Entering and Exiting with Grace

Sharing My Spirit With Those Before and After

I enter the woods in reverence. I stop to listen to the welcoming birdsong. My eyes search for the bright noted chirp of a chickadee. The raucous laughter of the blue jay. On my knees, I breathe in the deep bouquet of the soil. The intoxicating fragrance of fresh cut hay from the nearby field swirls, mixing with the deep tones of the breeze blowing off the lake to the west. Looking upward at the canopy of trees, I notice the many shades of green filtering the sunlight of a late summer afternoon. I ask permission to step into the world that no one possesses. A world that thrives in my absence yet embraces my spirit when I humbly ask to enter.

Walking down the old logging road, Eastern newts scramble to the nearest decayed log. Tiny mushrooms that I cannot easily identify, dare me to sniff their caps and examine their gills. The pileated woodpecker taps out a staccato rhythm on an old ash tree on the ridge. A hawk screeches above me. Red squirrels and chipmunks race to safety. A dusky brown field mouse scurries under a leaf pile.

Veering uphill, I turn onto a deer trail that I have watched for the last few years. A small pile of pebble-like scat is at my feet. The scar of an old rub from a young buck’s first dose of testosterone last fall, adorns a hemlock sapling. Under the low hanging branch of a maple, last year’s scrape is dry and lightly covered with small twigs and a twin pair of white acorn caps. Continuing uphill, the cross trail that intersects with this main line, recedes into the thick shrubbery where lies the whitetail’s beds.

As I reach my tree stand, it is apparent that the last intense storm has rearranged many of the trees, resulting in blowdowns and adding obstacles to the trail that runs just twenty feet under my stand. Dare I clear them? Would it be unnatural if I were to move them so that the current trail could be maintained, or would that just muddy up the entire area with my scent? I opt to leave them where they lay and reposition my shooting lane farther uphill. This is a game of woodland chess, trying to think like my prey. Would he walk out of his way to take the easier path to his food or would he simply, gracefully, walk over the fallen limbs? At what point would I consider him to present me with a shot? Natives believe, as I do, that when an animal “presents” itself to me, they are offering their own life to support my own. As I am still blessed to walk this Earth, before my shot is taken, always, a prayer. The prayer of a quick and clean kill. One done with respect and honor. Then, a second prayer as I sit with him, my hand on his chest, as the green fire in his eyes dims.

My heart cries for him and, at the same time, I feel so much gratitude for his sacrifice. I believe that, for a moment at least, our spirits are intertwined. Life giving life. He releases his beauty and grace into my own inner being. We die and live together. We live and die together. Our spirits become One. One day, my time will come as well. Time to surrender my own life. And by the grace of the Great Spirit, I pray that my life will have benefitted others. That their lives might find just a bit more harmony and connection with the world I leave behind.

Bradley Carleton is the Director of Sacred Hunter LLC, a privately owned Limited Liability Corporation that seeks to educate the public on the spiritual connection of man to nature through hunting, fishing, and foraging. His writing can be followed on substack.com.