Being Alone

I don't mean being single.  I mean spending time with only your own thoughts.

Most of the deer hunting season has ended here in Wisconsin, so I've just spend several hundred hours sitting.  Sitting alone with my thoughts.

Many people cannot stand stand hunting for deer because it is too boring, they say.  My uncle usually has a book with him to alleviate the boredom. Deer hunting from a stand is incredibly boring.  Hour after hour of...sitting...and looking at the same unchanging surroundings for hour on end.

The exiting parts of hunting are as exiting as anything, but mostly its boring.  Boring to the point where I judge how the leaves fall from the trees: the ones that rock back and forth are too predictably uninteresting, the ones that spin fall too fast to leisurely watch, the ones that rock to one side then spin to the other then drift back, etc are the best ones to watch.  Did you know that you can hear a leaf fall to the ground from a dozen yards away?  Or that you can watch some leaves fall and, hours later, remember which of the thousands of leaves on the ground you watched fall?

But I am rarely bored by my hours of sitting.  Occasionally I look forward to the end of that hunt, but that is because it is too cold or I've been thinking of something that I want to do and I want to do it right away.

Spending time alone with your thoughts can be a good thing.  You have nothing to do but think, and you are stuck with yourself.

There's always something to think about, there's always something to plan, and in nature there are always things to wonder about.