward a political science degree I had to take a slew of odd elective courses, of which this is the only one I remember well. In the course “On Death & Dying” we covered a semester's worth of study on what it’s like to die. We read a plethora of books on cultural differences in caring for the dead, what different regions of the world believe happens after you die, stories of near death experiences, and we capped the semester off by walking around cemeteries in Charleston, SC to read hundreds of years worth of epitaphs… ya know, the cheeky little sayings that get left on your headstone when you pass?

And out of nearly four years of ‘education’ that one exercise of walking around cemeteries to prepare to write our own epitaph was the most profound part of my undergraduate career. It’s not that I had a fear of death, but taking time to read hundreds of peoples lives summed up in a few words gave me a new perspective on how to live my life. It made me realize that no matter how much we squeeze into our lives and pile onto our resumes, the future generations will only know us by what’s left on our headstone.

Even going back hundreds of years, the most impressionable headstones I could find read like “Here lies X, a dedicated father and husband,” or, “Here lies Y, a wife, mother, and philanthropist.” Very few headstones recorded someone’s profession and the economy of space made it difficult to add fluff or useless info. When it came to writing our own it was difficult to choose just a few adjectives to describe everything I had hoped to accomplish. And since it’s been nearly fifteen years since I took this course I wanted to renew the exercise by rewriting my headstone’s inscription. If I were to die today, here is what I would want my epitaph to read:

Here lies Zach Hanson, a husband, father, and adventurer. 

A man who always wanted to see over one more ridge.

01/12/1989 - [death]

Daily Prompt: What would your epitaph read if you died today? Take some time to meditate on this and write it down here:

Motivational Passage:

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

-Mark Twain

Rewilding Action: Tools. If you want to get anything done around your home or with your hobbies, you need tools. And unfortunately, you need to be a bit brand agnostic here… most power tools are built around their batteries and they are not universal across brands. I for one got sucked into the Ryobi family early, which is cause for being made fun of by people with “real” handyman skills. But, all of the major players are great these days… Milwaukee, Dewault, Makita, etc. My advice would be to pick one and make sure you at least have a drill and battery to start off with… you can then build out your arsenal as you need it for projects that you take on in the future.

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A Fools Monopoly

Day 47 - I had it all to myself. The hills, the rivers, and the backroads. Three years of solo winter trapping in an area others didn’t want to go. There were plenty of fur-bearing animals and frankly I began to believe that my monopoly would last forever. Besides, trapping is a dying art, right?

Well, I was wrong. For the first time I walked into one of ‘my spots’ only to be greeted by another man’s bootprints. Now I had heard of this before at fur sales… Stories about other guys creeping into a location, stealing and molesting traps, while being an unreasonable cutthroat. All fueled by competition for a limited resource where gloves come off and words get exchanged. But, after a few years of solitude and no sign of other trappers, I almost didn’t believe it was possible. So, when I did see that someone made it out I was shocked… and truthfully? A little impressed.

Yes, the snow held off a little longer this year to make the zone more accessible into the start of beaver season, but it was still a slog to haul traps in. After my initial wash of anger, I stopped for a second to laugh at myself. It took me nanoseconds to realize that the emotion I was having was anger toward myself, not my newfangled competition. I had been beat. Someone with more gusto and time got there, put sets out, and was prepared to come check them sooner than I was — my fools monopoly was over. 

Like the railroad barons of the past I could see that encroachment wasn’t just coming, but it was already here. But, instead of doubling down and picking a fight I decided to let it go. Plus, I have seen the ending of “There will be Blood” enough to know that holding onto a monopoly with maniacal control can only end with having to bash someone’s head in with a bowling pin… So, in an effort to avoid that fate I pulled back.

Even though my autonomy over that part of the river was done, it turned out that I knew the guy who was out there trapping. In fact, after some over-the-phone discussion, we may even partner up to hit larger swaths of the hard to reach areas that are overrun with beaver. So even though it can seem devastating when something you hold dear is encroached on by other people, if you keep yourself open to change and competition, you may just find yourself with more opportunity on the other end… Plus, everything here on earth is fleeting and monopolies always crumble.

Daily Prompt: What is your fool’s monopoly? What will happen when your domination of that comes to an end?:

Motivational Passage:

“In 100 years, we will all be buried with our family and friends. Strangers will live in our homes that we worked so hard to build and someone else will own everything we have today.

Our descendants will hardly know who we are nor will they remember us. How many of us know who our grandfather's father was?

After we die we will be remembered for a few more years and then we’re just a portrait on someone’s wall.

And a few decades later our history, photos, and deeds disappear into history’s oblivion. We won’t even be memories. So, enjoy your life now.”

- Unknown

Rewilding Action: Warm gloves are an essential part of any winter backcountry kit. Whether you are skiing, trapping, or hiking, keeping the littlest appendages warm can mean the difference between enjoying the moment or feeling miserable. I have plowed through several gloves to date, but the brand that has won my admiration for warmth and durability is Hestra.

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