It’s Friday evening as I write this and the last 36 hours has been a blur.  It’s with a small but of reflection that I realize that the blur has lasted more than 36 days.

The Fall is my favourite time of year – it’s also the busiest.  There are so many competing interests at play:

• The harvest and the bounty it offers to preserve
• The stunning amount of great food events, festivals and tastings
• Preparing for the hunt
• The Brickworks Picnic (where we served more than 650 portions of food we prepared in four hours)
• Two long weekends which tend to be mini-vacations for us (generally to the hunt camp to prepare for the harvest)
• It’s also the busiest time at work as I host an International Summit of Leaders from across our business
• I’m starting a new position at my company – transitioning roles is a bit like working both jobs at the same time until one gently fades away.
• I’ve decided to keep the 1,000+ consecutive days of posting going so there’s also a matter of pre-writing 10 days of posts to keep the site going while I head into the forest.

It’s been busy.  It generally always is before the hunt – the 6 day moose hunting season generally marks the end of the busiest time of year for me these days.  It’s like my drive home – our house is less than 2 minutes from the highway that takes me home; I go from 100 kilometers (around 60 miles) an hour to parked in 120 seconds or less and it takes a few more minutes for my brain to slow down and get in synch with my body.

Our work summit, this year, included 2 days away from the office.  We’re on a break of the final evening – there’s a casual get-together after an intense 4-days filled with meetings.  I’ll be here through morning when I’ll wrap up some final work items, finish my final posts and run errands through town before leaving mid-morning for camp.  I’ll be there in about an hour from here (it’s close but the rough logging road I’ll cross in my pickup demands respect and patience).

It’s ironic that the chosen location was Huntsville, Ontario (where I’m writing this journal) – I’m 3.5 hours from home and less than 20 kilometers from our cabin.  I’m between two worlds – geographically far from home and socially in a different universe than that cabin that’s so near (to get an idea of how remote, visit this post from 2009).  We’re staying at a golf course which is all but closed for the season – I can see the fall colors all around me and keep thinking of the cabin where my Father, a few friends and my dog await.

My Family spends a lot of time in the cabin this time of year.  Mom and Dad will spend 30+ days out of 45 just getting ready for the hunt.  They’ll spend time working on small projects as well as hiking and using the 4-wheeler (ATV) to look for signs and evidence of animals.  Mom left camp with Dad on Monday (her final visit of the year) and he came back yesterday (Thursday) for another 11 days.  He’ll be back in November for 16 or 17 for deer season.

I generally always get to camp later Friday night.  I love arriving Friday night – it’s generally just the retired guys who are in and it feels like the calm before the storm.  It’s a celebratory mood and the guys either stay up or get up to greet me, even if I arrive after midnight.  There will be no such arrival this year as our conference goes through the evening – something I am slightly sad about but I’m also excited to have a casual night with my peers.  Besides, I know I’ll be in camp early in the morning so my ‘sacrifice’ compared to years past is probably a 1:00AM beer.

Yesterday morning saw me up and out of the house before 6:00AM.  I took Schaeffer (who was bounding with excitement) up to the suburbs and dropped him off with my Father.  I didn’t think taking our pup to our conference for 2 days would go over so well so he took the express route to camp with my Dad (who is his absolute favorite person in the world).

From there I headed up rural roads and wound my way up to Huntsville.  After a mini-SUV passed me on the highway I received a phone call from the vehicle.  It was a group of colleagues on their way to the same off-site session I was headed to and they were looking for breakfast recommendations in town.  It was fun to take them to a diner I’ve visited since childhood.

The restaurant was packed and there were plenty of tables where groups of men huddled over caffeine and mounds of breakfast staples.  It was clear to me that many were there for the hunt.  I was identifiable as the same (my hunter-orange jacket is the only coat I’ve brought) and I stood out – the only hunter at a table of men who were the only group of men who were non-hunters in the restaurant.  Much like where I am staying, my position at the table was one of limbo – physically between two places.

My colleagues missed a few subtle interactions between myself and a few others.  There were a few knowing nods, smiles and glances as each of us prepares for something that most wait the entire year for.  I have no idea who these people are and we’d likely miss connecting any other time of the year but this was 3 days before the hunt and we share a bond of familiar strangers.  It’s an odd exchange to try to explain – and just as odd to experience.

We had a team-building experience today that included orienteering with GPS’s, target practice with a ‘kids’ bow-and-arrow and other outdoor activities.  I had an edge over many of my colleagues until it came to lighting a fire that would bring water to a boil.  Our wood was met and I made a few rookie mistakes that I should have never made  but did.  We ended up in second-last (in a game where pride was the biggest prize) and I was reminded of the Golden Rules of all things outdoors: as soon as you think you have it mastered and get cocky, you will be humbled.

Time to run out for the evening; an early alarm will call from sleep – I’m excited to get into camp and see my guys…

To see all of the posts in this series, click here (a new post will be published every day through Sunday, November 6, 2011).

Greetings all!

Regular readers may recognize a gap between my announcement that I was hunting back to the woods for the annual moose hunt, my return and the lack of update around what happened.  Those who have been around these parts for longer know what’s coming but I wanted to invite the rest of you to join in the journey.

In the next 9 days I will be posting my complete diary from 9 days in the forest as I participated in the Ontario Moose Hunt.  The posts will be as sensitive as possible as I understand this is a divisive topic.  My initial posting on hunting (aptly called ‘Confessions of a one-time vegetarian‘) provides a lot more detail on the topic and my difficulties in writing about it.  In short, it’s an activity that I am immensely proud of yet sometimes struggle to participate in at the same time.  It’s also something I was taught not to discuss in public from the time I was a child.

I hope you’ll consider coming along with the journey and that you’ll share your comments, ideas and thoughts.  I’ll expect we all treat each other with civility when we disagree but also challenge each other to consider new concepts and ideas – this, of course, applies to me as well.

Many may wonder why I have such a dramatic pretext – it is only tied into personal experience and the consistent experience of my youth that speaking of hunting in public generally went poorly.  I remember a Science Teacher who once publicly berated me for skipping a day of school for the harvest and then explained that she fished and often killed fish without eating them.  That was wrong in my world but it didn’t escape me that what I was doing was just as wrong in hers.  I understand that the topic is sensitive and divisive. 

The topic of hunting is largely misunderstood – often because of the portrayal of some members of the hunting community at large.  Our cabin is a food camp; we eat everything that we kill and have done so on the same land for longer than I have been alive.  We apply for licenses and are able to harvest very selectively (our cabin of 14 men can kill 1 adult female moose and several calves during the 6-days of Moose Hunting in our area this year). 

In the next 8 days I will post daily journal entries exactly one-week after they are written.  You’ll be able to follow along with our daily challenges and successes and hopefully experience a bit about what the hunt is about.  I will not expose you to shock-value or gory pictures – the intent is to open dialogue and not throw it in the face of an unsuspecting group of curious people  and friends.

It is my hope that by sharing a lot more of what happens that we will demystify what happens and open conversation to discuss the role of wild game as part of the food chain.  It’s difficult to argue that hunting will ever be kinder than a vegetarian lifestyle but compared to some practices mass agriculture, birth control for deer or the lack of sustainable fishing practices I am hoping to discuss alternatives.

It’s a crazy week.  The busiest week of work if the year, crazy preparations for the hunt and life in general is keeping my hands full.  And I’m starting a new role at my company which is a most exciting (if not feverish) time.

It’s odd to think that in less than 108 hours I will be sitting in the woods, by myself, and surrounded by deafening silence.

The feeling is similar to that I remember from standing on top of the high-diving board in a pool.  My hear beats a little faster, my hands are a little sweaty and there’s a toxic mixture of excitement and intimidation for the task that lies ahead.

Many people feel that the days before vacation are the busiest.  I’m not sure that’s always true (although it often feels like that) but it’s this hectic pace that makes the arrival into the forest just that much more dramatic.  It’s kind of like going outside in winter – it doesn’t feel ‘THAT’ cold until you step outside after arriving on an airplane from the south.  There’s a period of shock and your senses are momentarily overloaded until you adjust to your new surroundings.

It’s even more bewildering knowing that similar feelings will repeat less than a week later when I return to the city.  What seems normal (though swift) today will be nearly overwhelming.  A year of living downtown makes me almost numb to the sounds of the screeching brakes of a streetcar until I come back from 7 days in the forest and the sounds are almost enough to knock you to your knees.

I’ve lost count of how many moose hunts this is for me.  I’ve been in the woods during hunting season most of my life (and 23 years with a gun) and this is probably my 18th or 19th as a full-time moose hunter.   

My total kills in that time amount to a grand total of 3 birds.  This also makes it natural to wonder if this will be the year that I will have a chance to harvest an animal.  It’s an opportunity that comes with many mixed emotions including absolute uncertainty (how can one be certain about something they have never done before?).

So today I simply share the emotions of the pre-hunt.  It feels a lot like a stomach full of popcorn in hot oil – and I’m smiling.