Becoming The Hunter

“My head told me to take the salt. My heart told me to take the bow.”

It was Day 11. It had been raining, my shelter still wasn’t completely ready to fully move into, and the hunger pains were in full swing. I remember sitting in front of the fire, feeling its warmth against my body, when something inside me simply said, Get up and grab your bow. So I did.

Taking the bow had become one of the greatest risks I took during my Alone experience. My original plan was actually to bring salt, and there is some irony in that now. Salt has countless uses in a long term wilderness situation, and knowing what eventually happened to my eyes, there is a certain irony in realizing that the item I chose to leave behind might have helped me when I needed it most. Maybe it could have kept me in the game longer. But the bow represented something completely different. It represented possibility.

Prior to launch, I tried not to compare myself to the incredibly talented individuals I had been chosen to stand alongside. Comparison only fed my insecurities and doubts about whether I was capable of taking on a challenge of this magnitude. Deep down, I knew I was capable, but I still wondered whether I could push myself far enough to stand alongside the giants I had admired from seasons before. That question could have consumed me if I let it. Instead, another question began carrying me forward: What if?

What if I caught a grouse? What if I took a hare? What if I had an opportunity at big game? What if I discovered something about myself that I couldn’t possibly know until I was actually standing there? There were no guarantees any of those opportunities would present themselves. Bringing a bow did not guarantee success. In many ways, that was precisely the point. If I didn’t bring it, I would never know. I didn’t bring the bow because I knew what would happen. I brought it because of what could happen. I brought it because of the what if and everything contained within those two little words.

And it didn’t take long for the bow to become more than something I had simply chosen to bring. My bow quickly became an extension of who I was. She wasn’t just a tool. She became part of me, and I began developing a very special relationship with her. It became apparent very quickly that she needed a name. I called her Artemisia, the scientific genus name associated with sage, but the name also carried a connection to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Holding Artemisia made me feel powerful. With her in my hands, I could embody the huntress.

I have held many bows and shot many bows, and I have continued hunting since, but nothing compares to the connection I had with Artemisia. There was an accuracy, an intention, and a power that existed between us as a duo. Before launch, participants had to paint our arrows so the colored crests were distributed evenly among us. While painting mine, I decided to add something personal. I wrote mantras and positive affirmations onto my arrows so I could carry those words with me into the wilderness. Artemisia became more than the means of delivering those arrows. Together, the bow and arrows became part of a ritual of intention. Every time I drew the string, I wasn’t simply taking a shot. I was setting an intention.

By Day 11, I had started developing a relationship with my parcel too. I had divided it into different working areas. There were hunting zones, trapping zones, fishing systems, gathering areas, and places I traveled for specific resources. What had initially felt unfamiliar was slowly becoming a landscape I understood. I was learning its rhythms, its obstacles, and its possibilities. That evening, I left the warmth of my fire with Artemisia in my hand and started walking along what was essentially an old moose trail. Then, for no logical reason, I slowed down. Something told me to turn. Go north.

Going north made absolutely no sense. It meant leaving the trail and pushing directly into an almost impenetrable thicket of willow and alder. It was tangled and difficult, exactly the kind of place I normally wouldn’t have chosen to enter. There was no movement suggesting an animal was there. There was no sound calling my attention toward it. My conscious mind had no reason to believe walking into that thicket would lead to anything. But something inside me said to go. So I went.

In that moment, I felt primal. I felt as though I was stretching the capacity of what it meant to be human. The constant chatter of my conscious mind became quiet, and I moved into something older, something mammalian, something instinctual. I wasn’t analyzing every movement or trying to intellectually solve the environment around me. I was listening to it. I felt plugged into the pulse. My thinking and reasoning brain seemed to turn off. I simultaneously felt like I was part of the landscape and being guided by something much larger than myself. Whether someone wants to call that intuition, instinct, the universe, the Creator, God, or simply the heightened awareness that comes from living intimately within a natural environment I am not sure. But. I listened.

Then, above a log in the shadows, I saw the head of a hare. I still don’t completely understand how I saw him. His little head was barely visible, and with the sun rapidly setting, everything was disappearing into shadow. But there he was. I raised Artemisia and drew. I am safe. I released. I missed. I drew again. I am warm. I released. I missed. Somehow, the hare still didn’t move. Everything became quiet. I became still. The hare became still. The entire environment seemed to pause. I drew another arrow. I am alive. Then I said to myself, “I am in line with nature’s flow.” I released. I watched the hare move. It was a clean shot. I had him.

In that moment, everything I had been developing with Artemisia came together. The intention, the instinct, the trust, and the connection between myself, my bow, and the landscape became one action. She had become an extension of my body and, in some ways, an extension of my intuition. Without her, I don’t know that I would have experienced what it meant to become so completely plugged into the pulse.

I walked over and picked up the hare. I carried him back to camp, processed him, and ate him. From the moment I had been sitting beside the fire feeling hungry to the moment I returned carrying game, only minutes had passed. I had spent longer sitting in a fast food drive through lane. But now there was no restaurant. There was no grocery store. There was no refrigerator waiting for me. There was no system between my hunger and the food my body needed. There was me. There was the hare. There was Artemisia. And there was the land.

I had protein. I had a warm meal. I had provided for myself because, for those few minutes, I had allowed myself to surrender to something different. I surrendered to instinct. I surrendered to the divine. I surrendered to the relationship I had developed with the environment around me. I embodied the huntress. I became a hunter.

For someone who had once experienced what it meant to be prey, there was tremendous power in reclaiming that role in an ethical way. I was no longer simply reacting to everything happening around me. I could participate in my environment. I could influence it. I could procure the resources necessary to keep myself alive. I could provide for myself, and if I could provide for myself, perhaps I could provide for others too. I remember thinking, I have power now. I am becoming the warrior. I am becoming the predator. I am becoming an animal. I am becoming a hunter.

But becoming a hunter was not simply about gaining power over another living thing. In fact, I experienced almost the opposite. Becoming a hunter meant recognizing that I possessed the power to take a life and therefore carried an enormous responsibility to honor it. There was gratitude, respect, stewardship, and an understanding that another living creature had become fuel for my continued existence. Taking a life didn’t make me feel separate from nature or dominant over it. It made me recognize how deeply connected I had become to it. The distance between myself and the natural world was disappearing. I wasn’t simply a contestant in a television competition anymore. I was part of something much bigger.

For once in my life, I wasn’t simply being acted upon by the world around me. I had the opportunity to create. I had the ability to make decisions and experience their consequences. I could provide fuel for my own body, my own authenticity, my own aliveness, and my own purpose. I began wielding the pen to my own world. That was perhaps the greatest transformation contained within becoming a hunter: agency. Things weren’t simply happening to me anymore. Even my mistakes became mine. I could make them, learn from them, adapt, and decide what happened next. There is tremendous power in realizing you can participate in the writing of your own story.

For much of my life, I had worn armor. That armor had been constructed through experiences, expectations, judgments, fear, insecurity, and ideas about who I thought I was supposed to be. Some of it protected me. Some of it helped me survive. But armor can eventually become heavy. I carried that armor into the wilderness with me, and slowly, nature began cracking it apart. Underneath it, I didn’t find weakness. I found vulnerability. I found responsibility. I found connection. I found instinct. I found agency. I found power.

There was something incredibly liberating about realizing that power did not have to come from controlling everything around me. I could never control the weather. I couldn’t control which animals lived on my parcel. I couldn’t control whether a hare would cross my path or whether big game would ever appear. But I could control whether I participated. I could control whether I tried. I could choose whether fear of failure prevented me from stepping into possibility. Artemisia became a physical representation of that choice. Every time I picked her up, I was choosing possibility over certainty.

That is ultimately what taking the bow gave me. Not simply an animal, calories, or a warm meal beside the fire. It gave me the opportunity to discover another version of myself. For me, Alone became about stretching the capacity of what it means to be human. It became an exploration of what could happen when so many of the conveniences, distractions, expectations, and external voices of modern life disappeared. Who are you underneath all of that? What happens when you stop allowing fear of failure to determine your choices? What happens when you start asking what if instead? What if I try? What if I succeed? What if I fail and discover something anyway? What if there is another version of me waiting on the other side of that uncertainty?

Possibility requires vulnerability because possibility offers no guarantees. You have to accept that the thing you choose might not work. You have to walk toward something without knowing exactly what will happen when you get there. Sometimes leaning into possibility means choosing the thing that might fail. It means taking the bow instead of the salt. It means walking away from the trail and into the thicket when something inside you says, Go north. It means drawing another arrow after you have already missed. It means quieting the part of yourself demanding certainty long enough to discover what might happen if you simply participate. That, to me, is the essence of vulnerability. And vulnerability opened the door to power.

Had I brought the salt, perhaps parts of my story would have been different. Maybe it would have helped my eyes. Maybe I could have stayed longer. Maybe not. I will never know. That is another what if. But do I regret choosing the bow instead of the salt? Absolutely not.

I made a trade. I traded certainty for possibility, and possibility opened the door to something I could never have packed in my gear. Artemisia allowed me to reconnect with something primal. She allowed me to embody the huntress. She helped me experience the responsibility of taking another life and taught me about stewardship, gratitude, and intention. She showed me I could provide for myself. Most importantly, she helped me stop seeing myself solely as someone responding to her environment and begin seeing myself as someone capable of participating in it.

I went into the wilderness wondering whether I was capable of standing alongside the giants I had admired before me. I came out realizing I didn’t need to stand on anyone else’s pedestal. I needed to stand in my own story. Artemisia helped me do that. My head told me to take the salt. My heart told me to take the bow. I listened to my heart.

I didn’t bring the bow because I knew I would succeed. I brought her because of what could happen if I did. And because I was willing to take that chance, I didn’t simply walk away knowing how to hunt.

I walked away a hunter.