On Patience

Blown chances, frenetic energy, moments of calm; coq au vin

I blew an opportunity to kill a doe the other day¹. Having seen her making a near daily circuit around sunset at one of the spots I hunt, and with a front approaching, I got into the tree about an hour and a half before her evening constitutional and waited.

This spot is the most “suburban” of any of those I hunt. Despite being “deer-y²,” I can see and hear cars from my stand. I was pretty confident about my set-up, but I still found myself distracted, unable to get fully “in the woods,” counting cars and listening to road noise instead of being tuned to nature. The doe, like clockwork, showed up at 4:05 — catching me entirely unaware.

Naturally, when I heard her behind me I whirled entirely too fast, putting her on guard. She stomped a few times, looking directly at me. And, rather than exhaling, relaxing, letting my energy bring down hers, I instead reached for my rangefinder, grasped for my bow. She blew at me and ran off, for all intents and purposes ending my hunt for the day.

I’ve been thinking about that moment with alarming regularity recently. I’m frustrated with myself for getting distracted, for not staying focused even when I knew almost exactly when the deer would be showing up. And I’m frustrated at myself for not being patient. Even with her coming up behind me, surprising me, I still should have been able to execute better. I was too frantic, too frenetic — I should have breathed, should have slowed things down. By calming myself I may have been able to calm her, allowing her to downshift and present a shot opportunity in the forty minutes of legal shooting light I had left. Instead, I rushed things and, as I said, blew a good opportunity to add another deer to our freezer³.

Growing up, one of Grandfather CWD’s great sayings was that “patience is a virtue.”⁴ That was repeated ad naseum at every slight indication of impatience that either I, Tio, or Uncle CWD would project. There are few times in life — short of true emergencies⁵ — that taking a moment to pause before action results in a worse outcome. This is a lesson I learned all too well in the spring during turkey season and I was reminded of it again the other night. There’s a truth to the special operations adage “slow is smooth; smooth is fast.”⁶ Far better to miss an opportunity because it never presents itself than it is to never have one at all because you were in a rush and never even gave it a chance⁷.

Perhaps even more disappointing was that I didn’t just get flustered because the deer snuck up on me — I missed it partially because I was fiddling on my phone. Despite knowing I was “in the window",” and despite knowing I needed to be extra attuned to my surroundings, I let a vibration in my pocket get the best of me.

In a way, this was another case of me losing my patience. Having patience is the ability to sit comfortably with uncertainty. It’s being able to wait with grace, accept that things will happen in their own time⁸. Nothing is going to happen until it does — and the repercussions of trying to speed up time through distraction or multitasking are neutral at best, hugely negative at worst. Responding to an email at that very second wasn’t going to accomplish anything except make me feel like I was doing something. Far better it would have been to turn off notifications, and sit, fully present, in what I was doing: being patient.

This experience reinforced that, but I also notice it quite often with Kiddo and the Warthog. As much as Mrs. CWD and I try to stay off our phones when the kids are up and at home, I still find myself sometimes responding to a text when we’re in the middle of play time, checking email in the moments their backs are turned. When I catch myself doing it, I can also catch the shift in energy. They end up being more likely to act out, more likely to go over-the-top to re-engage my attention. By trying to do too much, everyone loses.

It happens in other ways, too, not just because of phones or distractions. As any parent knows, kids can often march to the beat of their own drummers.⁹ Trying. to rush them out the door or into the car while simmering with anxious energy is more likely to lead to tears or tantrums than an on-time departure. Instead, a better approach is to realize that everything is probably going to take longer — and plan for that. Rather than getting frustrated at outfit changes or searches for lost toys, embrace the virtue of patience. Take a breath. Help the Warthog switch his shoes and socks, Kiddo find her stuffy. Be pleasantly surprised to find yourself departing near your targeted time, not apoplectic that you’re five minutes late¹⁰.

This post was, originally, intended to be nothing more than me sharing a story of the hunt around the proverbial campfire, helping me process my own mistakes and set an intention for next time. But, as these stories often do, it turned into something more. That’s one of the things I love about writing — it allows the writer to think out loud, having a conversation with his¹¹ own self. I’m grateful that so many of you feel compelled to follow along in this dialogue each week.

But, many of you don’t come for that internal correspondence — you’re here for the food. So, with that in mind, we’ll transition to a dish that requires a great deal of patience: coq au vin. We made that last week using a chicken we got as part of our meat share. Having some white meat was a nice change of pace from the venison and beef we’ve been consuming in vast quantities lately, and, having seen this recipe in Danielle Prewitt’s new cookbook Wild + Whole¹², we decided we’d give it a shot. If you’ve got some time this weekend, you may be so inclined as well.

In a large, oven-safe, heavy-bottomed pot or roasting pan, brown several skin-on, bone-in chicken legs and breasts¹³. Once the skin is browned and beginning to crisp, remove from the pan and begin to fry several slices of bacon, roughly diced. As the fat is rendering, tear into a pound or so of high quality mushrooms and those to the pan as well, letting them cook until they are well-browned and little moisture remains (this should occur roughly the same time as the bacon becomes fully-rendered as well). Add in to the pan a couple roughly chopped carrots, turnips, and/or other root vegetables and cook until they’re browning and aromatic. Add to the vegetables and bacon a tablespoon or two of flour and stir to incorporate. Deglaze with a slug of bourbon¹⁴, and then add a heavy pour of wine (two or three cups worth), scrapping the pan to bring up any browned bits.

Add back in the chicken and any collected juices, and then pour over the entire mixture some bone broth or stock to cover half-to-three-quarters. Bring to a boil and then cut the heat — covering the pan and putting in the oven at 250(F) for several hours until the chicken is tender and the vegetables cooked entirely through.¹⁵ If you’d like, put this under the broiler for a few minutes before serving to crisp up the skin.

So there you go folks, coq au vin. While the dish may present itself as fine dining, it’s important to remember that this originated as peasant food: it’s not meant to be fancy. As long as you’ve got good ingredients and the patience to let the flavors build, you’ll be fine — there’s no need to rush.

With that, I’ll leave you to your weekends. The Family CWD has another busy one, with Aunts and Uncles and Friends and Birthdays and Museums and Cake and Activities galore! No matter how you may be spending yours, I just hope we can all remember to breathe a time or two.

We’ll see you back here next week.

1. As I wrote a few weeks ago, I did tag out on antlered deer in Massachusetts. But, to manage the preponderance of deer in Eastern Massachusetts, the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife issues unlimited “antlerless” tags. It’s the number of female deer that survive each season which dictates population growth — the number of bucks has little impact.

From an eating standpoint, we go through a deer in about three or four months of normal eating. Since our goal is to buy as little meat from the grocery store as possible, three or four deer — supplemented with the half-cow we’re working through and the quarterly meat share we get from the farm — would likely keep us stocked up until next fall.

For comparison, a hunter-gatherer family of four subsisting on primarily venison would need to kill somewhere in the vicinity of 30-50 deer per year depending on how they supplemented.

2. That’s a technical term.

3. I saw both deer I’ve killed this year well before they saw me. This gave me the time shift slowly from observer to predator, gradually ramping up my internal energy and keeping the deer from spooking. When this deer took me by surprise, it threw off my equilibrium, catching me off-balance.

4. Others being “honesty is the best policy,” and “it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and only a moment to lose it,” along with a smorgasbord of favorites from Poor Richard’s Almanack.

5. There is also something to be said for swift and decisive action — but that’s an essay for another day.

6. I hear this most often attributed to Navy SEALs, but I have also seen it from members of other branches as well.

7. This goes for more than just hunting, by the way.

8. I dashed this off last week after a sit where I saw no deer:

I had this thought that deer 
like to move 
about an hour before sunset.

So, at high alert, I scanned
the woods around me —
and laughed. A deer

may be inclined to move
an hour before sunset, yes —
but whose to say they'll 
want to be moving where I am?

9. And often are indeed literally drumming on pots and marching like dinosaurs.

10. It was probably a self-imposed deadline, anyway.

I also need to remind myself to take this mentality when it comes to traffic, which is my level-headedness kryptonite.

Sam Alaimo

remarked on this poignantly earlier this week:

This raises some crucial questions: If a complaint about an obstacle instead of turning the obstacle to our advantage makes it more likely that we will be miserable or die, why put words to it? […] If the traffic is not moving, why complain when the burden of anger can be borne in silence or thrown off entirely?

Since we’re running with a theme here, it’s also worth noting that one of Kiddo’s favorite song’s in Alabama’s “I’m in a Hurry (And Don’t Know Why)” (which she inexplicably refers to as “the bone song”), which describes this phenomenon nicely:

I'm in a hurry to get things done
I rush and rush until life's no fun —
All I really gotta do is live and die,
But I'm in a hurry and don't know why

Sage words from a song which is essentially a chorus repeated seven times.

11. Or her.

12. The cookbook, which came out last month, is terrific and I’d highly recommend it.

13. I broke down a whole bird for this, but you could just as easily use individual cuts.

Breaking down a bird, by the way, is the next step in the radical eating curriculum after not returning to the grocery store when you inadvertently find yourself with bone-in, skin-on chicken legs instead of the boneless, skinless thighs you thought you bought for pulled chicken sliders, but instead boning out the legs, using the meat for sliders, roasting the skins for cracklins, and simmering the bones for stock.

(A special shoutout to Roommate CWD, MPP, by the way, for doing just that.)

14. Brandy would be traditional, but I rarely have it on-hand.

15. This was about four hours for me.