Can a One Week Vacation Accurately Predict the Rest of Your Life?

Photo by Sean Cassidy - Northern Ontario Beaver Meadow

I recently returned home from a moose hunt in Northern Ontario, and the weather was calmer this year than I’ve ever experienced. The absolute degree of silence was exceptionally remarkable.

Some mornings/evenings, except for the odd blast of red squirrel chatter or geese calling, it was almost eerily quiet. No wind, no rustling, no movement to create noise. I was beginning to notice my breathing, heart beating, and joints cracking as I moved; all odd sensations I've never detected before.

The vacuous quiet was so curious that, while on the long ride home, I decided to research the phenomenon. I discovered intense quiet has been proven to lead to a host of unusual sensory experiences.

For me, the void of noise seemed to stimulate more introspective thoughts than usual.

Sitting out on our 7th and last night of hunting, it seemed like yesterday we had arrived full of excitement and hope for our annual fall pilgrimage. It seemed like we had just paddled across the river, tied up the canoe, and hung up the trail marker tape to safely lead us back from these remote spots.

Now the time had come to take the tape down again for the year, erasing all evidence we had been here. Where had the week gone? It seemed to go so fast. I started contemplating how quickly time goes, the impermanence of all our activities, and began musing how a trip like this could reflect a microcosm of an entire lifetime.

It was now the 11th year I had hunted this particular location. Even though the beautiful tree I initially selected to sit below has fallen, and the small bushes on the edge of the beaver meadow have become 20' high trees, the meadow remains largely the same.

If you look closely enough, evidence of my annual visits is visible. Bark has worn off tree roots where I sit, branches neatly trimmed to provide a clear view into the meadow, and small items kept stashed over the years in a tree stump all indicate human presence. The stashed items are partly for convenience and partly as a test to see if anyone else has visited my remote little oasis.

Considering that it is 1000 KM by highway north of Toronto, 40 KM down several logging roads, a canoe paddle in, and then a 300 meter uphill hike through dense bush, the lack of human activity in the area is hardly surprising.

As a result, I know with a strong degree of confidence, any impact made on the local environment was made by me, and no one else. This is, essentially, my own private spot on earth – an interesting concept when you consider it.

Once I had established I was the only person to leave a mark on the land, I began wondering how long it would last? Would anyone know I was here? Would all my memories of this remote spot be gone when I am?

Nine years ago, I left a time capsule under a pile of logs for my wife and kids with a plan for them to dig it up when we canoe the river together. This year, while finding ways to keep busy during the intense silence, I was reviewing all my local GPS coordinates and saw the time capsule waypoint.

Out of curiosity, I walked over to find the familiar pile of logs that had marked its location was now fully decomposed and gone. Without my first-hand knowledge, or the coordinates, there was no indication anything was buried there.

This thought was strangely disconcerting, and I began to wonder if my kids (or anybody else) will ever find this time capsule, or evidence of this hunting spot I have enjoyed for so many years?

I realized the anxiety I felt when considering this may not be isolated to the time capsule, but possibly a metaphor for life itself?

When I buried the capsule, I was sure I'd be paddling through this remote stretch of water with my kids. Nine years later, I don't have that same degree of absolute certainty. While I remain confident it will happen, I have also learned a lot can change in a decade.

Just like the logs where the time capsule is buried, soon, my beautiful spot, and even the memory of it will be forever gone. Again, this reality and the associated consideration of finality causes a feeling of concern to wash over me as I consider:

Will my father be back again next year hunting this spot with me?
Will I be back?
Will I have the opportunity to bring my kids back?
If nobody comes back, is the spot gone forever?

What I do know with certainty is this final evening marked more than just a week of moose hunting completed. It marks another year gone by. All the pre-trip anticipation, packing, and excitement is over. In only 7 short days, it has evolved into another 51 weeks of analysis, planning, and waiting.

I tried to take stock of all that had happened during the week and was surprised to find that I couldn't with any degree of precision. Of course, I knew general themes and highlights, but too much happens in 7.5 hours of hunting per day over a week to remember everything at the end.

I wondered about solutions to this issue and immediately determined I should have kept a journal recording what worked, what didn't, what went well, what didn't, and what thoughts and ideas I had.

I then started extrapolating and thought if I couldn't clearly remember details over a one-week time horizon, imagine a whole year? Imagine a whole lifetime?

I know one thing, from now on, I will keep a journal even if I can only complete it in its most basic form daily. Not only will this be valuable to chart my progress but, even if only on paper, it will also serve to keep some of my thoughts and memories alive. For some reason, that is a comforting thought.

It seems ironic that so many people accurately chronicle and track their professional lives, but don’t apply the same rigour to their personal lives. Which memories do you cherish and want to keep alive?

On that last night, I also took stock of my supplies. I still had two scent attractant sticks, two clean outfits, and assorted food and drink items, all of which I was trying to smartly and efficiently ration.

Again, when I considered the problem, it quickly became evident I didn't have even the most basic plan in place, and was vastly overestimating how much time I had.

As the first few days went by, before I knew it, my good intentions of conserving supplies were almost becoming a reverse form of procrastination. It was at that point, a deep thought occurred. How could I have misjudged my resources in such a short seven-day period?

There had to be more to it.

Was holding out and not using things in a timely fashion possibly a subconscious effort to avoid acknowledging the trip was progressing as fast as it was, and would soon be over?

It was indeed a thought worth contemplating because if I couldn't accurately forecast supply usage on a one-week trip, there had to be more going on than a simple lack of planning.

Was this yet another micro-level parallel to that could be extrapolated to the rest of my life?

Even though we were primarily hunting, the river also has world-class fishing, and many people travel the considerable distance just for this opportunity alone. We were camped right on the edge of the water, and I only got out fishing twice, and a couple of my hunting companions didn't get out at all.

They kept saying we'd wet a line tomorrow when we had more time. When tomorrow finally came, it was time to leave.

Photo by Sean Cassidy - Fall Colours on the Water

Clearly, in addition to a journal, I needed a more robust plan of goals and objectives for the week.

If I could implement sophisticated business and project plans in my professional life, why was I not putting in place a personal plan?

If a basic seven-day plan could ensure better organization and results on a hunting trip, surely the same benefits would carry over to the other parts of my personal life?

Just like a lifetime, a seven-day trip seems like a lot when you begin the journey. But upon careful examination, it's remarkable what can be missed or overlooked in seven short days and the impact and opportunity cost this can have.

It also became readily apparent these same errors and omissions can be transposed to a lifetime with an almost uncanny degree of relevance and accuracy. Unfortunately, the costs are magnified relative to the time horizon involved. Not good.

All in all, the trip had gone quite well. But when reviewed in detail, it was evident several key considerations were overlooked or ignored. Plus I didn’t have accurate records of what took place each day.

As a result, potential opportunities were missed or never materialized. It is fairly easy to determine these deficiencies in a week-long trip, and they did not result in major consequences.

In contrast, when compounded over the course of a lifetime, I wonder how many opportunities we miss due to similar issues and how significant the consequences might be?

And, like the logs where my time capsule is buried, many of these opportunities will never be discovered or considered because the evidence to show they existed was never recorded and is erased with the passage of time.

This blog marks the start of my contemplation on this thought-provoking subject. The deeper I dig, the more amazed I become at how the seemingly innocuous little things that we do, or don't do, are driven by large and established underlying patterns of subconscious beliefs.

Beliefs that lead to results, or a lack of results, that compound over time and continue to grow if the supporting system isn't scrutinized with conscious attention.

As an experiment, closely examine and reflect upon the events of your last one-week trip. This is easier because it is an isolated event with defined start and end points. Review what you wanted to achieve versus what actually happened. Why did this happen?

I’m confident your results will be similar to mine as you closely examine how your belief patterns impacted the trip and how these outcomes can reliably be expected to mirror the rest of your life. Remember, this is not about whether the trip was good or bad, it’s about what actually happened versus what you anticipated would happen, and why.

We will continue this thought process in an upcoming blog, and in the meantime, I'd be curious if any of you have had similar thoughts or experiences and would be willing to share them? Please don’t hesitate to reach out, I’d love to expand this fascinating subject, and if you think others could benefit from this discussion, please pass it along.