cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am Now Officially a Professional The first class with my new group of students went really well. I got paid! Not a fortune or anything, but I got paid real money by people to talk about deer and ecology. Wow! I don't think that either of my students who I went out in the woods with yesterday had ever done anything quite like that since they were probably about 10 years old. Just crashing through mile after mile of underbrush, through thorns and streams and woods. A really funny thing yesterday was that Scott and Michael showed up to track this deer wearing head to toe camouflage. Why? We weren't hunting, just tracking. Hunting on Sundays is, absurdly, illegal here. None of us were even carrying rifles. I think they just liked dressing up in their little camo suits to run around in the woods. I don't mean to sound like an ass, but I noticed something odd this past week or so. These people from my classes have totally put me on a pedestal. They act like I'm Phillip Percival or something. The praise that they heap on me is at times ridiculous. I think that this is something that they have a psychological need to do, because they are all inexperienced. Especially among those students who have become the most serious about becoming deer hunters and who have spent many weekends scouting in the woods and meadows and practicing at the shooting range. Status as hunters has become important to them, and yet they are not yet highly skilled. Their obvious basis of comparison is to me, the guy who taught them to hunt and shoot and gut and butcher. To say that they are unskilled relative to a humdrum and ordinary sort of hunter would be embarrassing, so it becomes useful for them to proclaim me a great master of the craft who can do no wrong. This is what they go around doing. Friends have told me that they've overheard accounts of my classes, often second-hand, at parties or other gatherings. Invariably I'm made out to be some politically correct combination of Ernest Hemingway, Allan Quatermain and Michael Pollan. The truth is that I know only a fraction of what any good American field biologist knows about ecology and anatomy of whitetails and have missed shots on almost as many deer as I have successfully bagged. The personal transformation that some of these people have undergone as a result of the class is pretty remarkable and I suppose its only natural for them to make a big deal out of the person responsible for it. But I can't help feeling like somewhat of a fraud when I hear this praise being heaped on me and I worry that its only going to get worse once the book comes out. How long are people really going to buy into this image? Whats going to happen when everyone finds out that I blast ABBA on the car stereo and play Barbie dolls with small children? Getting paid money last night, even though it was less than $400, felt like a seminal event. I am now officially a professional. It feels like a little seed finally sprouted. 11:52 a.m. - 2009-11-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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