What's With the Beard (A Commentary On Regrets)

So what’s with the beard? Well, it’s a long story…

It starts in the mountains of eastern Idaho this past September on my annual trip to hunt elk with my bow. This year, I brought my 16 year old son Russ with us. Because of the way the winds work (the diurnal thermals blow down the mountain in the early morning then switch and blow up the mountain as the air at the bottoms warms with the sun - usually around 9:00am), we hunt uphill and into the wind early, get to the top, and turn around and hunt downhill into the wind on our way back to camp.

The climb we did that morning is particularly steep - almost a 45 degree slope. It took us about 90 minutes to climb the 2500 feet, and by the top we were gassed. Our effort paid off, though as we were into bulls right away. At one point, (there were four of us that morning - me, Russ, and my buddies Dave and Greg) we had a bull come into about 10 feet but none of us could get a shot. They say in archery elk hunting that in order to kill a bull, a hundred things have to go right. In that encounter, we must have had 99.

The best part of hunting elk with a bow during their rut (mating season) is the fact that you can interact with them by mimicking their calls. Cow elk (females) make a kind of “mew” sound, but the bulls (males) “bugle”. If you’ve never heard it (let alone been within meters of one screaming at you), it’s an incredible experience. On this day, there was one particular bull just screaming his head off at us from across a valley. Whether we gave him a cow call or a bugle, he would wail back. At that moment, there was nothing I wanted more than to go and kill that bull.

The problem was that he was fairly far away from us. In order to get there, we’d have to climb to the top of the ridge we were on, “side hill” a couple miles (which is exactly as it sounds - walking sideways across a hill), then try to drop down a few hundred feet to him. If that wasn’t hard enough, if we got lucky and all 100 things went right and we managed to kill him, we’d have to pack him back up those few hundred feet and carry him 3.5 miles back to camp (usually it takes 4-6 loads of 80-100lbs to carry an elk).

I told the group that I wanted to go kill that bull. My buddy Dave (the most experienced and successful elk hunter among us) immediately pointed out all the above mentioned reasons as to why it was a crazy idea. I didn’t care. Sure it would suck, but it would suck in the most amazing way imaginable. See, I’m the type of guy that is comfortable being uncomfortable. And besides, even if we didn’t kill him, going after him in and of itself would make for a great story - “hey, remember that time we went after that bull…”. I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I’d way rather collect stories and experiences like that than “stuff”.

So with the other guys being adamant about hating the idea of going after the belligerent bull, I did what only an idiot like myself would do - I decided to go alone. When I told the group that, we had another little discussion, and I was surprised when I found myself agreeing with them that it was an even more terrible idea than us going together. Finally, I think Russ could tell how badly I wanted to go because he said “fine, dad… I’ll go with you”. 

Now, as grateful as I was, I could tell that it was more of an appeasement than him actually wanting to go. In other words, he’d go with me to make me happy, but he wouldn’t be happy about it himself. Now, I love my son more than anything but there are times when he can get pouty/mopey like any other 16 year old. The last thing I wanted to do was be going after this bull with a kid complaining the whole time. I also didn’t want him to feel like he was obligated to come with me. I only wanted him to go if he really wanted to go - and I could tell he didn’t. 

 So we wrapped up the conversation, and with nobody to come with me (willingly), we set off down the hill and back to camp. On the way down, we split up (Russ and I went one way and the other two guys went another). It wasn’t long into our decent that Russ looked at me and said “dad, I wish we would have gone after that bull”. In that moment, he realized the opportunity we had to not only kill the elk, but also to experience something that would have simultaneously sucked and been awesome. He felt regret.

As we chatted about our decision (and regrets in general) I brought up the idea that by the time we’re old and our life is largely behind us, we’ll have many regrets. The interesting thing is that if you were to draw a pie chart of our regrets (I love pie charts even though I ironically don’t love actual pie), the majority of them won’t be things that we regret doing (although Lord knows that we all have a few of those doozies). The majority of our regrets are things that we had a chance to do, but for whatever reason decided not to. In other words, missed opportunities.

This got me thinking about my regrets. As crazy as it sounds, one regret that I have is never doing something audacious with my hair when I had the chance. It started getting pretty thin up there when I was in my early 30’s and I have been shaving my head since then. Up until then, I’d consider myself conservative with my hairstyles - high and tight. Looking back at it though, it would have been kinda neat to grow a mullet or something else ridiculous, just to do it.

So while I can’t be audacious with my head-hair, I sure can with my face-hair. I’ve never let my beard grow beyond the “itchy stage” because, well to be honest, I couldn’t stand the itching. Besides, I’ve been shaving since grade 7 (I was buying beer for my buddies when I was 15, even though I didn’t drink). Maybe the universe wants me to have a beard. At any rate, it's been a few months now and even though there's a bit of side-trimming going on, I'm going to let it buck for a while and see how crazy it can get.

In some sense, the beard is a result of me trying to “fix” a regret. For the record, the next morning I tried to “fix” the regret of not chasing that bull by going after him then. Before dawn, another buddy of mine and I started the climb up the ridge that we had heard him on the day before. Our three mile hike was for not, though.. He had moved from where he was.  We had an idea of where he may have gone, and this time we were going after him. I convinced my somewhat-more-impressionable Colin to embark on an epic trek up and along the Continental Divide and down another ridge line. That day we climbed over 3000 feet and covered 15 miles. We left camp before sun-up and didn’t get back until supper. We didn’t see or hear a single elk. I was exhausted and sore for days… but there’s not a single part of me that regrets it.