Your outdoor experience.
My kids and I, we're hardcore hunters. Summer dress, sun hat, holding hands, piggy back rides, high fructose corn syrup... and we get after it! Right off the bat we saw a curious antelope doe, and immediately the fight for the binoculars started.
"Let me look."
"No, let ME look!"
Of course, that poor doe disappeared quickly and that ended the binocular battle. Then I said to my six year old son, "Let's go over this way," and his response made me stop and pause a moment.
He said, "No, Dad. If we want to keep the wind in our face, we need to go this way." I hadn't mentioned a word of hunting or scouting, just "hiking."
I blinked a few times and said, "Good idea." Then I watched as he marched off with the wind in his face, focused on the land in front of him.
The kid is into it. He may never walk land filled with wildlife, talking loudly on his cell phone, treating nature as a pretty object (or worse). I hope he will always naturally prowl the land, participating, closely observing everything, taking it all in. And not just to please his hunting father, but doing what comes very naturally when your mind is awakened to what it does best, without effort: hunt and gather.
With this in mind, it can't be surprising that hunters are, far and away, the most financially committed conservationists. I say, "financially committed" simply because it's the best way to quanitify and "prove" this notion. Hunters don't need to be convinced of the value of wildlife and habitat. They already know intrinsically.
Awaken yourself.
You could find yourself a copy of Harper's Magazine, June 2009, and read "Green World" by Sherman Alexie on page 42. Read the last sentence. An obvious word has been left out. The other half is missing and that's how you end up with a "Green World." Even white boys like me can imagine what we lost... now that we love to gather... as I sit next to my electric clothes dryer.
Your outdoor experience.
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