Every spring The Community takes a break for two weeks.  One week always is the first week of May.  The other week will be either just before or just after that week, depending on the weather.  This Spring has been cold, so the Break started on May 1, and it will end this weekend.

The folks at Moose Factory used to tell me that the spring hunt was better than the fall hunt.  The geese coming North just tasted better:  “All that American corn you guys got down there.”

Whether or not that’s true, I don’t know.  It all tastes good to me — the goose, the corn, whatever.  But, no doubt about it, the Spring Goose Hunt is a serious business.

Easter came late this year.  No matter.  We got snow.  There were 150 of us celebrating on Easter Sunday, and then the town emptied.  From dawn to dusk airplanes on skis shuttled hunters and families to camping grounds out in the bush. Mistissini is a quiet place now.   On the Sunday after Easter Sunday there were six of us in Church.  This last Sunday there were fifteen of us.  One lady explained why she opted to stay in town.  “If you go out to the bush camps, you’re expected to pluck geese.  I am NOT going to spend my spring break plucking geese.”  Perhaps she is one of the exceptions.  In a way, I could see her point.  We, of independent mind, must find our common ground.  The exception always proves the rule.

But The Hunt IS fun.  Camping together is good for the family.  There’s a common purpose; everyone has a responsibility.  New England families follow a similar path, when they go out in the Spring to gather that precious maple sap.  It’s fun.  It’s outdoors.  It’s healthy.  It reunites the generations.  Everyone has something to do.

There was a time when life simply depended on this kind of hunting and gathering.  Children learned the way of life early — as early as they could learn anything.  Each generation taught the next.  The traditional ways — honed over the centuries — simply worked.  And they worked well. Even today, generations later, these old ways are remembered with affection and respect.  Originally they were developed as survival skills.  Today they help us understand who we are.

Of course, there are elements of life in addition to the physical that we seek to preserve and, indeed, enhance.  We value deeply the life of ancient traditions and constructive attitudes.  We seek healthy relationships and nurture our families’ unity.  We look for a realistic and functional relationship with this good Earth.

The very word, ‘hunt’, means different things to different people.  We Americans may think of  ‘The Hunt’ as a sporting event, a rigorous but entertaining diversion.  The Mistissini Hunter, on the other hand, is not in the bush for sport in our sense of the word, at all.  He harvests those good things presented by the Earth.  The family that participates in The Hunt exercises a centuries-old routine in which thanksgiving is an act of piety.  We don’t take these gifts of nature.  We receive them — and with thanks.

The activities of The Hunt remind us of who we really are and of our place in this verdant world.  Anyone who has been in the bush for any length of time adopts a profound respect for this environment that can both sustain and destroy.  Respect and humility are those instruments of survival learned in the bush and perfected in the hunt.  They are required in the days ahead on  this journey we are called to in the shadow of an empty Cross.