"Always. Meat, hide, bones if they're useful. Taking a life means using what you've taken." He pauses, meeting my gaze directly. "Waste is disrespectful."
"The deer on your cabin wall, you used all of it?"
"Fed my family for three months. Hide went to a local craftsman who makes winter gear. Bones went to my neighbor's dogs." Nash holds my eyes. "Nothing wasted, nothing taken for sport."
The concept challenges every assumption I've made about hunting culture. What he practices is stewardship by someone who understands the true cost of taking life, a world away from the trophy-seeking, resource-wasting industry I've imagined.
"I've been wrong about some things," I admit. It's true and I know it and I'm tired of pretending otherwise.
"Most people are. City folks especially. They want their meat to come from somewhere clean and distant, wrapped in plastic with no connection to the animal it came from."
"And that's worse than hunting?"
"Factory farming? Animals that never see sunlight, never choose where to go or what to eat, live in misery from birth to death?" Nash shoulders his pack. "Yeah, I think that's worse."
The comparison forces me to confront an uncomfortable truth. The industrial meat system I've supported through grocery store purchases causes far more suffering than Nash's careful, respectful hunting. I've been complicit in something I find morally objectionable while condemning something that might actually be more ethical.
"Ready to keep moving?" Nash asks.
I stand, testing my strength and finding it dramatically improved after the meal. My legs feel solid again, capable of handling the demanding terrain ahead. The protein has given me back the energy I need to continue searching for Waldo.
"Ready," I say, meaning it.
As we pack up and head back toward the snowmobiles, my stride is steadier and the pack feels manageable again. The trout is metabolizing into actual warmth.
The deer on the wall. The fish from the creek. The oatmeal with cranberries.
I came up here planning to survive on principle. Turns out principle has a daily caloric limit.
Nash is already fifty feet ahead, reading the terrain the way he reads everything, like it's information he's responsible for. I watch him for two seconds longer than necessary, then follow.
At the tree line, cut clean into the crust, a single line of tracks crosses ours and disappears into the timber. Canid. Big. Nash's eyes pass over them and keep moving, too smooth, too casual. He doesn't mention them. So I don't either.
Chapter Six
NASH
WatchingAris track across the snow puts a hitch in my breathing that the cold can't explain.
Three days into our expedition, she's learned to read the landscape the way survivors do. Her movements have gained purpose, efficiency. The desperate hunger that marked her first days has given way to steady strength, and the fish she finally agreed to eat has put color back in her cheeks.
She drops to a crouch beside the prints, one gloved finger tracing the outline without disturbing the snow.
"These are deeper than the others we've been following," she says, low.
"Heavier animal," I confirm, studying the track pattern. "Probably male, mature."
"Could it be him?" Her voice carries hope wrapped in scientific caution, like she's afraid to want too much.
I examine the stride length, the spacing between prints, the way the hooves dug into the frozen ground. The tracks tell a story of an animal moving with purpose but not panic, eating up ground the way animals do when they've walked this route before.
"Could be. Size is right, and the gait suggests an older bull who's comfortable in this country."
Aris fires off photographs from every angle, her tablet pinging with each capture. The sound should feel intrusive in the wilderness quiet, but I've grown accustomed to her methodical documentation. Everything matters to her research; every detail could be the piece that makes sense of three years of tracking.
She stands up, brushing snow from her knees, but as she shifts her weight to turn, her left boot catches on a buried root. She stumbles hard.
"Whoa," I say, lunging forward to catch her arm before she goes down.
