Who Is Hunting The Hunter?

 The woods of the Grand Nor Du Boise, are for the most part safe, pleasant, and some of the most beautiful hiking you'll experience anywhere on our Great Mother Earth.  Here in the North Country we don't have an excessive population of large predators. Taking a hike here in the forests is fairly safe, and all who have grown here are weened on the skills of watching for mamma bear, moose, and packs of coyotes or coydogs that group up and yap late into the evening.  

I come from a different set of woods.  The mountains I hail from have a whole different set of big toothy critters that have been know to set their sights on the slow two footed snack in the woods.  There are areas in the mountains of my home that you need to hire a professional guide in order to go safely into the night.  These armed mountain guides carry large guns to possibly dispatch the large people eating monsters that do wander to and fro amongst the higher elevations.  

When you grow up walking and riding along some of these places you develop a sense of being followed or watched.  When walking in the woods if a critter runs past in front of your stride, or has the courage to walk up to you in front of your path, that critter is not intending to do you harm.  Often, as we all know, in The Great North Woods, you'll come across bear, moose and even other two legged, most of the time your not going to have a negative experience.  The two of you will most likely have some sort of exchange, a look, a gaze, even a sound, then each goes your merry ways.  Nothing to fear.  However, if you're walking or riding along a path and suddenly get the urge to turn and look behind you, or get the uneasy feeling you're being followed or watched, chances are very high you are being followed or watched.  

In the big woods if you're being followed or watched and get that extremely uncomfortable feeling in the pit that something is not right, you must follow your instincts.  We have the same set of instincts that keeps the fuzzy bunny alive, the squirrel scampering the tree, and yes the people to remain people.  We have a very practiced set of survival skills.  We have developed them over millions of years of evolution and change.  We, because of our nature, are also the ones that do the following, and the watching. We are predators after all.   

Friends will walk up to you and shake your hand in welcome and respect.  They will come to you and introduce themselves.  Animals will come into your field of vision if they do not fear you for much the same reason people do as an introduction.  If you're in the woods and get that feeling, and you turn to look to see nothing, but know something is there, you must follow your instincts because you are being Hunted...

Peace and Balance,

John

To Pizza or Not

 Living in a small community has it's ups, and has it's downs.  Our choices of Pizza Places for instance is limited.  When one is closed so do the other's tend to close.  Getting a slice or a pie can be a mythical hunt the likes of the Roast Beast that decorates a Who table at Christmas time.  Where do they come from?

In our modern age in order to find out if a business is open and selling it's wares all one need do is question that all seeing eye, that orb of everything, Google. Google can be a lying bitch however.  You ask her the question and get an answer that should be acceptable, for example: Is the pizza place open?  Google spits out it's information and tells you that indeed the business is open and doing the pizza thing. So what does the self respecting hunter of the Roast Beast do, he calls to order that round delight of tastiness.  And what do you suppose happens?  The phone rings, and rings, and rings some more, yet no one answers.  Being the stubborn type that I am, I wait an amount of time and call again, thinking that they must be extremely busy with other like minded hunters of the cheesy gold.  A second, a third, and even a forth call is made to no avail.  What do we do, the hunters of saucy orb?  We go take a drive to look at the building the pizza is created in.  It says Closed.  Google is a lying bitch.

Being a New Englander by contact attrition, I always have a 2nd and 3rd plan.  The plan was to drive by the gas station, fill up the mechanical pony, and get my darling spouse a Red Slushy.  Bringing home some sort of fare keeps my Great Hunter status going.  She was happy, and I began working on plan 3.  A fancy home cooked grilled sandwich meal.  I have a couple go to recipes that are passable.  

A small community is the best place in the world to live.  Small communities, and rural tracks create strong and wholesome people.  On a weekend when the sun shines the greatest worry was to pizza or not.  Time to  correct that Google machine for she knows not...

Peace and Balance,

John