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.

My tasks involved the making of mistakes, then discovering how to resolve those errors without being an asshole, a search that I now understand will never end.

As Wendell Berry says, “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.”

Goosing myself out of normal, daily redundancies helps me to stay open and curious to the ever-shifting world around me.

The salient point, one that I’d gathered watching from afar and now saw in person, is this: It’s not that he loves the actual act of building stone walls, or splitting firewood, or checking sheep’s hooves for infection. The reason he appears to hop to each and every task is because he loves farming, and these are the menial tasks that comprise farming.

The essence of the hubris in this case is humankind’s inability to comprehend that we do not know and never can know, as Wendell Berry tells it, “either all the creatures that the Kingdom of God contains or the whole pattern or order by which it contains them.”

It has ever been the attitude of us Homo sapiens that when we employ our appetites and our technology to take what we like from the earth, if that greed should cause us any sort of problem, why, we’ll just use our indefatigable smarts to science us up a solution to that new problem.

As Aldo Leopold wrote, “The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.”

What a perfect example of a political mindset that merely wants to loutishly and lazily assert its place, backed by no reason or ideology other than they want their worldview to remain unbothered.

“Proper compensation,” in truth, for people who say things like “proper compensation,” would closely resemble a swift kick in the ass.

As James wrote in The Shepherd’s Life, “Later I would understand that modern people the world over are obsessed with the importance of ‘going somewhere’ and ‘doing something with your life.’ The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesn’t count for much.” I’ve said it before, but the cancer of consumerism is so insidious and pervasive that by now in 2021 the actual act of shopping is considered a legitimate pastime.

I was in a state of emotional and physical exhaustion with which I imagine the parents of young children must be well acquainted. Fighting some sort of truly existential battle, emerging victorious but just barely, then picking oneself up and starting a full day in that state of both triumph and fatigue.

my general happiness depends upon my ability to accomplish good, productive work that does somebody some good.

The blind passion one could feel emanating from these boat and truck maneuvers felt like the noises that blare from bleachers full of bovine, braying hometown fans, drunkenly disparaging the visiting team.

I suppose it’s obvious for a place like a national park, but one of the best ways to get a feel for a new city as well is to simply get out and walk it.

We also talked Madison, and the coveted local beer from New Glarus known as Spotted Cow, and I said, cutting him off again, that I wasn’t interested in perpetuating the argument over whether it’s a cream ale or a farmhouse ale.

Over my fifty-one years, I have taken on board a lot of messaging, usually from people trying to sell me shit, about “chasing my dreams” and “reaching for the stars,” and basically being as ambitious as possible. And maybe that route to that definition of success works for some people, but I can’t say that it’s really been my experience. I personally do a much better job at feeling successful by making smaller moves, and reading the organic signs that life sends my way.

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields—these are as much as a man can fully experience.”