I took a hike yesterday, on some BLM land just outside of Craig, MT along the Missouri River. As we say in the field, I took the .270 for a walk. I've been looking for little pockets of land to hunt that might hold some monster mule deer buck that nobody has seen or maybe get lucky and get into some elk that have been pushed off neighboring ranches. Neither happened so I literally just took that Ruger Hawkeye for a walk.
You'll notice in the photos I was pretty high up over the Missouri at one point, looking down on one of those iconic places that thousands, if not millions of people have seen over the years either fun floating in tubes and kayaks or drifting along with a guide in a drift boat. It's Bernie the Billionaire's place and The Number 10 Hole and if you've been by this place and looked up, chances are you've seen an eagle or two perched high up on the top of the cliff wall. Well, that's where I was. I was actually above that vantage-point looking down--seeing what those eagles see every day.
It was a little awe-inspiring to say the least and definitely gave pause for some reflection. I've passed these eagles, probably 4 or 5 hundred times in the 12 years I've been guiding and each time I wonder what those eagles are seeing. I wonder what they are thinking. Yesterday was a good day to take this vantage-point and reflect as another mass-shooting occurred in a synagogue and after a week of bombs being sent through the mail to political opponents of some crazy dude. WTF?
I thought about these eagles and what they see or maybe more importantly, what they don't see. As people float by, I guarantee they don't see race. They don't see religion. They don't see democrats or republicans or libertarians or independents. They don't see those that belong or those that shouldn't. All they see are fish to eat and a place to raise their kids. And for now, it's a beautiful place and I guess, all they care about is that it remains that way.
In the last week, we've seen some horrific acts being played out by folks that have shown an absolute hatred for someone or some group of people. That hatred was constructed around a man-made definition of what someone is based on a group they either were born into or have chosen to associate themselves with. You know what those eagles could care less about? Those definitions. They don't give one rats ass about Jewish people or democrats. All they care about are the laws that Mother Nature prescribes. At times, those laws and how Mother Nature adjudicates them might seem a little crewel but she does not discriminate. Those eagles live and die by those rules. They don't live and die by some assumption of what people think they are or are not based on some group they belong to.
(Now, that's not totally true since humans have a tendency of screwing things up for Mother Nature and then we do step in and try to either preserve the rule of nature or manipulate it and exploit it but you get the point.)
The more I reflected the more it became clear of where all this hatred comes from. It's a struggle over resources. It literally comes down to a fight over who has the most or who should have the most. And why? So we can feed our kids and give them everything we think they should have--feeding kids that we turn out in rates that make us have to have more and more and more. We have to secure those resources that Mother Nature provides so we can have more kids so we can secure more resources so we can have more kids.
You know what eagles don't do? They don't stockpile resources. They don't hoard food. They don't accumulate garages full of toys so they can compete with each other for supremacy. They catch food and eat it and feed their one or two fledglings and then they sit up on this rock and watch the world go by happy to be alive. You know what else they don't do? They don't blame other eagles for their struggles and they don't sabotage or kill each other just so they can have more.
Keep 'em where they live...
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