https://townhall.com/columnists/salenazito/2021/12/28/americas-outdoor-awakening-thanks-to-meateaters-approach-to-the-movement-n2601120BOZEMAN, Montana -- Steven Rinella has a very hard time sitting still. This is not just an observation. It is, he says, what makes him who he is.
"I was born with this wanderlust to move, constantly, as far as I could. It's more than I have a very hard time holding still: I like to go places. I like to understand the people, their history, their social norms, the stories behind their lives, what they ate and how they prepared it," explains the writer and outdoorsman. We are talking from his office in Bozeman, Montana, Rinella having just returned after several weeks hunting and fishing with his family at his cabin in Alaska.
His wanderlust for tracking, hunting, cooking and storytelling has generated a multiplatform empire that includes his reality show, "MeatEater." In it, Rinella travels to far-off places to track and hunt animals, typically followed by painstakingly prepared and often exotic meals.
In his wanderings, Rinella says, he ponders who was there before him -- not yesterday, or last year, but as long ago as the Ice Age. "I often look at some of my favorite periods in deep history that involve these nomadic hunters," he explained. "People who did move around a lot and cover a lot of ground. Even in our understanding of surviving on the Great Plains, they would cover this enormous amount of ground. I imagine these people's base skill set, it would be adaptable to so many different places, and so I admire that," he said.
It is a notion that conflicts with his love and respect for the person who was born of, and remains in, a certain spot. "And they know it inside and out, they know everything, they know every lead, and if something is different, they know. They know what the weather's like every year, where the wind blows from on such and such day. I love all that," he said of the more rooted hunters across the country whose experience spans dozens of generations.
"These are two very different ways of going about your life. I could be happy in each, but I'm happier as the person who can just go anywhere and hack my way through it because I've accumulated enough knowledge to be adaptable," he said. "I'm happier at this age in that nomadic space."
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