Today I was reminded how frequently I’m in circles where I don’t quite fit in.
It was during a meeting at work and a consultant started the conversation by telling a story about when he ran over and killed a turtle. That experience led him to become the Mother Teresa of turtles and ever since, he’s always tried to rescue them while they’re attempting a road crossing.
He went on to say that he was almost hit by oncoming traffic trying to save one of his little friends. Three cars swerved to avoid the animal but the fourth, an SUV, clipped the turtle and came close to clipping him too.
The entire time he’s telling his story, I’m thinking,
‘Keep your mouth shut Tim. Not everyone thinks eating turtles is normal.’
I was torn. I wanted so badly to say, “I love picking up turtles too.” and just leave it at that.
Enough coworkers would have gotten the innuendo and the discussion would have been derailed. I would have become the just-discovered jungle savage being studied by sociology grad students. “Do you eat the shell too?”
I bit my tongue. I do love turtles and had them growing up as pets, so I get their attraction, but that’s not the point. The point is, being a woodsman inherently makes you different than most of the people you’ll run into today and makes you somewhat of an oddity. I came up with a few reasons why.
1. The Dark isn’t Scary
The human eye actually does pretty well in low light conditions. The problem arises when you add artificial lights (headlamps, flashlights) that only blaze a small swath in front of you, contrasting everything outside that area as completely black. It’s like creating a tunnel whose diameter is only as wide as the flashlight’s aperture allows and is completely reliant on functioning batteries and LEDs.
We often walk into and out of the woods in darkness. Using only ambient natural light, after a couple minutes you can see a surprising distance with detail. After 20 minutes of immersion, the human eye is about as dialed in as it can get and darkness becomes relative. You know longer feel hemmed in by a tunnel, rather, you simply see the world in deeper hues and shades than you would have while the sun was up. The blinders are off and you are free to move and perceive. Nothing to fear here, unless you’re underground and there are C.H.U.D.s.
2. Death is Familiar and Natural
Some people can’t even let themselves think about death. Pondering blood coursing through their veins pushed by a bundle of muscles and nerves the size of a fist would drive them insane…but it’s reality. I’m not saying that’s the sum total of what we are as humans, but on one level we are electric meat machines.
Ultimately these machines give out. Sometimes, we caused the disruption to the critical systems that induce the outage. In those situations, we’re faced with the reality of not only our prey’s death, but our own inevitable physical end.
C.S. Lewis said that life is only sustained through subsidies from other life. It happens all around us all the time but to those who choose to ignore it, death is bizarre and taboo. For those of us who see and cause it, while sad, we recognize it is necessary to maintain other life. Think of the homesteader or farmer of 150 years ago. Like the modern hunter, I’m sure they held no malice towards their livestock, they simply loved their family and sought to provide for them.
3. Comfort With Ourselves
Sometimes I’m startled by the human voice after spending all day afield by myself. It’s striking the effect it has after listening only to the wind and birds and my own breathing. In our culture, being by yourself isn’t normal. We’ve always got to be plugged in to something or someone communicating to us. We are so bombarded that we have been habituated to seek out that stimulus and begin to feign for it if we become disconnected…
…Like when you’re alone. You may be confronted with your thoughts. You know, that jumble of slogans and sound bites? The heap of conclusions that you can’t actually point to the logic path they arrived from? You have to think. Consider. Ponder. Discern. You find out who you really are. Are you a caricature a mile wide and an inch deep? Do you like yourself? 
Being outdoors solo requires that you get comfortable with who you are, and develop an appreciation for silence. Just know that you when you come back to civilization, you may be perceived as reserved or aloof.
I’m sure there are other differences; wondering what different animals might taste like, picking up and eating things you find on the ground (Persimmons are blowing up right now) but these three fundamentals are important to recognize because they explain the disconnect we sometimes experience.
The next time you’re in “civilized” company and feeling like you don’t fit in, take heart. You’re not the only one who feels a little out of place every now and then. The best thing we can do is to bring more folks outdoors to let them catch a glimpse of the difference. We may still not fit in all the circles we interact with, but we’ll increase the odds someone there will understand.
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