It’s long been a theory of mine that the most intense outdoor experiences are those that reflect elements of work.
My preferred play, hunting, was a necessary skill in the original job description of our species, from the time when hunting and gathering was what humans did to live, and not mere amusement to facilitate getting away from it all.
Fishing is of course just a subset of hunting. You don’t need a gun to hunt.
The most intense outdoors experience of my life was the summer I spent in the wilderness of the Bitterroot/Selway, surveying rivers for the Forest Service. My crew lived in the backcountry for eight-day stints, working 10-hour shifts. If the weather was bad, we worked. If we were worn out from an especially brutal day, we still got up the next day to work.
Skipping a day afield to rest up in the lodge wasn’t an option.
I was a fly fishing guide for three or four summers back in an earlier life, and experienced a similar dynamic. There were mornings I looked out the window and thought, “This looks like a lousy day to float a river,” but since I had a trip booked, I floated the river and made the best of the rain.
Some may not realize it, but I think this work component is why outdoor types are so compelled by artificial goals such as species slams. I just completed one myself, in January, when my English setter Doll and I killed a mountain quail, making it six for six on the native quails of the United States. We spent a lot of time in a decade-long, seemingly fruitless quest, until we finally succeeded about a quarter mile from a spot we’d hunted a dozen times before.
You see this with fly fishers as well. There’s a natural progression, from wanting to catch your first fish on a fly, to catching as many fish on a fly as possible, to catching the biggest fish. Then, finally, you focus on the nirvana attained only when you catch the most challenging fish in the river.
In a way, pursuing a slam introduces the drudgery of the time clock into your passion. You can’t clock out until 5, and the routine starts over tomorrow at 9. With these artificial constraints in place, we push ourselves further, creating a more intimate interaction with place through attaining your goal.
It’s a tendency of mine to overlook the gathering part, but there are plenty of researchers specializing in this sort of thing who will tell you it’s gathering where the real calories come from. Yes, the clan taking down a mastodon is cause for a celebratory feast, but it’s the fruits and tubers gathered on a daily basis — usually by females — that sustains life.
There’s a reason elephant herds are led by experienced matriarchs: pachyderms are smart.
Across the Northern Rockies, smart humans are doing their darnedest to replicate the gathering ways of our ancestors. They are dispersing across forest berry patches, buckets in hand, hopefully picking enough hucks for a pie or two.
Or better still, so many they can put up a few quarts for later.
This huckleberry gathering connects humans to place in much the way hunting does. To be a successful berry picker — a status attained by filling a number of pies I’ve never shared the same area code with — you have to learn the forest and recognize the conditions huckleberry plants need to set lots of fruit.
That pie producing berry picker is going to work, though most of the folks you see this time of year with purple-stained hands are working because it’s fun, and delicious.
That’s the beauty of nature. The more intimately you work it, the better nature makes you feel.
Rob Breeding writes and blogs at www.mthookandbullet.com.