On Being Alone

Yesterday, poking through the rice of Back Bay, flushing mallard and teal and bluebills, the thought came to me that all I wanted out of life was to be left alone somewhere on a point, watching the ducks come in. Alone is what appealed to me, not hunting with a gang. There is something to being on your own, whether in a blind, trout fishing or canoeing. Alone you get close to nature, you can listen, think, feel yourself a part of the water, at one with the trees and grasses, a part of the whole eternal picture. I think this is what many men seek but never find, the sense of being an intimate part of anything they do. So much of a man's time is spent being a good fellow, trying to be sociable, competing with others, that he does not find the real answer.

This spring in a hole of the Manito River, when the trout were rising, I had that feeling. In the water to my boot tops, the trout rising steadily and savagely for flies, birds singing, flies humming, Burns up the creek ahead, there was nothing to distract me from the pleasure before me. Then, for half an hour, I knew what it was to feel a part of the picture. There I knew was the answer to all my striving, all the longing that had been mine. There was no one there to cheer me on, to yell encouragement when trying to land a pound trout. I didn't need that, I was content.

I had the same feeling one day in the old mallard hole on Basswood. Alone, watching them wing in to my blind, the whole show mine alone. I brought down five beautiful birds that day, had the time of my life. I was on my own.

I have seen the same thing deer hunting, trailing some big buck up hill and down, watching for the final flash of tail that would mean a shot. Then the final moment. Such a moment was mine one afternoon north of Fall Lake, trailing a deer across a little creek bottom. It was wild, mysterious, camp was far away and here I was alone on the trail. When I jumped that buck and fired away as he bounded across the dried swale into the hills, even though I missed him clean the feeling was there.

I think that here is so much of what a man seeks, here so much the answer of what he needs to give himself contentment that he should try and find more frequently ways of satisfying his need. Once he senses that feeling of utter familiarity, of complete attunement, then he has gone a long way toward counteracting the bleakness of civilized living. We are not so far removed as yet, but what we must satisfy often the urge to be alone, to be a part of our surroundings, of being at one with the earth and sky and water. Here is real satisfaction, here fulfillment of the constant hunger of men for the past and primitive.