One of the notable events of my pre-Christmas preparations was yesterday’s lands…
One of the notable events of my pre-Christmas preparations was yesterday’s landscaping and feeder maintenance.
This wasn’t merely a practical task, but an almost ritual act, during which I nicely arrange and "decorate" the table laid out for the game, in a manner befitting the approaching holiday.
While going about my business, I found myself pondering how differently a bowhunter lives his life compared to the average person on the street.
Two parallel realities, unfolding at the same time, but in completely different dimensions.
– Some people, before Christmas, decorate a pine tree with gaudy little baubles, glittering figurines, fire-hazard candles, sparklers, and less dangerous but equally dazzling strings of lights.
Even those who favor natural materials fill their homes with straw angels and snowflake patterns.
Someone like me, a bowhunter, instead gathers long strands of ivy leaves to decorate, or rather to hide and camouflage, the feeder tank I built with my own hands.
My "Christmas tree" is a complex structure that doesn’t gleam, but blends in.
The decorations don’t reflect light, they absorb it;
they don’t invite an admiring gaze, they deflect it.
This kind of decoration isn’t about splendor, but about the art of getting close to the game, the art of remaining unnoticed.
– Some people, at Christmas, gather with family beneath the tree, by the warm, crackling fireplace with its intimately glowing embers, amid the swirling scent of hot chocolate and pine resin, and rejoice over wrapped presents.
The bowhunter, by contrast, perches alone at the top of a tree, in a wind with an icy breath, and rejoices – in his own solemn, respectful way – over the "surprise, the gift," that might cautiously, forlornly wander beneath the tree.
My Christmas table isn’t a tablecloth decked with pine boughs and candles, but the frost-covered winter leaf litter; my candles are the starry night sky, swept clear of clouds, where the constellation Lynx watches over me with silent severity;
my music is the beautiful symphony composed of the soft sounds of the mist-shrouded, veiled forest around me.
Where
"Animals waking in the evening darkness, concealing their unknown existence in the calm of the night, fill the half-light with soundless excitement.
Large birds glide through the air without a cry – patches, shadows.
The humming of unseen insects grazes the hunter’s ear;
silent scurrying in the dewy grass and the dust of abandoned paths."
Then, when the "time for gift-giving" truly arrives and the gift must be unwrapped, there’s really no point comparing the two any further…
While in one world wrapping paper flies amid joyful shrieks, and new sweaters, books, and toys emerge into the cheerful light, in the other, the "unwrapping" is a deep, almost liturgical moment: responsible swiftness, the paying of respect, and a silence deeper than any silent night.
This is not the exchange of material goods, but an honored moment in the eternal cycle of life and death, the fulfillment of a covenant between man and nature.
One holiday is the material manifestation of love, the other its most ancient, most mystical form: participation, sharing, and the acceptance of the fateful cycle.
So Christmas passes: two different symphonies, playing the song of the same holiday, but on entirely different instruments, from entirely different scores.
At 10:08 p.m. the little striped piglet arrived, along with the sounder of 11 piglets that has been visiting this feeder since they were born.
Of these 11 piglets, only 9 remain today, and the sows and larger yearlings that once guarded the sounder have also disappeared.
These nine piglets have now grown into fine, healthy yearlings and regularly return to my feeder, which I maintain with great care.
