There's a compass on my right forearm, but the piece that means the most is the wolf.
It's there because of a morning on our property in Wisconsin — sitting still in the woods the way you do when you hunt, when the whole point is to disappear into the quiet and let the place forget you're there. I won't oversell it, but something happened that morning that I'd call spiritual if that word weren't so worn out. A stillness that reorders you a little. I've been chasing that feeling, and finding it, ever since.
That's most of why I hunt. The tag, the freezer, the tradition — all real, all part of it. But the bigger draw is the discipline the woods ask of you: patience, attention, preparation, and the humility to sit there on the land's terms instead of your own. You can't rush a morning like that. You can't multitask it. You just show up, get quiet, and pay attention.
The pines on my arm are family — one for the people who matter most. The wolf is that morning. Different tattoos, same lesson: the things worth having take patience and presence, and they don't care how busy your week was.
I've come to think the woods and the work aren't as separate as they look. The stillness that lets you notice a deer move at the edge of a field is the same stillness that lets you notice what's really going on with a team, or a system, or a problem everyone else is talking over. Preparation, patience, paying attention. Turns out that's most of leadership, too.
Anyway — if you need me some Saturday and I'm slow to answer, there's a decent chance I'm sitting somewhere very quiet, on purpose.
