The Good Ole Days

“Ok” challenged my brother “Where are you going with this?”

A few days, and more than a few rum and tonics into vacation, our evening card game had morphed into a heated discussion of such light fare as original sin, man’s inhumanity to man, and our collective ability to affect positive change. I’d made the case that the arc of human history – from small clans of hunter gatherers to multinational corporations of market arbitrage analysts – doesn’t inspire optimism.  Sure, I’d conceded, we’ve made a lot of progress in the last 50,000 years … but progress toward what?

Months later, with the “smart” phone chirping distraction after distraction, work piling-up at the office, undone chores waiting at home, and no time for any of it, Trey’s  question still won’t let me go. If, as I’d argued in the Keys, our hubris is insurmountable, if we’re fundamentally ill-suited to the modern world, if the demands of our species have outstripped global supply; than by that logic the Good Ole Days are gone forever. Trey has a point. Where do I go from there?

By applying the same reasoning from a different direction though, I can see the same conclusion from a new perspective. These are my son’s Good Ole Days says the logic. Heck, they’ll be mine soon too. No sense pining for some airbrushed yesterday when the elk were bigger, the deer were more plentiful, and our public lands were safe from attack.

Where am I going?

I’m going hunting, I’m taking my son, and I’m leaving that damn phone at the office.