I walked over to the animal in the dark, put my hands on its body, and said thank you. I cannot explain, only that it was the right thing to do.

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The truth is that I didn’t know how to cook until I was an adult. I grew up in New York. Restaurants and takeout. Always somebody else’s kitchen. I never thought much about it, how my food was sourced. And then in 2020, I started cooking every meal I ate. For fourteen months straight it was just me, my kitchen, and the process of trying and failing and trying again, until I realized that learning to cook was learning to pay attention.

I’ve been working with Maui Nui for the past two years, cooking regularly with the cuts and posting recipes. I bought into the quality immediately. Wild-harvested. Mission-forward. The most nutrient-dense protein available. But it wasn’t until I visited the Baseyard for a harvest with the team that I understood what I’d been missing.

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The harvests happen at night, on the slopes of Haleakalā in ‘Ulupalakua. The teams use FLIR thermal imaging to locate deer in the dark. The animals have been on Maui since the 1950s, eating through native vegetation at a rate the land can't regenerate. Every harvest is a precise, careful intervention in a problem without an easy solve.

The animals have been on Maui since the 1950s, eating through native vegetation at a rate the land can't regenerate. Every harvest is a precise, careful intervention in a problem without an easy solve.

Witnessing these guys on the move, I kept reaching for the word reverence, except the team was coordinating with total focus and total care. Two things I’ve rarely seen coalesce.

The dedication, speed, and love. Working together through the night on a part of Maui that most people on the Continent never visit, processing animals most consumers never think about, and doing it all with a precision and a seriousness that most people never seen.

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Carrying the deer across my shoulders out of the brush, I finally understood the whole chain as a physical reality. This is where the flavor comes from, I thought. The depth of its color. The reason I cook it the way that I do. Because a team of people decided the animal deserved to be treated with care from the first moment to the last, and built an entire operation around that hard, difficult decision.

I think about the food I'll cook for my kids. I want to be able to tell them where it came from. Not what’s on the packaging or the label. The actual story. The real one. This one.