No doubt, I was a little winded after climbing that last piece of hillside. It just doesn’t seem to get any easier.
Now I was on a nice little “bench,” what we call the narrow (and precious) pieces of relatively flat ground that twist around the side of a steep hill. I was walking this little flat and getting my breathing back in order when I looked down, and there it was. A beautiful and perfect little deer antler, probably recently shed.
I was struck by its beauty and simplicity. I can’t explain how, but this little forked antler seemed to symbolize and embody everything about the wild — the wild country, the animals that inhabit it, and all of the complex emotions we associate with the world of hunting.
(READ MORE: Hunting for the reasons why we do it)
Now I didn’t explain it very well in that last sentence, and a writer shouldn’t admit to it, but the words continue to escape me as I try to relate just how much something so simple and common affected me at that moment. Just a deer antler lying on the leaves in the midwinter woods.