Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside

by Nick Offerman

the more I focused my attention on myself, the stupider I behaved; and the more I focused on others, the likelier I was to be of actual service, because I could then apprehend the work that needing doing.

“Look. Examine the ‘conservation’ of ‘nature,’ not through the lens of John Muir, which is how everybody looks at it, but instead through the lens of Aldo Leopold.”

Pulling onto the main road, I was soon assaulted by a veritable barrage of billboards, reading “JESUS IS LORD,” “CHOOSE LIFE,” “LEGALIZE JESUS,” “FEAR GOD,” etc. It was a rather ham-fisted display that didn’t seem particularly well thought out. I mean, it didn’t remotely give me a feeling of love or safety or welcome, which is what I would think a Christian-minded organization would desire. Even a dum-dum like me recalls Jesus’s saying in Matthew 25: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” But, no, the clear message here in Kalispell was “Fear God (or Else).” If they’re going to monopolize the local billboards, why wouldn’t they try something less aggressive, like “Welcome to our town, we hope you safely enjoy the ways in which we will be providing you succor in exchange for your tourism dollars, and by the way, we have a church or two if you’re looking for that sort of thing, but mainly just don’t forget to love one another!”

I think that a downside of the kind of shopping Jeff and I enjoyed is that perhaps it can fool a person into creating an actual deficit in life—“I can’t go have fun doing [x activity] because I don’t have the proper gear.” Of course, one should absolutely invest in safety and responsibly attack any activity with common sense and curiosity, but if you’ve been around the block (like George), then you might realize that you can hike a national park trail without dropping a few bills on a fancy new pair of boots. I’ve never to my knowledge finished the ups and downs of an arduous, daylong hike, arriving back at camp only to lament, “Man, that was so fun, but think how much better it could have been if only my middle under-layer was self-wicking! Damn!” To each their own, I say, because I can certainly understand both sides of the issue, based on my own hard-earned experience.

“Do we feel such an overwhelming peace when we enter the woods because the chaos of nature is a balm to the rectilinear order of mankind?” George countered, “Or is civilization the chaos, and nature’s inscrutable design the respite because of its older-than-the-hills systems and patterns?”

“Emotional power is the highest aim of art and can be attained even in the face of clumsy craft,”

“And so I go to the woods. As I go in under the trees, dependably, almost at once, and by nothing I do, things fall into place. I enter an order that does not exist outside, in the human spaces. I feel my life take its place among the lives—the trees, the annual plants, the animals and birds, the living of all these and the dead—that go and have gone to make the life of the earth. “I am less important than I thought, the human race is less important than I thought. I rejoice in that. My mind loses its urgings, senses its nature, and is free.” Wendell Berry, A Native Hill (1969).

A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. —EDWARD ABBEY, Desert Solitaire

It was a markedly similar sensation that struck me there upon the trail to the Hidden Lake Overlook, and not just because I slapped a mosquito on the back of my neck. What occurred to me was the sensibility that seems to be shared by most, if not all, of the people I know when it comes to achieving the distinct pleasure I was now feeling. I have felt it in many places, scenically and geologically disparate places, but although far apart, the characteristic that these places share is simply the way in which they present the natural world, at some distance from home, in a place that is free, happily, from the trappings of convenience that somehow simultaneously free us and shackle us to our spots.

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”