When it comes to displays of hunting culture, a roadhouse or farmhouse can fare well against big-city museums

The ethereal light, reminiscent of the last light over the marsh, brought life to subtle colors and textures. The silence provoked my imagination to listen to the haunting sounds from the past.

I heard the short harpoon swishing through the cold air and finding its mark with a thud, followed by the soft padding of mukluks running across a skiff of snow to the rent in the ice. I heard the fire-hardened knife slicing through to hot blood and the primordial chewing of life-sustaining blubber, sounds of celebration in the hunter’s success.

I imagined the sharp pop as a needle, crafted of bone, punctured the intestines and drew the sinew thread tight to form the waterproof joining that would become a hunter’s parka. There would be cooing from the child, bundled against the cold in the bassinet made of luxurious furs, lying next to the maker of the parka.

Metropolitan museums have always scared me a bit. I think of folks standing around, a glass of wine in hand as they muse over the meaning of a painting that might have been made by an infant crawling through spilled paint. I couldn’t imagine myself in such a scene.

The hustle of city life, with its busy sidewalks and events that draw crowds, has been a daunting environment for me. It took me years to figure out why I could never enjoy the great indoors where others seem to thrive. I discovered it isn’t a dislike of people. It is an upbringing that insisted if one wasn’t contributing, being useful, then it was best to stay away.

But when Alice Green, the curatorial and exhibitions assistant at the Anchorage Museum, asked Christine and me to do a presentation for the “What Why How We Eat” series, I had a purpose. An odd twist in my personality is that I enjoy public speaking. An opportunity to speak to a crowd gets my blood flowing. It’s the useful aspect, I guess — if I’m asked to do it, then it must have some value, and I embrace the opportunity. In sharing our hunting life with folks, I would get to talk about Winchester, so, yeah, sign me up.

That’s how Christine and I found ourselves in the east wing of the museum, in the Arctic Studies Center, among the fabulous displays of Alaska Native culture. As we looked at each collection, representing indigenous culture from Southeast Alaska to the far north, we both noticed how much the displays reflected a celebration of the hunting culture.

The garments and tools of survival, fashioned with elaborate decorative items from nature, spoke in silence to the celebration. One could imagine the gatherings of people at the successful return of hunters with game, and everyone pitching to process it and consume it so that life could go on.

They were reminiscent of the celebrations of the hunting, fishing and outdoor lifestyle I have seen in rural America, without the benefit of museum glass, lighting and pristine examples.

A favorite memory of my younger days is hunting with my dad and friends when we stopped at the farms and ranches of other hunters. Most often it was to talk hunting or help with a chore that needed a few extra hands.

Somewhere at each of these places, there was an area where artifacts and memorabilia were displayed. Sometimes it was in a barn, shop or, most often, in the house. There weren’t many mounted animals in those days because few could afford taxidermy, and seeing one was a special treat. But there were always antlers, sometimes a lifetime of them stacked in a tall pile in the corner. There were old hunting clothes, boots, knives, arrowheads, spent bullets retrieved from animals, feathers from game birds, and always old leather items and cookware. Gun scabbards, moccasins, horse and wagon tack, Dutch ovens and cast-iron frying pans.

In those days, the company we kept always had some sort of gun cabinet prominently displayed in the living room. There were spent shells, loaded shells, feathers and knives arranged as a backdrop to the firearms, all gleaming from gun oil and hand-rubbing.

One old rancher had an upstairs he would take my dad to while I hung out with one of his sons. One day when I was a bit older he let me go up to this loft, through a door set into the ceiling. The first thing you saw as your head cleared the floor was an 1874 Sharps “buffalo” rifle.

That Sharps was an enormous rifle, with a heavy, 30-inch barrel. The old fellow saw my fascination with the old rifle and offered to let me hold it. He insisted I take it in both hands, and even then I nearly dropped it. Then he showed me the cartridge that went with it, which was the size of a cigar. It was a high point in my young life.

The rest of the loft was covered in old guns, saddles of all sorts, many more than 100 years old. He had a feather headdress, Indian arrows, a buffalo robe and a spear with feathers hanging from it. The contents of that room would be worth a fortune today. But for him, it was a place to revel in a life he loved and to share that love with his friends.

These shrines are still out there, in all sorts of forms. When traveling to hunt, Christine and I enjoy stopping at small stores and out-of-the-way restaurants to see what the locals want the public to know about them. It seems there is always something that embraces the outdoor life.

Our favorite restaurant is one of those places. With its display of Alaska taxidermy, hunting art, fish mounts, guns and tools used in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it is as comfortable an environment to enjoy a meal that we’ve found. There is even a harpoon gun on display, one used years ago to harvest a beluga whale for the annual community whale feed.

As we stood in the museum admiring a skin kayak that appeared as seaworthy as anything you might see in store, I wondered. The overwhelming majority of Americans don’t hunt, yet the majority still approve of hunting. Perhaps when people see the obvious love of a lifestyle, a love that has been displayed in all cultures since humans started sticking things with sharp sticks, they understand that something as timeless as the hunting lifestyle is necessary.

Maybe it is something we need in a world that can be a bit enraged and disconnected, knowing there are still places, and still healthy populations of animals, that allow us not to forget what got us here.

Steve Meyer is a longtime Alaskan and avid shooter who lives in Kenai.