Failure

According to Google, Failure means the lack of success. And for a long time, this was a binary definition to me. Either I met my goal or I didn't. There was no in between.

This year, I went on two elk hunts on public land. I had the tag, and I was the one looking to successfully harvest an elk. It seemed like there were two possible outcomes to these hunts. Either I succeeded in harvesting an elk, or I failed to.

In both hunts, I did not harvest an elk. I spent eight days on the first hunt, four days scouting and four days hunting, in the backcountry, getting up pre-dawn and getting out of the backcountry in the dark, hiking my actual body off all with the goal of locating, successfully shooting, and then packing out via my own body (and the bodies of my companions) a bull elk.

In those eight days several things happened.

First: I hiked through snow, sleet and tears and did not lose any weight, but my entire body re-comped. None of my clothes fit the same when I got out. My workout pants, with snaps at the calves, no longer snapped shut when I got home.

Second: I always thought I wasn't a napper. Turns out I can nap, but only after waking up at pre-dawn, hiking for miles up hill in the dark with an extremely heavy pack at ten thousand feet of elevation, and then not having access to the Internet, or my always full To-Do list. With these conditions met, I can lie face down in the dirt and sleep like there is no tomorrow.

Third: I learned the best way to see elk is to go grouse hunting, and the best way to see grouse is to go elk hunting.

After not finding success in the first elk season, I decided to spend two days in the fourth season on what my husband and I termed a YOLO boondoggle of an elk hunt. In this hunt several things happened:

First: We failed to see any elk at dawn on day one. So instead of staying out there until dusk, we went into the bustling metropolis of Walden, CO and ate bacon. Turns out, I cry a lot less while hunting if I get a midmorning snack of crispy bacon and coffee.

Second: We found elk at the end of the first day. We were across the valley and spotted them with binoculars. We decided to check out the trailhead from where we would need to hike to access them the next morning. While driving to the trailhead, twenty minutes to shooting light, we ran into a herd on the road!

I jumped out of the truck and chased them. Of course, they are a million times faster than me, and while I didn't see them again, just the action pulling the cover off the scope and actively tracking them gave me a rush which is one of those IYKYK things. I wanted to both cry and laugh manically. It was actually happening. Something which I'd put so much time and effort into was turning into a reality. I had the gun and I was running into the forest, the legal light fading, and it was decidedly not chill but entirely electrifying.

Doubt at my ability to take the life of something so majestic flooded me. Then I second guessed my skill. Then I forgot all of that and simply followed the hoof prints in the snow, propelled finally by just my lizard brain. I was the hunter, and I was not going to stop... Until it became dark. Then I was in the woods with no gloves, no headlamp, and a bubbling sense of being truly alive. For a brief moment, the rest of the world had faded to nothing. I didn't have bills to pay. I wasn't doom scrolling. I didn't have to go to any pointless meetings. All I had to do was follow the prints of an animal that could feed me for a year. Even though they had turned to mist, for just a second, I had floated on that mist.

And when we drove home at midday on the second day, my husband and I had a conversation about success and failure. I had not successfully hunted an elk, but we had done a lot of things right. We had changed plans after only a few hours in a location which showed no promise, allowing us to actually locate them. We then got to chase them, and we put ourselves in a very good position to actually hunt them the next morning. None of this is a given when hunting.

In fact, we talked to a guy, who said he was just going to walk five miles into the backcountry and find the elk. He was alone and started his hike at one pm, even though sunset was at 4:55pm. We watched him hike into a snowstorm, no elk sign anywhere in the valley, and while we both knew his plan was absolutely insane, we knew, he'd learn (assuming he didn't die out there). We watched him wander into the wilderness, and we decided to pull the plug on that area, which was what allowed us to find elk later in a different location. But not that long ago, we would have been out in that valley just like that guy, simply wandering around because we knew no better.

So, while I did not get any elk, I realize, the definition of failure, a lack of success, is 100% in the eye of the beholder. Google defines success as: The accomplishment of an aim or purpose. And as hackneyed as it is to say, everyone gets to define what their purpose is. There are many, many pieces that go into something as complicated as a big goal. Be it hunting an elk on public land, or publishing a book (a topic I think a lot on), the overall objective is made up of countless small pieces. And all those pieces have to be filled for the final objective to be met.

I did not get an elk, but I got closer than I've ever been, and by that metric, it was a raging success.

And I have no doubt, everyone reading this has their own version of failing. And all it takes is a-not-so-simple vision shift to see those failures as tiny successes which one day might, just might, if you keep on keeping on, culminate in a very, very big success.