There was no meat in camp. My dad often stood, binoculars to his eyes, glassing the surroundings.

“There’s a caribou on the opposite bank, about a mile upriver. What do you say we take your mother’s rifle, get in the boat, and creep up there and have a look? We need meat.”

“My mother’s rifle” was a Model 98 Mauser bolt action, its barrel chambered for .30-‘06, and mated to a graceful wood stock. And a scope. Under seven pounds. Firearms – now almost a forbidden topic among many people—were my introduction to manufacturing precision. I drank in the precise shapes.

In movies a rifle is depicted as a fixed object like a spoon, but it’s not. It’s a process. When was it last sighted-in? At what distance does it print (hit where it is aimed)? Farther away, it would hit low. Closer and it would hit a bit high. Once out of the muzzle, the bullet is constantly falling, constantly slowing.

Life is full of misadventures. Have they disturbed anything? Go to the range and shoot a target group at the desired distance. Did the bullets hit where you aimed, or were they high or low, right or left? That’s what the two adjusters on the scope are for—to make the point of impact coincide with the aiming point.

We pushed the boat into the water and climbed in. He started the outboard, heading for the far opposite bank, under which we would remain invisible and un-heard..

“I saw a pingalook between the bank and the caribou. We’ll land in line with it and crawl inland, out of sight behind it until we get in range.”

A pingalook is a frost mound up to several feet high. Good cover. I wondered what mechanism had created it.

We would make our way across tundra peppered with all sizes of warm-season puddles and ponds. “Well, OK,” I thought. “This is what he likes to do. Let’s see how I like it.”

I didn’t, but in the presence of his huge enthusiasm I let myself be swept along. And we’d like some meat. My little sister, three, had strongly disliked fat. Now, in a world without supermarkets, she had developed a taste for it.

Wonderfully wet and cold, we were presently by his estimate at 200 yards. This part I could do—I’d been to the range and knew the basics of shooting. I was thankful for the need to be quiet. My dad’s idea of conversation with a ten-year-old was for me a perpetual spot quiz I could have done without. Questions, not conversation. Why couldn’t my life be the easy cornball harmony of the “Dick & Jane” reader?

I’d talked to my mother about this, saying I knew how much he wanted a hunting partner, but for some reason I couldn’t enthuse properly.

She suggested I do what I could. I knew that.

I wriggled into prone position, listening to suggestions about where to aim. Once, age four, my mother and I went into a five-and-dime.

“Would you like one of these notebooks?” she asked. I shook my head no. Later, at home, I thought of the lonely notebook in the store. Why must feelings come with everything?

I opened the bolt and he set a cartridge in front of it. I closed the bolt. I lined up the crosshairs and squeezed as directed. Mixed feelings.

We went to the animal. It was outright cold now, especially my feet. My dad was expertly dismantling the creature.

“Take your boots off.” I looked at him. “Your feet are cold. This will warm them right up.” He invited me to put my feet into the warm body cavity. Soon my feet were, as he had assured me, “Toasty warm.” His enthusiasm was warming me too.

We’d return tomorrow for the rest of the meat, but right now we headed for the boat. He had wrapped the caribou’s liver in a cloth and stowed it in his pack. The liver, he reminded me, is a storehouse of nutrients.

Once we had returned to camp, he said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I think you should take this liver to Kisik and Oineak (who had a tent nearby) and present it to them.”

They were our hosts at Niglik point, for this outpost of human life was theirs.

I was full of questions but if this was the next performance required of me, I could do it.

What an outburst of speech, smiling, and laughing from the two of them, and from their daughter, Lydia! It seems that among “the old people” – previous generations – the young hunter would do what I had just mechanically done—present the senior family with the liver of his first success. I felt myself being carried along in this.

Years later I would read in some Anthro' dissertation the author’s speculation that ancient persons, making sacrifice in whatever temple, were intentionally short-changing their gods by giving them nasty internal organs instead of nice red meat. But no—the liver is the choicest of the choice in terms of nutrients. It was the finest gift they could give.

Next day, once the caribou had been brought home there was again meat in camp. I thought about all this. My feelings would settle.