Escaping Our Rut

It's hard to pull ourselves away from the busy rut we modern humans get ourselves into.
Dec 16, 2021

Sometimes its hard to pull yourself away from the busy rut we as humans tend to get ourselves into without really realizing it. There’s always that electronic demon in our pockets or purse or on the couch next to us that alerts us to jump back into cyber world and forget everything else.

I’m getting better at ignoring that thing if even for short periods of time when I deliberately walkaway from its alarms, notices and alerts.

My refresh button has always been the outside world. It’s amazing what we see and feel when we detach ourselves and go back to enjoying the natural world all around us. Take for instance the rewards I have reaped just in the last couple months.

I happened to be down in northern Wisconsin at the cabin and casually walking around with the camera, even though it was prime archery season and I had a deer tag in my pocket, I had decided to forgo the hunt and just walk around and observe. In the course of a couple of wandering hours, I heard and saw huge flocks of snow geese, trumpeter swans and sandhill cranes all with an hour of each other flying south against a dark blue sky on a windless day. In each case I heard the faint calls before I could actually see them in the sky.  I wouldn’t have had a chance had I been inside the cabin.

You never know what you find on a stroll in the woods. Here, a set of deer and wolf tracks.

A couple weeks later back home here in northern Minnesota I passed up siting down in front of the desktop and wandered up on a back ridge, climbed into a ladder stand to just watch and listen to the world in front of me for a few hours. Had I stayed “entertained”by the computer I would have missed the dark and silent Fischer that loped by without a sound within ten yards of my stand. A rare sight even up here.

A trail camera shot of a local fisher, possibly the same one I saw from the stand.

I would have been more than satisfied with these fortunate encounters, but it got better. A week or so later on a cold windy snowy morning as I sat in a ground blind, a lone blackTimber Wolf casually walked across a ridge not thirty yards away. Nose to the ground but keeping an eye in my direction it stayed within plain sight for more than a few minutes. I’m guessing he noticed me well before I made visual contact.

Three experiences I was rewarded with simply by being out where each experience was possible. These are chances I never would have gotten had I been engrossed in the more than too common and typical rut of everyday living.

Nature gives, nature builds, nature heals our human spirit. You can never get too much.

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