If you have ever killed a moose you will know what I mean. There are five minutes of rejoicing followed by five hours of regret as you carry the moose piecemeal back the way you came, usually in the rain. If you have a cheap backpack or bad boots your regret will be compounded and you will likely never go moose hunting again.
A mature Alaska-Yukon moose has forequarters that weigh in the 80s and hindquarters in the 110s. I have heard of hindquarters (and these were weighed, individually, at the butcher) that tipped the scales north of 130 pounds. A quartered moose with all the backstraps and other cuts will weigh in at the butcher north of 500 pounds. A small moose can be taken from the field in six loads, but a big moose or comfortable loads requires more like eight loads. You can see why solo moose hunting takes some forethought.
I do not fantasize as much about hunting solo as I did. In many hunting areas, you need to carry the entire moose out on your back, by law, or risk your privilege to do it again. No wheels or motorized vehicles allowed. If you are an uninitiated moose packer, I can pretty closely predict what will happen. You will strap a moose hindquarter to your back, take about twenty steps and your dignity will vanish and you know it’s going to be a long day. This is different.
I only packed three moose this year, which is not nearly as many as some of my friends. But it was fun. Of course it is a horrible kind of fun, but it is made bearable by the camaraderie of six or seven guys huffing and wheezing and joking all the way back. There is the delighted air of success and the prospect of a job done.
These men sacrificed time to help you out. But you can’t do it alone, unless it is only several hundred yards. Even then, you will be a subdued individual for quite a while, and you probably won’t be making a habit of it.
To pack moose, you just need help, and this is moose hunting’s saving grace. For thousands of years, human cultures took on tasks that required more energy than one person could supply. Families built lifestyles around farming, where everyone was forced to participate in the enterprise or risk loss to the entire family. Legitimate communities are never formed by a clique of like-minded people who cluster into a geographic area because they like to crochet or play Minecraft. Communities are simply groups of people who can’t do without each other economically.
Today, we might put up a profile on an online forum and say things like “I am part of an online community,” which is either a redefinition of community or pure nonsense. Online forums are not communities. They are sealed chambers where interdependence cannot exist, and therefore visible dependency cannot be built. A visible dependency to online activity is addiction, not community.
We are dependent on other people and we know this theoretically, but the connection is usually lubricated, and therefore hidden, by money. Need something? Pay a professional. You are dependent on the professional, but the interaction has none of the good faith and charity of neighbors helping neighbors. The professional has done his job, and you have paid him for it. He has gone home with money and you have sustained the idea that you are self-sufficient because you can pay your way out of your trouble.
But if we have a task for which there exists no professional, if we need help that can be gotten only from a charitable person, then we have the first piece of something that can build a visibly interdependent human society. Do not lose it. There is no way to put a price on it.
To sustain this type of community, we have no help from culture, lifestyle, or business, and so our communities begin to look like clubs and have the irrelevant air of people wishing they needed to be together. There is no replacement for the camaraderie, the interest, and insight a people will have for each other as they work together and have a physical need for each other. The question is, clearly, how can we need each other?
Usually, the successful hunter will invite his packers to supper that evening. Or if that is not an option, at least within a week. Then he will share some of his meat, depending on the type of hunting, with the people who helped him. If it is a sheep hunt, the meat is split evenly between the shooter and packers. That is, of course, not universal, but it is how the little group of people that I spend time with does it. Some fishing trips get the meat split evenly between the fisherman, even if one person catches more than everyone else. The only good way to repay generosity is with generosity, because next hunting season is coming and nobody promised you success.
The particulars vary, but the themes are the same: gratitude for the help received, gratefulness for the gift of meat, and a generous hand in sharing with the people who made the harvest possible. The obvious response is to help the people who helped you as best you can, and not with money. Money puts you right back into the “professional” world. Humility to recognize a task too large for yourself, a forced dependency, a helping hand, generosity and gratefulness. This is the upward cycle of interdependence that makes community.
It seems people are glad to help each other when there is a need. But it must be a need. So we might ask for help on a project, but it is not a project that is necessary and so people find it unsatisfying to help. Can you build community by asking for help to set up a swimming pool?
David Kline, an Amish Farmer and author, tells of plowing his field in early spring and looking across the fields and counting seventeen other teams at work with the knowledge that if something would go awry on his place, those teams would be over plowing his fields to make sure he sowed his crops in time. Or that he would be helping them if they had trouble. It’s a system where the safety net is stored in the hearts of neighbors, and it makes State Farm or Geico look like frauds.
We need projects and activities for which there are no professionals.