Sometimes it is the simplest of things, subtle, almost unrecognizable rituals that move us; cause us the greatest reflection, allowing a reintegration of personal-life activities and career experiences, extending awareness and adding value to our perspectives. So it was, this past October. 

At my Fool Lake campsite, all equipment had been ferried back to storage. For two weeks after the hunt, four tents had been awaiting two days without rain. I had left my house at seven thirty a.m. with frost on the trees and rooftops in the neighbourhood. The sky was clear; a fulfilling promise of yesterday's let up of the rain. It was the weather I had been waiting for.

The ride was about an hour and twenty minutes, and I spent my time reviewing the process of take down. Two 12 by 14 foot, and one 14 by 16 prospector-style sleep tents, and one 16 by 32 kitchen tent would have to be dried. The prospectors would take care of themselves, the sun and cool breeze drying them in about four hours. The larger kitchen-dining tent would have to be heated for nearly five hours to get rid of the moisture. 

On the way to camp a single Ruffed Grouse flew across my path; I watched it flutter into the trees; considered stopping to follow it then reconsidered. Seven hours until back home; better to let him go, and get to the tasks at hand. Maybe I could pick up a few while I waited for the tents to dry at camp.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. I passed the hunting stands where several days before we had hunted. I would be stopping at one we called the 'Gravel Mountain,' where Doug, one of the hunters, had seen four wolves. I would be leaving two boxes of moose trimmings and bones for the wolves, and any bears in the vicinity. The moose was taken by my brothers, Allan, and Darryl, the previous Tuesday. All but these two boxes of trimmings, some 500 to 600 pounds, was now distributed in the freezers of four brothers' families. Meals for the next year.

Driving up the side road to gravel mountain, I scanned the roadside, now baring itself of foliage. 'How fast fall comes to us in the North,' I mused. No sign of the wolves, or bear traffic. Other than the falling leaves, carried by a slight breeze, nothing was moving. Summer was waning, and the wilderness preparing for winter. 

Stopping at my planned location, I unloaded the first box, carrying it into the cedars where we had previously dropped off the entrails and trimmings of four Canada Geese, some ducks, and several grouse taken during the hunt. Nothing but a few wing feathers remained. The birds had been redistributed back into nature, some going to feed us during the hunt, some to the animals. 

I carried the second box of trimmings into the bush. No matter how one looks at it, the energy gathered into each of them continued in a cycle. Whether we ate them, the wolves ate them or the microbes who would finally break down the wing feathers ate them, they would pass as biological energy, nutrient value, back into life. I compared the transition that was happening to the common civilized practices of funeral embalming, pumping a perfectly nutritious body so that it would not decay, and the practice of cremation, both which seem to spitefully destroy our remains, long delaying or forbidding its re-entry back into living organisms. Not so for this moose, he was going back into life.

He would pass into our families, into wolves, and bears, skunks and ravens, flies and microbes, back into plants and trees as protein, fats, amino acids, and various nitrogen compounds. Even the bones would be eaten, by mice and porcupines. What was left would help neutralize the acids from the pine needles on the forest floor. And in a sense, this moose, along with the others we had hunted over the years, had achieved some sense of immortality. 

The bull would remain as big as life, a correspondent in the hunting ritual, as a participant in a hunter's calling scenario. The moose would remain alive in the stories of the hunt, being remembered at each meal he provided. He had served, and continued to serve a purpose as food, and a means to pass on a culture through memories and analogies. As an animal, he was one of the few that enter into human consciousness; recognized. In our world, if not his, this seems important. To be remembered after one is gone, and to be the instrument of learning and teaching. Such it was for this moose.

As I got back into my truck, a whisky jack fluttered down to the boxes. The cycle was already in process.

Back on the main road, I traveled past a stand recently hunted by Dick. Memories were there, some yards into the bush, being replayed in my mind as the truck moved by. Dick had made a clean shot, requiring us to track his animal less than thirty-seven steps; some one or two seconds of flight at the time. I remembered asking Dick about his shot, the actions of the animal, and the few seconds after his shot. Tracking was necessary not because the animal was ineffectively wounded but because two weeks ago, the underbrush was dense. We wanted to be sure that we recovered it without the confusion that hurrying might bring, should we lose the sign. It had taken us more than twenty minutes to cover those thirty-six paces. Slowly, each movement we had made came only after certain verification that this was its path. 

When we found the bear, it was a little unnerving. We had found no sign for several minutes, and reviewing the trail we had marked with pieces of orange survey tape, I scanned the direction of the animal's path. It had vaporized. I turned to talk to Dick, and mid sentence, saw the black form only three feet from me. My remark? A shocking "Holy Shit!" - Dick had seen it at almost the same time. 

Such is tracking, and another reason for moving slowly. The otherwise successful find could have been dangerously complicated if the shot had been misplaced, and the bear still alive. He had fallen off to the left of his determined direction, behind a small balsam fir, just enough to block him from our sight. I remembered shaking Dick's hand, and congratulating him on his effective placement. Again the guide-hunter relationship had worked to fulfillment. Another hunting story was committed to group memory, like the moose, who had provided us food, he, along with the geese, ducks, and grouse taken that week were now in our memories. And like the moose, he would continue on, as well, in a kind of immortality. 

Over a dinner table with his son-in-law, and his daughter, Dick would relive and retell the stories, and I believe that those stories will go on, and in years to come, enter the consciousness a new grandchild, now being carried by Dick's daughter, due next April. 

The bear had transcended both time and space. He had become an international entity, carried in the memories of two guides from Ontario, three hunters from Ohio, and one from Illinois. In a human value system, one might consider that bear 'successful.'

I approached the camp road, and turned into the last quarter-mile towards the tents. Since I last left four days ago, a moose had walked the road. The only traffic that had been by. 'What a wonderful neighbourhood', I mused to myself. 

The tents were still standing, and I was relieved. Nothing is as discouraging as having a bear tear down your tent, leaving in shreds. I had dreaded such a sight, because three days before our hunt, a bear had ripped into our large dining tent. He had done some damage to the canvas, leaving a three four foot gashes in one of the back walls, and several claw punctures along both the north and south eaves. Nothing a little contact cement and canvas couldn't cure, but still, an inconvenience, and extra maintenance work.

I parked the truck, entered the kitchen tent, and started a fire in the airtight heater. In minutes, the heat was driving away the frosty air. On the inside roof, the moisture had beaded, the canvas preservative preventing it from soaking into the fibers of the tent. I hit the roof from end to end, knocking the water off, to speed the drying process. 

Only the picnic table remained as evidence that we had lived in this structure. On it, and around it we had eaten, told stories, shared of our histories and families, and recounted our personal adventures. We had offered advice to the new hunters, learned of the days activities, and planned the next day's. 

In six days we had become 'best friend-hunters,' a common transition I still find amazing. In those days, we had learned about each other, compared values, and found them to be similar, had some differences, and had made adjustments and come to acceptances of who we were. And, all in all, we came to appreciate and work with each other. 

It had happened during a period of intense focus on hunting, thinking and talking. We had shared a common objective, speding long hours over fireside and table, and in the sleep tents before turning in. Compared to the half-hour meeting and the one-minute manager, we had, if we were to consider it such, all the experiences of good project management and team building processes. It had been enjoyable. Each day was an exercise in empowerment and decision making. Each hunter reviewing progress to date, assessing current conditions, consulting with the group, and taking action to the best of his ability. And at the end of the day, or whenever necessary, each pitching in for his share, or more than his share.

We had become a mini-tribe, a hunting team, and as hunters, I believe those six days brought us to the point that we could equal or outperform any other well trained hunting team. Now it was over and I was at camp taking down the last evidence that we were once a people in the Native American sense.

I sat for a while at the lake, just some sixty feet from the larger sleep tent. I had time to relax, the fire was burning, the wind and sun were doing their combined jobs, and I could sit, watch, and listen. A large Hooded Merganser, who had been one of our neighbors, was still out in the center fishing. Squirrels were chattering and some whiskey jacks visited with me. In a few more days, the Merganser would move on southward, but the squirrels and the whiskey jacks were here for the winter. They were permanent residents -- the land owners of record. I was here on a lease called a 'mini-land-use permit' or L.U.P. These guys were my neighbours and my landlords. I needed a fire, a source of heat, while they required only their fur and feathers and a dry place out of the wind.

'We have come so far.' I thought, chuckling to myself, 'We have it all; central heating, synthetic fibers, downsizing, and capital financing.' The Merganser dove again, and surfaced a minute later, the tail of a fish vanishing into his gullet. I continued my thoughts. For a short time, we six individuals had reclaimed the essence of what it was to be a part of this older world. We had come together as a hunting party; like the early teutonic tribes of Europe, like Cro Magnon in France, or the North American aboriginal, a mini-society. 

We had practiced the skills that seem so new in management circles; collaborative management, scenario planning, risk analysis, strategic planning and work breakdown exercises, plus so many more. These are not new things; they are the practices of our forefathers, just now being rediscovered in the new world where concrete replaces moss, where flagpoles replace pines; and hierarchies and mission statements replace responsible individuals with simple, common objectives. For six days we reattached to our human and personal essences, and renewed, we traveled back to the new world, with plans to do it again next year. For six days, we had lived as hunters. It was over until next season, and I was quietly, solemnly, taking down the tents.