Tame senses become awakened when entering an ancient winter forest. The primal yearning to experience the environment becomes manifest in a snow-clad forest.
Into The Snow Covered Woods
Sharp senses are a must when the hunter is out and about but in the forest they become premium assets. They allow orientation but also finding and tracking prey. Sight, smell and hearing are how an Akita parses his surroundings, making decisions on the fly and becoming in tune with the nature. By following one such Akita, we too can synchronize with the wild, reviving our dulled senses.
Seeing is believing
What we see dominates how we think and feel. Hence, we believe what we see but the opposite is true as well — we see what we want to believe is true. If there’s an idea in our minds that takes hold, it tends to manifest all around us. That applies to strongly held beliefs just the same as to transitory emotions and notions.
The secret to not letting sight dominate our thinking is to take a moment and reconsider everything we see. To be unmoved by strong scenes and to remain calm like the surface of a pond is the ultimate goal of every aspiring hunter. That doesn’t mean a lethargic consciousness but a mindful and centered one that can always react with poise and grace. Better yet if we can combine visual information with that from other senses.
Ancient scents
Smell and taste are closely linked; we can literally taste strong enough scents. For an Akita, that applies a thousandfold and it can almost bite into a scent. Every new scent is a new experience that brings Akita into the moment but also evokes ancient memories of stalking and hunting. Spending time with an Akita or just in the wild does something similar for humans too.
A forest is rich in scents of all qualities, from pungent to sappy. Our noses, as untrained as they are, get in tune with the forest and we too start noticing them. The forest tells us a story that we simply didn’t know how to read — now we do. Going back to the forest reignites our sense of smell. We start participating in Akita’s exploration, which gives us a new level of insight into its behavior.
Sounds of the past
The trinity of the senses is completed with hearing, which is highly selective in humans. We hear what we want to hear and constantly filter out what we consider background noise. In the concrete jungle, that’s perfectly acceptable, but in the wild that might mean losing valuable information and missing a predator or a prey. Only those who can hear the world around them in all its unfiltered glory can become the true masters of stalking. That’s where Akita comes in.
By following and observing an Akita, we too can start hearing with a new set of ears. By training ourselves to withhold our judgment of the noise and genuinely hear it as it is, we too can tune into the nature. The Akita already does the same and now we too can be sure we won’t skip a single detail in the grand snow escapade of life.
